Shadows of Luclin Your opinion?

[Kevlar]

Luclin was dumb because it took away too much from the tolkein-esque fantasy world that EQ was built on.

Planes of power brought the game back a little bit because it focused more on something you would expect out of a mature game setting, something that had been done in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons years earlier, Ultra high level Players challenging their deities.

POP books ruined the feel for the size of the world a lot more than the luclin spires did, but cats on the moon was just a ridiculous concept that really f%6ked up the fantasy setting. Something I would expect out of a Japanime game geared to 12 year olds, not something that was trying to pass itself off as a heroic D&D style game.

[mostbitter]

What I remember most about luclin was that it changed a game which used to have tons of people all over it to one that had all its players in one place.

[knottyb0y]

Luclin like Planes of Power were an odd mix of awesome and terrible. I don't think either expansion killed Everquest, but they took away some things that made classic Everquest strong, but over all added a lot of good. I wish I had the power to implement those two expansions in the way I think would be the most beneficial to the game.

Starting with Luclin
Keep: AA's, More Raiding Zones, Interesting Raid Encounters, More hunting zones for levels 40-60, Beastlords

Problem: Vah Shir: New races don't inherently suck. Now placing them on the moon was a little far fetched.
Solution: Place the Vah Shir on Odus, connect either their city to the continent somehow, or add them to the cats already on odus.

Problem: Player models were kinda crappy (particularly animations).
Solution: use the low rez cat models and get rid of horses *shrug*

Problem: Nexus (safe zone). Really I would argue the spires allowing players to teleport to gfay, nk, toxx, dreadlands and Great Divide wasn't that bad. These ports only occurred every 15 minutes but they did allow players to have a wider range of ability to group without destroying the port trade. Ala, my guildmates want me to group in Seb, but i'm in Velious. I can get there in about 30minutes. I would still have a lot of running to do, but the point is to allow people to get together faster imo.

Solution: Nexus shouldn't be a safe zone (for pvp). Sprinkle in the lore to make it NOT part of the moon. Also really made these giant spires all over the world a lot cooler imo.

Problem: Bazaar. The bazaar initially is not a terrible idea. It was a couple expansions later when it was "optimized" that it got funky. Initially it was a zone, where just like EC where people could stand around and trade. It had nuetral bankers and a lot of tradeskill merchants. No auto merchant mode, no finder, just a big zone that was easy to get to for people to trade.
Solution: Keep bazaar in 1.0 form. nuetral hub, no find, no PC merchant, filled with tradeskill merchants.

Problem: Expansion is on the moon.
Solution: This is the hardest one. A lot of sprinkled "fan lore" and some zone connection reassigning would be the ideal solution. Or if that's too much work (I can only imagine how many quests would have to be worked with). At least connect all the Luclin zones as a new continent, or some weird underground expansion from Odus or something. This is the hardest part of adapting this expansion.

Planes of Power
Keep: Amazing Tiered Raiding System that actually didn't (at low teirs) invalidate Velious or Luclin Raids), Keep level 65, keep more AAs, more leveling zones

Problem: Plane of Knowledge and books
Solution 1: Remove the Plane of Knowledge, and sprinkle all the planar zones throughout the oldworld.

Solution 2: remove the books and give it an entry system similar to the Nexus (15 minute interval spire 1 per continent, or just add some zone entry connected to an old world area (odus library or felwithe library might be decent though that holds faction problems).


Basically we almost all acknowledge that AAs, Beastlords, and More Raiding Space is not a bad thing. You don't want to shrink the world too much, because the glue of everquest is socialization

[Atmas]

I think GoD killed EQ more than any other expansion. As strange as mobs looked and were named in SoL it was nothing compared to GoD. Ridiculous looking and named mobs and horribly uncreative encounters, spells, and zones.

It's kind of a shame cause I played some OoW and that was actually not terrible.

I still think with the exception of the books PoP was awesome. Awesome Lore, fun progression with a sense of accomplishment, useful AAs, sweet spells, and a nice conculsion (maybe too nice).

[ziggyholiday]

Originally Posted by knottyb0y [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Problem: Bazaar. The bazaar initially is not a terrible idea. It was a couple expansions later when it was "optimized" that it got funky. Initially it was a zone, where just like EC where people could stand around and trade. It had nuetral bankers and a lot of tradeskill merchants. No auto merchant mode, no finder, just a big zone that was easy to get to for people to trade.

^^ Bazaar didn't go autotrader mode until PoP or just before PoP as I recall.

[Vohl]

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

Luclin was dumb because it took away too much from the tolkein-esque fantasy world that EQ was built on.

Agree 100%.

The world in this expansion was not the EQ that everyone knew and loved. Vah Shir were questionable. Whacky zones filled with whacky mobs and item drops with nonsense names certainly lacked appeal. Ssra was admittedly cool. VT, the CandyLand zone of the expansion, had incredibly good loot, and was a challenge to raid, but suffered from the same issues as nearly everything else in this expansion.