I have to disagree with easy travel being good. There are many MMOs that are about the action and not the world. EQ should be about the world. That's what classic means (to me).

Great ideas, Mixxit! I am in favor of leaving the sci. fi. moon out of the picture as well.

Great great idea! Access to plane of air on an island in plane of sky. Now we are talking like classic vets and verant. :D

Everything you said just rocks. Thank you.

Ahh yes, but we also don't have to give mobs several million HP like the blobs in VT had either.

Travel will become harder as the expansions open & the boats will return as soon as the mechanic can be worked out. We aren't doing anything to make it easier for you to travel...if anything, we're trying to make it harder.

I did POTime, for me it was boring & monotonous, just like AA were. The only fight that was remotely fun was RZ and VZ/TZ. The rest were your average tank and spank.

And you don't need levels to do anything if it is balanced appropriately.

Instead of AA, I'd rather write quests that gave items that had AA abilities on them or gave access to the skills/boosts themselves. But, then you end up with mobs with astronomical amounts of HP, like the blobs. AA were the beginning of an escalation: You can either advance player gear, or player ability; if you advance both then you have to advance what mobs drop and what mobs do. Be that "do" equal to HP, Min/max damage, AE, proc or attack speed. The tighter you can control what the players have access to the better encounters can be tailored to be difficult vs "a 1500aa tank fight".

There's a lot that could be done with EQ storyline. I'd focus on internal expansions for the most part, that of a constant and changing world.

I like the term Discord and what it represents, chaotic stirring of the divine and mortal powers of Norrath alike; the sowing of corruption and manipulation by these great powers and their influences upon Norrath.

One cool thing I enjoyed about EQ lore, was the fact that the Gods could be the creation of mortals through worship and belief. This opens the door for myriad of other "deities" to exist. While the original pantheon are the powers/influences that balance the universal energy, there could be many other lesser gods and mortal races in existence that could make their way to Norrath. Perhaps an ancient relic of great power exists within Norrath and is guarded by the frogloks of guk, a relic which the undead of guk seek that will grant them eternal lichdom and power.

There's so much to do with EQ lore, I'd love to write for the EQ world!

Trakanon then laid his serpent-like head on the floor of his cave. "That time is fast approaching. Here is my prophecy, young one. Everything I say now shall soon come to pass. When the wars of the elder races begin to come to fruition, the gods shall take notice and plan for their coming into the world. Then, on the third day of the third season, in the dark of the night on all the continents of the elder races, shall be reborn my chosen in the bodies of other men, representing all of the three virtues: good, evil, and the gray neutral between them both. They will arise to the call of a fourth chosen, great among them, who will collect my gifts unto himself: the magic enhancements of Miragul, the flaming sword of Nalikor, and your dragon pendant. The peoples of Norrath will revere this one as Trakanon's chosen, and he will watch the whole world burn."

Why is this fun?

AA's gave me a reason to log on and keep improving my character. As far as PoTime goes...boss after boss boring? Dang.

[Re: travel being hard]

It's fun because it's a challenge. EQ was interesting in part because the challenge consisted of many things besides just crawling a dungeon or defeating a raid boss.

For example, finding your way through a new zone, finding your corpse, or being lost in the dark (or all three if you're a Barbarian going down to Blackburrow for the first time).

When Sony lightened the game and made night vision meaningless, they removed a challenge from the game. There's nothing anybody can do to put that challenge back now.

When you remove enough little challenges over time, you wind up with a bland and empty game where you do the same thing time after time to acquire points. Basically, WoW "dailies" (which is when I quit that game again when my friend suggested I should start doing them).