So what happened in luclin-pop?

[Raev]

Well, to me the cool thing about Project 1999 is that after Velious is complete the staff have suggested custom content. Which means they are no longer bound by Verant's constant idiocy. What if the staff cherry-picked some of the better dungeons and raid encounters from future expansions (wouldn't even have to be Luclin/POP, they could go to Depths of Darkhallow or whatever other expansion). Retune them to a classic level of difficulty, but keep the bosses with multiple special abilities so it's not just tank and spank. Give them some sort of anti zerging code. Retune the gear to be just slightly better than classic (absolutely no more than 125 HP/slot, and that very rare). Keep a few pieces of gear with focus effects so that casters don't feel quite so fucked relative to melee candyland. Could be pretty awesome IMO, and much easier than the current zones because they wouldn't have to worry about slavishly copying every single thing.

But the other possibility is that Nilbog and Rogean and co are just tired are their tremendous exertions and after Velious finishes (so close! another 4-5 more patches) and everything is 100% fixed up they let the beta server (blue) and the sociopath server (red) die and launch Recycle99 which runs for a few years and then they just open source everything and walk off into the sunset!

[Jauna]

The only thing I miss from Luclin was the increase to the amount of debuffs a target can have

[Swish]

Lost Dungeons of Norrath was best Norrath.

[maskedmelon]

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

Lost Dungeons of Norrath was best Norrath.

I will concede that I had fun with that expansion. Though that is where I stopped.

[Skinned]

The original and first two expansions were the Brad McQuaid era of Everquest, regarded as the classic era.

[Trollhide]

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

The original and first two expansions were the Brad McQuaid era of Everquest, regarded as the classic era.

¡Viva la Vision!

[Josa]

Yep, portal Books were the worst part. Basically people just ported to the best places to quickly level and ignore 80% of the world. That and the bazaar made most human to human interaction unnecessary. I really liked the newbie armor quests, since they filled the first levels with purpose.

[Brontus]

The answer to the future of P1999 is to intelligently expand. Take the good things from Shadows of Luclin, the Planes of Power and Legacy of Ykesha and remove the bad things.

For example, here's what could be removed:

-horrible Luclin character models
-bazaar
-Plane of Knowledge book portals

Problem solved.

There's an old saying: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Now if people want to continue to play the current server frozen (no pun intended) at Scars of Velious then let them. Let those that want P1999 and progress further play on a new server that expands. This way everyone is happy.

I appreciate that the developers and admins of P1999 want the purity of "classic EQ". I think that's a noble and worthwhile aspiration. However, I believe that classic look and feel can be maintained with this approach.

[fastboy21]

Nothing super new to add to a 15 year old conversation...

I'd say, in hindsight, that Luclin/PoP in some ways were the verdict of the decision the devs committed to taking the game: EQ became about pushing the end game content and emphasizing raid forces that needed to devote their existence to gearing up through tiered levels of available gear before moving on to the next rung of content...

Its true that Velious was also like this, but in Velious there was still a spirit of EQ that existed for most of the server that the game was about more than just replacing armor_piece_1 with armor_piece_2 ad infinum. The community was still exploring the game and enjoying the world.

Don't get me wrong, the raid content in those expansions (lucin and pop) was fun...it was what the raiders who had wet their teeth in kunark and velious had wanted EQ to be. The devs gave it to them. And the content was epic, better designed, and fun.

The tipping point, however, was crossed. And the mudflation geni was unleashed forever from its bottle. In hindsight, EQ should have stay small and focused on enhancing the world that already existed, i.e. "Sandbox" style mmo.

Luclin is actually my favorite expansion to play in...but it was entirely absorbed in raiding. Guild groups took on new meaning as you needed to group off raid time to build AA points, farm key bits, etc. It was the beginning of EQ just being about my guild and the raid schedule...instead of about the world we were in.

[fadetree]

I think PoP would be the perfect stopping point, maybe with some surgery to remove the easy travel and a few other things. But if I had to pick and choose, I'd say that AA should be implemented, as it was when first released. Obviously, part of my interest in that is the Ranger archery fix, but that's not the only reason, there's lots more in thread and Daldaen especially did a good job explaining.

Unless you've played a Ranger to a high level you probably don't understand what it's like to have your favorite class and playstyle essentially broken. That AA stuff finally made Rangers what they were supposed to be all along, without turning them OP.