Expansions or Reboot?

[Byokii]

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

I think PoK should have no port stones, books at all and magic porting spells should be disabled here. But there should be an easy way from each starting city to get there to chit chat with other players and learn stuff, but not be able to zone out to other locations. The Plane of Knowledge should be just that: a place to learn things about the game from NPCs and experienced players. Players should only be able to port to each individual plane via spell,stone, or book and disable zoning completely from PoK.

If you give the players a meet-up "zone-able hub" of any kind you seriously damage the idea of having to travel great, epic, distances to meet up with one another.

I think PoK should not exist at all, or if it does make it a quest turn in zone for Storyline only. No merchants, no banks. No reason to go there other than doing your quests. Do not make it accessable via standard cities. You would have to access it via the PoTranq and that is it. Wizards/druids would be able to port to PoTranq. There would be no zone out of PoTranq, you would need to gate to get out of the planes.

[Kerrik]

Lumin makes a great point. I started to type up another idea in response, but realised that we're definitely getting way off on a tangent here, since any fix would get away from the server's intentions to be true to classic EQ. At this point it's just way too early to discuss it since it's not going to even be an issue for a couple years, and the server admin team is still officially planning to stop at Velious.

Only after Velious is out on P99 and people have had plenty of time to enjoy everything up to that point will it be the right time to address this. The admins may prefer to stop at Velious as planned, they may decide to continue opening standard EQ expansions (either at a reduced rate, or the same as live) or they may agree to consider some customization.

But I'd rather not see people get excited (or upset) over any one of these choices now since it's so far out. And it's kinda unfair to Rogean, Nilbog and the other P99 team members to be bugging them about issues like that now when they have so much on their plate already.

[Omnimorph]

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

I think PoK should not exist at all, or if it does make it a quest turn in zone for Storyline only. No merchants, no banks. No reason to go there other than doing your quests. Do not make it accessable via standard cities. You would have to access it via the PoTranq and that is it. Wizards/druids would be able to port to PoTranq. There would be no zone out of PoTranq, you would need to gate to get out of the planes.

Omnimorph likes this idea. Hell, they should have had all the planes just be port up places like sky and hate [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[PhilPhans]

While i enjoyed PoP. PoP to me is the one that broke EQ. It basically elminated the need for port spells. The itemization for the first time was 2x the amount of hp/mana from the previous expansions. The Exp factor in PoP zones made all other zones in the game worthless to exp in. you basically invalidated the previous expansions original-luclin.

btw i still play on Live today and have seen the rate in which Gear stats have gotten out of whack. It started in PoP.

[stormlord]

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

While i enjoyed PoP. PoP to me is the one that broke EQ. It basically elminated the need for port spells. The itemization for the first time was 2x the amount of hp/mana from the previous expansions. The Exp factor in PoP zones made all other zones in the game worthless to exp in. you basically invalidated the previous expansions original-luclin.

btw i still play on Live today and have seen the rate in which Gear stats have gotten out of whack. It started in PoP.

Some people say it started with Kunark. For example why would a monk play anything other than a lizard? Why would you experience in a classic zone when you can experience in a kunark zone and get more money and better loot? Etc.

It's not the presence of mudflation that was the distinction, it was the rate of mudflation that increased as the years went by that defined what happened. It was as though they were so desperate to sell expansions that they made them too important to pass up. So any player that didn't buy them played at a disadvantage. Many of the expansions didn't just add content, they replaced content. For example, if it increased the cap by 5 levels, it didn't just add content for those levels, it added content for the previous 20 or more. And this led to people leaving old zones and giving people that empty feeling inside. The kind of feeling you have when you're being dragged down a road on the back by a rope. Eventually, they just -forgot- about old content.

And to be honest, if new content was all that mattered, I wouldn't be playing here in the zones that I've played in. I don't think i'll ever get too sick of it. I still don't know everything about them either. Some people make the mistake of assuming that just because you've played in a zone that this somehow means you've seen and experienced everything and new content is the final solution. I'm not at issue with that contention, rather I disagree with the assertion that old content is old! It's not old unless you know everything about it. I don't, so it's not old! Thus, that's why I feel like I'm being dragged behind a truck.

I feel like I am over the barrel on the live servers and have no choice about what happens. That feeling isn't as strong here. The air is better. It ain't perfect and I need breaks. And I'll probably play on hte live servers again sometime, but that doesn't change the fact that the air is dirtier on live. Live is like disneyland or something. Or Ronald McDonald. I get tired of it. I think the larger thing is that it's just old and hard to change. I like EQ2 and Vanguard. But this game, as we know it here, is so different from live that it's like a separate game almost. Time hasn't got rid of that. It's not old until it's OLD.