Thoughts on luclin?

[TheRusty]

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

And finally, like Sanctus Seru, make the zones interesting. How many people have interesting stories from Marus Seru, The Scarlet Desert, Echo Caverns, Grimling Forest, Hollowshade Moor, etc? No one - and a similar amount of people most likely never went to these zones unless they were doing their VT key or had to get to a connecting zone.

Not everyone entered Luclin as a NtoV-geared raid guildie. So I can say I played in these zones, and I had fun in... almost all of them. marus Seru is about the worst zone ever designed. ever. And that's counting gates of discord.) Running around Hollowshade trying to jigger the war with my guild, hanging out camping bandits with the (vain) hope our beastlord would be a server first epic, and the Scarlet Desert and Twilight Sea were just frankly gawjuss-looking. And there was the hideous fun / frustration time of farming nameds in the Umbral Plains.

There was plenty of good stuff in the pre-raid section of the expansion, in terms of both content and story (or at least, as far as story ever goes in Everquest...) and while not without its bogus content - including the two worst zones in the entire game, bar none (Marus Seru and Mons Letalis) it was thoroughly enjoyable.

If you came in as a raid-geared 60, in a raid guild, yeah, I can see where the expansion would pass you by - your experience would have pretty much consisted of fighting other groups over three mushrooms in Fungus Caverns for three weeks for AA, then moving on to competing for shards and bane weapon drops.

I've seen these zones used well on custom servers - they can be fun, but the biggest disconnect between Velious and Luclin was how uninteresting and dead the world felt. Comparing those two expansions in that regard is like night and day.

Luclin's big flaw was immersion.

First off, it looked very plastic, and the zone design was very clearly using a set palette across the board. Velious armor textures were abandoned for the new models, when a better idea would have been to update them and add new Luclin textures. It was also jarring to travel between old content and Luclin - you're traveling from a world painted in straight line and angles, and entering one that has discovered curves and circles. A little more individual zone design would have been an excellent direction. I can't rag on the new models, since the old ones aren't exactly eyecandy either.

Second - and this is actually huge - it was mostly silent. There's some cued ambient noise - crickets, rocks falling, tavern noises, wind and water... but they all started abruptly and ended just as abruptly when you left the cue area. But worst of all? There's no music. Unless VT has some, at least - I never made it there - the only music is some nasty stuff in Grieg's End. I think one of the reasons I hold a soft spot for Scarlet Desert is because I played the soundtrack from the Sci-Fi channel dune movies when I hunted there.

I liked Luclin. It was odd, but it was mostly good - the bazaar was wretched (though admittedly convenient) and Paludal set EQ down the path towards its modern system of everyone having the same newbie zone... but still, mostly good.

In fact i think Everquest kept being pretty strong right up until Gates of Discord - that was the expansion that took a hatchet to Everquest. Aside from all the rampant bugs and failed QA, it was just bad content - drab, and catered exclusively to progression raiders - an the one bone thrown to non-raiding players was a class so broken as to be unplayable for another two expansions. Omens of War was almost good... but then DoN, DoD, and Prophecy of Ro just made it all feel like SoE was secretly working for Blizzard.

[loramin]

Not worth discussing, as the devs have stated, in no uncertain terms, that there will be no Luclin on Project 1999.

Now, once Velious (and all the patches after it like the Kunark Goblin Revamp) is complete, the have hinted at the possibility of custom content. And since they'll probably use some of the un-used zones from the Titanium pack as the basis for any custom content, that might mean that we get to see a custom version of a Luclin zone or two. But that's as close as we're going to get.

[Trebeh]

[QUOTE=loramin;1320684]Now, once Velious (and all the patches after it like the Kunark Goblin Revamp) is complete, the have hinted at the possibility of custom content. And since they'll probably use some of the un-used zones from the Titanium pack as the basis for any custom content, that might mean that we get to see a custom version of a Luclin zone or two.

This is what I would LOVE to see.

[NextGenesis88]

Completely goes against why this server was made and why we sought out to find one like this. I think it's absolutely silly to think about adding Luclin and further because after all most people say that's when what they have come to know and love was starting to be taken away or started to fade. For a huge amount of people "classic" and "pre-luclin" were the absolute selling points.

Bottom line, if people want to continue further and will be dissapointed when it doesn't then you should be playing on a different server knowing this ahead of time.

[jaybone]

I believe luclin has too many no drops so loramin is against this as it hurts his RMT

[SwordNboard]

Yes it ruins EQ. It totally pulls you off of Norrath. I believe expansions should always build on the original content or uncover lost and deeper parts of it. Luclin is basically EQ 2.0.. New zones for 1-65, not just more raid content. Game changing features like PoK and bazaar that ruin social interaction. Do we really have to answer to another one of these posts?

[rollin5k]

Stop it

[Ciel]

I really enjoyed Luclin. Beastlords were badass! Also the expansion I started raiding on live. Umbral Planes, Ssra Temple, Acrylia Caverns etc some of my favorite raids

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

Game changing features like PoK

hmm...

[stewe]

Luclin is the Apocalypse, not gonna happen on this server so if u want to play luclin start looking at other places.

[Iumuno]

Luclin is the expansion where zone design with no polish/lore/immersion started. So, generally speaking, it's the end of the "good" everquest, even though I thought PoP had a lot of work into it.

The good stuff: the Bazaar (personal taste, trading never was a huge part of why I enjoyed playing the game), breathing room in the raiding game, and finally and mostly, AAs, even though I do agree they raise the entry barrier for new players, and it's an undesirable side effect..

So maybe some stuff could be taken in and the bad stuff left out.