[Reiker]

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

I respectfully disagree, Reiker. First, it wasn't "the same instance" every time, each LDoN flavor had several different instances. Second, while they were admittedly repetitive, name any aspect of early EQ that wasn't? Was LDoN any more repetitive than sitting at a camp waiting for respawns? And lastly, LDoN got a lot more people to get on board with dungeon-crawling as opposed to sitting around in Overthere zone lines because it was safe.

I personally witnessed a lot of players mature and become bolder thanks to LDoN, and they made less excuses for avoiding groups in the depths of existing dungeon zones as a result of it. But I digress, I'm breaking my own OP rule of avoiding expansion-specific rants.

Dude, compare any old world dungeon with its LDON counterpart. Upper and Lower Guk had a unique style and were well designed. I'm sure you can remember tons of awesome locations in those dungeons, but what stands out about Deepest Guk?

LDON began the dungeon design that basically every MMO has unfortunately emulated since: hallway, room, hallway, room, hallway that splits into two rooms, etc. And to make the poor design even more painfully obvious, each "main" LDON dungeon had 4 or so "subset" dungeons that were nothing more but hallways and rooms arranged in a different order. The entire expansion felt like it was thrown together on some dude's lunch break. There's no place for randomly generated dungeons in a static fantasy world. And LDONs felt like randomly generated dungeons, except they didn't have the technology so the mobs were placed randomly. But in the end, it didn't matter if one dungeon was two hallways into a big room and another was hallway into small room into small hallway into big room, the expansion was shit.

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

But it brought us Dyes!!!!!!

And this is what makes LOY the worst expansion ever. Not particularly for dyes, but if you had some deep disdain for Velious, you could play the game without ever having to interact with it. Not LoY however, it forced bright pink troll warriors into your group, and took away armor recognition from the game. An important aspect of EQ was "wow, that guy is in full dark blue armor, he's a powerful warrior with a full set of Cobalt." This is coming from someone who mained a shaman and made a assload of plat from dyes. LoY is the only expansion where every single idea was fucking stupid. Frogs, charms, dyes, maps, trolls losing Grobb, low end versions of powerful milestone spells (ie. Stoicism). The entire thing was an abortion. And don't get me started on the actual zones, they were so bad no one ever used them except to get Pure Blood or whatever spell they needed so they could get back to Planes of Power.

Edit: Okay, the entire expansion wasn't horrible; LoY was the first expansion offered as a digital download and digital downloads are cool! Saving a 15 minute trip to Gamestop: the only good thing about LoY.