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Originally Posted by Goregasmic
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My theory is they didn't seem to think players would care all that much about items so they didn't care all that much about itemization. For casters there are just so many slots that have pretty much straight up junk until late kunark or velious that it wouldn't have been too hard to come up with gear that isn't terrible. Like, just a gradation of viable options would have been nice. Also they seemed to want player to do exploration/adventuring but they kinda stuck a stick in their own bike wheel by putting like one good item for a slot and expect people wouldn't try to get it? Like if you're a caster in classic it is basically wolf fur slippers then GEBs, that's it, some middle ground boots in like... kedge would have been nice.
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Even the early endgame had some laughably bad items. The stats on most Plane of Fear armor drops are hard to look at. Same with the bard weapons in Plane of Hate. EQ's patch history more or less shows that the devs were learning as they went. Testing wasn't restricted to the test server, or alpha/beta before that. It was ongoing. Understandable, since there were so few games like it at the time.
But yeah, certain slot options for purecasters were scarce. Maybe that was intended, similar to monks, but then the demand for gear became apparent. So monks were given more and more weapons, and purecasters extra regalia/finery. That said, before all of that, more useful equipment was available and far better than the ordinary armor that increased stats. Some of it didn't even need to be equipped for the side benefits, like reclaim energy from mage focus items.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Goregasmic
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Diablo 2 has random generated loot so you'll get both junk and good loot but in EQ the items are static so that junk is just junk forever.
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Well, by this I meant specifically the designed gear, uniques and green sets, being comparable to epics and raid drops. If EQ had randomly generated loot with stat variables, that would be demoralizing. Small group camps fungi tunic for hours and then one finally drops, except with +5 regen and slightly more AC. Raid downs their eleventieth Vulak and, at last, Abashi's is linked in chat but with inferior dmg/dly and the effect having a 9sec cast. Better luck next time! Full BiS would take forever.