I liked that Velious added some crucial new spells, some great raid content (I never even saw NToV..), and great quests like the prayer shawl and the ring.
I remember grinding my way up to the 7th shawl and just how brutal that tradeskill grind was - mostly the tailoring and blacksmithing portions - and then my asshole puckering as I did that combine that can fail. (and I did have it fail once). Actually got my 8th shawl later on too.
As another poster said, Luclin sucked thematically more than anything else. I can forgive the shitty models that I can turn off, I can forgive mooncats, but the setting was atrocious and only further shat on by the awful Gates of Discord BDSM theme.
The raids were also super long and shitty - VT made me quit the game because after spending 8 hours in a VT raid I decided I didn't want to play EverQuest anymore.
That said, I actually liked the bazaar. Having to leave your character in game as a vendor was an interesting mechanic, and I think AA's were an absolute godsend for keeping people into the game. It really gave you something to do once you hit max level, and you were always gaining something even if it was just a tiny bit of AA xp.
I couldn't care less about the arguments that it just raised the cap from "max level character" to "max level character + X number of AAs". Getting Run 3, innate mana regen, stats, abilities, that was all super fun to me.
Luclin also had a ton of shitty zones that nobody ever did because the mobs were hard and the XP sucked. Scarlet Desert? The Grey? Katta Castellum? Twilight? GTFO.
I can't even think of an actual high level Luclin dungeon people did like OS or Velks Lab - can anyone tell me if there was one? Nobody touched Akheva Ruins/Griegs End/Ssra (except for key stuff and raiding)/etc on my server. FG only for AoE groups...
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