Your dream expansion set

[frefaln]

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.

[Excision Rottun]

Velious with Valdeholm and Ashengate tacked on as additonal raid zones behind Kael / ToV

PoP with Solteris in it after Temple of Sol Ro.

[Harmonicdeth]

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

Only LoY (the worst EverQuest expansion of all time) was a worse idea.

But it brought us Dyes!!!!!!

[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.

[frefaln]

Welp, sorry you feel that way but it doesn't change the fact that I had a lot of fun with LDoN. Yep, even as someone who loved PoP raiding and also agrees with you that old-world dungeons were very well designed.

[fuji]

Original, Kunark and Velious. If it goes past that I am out.

[Reiker]

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

Welp, sorry you feel that way but it doesn't change the fact that I had a lot of fun with LDoN. Yep, even as someone who loved PoP raiding and also agrees with you that old-world dungeons were very well designed.

A lot of it, in my mind, comes down to casual vs. raider mentality. Raiding warriors were like "omg, I can add another hate proc to my weapon, I'll do whatever it takes to get it even if it means getting stabbed in the dick!" or in my case, "oh nice a new magic-based dot I can add to my rotation while soloing PoFire tables." And then raiders began the grueling task of begging their guildmates everyday to spend the next 8 hours running the same hallway-room-hallway (I won't even dignify the zones by calling them dungeons) so they could get 5% closer to that shiny new aug (a precedent that still continues to this very day, see: BiC or any other "must-have" aug).

While casuals just didn't give a fuck, it was new content in EverQuest and hence it was fun. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against not giving a fuck. I actually prefer not giving a fuck. I don't give a fuck often and recommend others to follow my way of not giving a fuck. But if the dungeons were actually well designed and well tuned (difficulty, time investment, and rewards) the casual player would have enjoyed the expansion that many times more.

[Reiker]

Also, some may think I'm being overly hard on LDON, but consider that all the best rewards were from Miragul, the whitest fucking dungeon known to gaming. I had a raging headache every time I stepped foot in that dungeon, which is just yet another unpleasant memory to add to LDON.

Seriously, fuck Miragul with its HP and Proc augs. I hated tha-[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[melkortshea]

For me I just want Kunark and Velious.

I did like Luclin but part of the problem with such exapnsions is that they offer a much larger playing field. This caused the community to scatter or at the very least other parts of the world obsolete.

I think Kunark and Velious will bring the world to a large enough size that the game will not seem so empty and yet probide many things to do for adventure.

[Mountaineer]

PoP was the best! Sure it was the start of "easy mode" with PoK. But it's raiding was Un-Matched!
There was SOO much different content that a guild of any level could almost always have something to do. Be it raiding and trying to get flagged for Time, killing mini bosses in PoFire, trying to get flagged for Sol Ro Temple/BoT, etc etc....

They had some extremely hard/time-consuming raids also (Rathe council, Xegony, not to mention Corinav wasn't all that easy until you got the hang of it, hell, even Bertoxxulous). Sure they were extremely hard or lengthy, but thats what made em fun. Personally I'd rather spend 12 hours working on a raid, than 24 hours camping in a zone waiting for something to spawn lol.