So what's there to do in Velious anyway?

[falkun]

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

It was also the only expac in eq history where the final boss didn't die before the next expac, underfoot was close to this.

That's because the whole expansion was over-tuned for L70 characters while the max level remained at 65, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_o...rd#Controversy. I'd hardly call that a positive for the expansion.

[heartbrand]

For 90% of the player base it made the game awful for them, for me I absolutely loved the challenge, matter of preference.

[Gadwen]

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

It is the way they did it. Books you click on sitting around the world that teleport you to some big floating city in the sky? Books lined up and down the walls? It was cheap, ugly, and a quick fix that didn't mesh well with the original wonderful world.

But nothing stopped you from running right past that book and traveling on foot.

You can trivialize your travels even in classic. Like i said before, porting and running with a sow/lev isn't exactly a challenging or immersive experience.

[heartbrand]

Gotta love the ever immersing numlock alt tab

[TarukShmaruk]

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

Everyone having easy access to ports enhanced the community feel of the game by making it easier for people to interact. Sure, teleporting is a core class ability, but it's not a very important one. Even before the easy access to ports, I seldom ever asked anyone for a port. In raid situations, ports tended to be provided. Otherwise, I took the boat or walked. So, it wasn't really hurting a single thing at all.


True, but teleports do not qualify as affecting game difficulty.

What teleports did was take a horrible, needless, disgusting timesink and throw it in the trash. Good freaking riddance. And this was even more true as the world had become more than twice as big as originally planned.

I feel like you're incapable of understanding the concept of making things too easy and the detriment it has on the game.

I can extrapolate your argument to anything. Let's make leveling take 1/2 the time "what the new leveling rates did was take a horrible, needless, and disgusting timesink and throw it in the trash. good freaking riddance. and this was even more true as the level cap had become more than twice the original level cap"

Yeah, PoK books were convenient. We all used them. It still ruined the game. In many ways just like flying mounts did a lot of damage to WoW's world, or how the LFG queue killed the sense of server community (despite being a popular feature).

Now I don't think anyone would argue that an EQ warrior was a bit of a shitty experience - no real abilities, no utility, etc. Obviously a modern re-imagining of EQ1 would have to bring some quality of life improvements while still maintaining the original core concepts - and this would probably include some kind of faster travel options (non -sow running was stupid slow) and probably giving every class a hearthstone type ability.

[Vexenu]

It's mindboggling to me that someone can sit here and advocate for insta-ports on a classic server with the argument that they're just "convenient" and that adding them doesn't remove "anything important" from the game experience. These are the same arguments behind every disastrous change to the game that has made it unrecognizable from its original design.

Also, saying that ports are "not a class defining" ability for Wizards and Druids is one of the most ludicrous things I've ever heard said about this game. Imagine if there was an NPC in every zone in the game that you could drag your corpse to and get a rez after handing the NPC some plat. That would certainly be convenient, wouldn't it? Definitely. It sure as fuck wouldn't be Everquest, though.

[Millburn]

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

But nothing stopped you from running right past that book and traveling on foot.

You can trivialize your travels even in classic. Like i said before, porting and running with a sow/lev isn't exactly a challenging or immersive experience.

You can also get up 6 hours before work and walk there every day instead of using your car. We don't though (for the most part) and because of that to a degree our small town communities are more spread out across our regions. It's all fine and dandy to say it's all on the individual not to do something but opportunity cost is a real thing.

[Gadwen]

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

You can also get up 6 hours before work and walk there every day instead of using your car. We don't though (for the most part) and because of that to a degree our small town communities are more spread out across our regions. It's all fine and dandy to say it's all on the individual not to do something but opportunity cost is a real thing.

When the opportunity you are looking for is non-trivial methods of traveling not using the books sounds like fantastic plan.

How you experience this game is up to you. You can trivialize the entire game in its current state if you are so inclined, and many players do.

[Atmas]

Missed a few pages in the middle of this thread but I am going to mention incase no one else has, the books did not come out with Luclin. They came with PoP. I wasn't really a fan of them being a wizard, they cut into my translocation revenues. However, I didn't mind PoP as a whole and I didn't mind the Nexus scions and ports that I think came with Luclin. Those ports were only every 15 minutes and depending on where you wanted to go it could take up to 30 minutes just to get the closest ports and then run more.

The thing about the books is it killed a lot of interaction as far as talking with people to get ports. Also making travel that easy for anyone really makes the world feel smaller. One of the things I really hated about EQ2 was that everything was just a bell click away.

Quick recap of other thread items. I think AA's were awesome. They gave you a reason to play a character more and let you advance your character in interesting ways. I don't think they broke any classes, just cause they allowed bards to do pulling doesn't mean that monks no longer did. Also a group of wizards manaburning mobs that were 2 expansions old was not a big deal. You could form a high end tank and spank group to kill Kunark mobs. Manaburn was not practical for progression Luclin or even Velious mobs. Ssra was awesome, VT was boring as hell but loot was nice. I liked a lot of the ideas of the zones like the Grey, didn't really have strong feelings about the cats.

[Hobie819]

For everyone saying it was a time sink - what isn't a time sink in classic? Leveling is a HUGE time sink but we don't advocate for that to be easier. Tradeskills? Huge time sink. Selling in EC? huge time sink. Taking ports out of the game because it was a "huge time sink" justifies you to play another game because if one thing is removed for being a time sink, every time sink should be removed.

Time sinks are meant to take a lot of time for a reward. Take the time to level tradeskills? You can make cool things. Take the time to level? you can be mower powerful and see more aspects of the game. Take the time to run or port? You can get to somewhere to explore, or level your character.

Like it or not, classic EQ revolves around everything being a time sink. It is one of the major complaints about the newer MMORPG's - everything is too easy.

You can't have it both ways - if you want the game to remain challenging, you cannot remove the time-sinks. If you want it to be trivialized, you may as well play WoW or any other number of MMORPG's on the market.