I really think Velious was the shining example of what an expansion should have been. When Velious was released, I was a rogue and barely of level to get a group at the Ry'Gorr fort in the East Wastes. I spent equal time in Velious and old-world and Kunark dungeons leveling the rest of the way to 60. Velious also re-defined the raid scene, while still strengthening the idea of the community. I spent countless hours farming class armor at the ToV exit (Kael faction represent) and had a fun time doing it. Keys for the content were simple-enough, kill a dragon - turn in an item. Done. The Coldain ring was probably one of the best events I've ever done in EQ, just because it was the first time something like that was implemented. It also got the whole zone involved.
My beef with Luclin wasn't the bazaar (EC did the same thing, bazaar just made it easier and you didn't have to sift through posts on your server board to find things), or cats (who cares, if someone wants to be a cat that's their own problem), or the nexus (Velious introduced quest hubs where lighties and darkies congregated) ... it was the artificial time sinks that really felt like they were time sinks. For some reason, farming armor didn't bother me. Farming ore for shissar bane weapons? That blew. Farming whatever for seru bane weapons, even worse. The VT key was a terrible, terrible waste of time as well. In addition to all that, if I wasn't doing things to help people get keyed, I was soloing (with a second cleric account logged in healing me) in whatever zone had the little mushrooms and fungus beasts to AAs. With that, the sense of community was diminishing quickly. So while the raid content was fun enough (even though VT was just a huge zone to exploit aggro radii), and I did love my lunar fungus tunic, I didn't like the lack of innovation in the Luclin expansion.
With the sense of community gone, the final straw in my (and a lot of my friends'/guildies') EQ existence was PoP. The idea of back flagging, combined with progression choke points that could be blocked by one person effectively ended progression and we all ended up quitting or cutting our play before the 5:1 rule was implemented. As a pretty hard core raiding guild, I imagine that it should have been viewed as one of the best expansions - but the flagging system was a hurdle that no one really wanted to deal with anymore. Lacking the sense of community, having the raid arena taken EQ offered no more magic.
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