AAs are good for that very reason. There was a desire to continue playing your character at the max level. Even for inconsequential things like Innate Dexterity on a caster. To start out, really after the first about 80-100 AAs everything else was fluff. You'd get a few big key things like Mass Group Buff, Spell Casting Mastery, and a class specific thing here or there. After that they were largely irrelevant in Luclin and PoP.
AAs also provided balance to the game. Currently in Velious melee reign supreme. However once AAs come in casters can regenerate more mana, save more mana, and do more damage. It greatly leveled the playing field on the archetypal level. More specifically it brought balance to individual classes. Rangers got Archery Mastery/Endless Quiver to bring their bow DPS up to par with other melee DPS when discing Trueshot. Wizards got Critical Blasts / Quick Damage / Harvest of Druzzil greatly increasing their value to a raid. Etc. etc. while the very OP classes got some very good abilities but not ones such that they remained head and shoulders above the others.
PoP was probably the point in EQ when classes were the most balanced of any time in EQ for both the raid and group scene.
Luclin raids were very good. People unfortunately tend to only remember their bad experiences with them, typically that means Vex Thal. However they also tend to forget the very cool encounters in Ssra like the Emperor, Cursed Cycle, Rhags, Arch Lich and XtCreator. Each tested another aspect of your raid. Akhevan Ruins probably had the expansions single best raid though.
Shei Vinitras was a glorious event that far too many guilds avoided/didn't ever get to experience. Every 2 minutes he would DT your tank forcing a tank swap. Every 3-4 he would spawn 4 adds, mixes of mezzable non-slowable and slowable non-mezzable. Forcing you to CC with both your enchanters and your shaman + Paladin/Knight offtanks. The room would mana drain people who stood in the center so you had to be wise about your mob positioning. And the room would spawn an additional random add every death that occurred, preventing a Zerg style fight and encouraging solid play. This type of event is what separated EverQuest raids from all other MMOs for awhile until they started stealing from EQ. Too many people think EQ became more like other MMOs and that's false one regards to raiding. They made challenging raid content way before others and did it in many different ways.
A cleric on P99 could solo Nagafen right now if not limited by the banish effect. All raid mobs will fall eventually to solo artists, that's the nature of the game. As the game progresses you inevitably get more powerful while old content stagnates. Too much "back in my day" thought goes into the mysticism of raid boss power from when you remember it. It's like getting upset over your Commodore 64 not being the powerhouse it was 30-35 years ago.
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