so you guys are looking for EQ Minus....

[drew0987654]

I wouldn't have understood it but recently they started giving away free lvl 85 chars with all of the aa's... even if you start from lvl 1, you can automatically get all of the aa's that you meet the requirements for once you lvl up enough. it's optional, yeah, but everyone does it so I can't really group up with anyone [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

other problems I had but could live with include mercs, lack of a death penalty, and gear that caps all of your stats insanely early in the game. oh and leveling so fast that you only need to get through 10 zones b4 being lvl 100.... given all of this nonsense though, I STILL wanted to play with SoE instead of you guys, until the free chars/aa's [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I was wondering what it would take for you guys to go over to SoE. if they released a new server without the free chars/aa's, no mercs, no crazy gear, and reinstituted a real death penalty, would that be enough? or are most of you on here just b/c you can't live with levels beyond 60 or expansion X? I imagine there was just a final straw for most ppl here, whether it was the mercs, gear, or free aa's... maybe even the Plane of Knowledge was the last straw for some of you, I'm really curious though. so, what made you say, "screw this, I'm going back to vanilla"?

[Troxx]

They'd have to make a classic server locked permanently up to velious with classic mechanics.

In short - they'd have to make project 199.

Even then it wouldn't be as good for a few big reasons:
-no two boxing allowed here
-hard stance vs RMT
-hard stance vs cheating

SoE server would be decidedly not classic with hacking, botting, legit boxing, and RMT.

That's why I now play on P1999

[drew0987654]

wow... I don't think I ever ran into any Sam Deathwalker wannabes, and if anyone was using bots, hacking, or selling anything for real money I wasn't aware of it. then again I don't use any trade chat channels.

what is it about the Shadows of Luclin expansion you hate so much? the mobs, the environment, music, atmosphere, quests, the introduction of aa's, mounts, the nexus, the bazaar? you can't hate ALL of that... the aa's and bazaar are nice at least, right? what would it be, mainly? my guess is the nexus....

[Reubin]

Originally Posted by drew0987654 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

what is it about the Shadows of Luclin expansion you hate so much? the mobs, the environment, music, atmosphere, quests, the introduction of aa's, mounts, the nexus, the bazaar? you can't hate ALL of that... the aa's and bazaar are nice at least, right? what would it be, mainly? my guess is the nexus....

Pretty much everything you listed except the music. SoL took the fantasy D&D style game I loved and changed the mechanics and made it a Sci-Fi game. It was still an ok game but the magic was gone for me. There is a reason people call it 'Cats on the Moon' here. I actually liked the PoP and LDoN expansions. But by that time it was a completely different game to me.

[Xer0]

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

There is a reason people call it 'Cats on the Moon' here.

because there was a race of cats on the moon?

[fastboy21]

Originally Posted by Xer0 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

because there was a race of cats on the moon?

there was also a race of snake men on the moon....don't forget about the snake men!

and four armed women with boobies!

[QuantumZebra]

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

Pretty much everything you listed except the music. SoL took the fantasy D&D style game I loved and changed the mechanics and made it a Sci-Fi game. It was still an ok game but the magic was gone for me. There is a reason people call it 'Cats on the Moon' here. I actually liked the PoP and LDoN expansions. But by that time it was a completely different game to me.

I'd still be playing EQ to this day if they skipped SoL and everything in it and went PoP > LDoN > GoD > OoW and never introduced mercs

[Byrjun]

Originally Posted by drew0987654 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

what is it about the Shadows of Luclin expansion you hate so much? the mobs, the environment, music, atmosphere, quests, the introduction of aa's, mounts, the nexus, the bazaar? you can't hate ALL of that... the aa's and bazaar are nice at least, right? what would it be, mainly? my guess is the nexus....

For the most part I didn't mind the moon "environment" that much. It wasn't a huge stretch as most people think, since the Shissar and the Combine living on Luclin was part of the original classic storyline. It was only a matter of time before EQ explored that portion of the lore.

The mobs for the most part were cool. The Shissar are probably my favorite race in the game. I hated the graphics update though, with the new models. Most of them were ugly and removed a lot of the original charm, but the real deal breaker was the animations. And then a lot of the NPCs started using the same system and everything had those weird creepy marble eyes.

A lot of zones were useless (Scarlet Desert), but some were really cool (Sanctus Seru). Fighting through this huge Roman city was awesome, the problem is no one ever really got to see it because there was literally no point to go there. How many people have even seen the huge gladiatorial colosseum in that zone?

AAs were great. Mounts were stupid because you had to use the new models, and I refused. The bazaar was ok but I prefer face to face trading and haggling.

