The Pinnacle of Everquest (In your opinion)

[Breeziyo]

i miss my scaled wolf warder :\

[Zuranthium]

Originally Posted by douglas1999 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No need to hit FoB or EJ just run through the river tunnel in SoNH that leads to TT.

Yeah, it's approx 22 minutes to get from KC to Seb, without SoW or Jboots. With SoW (which was nearly always available from a group in KC or DL), it becomes 14 minutes. There are frequently ports available to cut that time down as well.

Originally Posted by webrunner5 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Oh come on. The average person did not want to be stuck in KC, Seb then, no more than they want to now. That was the reason for all the expansions, Boredom.

Child, no. You were never "stuck" in KC. Yes, going to Seb and not finding a group does make you a lot more isolated (still not "stuck"), but that's the entire point of a dungeon like this. It's high investment, high risk, high reward. Adding Velious doesn't do anything at all to help, it just makes it far worse. That era is when the community gets fractured too much and travel does become a big issue, because there are less people in Kunark and it takes forever to get to Velious zones from there without a port.

The "reason" for the expansions was to make money. During Kunark era it wasn't even an issue of people needing more content to progress through. No guild had many people (or anyone at all?) with full Veeshan's Peak gear before Velious came out and it was often only 1 guild per server even going there. Only a very small amount of people had epics and for some classes (Mages!) it was one person per server and I recall that some servers still hadn't even gotten it yet before Velious came out.

There's much that can be said about this but taking travel out of the game is not the answer. In a more properly developed Everquest, I would have a better boat system that would make the continents much more interconnected (including things such as the Steamfont area being a hub that would connect to all of Erudin, the west side of Velious, and the NE corner of Kunark).

[Jimjam]

Zuranthium, if you look at the signs at the docks in game you can see the plans for the expansions boats were different to where the kunark boats ended up travelling from.

[apio]

I think being ''forced'' to level in Kunark 50 to 60 is way worse than being forced to do 60 to 65 and AAs in PoP, personally

[miso1337]

Velious.

As soon as travel became trivial in PoP, the game lost its sense of adventure and interdependence.

[Fregar]

I think kunark was the pinnacle when speaking about content.
I like exploring interesting zones, and kunark is full of that. Places like LOIO, Seb, Kurn, CoM, Dalnir and many other ones.
On the other side of the coin, grind from 55 to 60 is awfull and I don't like beeing forced to group.
Also there's pretty much nothing to do after hitting 60.

Velious also has interesting content but in lower supply than kunark imo.
Quality raids is the interesting side of this expansion.

I liked AA very much with SoL, and thats why I think SoL is still damn near the pinnacle.
Sure it also added some not-to-good stuff, but it was mostly content-design related and since the level cap was not raised, you could still play in kunark/velious while getting the benefits from AAs.

PoP destroyed the game for me, and it's when I moved on to another MMO.
The game started to be almost 100% raid focused.
I slowly started to hate having no choice about what to do when logging on my character and the constant fighting with other guilds.
Game was not fun anymore: it was a second job after a day of work :0
Sure PoP did not start this trend, but it was more of the same shit with nothing else added to the mix.
Nothing to explore, trash mob hitting for 400ish, WTF?!
I liked it when they eventually added veksar, but it was too late.
I'd love seeing this zone on p99, even if the dev would have to change some things to keep the game classic-like.

So I'd say the pinnacle was around kunark, but the game remained good untill PoP and then collapsed.


From what I read some later expansions were not too bad? (the serpent thing?)
I may want to try exploring live some day, since its now free to play, but don't really know where to start from o.0

[Messianic]

I know this is probably Anathema on this board, but at the time Luclin was a phenomenal expansion. Believe it or not, most people really liked the Nexus/Bazaar as a pretty darn innovative way to remove a couple timesinks from the game.

We look back at those as affecting the social fabric in a negative way, but i'll create my own social atmosphere and save the timesink any day.

[Danth]

I appreciate automatic trading; granted EQ's system was clunky and inefficient compared to the auction house systems used by most other games. I hate manual selling/buying and the massive nuisance associated with doing so. It's a necessary evil I tolerate in order to use P1999 but I'll never enjoy it. I disliked the Luclin expansion for other reasons including hideous art, massive levels of technical problems, stupid setting, and so forth. I don't think Luclin was conceptually flawed so much as badly built. I don't see much about it that couldn't have been acceptable with some additional work or different styling.

Danth

[Messianic]

Eh. You only make money if your goal is to create an experience people want. So they were trying to create the experience people wanted, and in doing so, have a business that is successful (defined as making more money than it costs to run).

So duh. Part of everything is "surviving and prospering" which in modern, sophisticated economic terms is "making money". But it's such a poor explanation for discussions to which you're not privy.


Lots of EQ fanboys should face facts - The bazaar, the Nexus, PoK books, the other massive changes to the game through PoP and beyond - these weren't bad decisions motivated by some scrooge bathing in his gold coins. What makes you money is what keeps subs going and new game purchases flowing. That requires content people *want* to play. So, to "make money", they had to focus intensely on what people want to play. So don't do the trite "they only want to make money omgs everything after velious sux cuz sony".

WoW actually made far more money than EQ ever made doubling down on the easymode MMO principle and did many of the things EQ did in releasing the expansions it did up to PoP. So it's really, really easy to argue that EQ didn't go in that direction far enough to prosper, not that "a bunch of greedy executives only wanted money so they made more expansions that would ultimately fail and not earn them money".

So it's really amusing to watch players - however knowledgable about the game, and however hardcore - judging business decisions as if "gosh if only they had listened to me and other hardcore players of their now niche game 14 years later they would have succeeded".

[Zuranthium]

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

Lots of EQ fanboys should face facts - The bazaar, the Nexus, PoK books, the other massive changes to the game through PoP and beyond - these weren't bad decisions motivated by some scrooge bathing in his gold coins.

Yes they were, for the most part. That's exactly what they were. The devs implemented lazy "fixes" in order to satiate the masses and make quick money, instead of understanding what made Everquest special in the first place and working to continually make it a more enriching game.

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

WoW actually made far more money than EQ ever made doubling down on the easymode

That's because there's been no better option. EQ failed itself. It was "Jurassic Park" and continually kept coming up with worse versions of itself, in order to chase more $$. Eventually people stop buying from your product line and move onto any better option.

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

I think being ''forced'' to level in Kunark 50 to 60 is way worse than being forced to do 60 to 65 and AAs in PoP, personally

You can get to level 60 without going to Kunark. The Hole, Permafrost, Sol B, Kedge Keep, and City Guards/NPCs.