Quote:
Originally Posted by caldiar
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The term 'classic' as I understand it stems from the history of Brad McQuaid and Verant's acquisition by Sony.
Brad McQuaid, as I'm sure most here know, was the dude responsible for pitching the EQ vision. He was the head honcho of design for stock, Kunark, and Velious.
After Velious' release, Verant got bought up by Sony Online Entertainment which also resulted in Brad being promoted (need to fact check that), and become responsible for more than just EverQuest apparently (EverQuest 2, EverQuest Online Adventures, PlanetSide, and Star Wars: Galaxies).
He wasn't super stoked with his new responsibilities and left SOE in 2001.
Luclin onwards were expansions that EverQuest's creator had no input on. They lacked his vision and took the game elsewhere steered by people who didn't know what Brad had in mind for the game.
Classic = Brad McQuaid's work.
Non-classic = everything else.
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Good post, although I'd like to add that even though McQuaid was the brainchild of The Vision™ and the chief designer of EverQuest, credit is also due to John Smedley and the rest of Verant Interactive who worked on the game up until the release of Luclin.
"Classic", as I see it, primarily refers to the game's actual server-hosted content rather than its ancillary client-side features like user interfaces, character models, graphical textures and so forth. These things can certainly make your EverQuest experience more classic, or less classic, but I wouldn't say they are the core things that determine whether or not Project 1999 is being true to Verant's original idea of EverQuest.
As caldiar pointed out, the release of Luclin marked the series' official departure from Verant's vision as Sony Online Entertainment took over development, spurring a rush for new expansions. Velious had been out for a single year on live servers before they unleashed Luclin, which was hardly long enough considering how much new content it provided.
Contrary to some opinions, classic is definitely not whatever you want it to be. It is the original EverQuest game and the first two expansions: The Ruins of Kunark, and The Scars of Velious.