Nilbog's post gives me a lot of hope, and at the same time makes me lament the fact that SoE didn't share his philosophy back in the day. Somewhere along the line they convinced themselves that it was the quantity of zones that mattered, instead of zones that actually felt "alive" like the old-world/Kunark/Velious zones do. Starting with Luclin there's no question about it — with each subsequent expansion the zones got a lot prettier but felt progressively more hollow.

Nilbog gets it, which makes me feel a lot more confident that P99 isn't doomed to repeat history.

I'd fancy all the non-implemented areas and concepts to be made in some way or the other. Empty places that seemingly serve no purpose, or stuff that clearly was supposed to be for something, but neer was. Ones I can think off the top of my hat:

- Rujarkian Hills. The LDoN zones, where the orc highway in Oasis would've led. But not the stupid-ass caves with storages of barrels and crates as in LDoN. I dunno what zone it could be, but it bothered me to no ends that you could clearly see a zone entrance reserved for the deathfist orc clan, but it wasn't there. I still run to the invisible wall occasionally thinking to myself: "if only!!".

- The Rathe Mountains. The sphinxes, for instance... One of them is clearly guarding some entrance to somewhere. Why are they on different factions? What are they? What about the weird ruins everywhere with big blue flames erupting from everywhere in them? SOE just threw ghostly frogloks in there later, but those ruins were there for a long time, one of Norrath's great mysteries. Some trolls are also guarding one of the haunted towers in there. What's that all about? Broken Skull Clan?

- Broken Skull Clan. These guys are supposedly the big enemies of the trolls of Grobb, and I didn't fancy the pirate-business they added as LOY.

- There's a clear entrance to some zone inside Oggok, near the smiths. It makes that S-shape that indicates an entrance somewhere. North from Oggok would be Karanas, so maybe it was meant to be a shortcut for ogres to get there?

- The weird tombstones and pillar-things in the Feerrott and at the West Karanas with ogres around them. I'd assume they were meant to be some form of teleportation for evil races to go around with somewhat less trouble, but that'd be PoK-ish so don't know.

- The angry Efreeti in Solusek Temple, and the secret room near him! SOE again added a quest for this guy later on, but going to the Dreadlands and summoning and killing some huge giant djinni imprisoned in some alternate dimension was a bit of a "bleh" thing to me.

- The dreadlands with those huge ruins. I thought there were just a couple of skeletons or something there, if they weren't completely empty? Such mysteries bother me!

- Loch Ness Monst-errr.. Lake Rathe and Dagnor's Cauldron. I remember always being scared as all heck of some huge giant serpent or something jumping me from the water there, and ofc there were rumors of such flying around everywhere back in the day. Prince Kermt Kyroppi doesn't really count to me.

- Unsolved quests! The tusk from that named mammoth in South Karanas, Eye of Petrifin, Evil Eye Optic Fluid, them sphinxes, that efreeti in solusek temple, so forth so forth. There's tons of stuff no one ever figured out on live. Despite us not knowing what these quests were meant to be, something could be come up for them eventually. I think. Despite how it might contradict with how much the decisions of SOE to make quests around them later agitates me.

Depends on how many people are playing. If there are enough people, then Luclin I guess...without the Bazaar if possible. That's as far as it should go though. After that it started to go downhill in my opinion.

Edit: Nevermind. I missed Nilbog's post. :)

I guess just regular GM events if possible. I loved the Halloween events they would do, for example.

I really like Bruts ideas as well. There are tons of dead end hallways, secret tunnels that lead nowhere and lore which could be used - like the alleged entrance to Brell Serillis' realm in The Hole.

Also add some more bosses (both raid and group ones) to existing zones, like the Loch Ness type monster that was supposed to be in Lake Rathetear (but was removed due to buggy pathing), or maybe some royals or lords in the existing cities with loot and quests etc.

Had a really long answer typed out, dropped my cell phone, hit escape and lost it. Here is the short answer

No instances
No POK
No POT
No AA
No Level cap increases.
No Discordians
No cats
No beastlords
No nexus
No Taelosians
No Netherbians
No POTime
No Zeb

Most zones in expansion set for raids or raiding in general. Possibly 1 additional zone in each for neach 31-40, 41-50 and 51-60 level range.


SOL - Focus more on Combine on Luclin. Shift Akhevans from "wtf" to "Oh, Luclin!", tie Shissar more to the Iksar.

POP - Change the planes to work like how they do currently, ports or portals. Rework that shitty storyline. Most zones open.

GOD - EQ goes to hell. Rename Discordians with demonic/devilish names. Replace Taelosians with angelic-ish counter part. Rework BIC to be 1 groupable, most zones open.

Tying Shissar to the iksar to be able to do SSRA would be the shit. So would SSERU.

There's also an invisible wall in Nektulos Forest that seems like it ought to go somewhere. Just north of the River.

And all the Combine fire pots. ;)

..
 

Luclin!!!!!!!!

Netherbians.. /shrug who cares they're not even close to an integral part of luclin, they're mostly green cons that are small potatoes. Personally I dont mind them at all.

Nexus.. Whats the big deal with this zone, how is it any different from how WC is right now, a general meeting zone for guilds or afk zone for others. The 4 spires should be on like a 15 minute timer iirc, not exactly super fast travel and hardly takes away from wizard/druid porting abilities.

Beastlords.. This I could agree with you on, I always found beastlords to be somewhat of a useless class especially in the begining. However, Paragon of Spirit is actually semi useful on raids and the dps of a well geared BL is almost respectable. They deserve to exist.

Vah Shir.. No furry kittys? That entire city of them would make it tough, though I agree they never really did much with the Vah Shir city in terms of quests or raid targets etc. One big quest involving the grimling I think.

AA.. Absolute necessity, how anyone can be against AA is beyond me. I would give my first born for innate metabolism and run speed right now! Seriously though, it's not feasible to tackle the raid encounters in Luclin without having a decent amount of people with AA's, they will get raped.

These were what made the game fun for me the first time around. I started mid-Velious mind you.

-AA's allowed you to set yourself apart from someone else, beyond just gear. -Plane of Time was one of the most fun raid zones made imo.
-Easier travel means more time for things you actually want to do or get done.
-Need levels to do Luclin content