PoP hypothetical

[Harm]

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

Velious was exellent.

Luclin raid content was excellent.

PoP sucks balls in every way and so did everything until GoD. And even then RSS sucks balls, MPG trials were great fun but everything else in GoD was balls. CoA was an unreal raiding zone with a gay key system.

Pretty much it all sucked after velious in the grand scheme...

Velious was the best expansion that Verant or SoE ever made. I agree though, Luclin was largely excellent, but I don't agree 100% that Luclin raiding was excellent, because of one zone in particular.

About Luclin, The Deepshade was the best non-raid zone in all of EQ1 imo. I would play on a Classic + 1 server just for that zone. The raid content, excluding Vex Thal, was also excellent. Vex Thal was a piece of shit that should have never happened. Luclin AAs also fixed a lot of what was broken in various classes, particularly for rangers.

If I was going to decide on the ruleset of a Classic+Luclin server, I would add all of Luclin except leaving out: cat people, beastlords, mounts, PoK, Bazaar, teleporters, Vex Thal. I then I would flesh out Katta vs Seru similar to how Kael vs Dwarves/Dragons worked. The 40-some AAs every class gets would be all there is to get, no more "forced" leveling after that. I might redesign VT to be a Sleeper 2.0 type zone to keep the key quest in there... as much as a grind that it was, in the end I look on those days fondly, just not the final result once the key was attained. The Kerran city would be a new low-tier raid zone, because the cats were incredibly lame. Either that or introduce frogloks in their place, because the frogs were one of the only cool things to happen after PoP, even if I never played one. But I would never kick out the trolls for them to exist, so they could go in Luclin. And I in general lean against adding new races and classes.

PoP was a mixed bag, but it was the beginning of the end. More stupid leveling and AAs for no good reason, turning old dungeons from a place to hone your skills and collect gear, to a place to skip entirely because your upleveled and upgeared characters didn't need it any more. I liked the planar raids, but they didn't have the plane raid feel to them other than in name.

Everything after PoP was crap that I only did because my guild was a progression guild. When WoW came out I kicked EQ1 to the curb with no regrets other than regretting what Sony did to Verant's awesome game.