[Clazxiss]

I notice many people listing the negative aspects of SoL being about the AA and past content being rendered obsolete. This was not true.

What I liked about SoL was the ability to explore and experience zones that were normally on lockdown for loot. Those "obsolete" zones people complain about were not left barren. On my original server the top guilds created the same bottleneck of content that many people see on P99. Their pattern was this, lock down every raid boss in the current expansion plus the top mobs in the previous expansion. SoL offered enough raid mobs though that the intermediate guilds were able to swipe a few kills. It was fun to finally raid Nagafen, Vox, PoH, PoF without having to poop sock.

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

Bazaar made some interesting stuff beside the killing the whole immersive trading in EC, but yeah that could begone. They shouldn't have even added spires it just made wizards and droods a bit obsolete, that being said. Looking at some of the old zones and how popular the game was back at the time, I think they were trying to alleviate the crowded zones with more newer zones that can compete to stop the clutter but given how nice some of the zones were an how Brutal the other zones were in comparison was just very rough.

I felt like the newest addition to content they pushed it made it a bit easier to maintain mana and other stuff as well with a whole new slew of twink gear and such.

So many people are wearing their L33t gamer nostalgia goggles and you hit the nail on the head. At the time SoL was released, certain servers were way too populated to function well. I remember running into EC before SoL and just lagging out due to the sheer amount of people occupying the zone. There were times I had to aim my view in first person and stare at the ground to avoid the graphical lag from so many bodies. EQ is not WoW with the way its graphics and processor programming functioned. The game did demand that you not play on a potato if you wanted to raid or go into popular dungeons.

Friendly reminder to everyone. Many of you were playing EQ on a machine using Win 95 or XP! When SoL released, the clutter you found in the popular zones died down enough for those of without gaming rigs to enjoy and explore with friends.