[Byrjun]

Originally Posted by drew0987654 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

what is it about the Shadows of Luclin expansion you hate so much? the mobs, the environment, music, atmosphere, quests, the introduction of aa's, mounts, the nexus, the bazaar? you can't hate ALL of that... the aa's and bazaar are nice at least, right? what would it be, mainly? my guess is the nexus....

For the most part I didn't mind the moon "environment" that much. It wasn't a huge stretch as most people think, since the Shissar and the Combine living on Luclin was part of the original classic storyline. It was only a matter of time before EQ explored that portion of the lore.

The mobs for the most part were cool. The Shissar are probably my favorite race in the game. I hated the graphics update though, with the new models. Most of them were ugly and removed a lot of the original charm, but the real deal breaker was the animations. And then a lot of the NPCs started using the same system and everything had those weird creepy marble eyes.

A lot of zones were useless (Scarlet Desert), but some were really cool (Sanctus Seru). Fighting through this huge Roman city was awesome, the problem is no one ever really got to see it because there was literally no point to go there. How many people have even seen the huge gladiatorial colosseum in that zone?

AAs were great. Mounts were stupid because you had to use the new models, and I refused. The bazaar was ok but I prefer face to face trading and haggling.

Paludal was very damaging to the game because it forced every old world zone from level 10-20 to become deserted. And then people tended to move on to Netherbian Lair, Dawnshroud, etc. since they were close to Paludal, which made non-Luclin zones feel empty.

Ssra Temple is possibly the best raid zone of all time. It was the first time where raid encounters started to add some complexity outside of tank a mob while it AE damages everyone. It culminated with Emp Ssra, one of the most epic fights in MMO history.

The problem is that after Emp Ssra (and the most lengthy, frustrating quest until GoD's BiC) you gained access to Vex Thal, possibly the worst zone in the game. The fights took forever (even trash), everything was named the same, the zone rotated through about 2 models (4 armed alien dude and slime), and every single raid encounter was the same AEs over and over. It was complete garbage.

All in all, it was a mixed bag, but the ending was the worst so that's what a lot of people associate the expansion with.

Originally Posted by Rararboker [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don't remember the specifics of where they placed the spots but they would all work like PoFear now. Basically a spot in a zone where there is a portal/item to click that brings you there if you meet the requirements. I want to say Bertoxxulolus realm was in Qeynos Sewers, in the suggestion? Rallos Zek's zone-in would be somewhere near the Ogre homeland, perhaps inside the town? Etc for each of the individual planes.

Just about every unused zoneline in the game would make sense for planar access. There's an unused zoneline in Oggok for Rallos Zek, and one behind Yael in the Hole for Brell, in Qeynos Catacombs for Bertoxxulous, etc. It's too much of a coincidence to imagine that the original intent wasn't to have more planar connections to the old world eventually. Plane of Tranquility was a cop out.

Originally Posted by Erydan Ouragan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

That's a good suggestion Sirken, but i can see several issues by doing that.

If you skip Luclin and directly go to PoP, how do you fix the gear progression? Would it be possible to go from Velious gear and transition directly to PoP, hp/mana/dmg wise?

It's funny since one of the main criticisms of Luclin was the poor loot quality. There really wasn't much gear progression from Velious to Luclin outside of ATH and a few outliers. Vulak's loot was still better than the majority of Luclin, which is why they artificially increased the difficulty of the encounter via the ring event.

PoP attempted to address this complaint but they overshot it by quite a bit, so you had players going from stuff like Sprinkler of the Spirits or Mace of Confusion to Time's Antithesis, which is just an unfathomable power leap.