Quote:
Originally Posted by pasi
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Daldaen and Secrets hit most of the pro-Luclin points already.
I think that other than zone/NPC graphic schemes, the biggest negative against Luclin is the lack of a traditional camp/PH style dungeon. Luclin has a ton of minimal-use flyover zones, but so do Velious and Kunark. There are a ton of camps in Luclin, but there is really no dungeon with the traditional camp/PH seen in Guk, SolB, Sebilis, Velketors, etc.
The closest thing to this would be Maiden's Eye (which was the most populated exp spot during SoL). Unfortunately, Maiden's Eye was outdoors and most of the good shit was no-drop. Fungus Grove mostly followed a random-drop model, Acrylia was an AE zone, and Umbral Plains was a plane with a few long spawn PHs.
As mentioned above, there was an abundance of camps and ways to make money in Luclin, you just had to be very pro-active and pre-form a group prior to reaching a destination. That 100% does not work with PUGs and imo, contributed heavily to the expansion's reception.
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I don't think you're going to win this argument. There were a lot of PH's in Luclin.
I'd like to explore this some more though to see if there's any merit.
Another argument I saw was the original development team wasn't around for Luclin. Far as I know, that's untrue. Most of hte original team were gone by 2002, but Luclin launched in late 2001, meaning at least some of the originals were still there during development. Now, it's true Verant was reorganized to become SOE in 2001, so perhaps some management changes happened after it was apparent Everquest was a huge success. BUT I haven't seen anything hard to prove that.
I do prefer the original Everquest up to Velious. I just think many of us over-romanticize things like the EC tunnel. Many also don't appreciate how large the world had become and why the Spires helped to actually strengthen the community by keeping it from being too widely dispersed.
I think it's primarily mudflation which ruined the early game. But this happens in all MMORPGs. You can't blame that on SOE or Smedly. It's a systemic problem. Mudflation attempts to cure an ever-inflating power divide between the lower levels and higher levels. That combined with things like too many zones and a decreasing new player population (and outdated tech) ended up butchering the early game.
Many players in WoW are going after classic WoW servers for the exact same reason we go after p1999. But probably 99% of the players are mistaken about who or what's to blame. I've only met a couple who realize much of teh blame is rooted in development habits and mudflation. Most never get that deep and just reside on the surface, assuming it's some crony in management trying to ruin their game.