One of the most important things about Kunark is that a lot of the best gear is tradeable. While there's some pretty great stuff in VP, it's mostly weapons, and epics are worthwhile alternatives to those. Once you get to Velious, there's a gigantic divide between raiders and the rest as the gear from raid content becomes so overpowered. Since the game simply doesn't have enough raid content for everyone who would like to raid, that creates a highly toxic situation where a lot of players are prevented from "competing" (insofar as you can compete on a PvE server) simply because the content isn't available to them, and there's nothing they can do about it because there's a hard limit on the amount of raiding that a server can accomodate. In Kunark, you don't quite have the same issue as anyone with enough money can buy almost everything.
In some ways, Velious was the worst thing that ever happened to Everquest, and to MMORPGs in general. It turned the game from "the world belongs to you" to "you're part of the 5% that raids or you're literally worthless." The gear from Velious raid content is just too far ahead. It especially destroyed the PvP scene, but it's also a blemish on PvE. It really ruined the game on a fundamental level. Don't know what they were thinking. Non-raiders in Velious have no reason to exist at all.
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