[heartbrand]

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

Luclin on P99 is a moot point as the server will begin hemorrhaging players a few months after Velious comes out. You see, what each expansion after Kunark does is this: if you don't raid, you're nothing. This is doubly important on this extremely top-heavy server where nobody is content to simply see the sights and be level 43 for months. The wonder and magic of Everquest is long gone and people want to do what they didn't get to do as kids a dozen years ago. Unfortunately, Velious introduces the concept of full separation between normal and hardcore players.

In Classic and Kunark, almost no gear is notrade. Epics, the odd quest item, a few raid pieces and then VP gear, everything else is droppable. Almost all of the best gear in the game is tradeable and you don't strictly have to be in the top guild to get it. You can become an "accomplished player" by trading, by knowing the right people, by RMTing or scamming (hey, it counts for the purpose of this discussion) and any other way you can imagine getting a fungi, Cobalt BP, tstaff, CoF and whatever else is considered top items in the game.

Not so in Velious. Suddenly every piece of "BiS" is from NToV or similar. In fact, the top three best items for each slot will usually be notrade raid drops, and anything less will be considered low-level crap. The gear you can get as a non-raider is suddenly laughable and you are nobody if you don't raid. As we all know, raiding on P99 is tantamount to selling your soul to the devil, and there's a gigantic divide between the TMOish crowd and the rest of the server. With everyone realizing that there's no way for their characters to be comparatively decked out without that unrealistic requirment of becoming the 1%, the whole experience will feel tainted and people will stop playing as this feeling sinks in and comes to permeate the server.

This did not happen back in the day because 1) people didn't know better, 2) the vast majority were satisfied with being unambitious nobodies, and 3) there were tons of servers and you could always find a raid guild somewhere if you wanted, the entire endgame concept was not utterly monopolized by one or two highly exclusive guilds. People await Velious like it'll be some great coming of age for this server, but nobody seems to realize what it did to Everquest and how poorly it fits this server and the way it differs from the great old backintheday. There will never be a question of whether or not to implement Luclin on P99 because there will be less than 100 players left by then.

This is a great post and 100% accurate. Many of the zones in velious that were so popular back in the day are now meaningless because of the surplus of superior items in existence here / everyone at max level cap / knowledge of where to get the best stuff. You either raid or do shit in Velious, and one of the most exciting parts for the non-raiders, the Shawl quest, is now pretty shitty here because the 8th shawl will never be implemented. I do disagree about every expansion being like this however, Planes of Power implemented a lot of cool gear for non-raiders like Ornate armor, it brought a lot of good tradeskill made stuff into the game, had groupable tasks etc.