Originally Posted by Fett (Post 1349767)

I'm a recently returning player to EQ, I played through Velious, and came back shortly in Luclin/PoP.

I came back to EQ because of the "classic" era nature of P1999. There's a couple things EQ does that go beyond many modern MMOs that I've tried and that's the forced player interaction. you have to interact with people to play this game. You have to ask a wizard/druid for a port. You have to speak to people in auction channel instead of their being an auction house. Etc. I definitely think the PoP books helped ruin the game, because it was one more thing they took away from having to make relationships and make people interact with each other.

MMOs are about interacting with other people. Otherwise you're just playing a single player game. This is just one of the things classic EQ does so well. I would be quite sad if the PoP got added into P1999.

As far as the exp penalty goes. I rolled an SK. I'm not that far yet (only 15). At first the penalty was driving me insane, but by now I'm used to it. I don't feel that strongly either way about it be removed in Velious. I would feel a little bad for everyone else who's leveled a hybrid to 60 already if it was removed and hey, if other people could get to 60 pre-removal, then so can I. I'm not going to complain if it's removed though.

Originally Posted by Daldaen (Post 1349786)

That's all good and fine. Until you are anon/role 100% of the time and only talking to your guildmates. Which is what happens to many people on this server. They don't interact at all with other people.


Then they don't understand why I refuse to port their anon/role toons. If you don't want people to interact with you, I don't want to interact with you either. /who all anon Druid and ask them for a port... Oh wait, you can't.

Anon/Role killed interacting with others 100x more than any silly PoK books did.

Originally Posted by Fett (Post 1349848)

Weren't Anon/Role always in the game? Is that really a fair comparison to make?

Originally Posted by August (Post 1349890)

I loved PoP.
I loved AAs.
I loved the keying, the tradeskilling, the exp zones (fire, earth, hello).


Game is about people. Complaining about removing 1 interaction (reliance on druids/wizards) because of books is stupid. You're assuming that druids/wizards only exist to perform this task for you. Good chance they also want to go out and exp and do stuff as well.

Almost every major MMO has enabled fast travel, and they have enabled it to a way greater degree than the PoK books. You can typically go to the quest hub you want via flight path, etc. At least you only got the 'general area' and still had to run.

People claim it makes the world feel smaller. But question- how many of you actually choose to hoof it from EC tunnel to lguk -? To oasis and to hit up kunark? Or do you port and pay someone for the pleasure?

But it's all moot. Server won't be headed to PoP. I'd love to see some custom content that incorporated the zones, though.

Originally Posted by Fett (Post 1349906)

You're seeing this from the wrong angle. It's not about the wizard/druid existing only to port you, but instead leaving them with a valuable and useful utility role they wouldn't otherwise have. This game isn't solely about killing stuff and and gaining exp, and as far as I'm concerned, classes having a useful utility role that gives them something to do outside combat is fantastic. RPGs are supposed to be about playing roles, and the journey. This type of mechanic adds to that experience.

Originally Posted by August (Post 1349916)

I understand both sides of the coin. I used to make a killing during PoP era due to translocation spells on my wizard.

The problem is that you've been given a hard dependency. When the world is so large, if you don't have a self-serve travel mechanism, you are forcing people to either

a) beg people for ports
b) run really long distances.

I understand the desire to be needed, wanted, hell even loved. However travel is something that everyone must do in this game, and to make one part of it so integral, with the world so large, it becomes overwhelming. There is a reason they implemented books. The game still required groups to do even generically hard content (bothunder, povalor, ponightmare - not to mention elemental plane farming).