Paludal was very damaging to the game because it forced every old world zone from level 10-20 to become deserted. And then people tended to move on to Netherbian Lair, Dawnshroud, etc. since they were close to Paludal, which made non-Luclin zones feel empty.

Ssra Temple is possibly the best raid zone of all time. It was the first time where raid encounters started to add some complexity outside of tank a mob while it AE damages everyone. It culminated with Emp Ssra, one of the most epic fights in MMO history.

The problem is that after Emp Ssra (and the most lengthy, frustrating quest until GoD's BiC) you gained access to Vex Thal, possibly the worst zone in the game. The fights took forever (even trash), everything was named the same, the zone rotated through about 2 models (4 armed alien dude and slime), and every single raid encounter was the same AEs over and over. It was complete garbage.

All in all, it was a mixed bag, but the ending was the worst so that's what a lot of people associate the expansion with.

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

I don't remember the specifics of where they placed the spots but they would all work like PoFear now. Basically a spot in a zone where there is a portal/item to click that brings you there if you meet the requirements. I want to say Bertoxxulolus realm was in Qeynos Sewers, in the suggestion? Rallos Zek's zone-in would be somewhere near the Ogre homeland, perhaps inside the town? Etc for each of the individual planes.

Just about every unused zoneline in the game would make sense for planar access. There's an unused zoneline in Oggok for Rallos Zek, and one behind Yael in the Hole for Brell, in Qeynos Catacombs for Bertoxxulous, etc. It's too much of a coincidence to imagine that the original intent wasn't to have more planar connections to the old world eventually. Plane of Tranquility was a cop out.

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

That's a good suggestion Sirken, but i can see several issues by doing that.

If you skip Luclin and directly go to PoP, how do you fix the gear progression? Would it be possible to go from Velious gear and transition directly to PoP, hp/mana/dmg wise?

It's funny since one of the main criticisms of Luclin was the poor loot quality. There really wasn't much gear progression from Velious to Luclin outside of ATH and a few outliers. Vulak's loot was still better than the majority of Luclin, which is why they artificially increased the difficulty of the encounter via the ring event.

PoP attempted to address this complaint but they overshot it by quite a bit, so you had players going from stuff like Sprinkler of the Spirits or Mace of Confusion to Time's Antithesis, which is just an unfathomable power leap.

[Alanus]

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

It's funny since one of the main criticisms of Luclin was the poor loot quality. There really wasn't much gear progression from Velious to Luclin outside of ATH and a few outliers. Vulak's loot was still better than the majority of Luclin, which is why they artificially increased the difficulty of the encounter via the ring event.

PoP attempted to address this complaint but they overshot it by quite a bit, so you had players going from stuff like Sprinkler of the Spirits or Mace of Confusion to Time's Antithesis, which is just an unfathomable power leap.

I always was of the opinion that the "boss" of the last expansion having some of the still best loot in the game isn't a big deal. I think the leap in gear from Velious to Luclin or from PoP to GoD was a good amount. Luclin had more effects (like flowing thought, aura of battle, etc) and had the then-max HP of 125 (versus 75-100).

Like having Vulak loot be comparable to non-Aten/Emp mobs in Luclin is not a bad thing, since then all of that work for Vulak loot during Velious isn't "wasted".

What killed live for me was going from playing hardcore (through Omens of War pretty much) to playing a lot more casual, and being unable to tank in experience groups anymore as a paladin since my gear was real solid from 2 expansions ago, but now is complete crap despite only a 2 expansion difference.

But your post did hit the nail on the head, particularly on Luclin

[Byrjun]

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

I always was of the opinion that the "boss" of the last expansion having some of the still best loot in the game isn't a big deal. I think the leap in gear from Velious to Luclin or from PoP to GoD was a good amount. Luclin had more effects (like flowing thought, aura of battle, etc) and had the then-max HP of 125 (versus 75-100).

Like having Vulak loot be comparable to non-Aten/Emp mobs in Luclin is not a bad thing, since then all of that work for Vulak loot during Velious isn't "wasted".

The problem was that Vulak was significantly easier than events like High Priest or Cursed, and outside of an item or two, Vulak's loot was vastly superior. There was no incentive to go do Luclin content if Vulak was up. This also caused a problem where the top guilds on each server needed/wanted tons of Vulak loot but the thing was always killed at 3 am by some Asian guild.

The solution was the ring event, which was incredibly stupid. They could have just made Vulak itself more difficult since it's pretty underwhelming compared to Vyemm, Nevederia, or even Aaryonar.

Vulak wasn't even balanced within Velious. Avatar of War was about 10x more difficult and dropped maybe 2 items that could compare to Vulak's 14+.