Where did EQ Live go wrong?

[Mardur]

Luclin was the first mixed bag expansion. All of Kunark and Velious were generally entertaining, but with Luclin came the dumb cat race, the dumb bazaar, the dumb teleportation system, and dumb zones like Paludal and Vex Thal. I generally like it though because AAs were awesome and Ssra was when raiding really took off.

Planes of Power was the same way. Plane of Knowledge was retarded, but the raiding progression (minus the endless backflagging at first) was EQ at its finest.

I quit playing twice in GoD (original and first progression servers) because the theme of the expansion really nerfed my class (shaman). It's hard going from being slightly OP Kunark -> Velious to completely OP Luclin -> PoP to poor buff/heal bot in GoD. Shaman weren't nerfed directly, but the content shift to low hp high dps mobs doesn't mesh well with slows and insane mana regen. Compare that to a fight like Seru that can last 20-60 minutes, where a single shaman can heal the raid, cure curses, keep slow up, and still be on top of damage charts by the end. Also Uqua really crushed the spirits of any raiding guild I was in because it was just so damn hardcore. I still have a lot of respect for GoD because of just how difficult it was, but that expansion is still pretty much the end of EQ for me.

What class you played had a lot to do with it I think. You can't be a shaman and hate AAs because some of those abilities were completely game changing like Canni 5 which was like obtaining an FT200 item and Virulent Paralysis which let you solo literally any mob in the game that didn't summon.