So what's there to do in Velious anyway?

[nilbog]

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

... people equating timesinks with difficulty. Timesinks aren't difficult.

RL is a timesink which a lot of people have trouble playing. Timesinks can certainly be difficult as time itself is one of the only things you can't purchase.

Did you love VT because it had all dem trash mobs you had to spend hours and hours clearing, sure was "difficult" amirite? No, it was fucking awful. I'd much rather spend hours banging my head against the wall on a difficult raid mob as I try to figure out the encounter than do so against trivial trash mobs just to get to the raid mob.

A good aspect of a sandbox environment is that no one made you go to VT. If you want to waste your time, then you go right ahead.

I guess it's a matter of preference. I like to play games to actually get to play.

This philosophy was what originally separated pre-wow mmorpg players from console gamers.

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

EQ was @ it's peak during PoP, it died because 1) WoW came out and 2) 72 man raids being reduced to 54 man raids 3) GoD raping everyone who wasn't in a cutting edge end game guild with full plane of time gear, aka 95% of their sub base

EQ was at its peak during PoP because cheap computers could be purchased at your local Walmart and broadband internet was available to everyone. There are a lot of people, including myself, which saw it (PoP) as a bellowing swan song for EQ. I played the WoW beta when it was released in 2004. It was fully released in December, shortly after EQ released Omens of War in September. Wow was a better game at release than the last expansions leading up to Omens of War and EQ2 at release.

[TarukShmaruk]

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

the quested armour (ornate/elemental) required rings/swatches created by blacksmiths/tailors, yes. but that blacksmith/tailor didn't have to be you



likewise, you didn't have to craft your own items for cabbage. just stuff you bought off bazaar just like pop.



the difference is, you had to make most of your own items for the thurg quests. i remember we MQed into the first ring so we didn't fail making the blankets, but after that both lines of quests meant making your own stuff.



i think it was GoD (maybe it was OoW?) with the player enhanced socketed gems that actually made tradeskills relevant. none of the armour crafted up until then was best-in-slot or didn't have end-game raid upgrades, but every piece of armour needed socketed gems.

Actually IIRC there was an entire line of really good crafted stuff in PoP which wasn't the quest armors.

Unfortunately it required drops from the elemental planes so you basically had to be a raid guild anyway. But it still made tradeskills a lot more relevant.

http://www.eqtraders.com/recipes/rec...r=080100160040

There we go. It was actually pretty cool - you had to craft an emblem to make a type of armor (storms, water, fire, whatever) but that emblem was always returned to you once you had it. It was kind of a 'license' to craft a particular item.

edit: Also the content itself of PoP was quite good. People loved going to the plane of decay, valor, halls of honor, or finally getting RZTW down so you had access to the 4 elemental planes (of which PoFire was an excellent leveling zone...the others were pretty much raid only I think). The bosses were cool and it was a welcome change from the aliens of the moon

[heartbrand]

It's one of those things where people are free to disagree. No right or wrong for what makes one person enjoy a game and another dislike it, [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] . My feeling with PoP is, if you were in a cutting edge guild you had a lot of fun, if you weren't you were prolly cock blocked from 50% of the content and hated it.

[TarukShmaruk]

Also Beastlords were a cool class.

Never could get into Berserkers though - they seemed pretty stupid to me.

[heartbrand]

Berserkers sucked until much later in EQ when AA's finally gave them a role

[Gadwen]

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

ITT, much like every EQ Nostalgia thread on rerolled, is people equating timesinks with difficulty. Timesinks aren't difficult. Did you love VT because it had all dem trash mobs you had to spend hours and hours clearing, sure was "difficult" amirite? No, it was fucking awful. I'd much rather spend hours banging my head against the wall on a difficult raid mob as I try to figure out the encounter than do so against trivial trash mobs just to get to the raid mob. I guess it's a matter of preference. I like to play games to actually get to play. Travel was always trivial to me in classic, but I was a caster who could bind, apart from the sporadic trip to town to sell all my l33t gearz, I was always in a dungeon or what not, it's not like I was taking 3 hour strolls through the karanas erryday

You also have to keep in mind that a lot of old EQ players literally grew up in this game. Their social life was everquest, their fun after school was everquest, their best friends were in everquest and for some...their sex life was in everquest.

It's like going back to your little home town and seeing all the changes that have taken place, nobody likes it. But you just have to accept that the changes were made for a reason, are simply unavoidable, and the majority of times it was with the intent of benefiting people...and actually did benefit people.

I played EQ from classic through GoD on and off. Nothing ever "ruined" the game for me, I just got bored of it and went to do something else.

[Atmas]

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

EQ was at its peak during PoP because cheap computers could be purchased at your local Walmart and broadband internet was available to everyone. There are a lot of people, including myself, which saw it (PoP) as a bellowing swan song for EQ.

I recall when PoP came out walking into a Best Buy and seeing videos of it playing as the display for new computers. This was the time when I felt like broad band was really starting to proliferate to more than just tech-savy house holds and PCs were on the front page of advertisements because Megahurtz were doubling every week.

I personally think PoP was a pinnacle because content was fun, good character progression opportunities, and high fantasy lore. The problem is after you have slain the Gods what else do you do in a fantasy game? GoD was terrible, both content and planning wise.

[TarukShmaruk]

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

I recall when PoP came out walking into a Best Buy and seeing videos of it playing as the display for new computers. This was the time when I felt like broad band was really starting to proliferate to more than just tech-savy house holds and PCs were on the front page of advertisements because Megahurtz were doubling every week.

I personally think PoP was a pinnacle because content was fun, good character progression opportunities, and high fantasy lore. The problem is after you have slain the Gods what else do you do in a fantasy game? GoD was terrible, both content and planning wise.

Thematically it was about as good as me just taking a shit and smearing it on a wall and saying "there's your concept art"

[Atmas]

Edit: judging from other posts I will assume you mean GoD and totally agree.

Everything was bland, ugly, and looked the same. Looked like all architecture was a cut and paste job. Mobs looked like bad sci-fi creatures.

[Thulack]

PoP's Tier raiding system was the best expansion raiding there ever was in EQ. Simple as that. After playing live for 13 years i can tell you alot of people would shit bricks at the mechanics and attention to detail needed to raid in current EQ. I know 95% of you hate instancing but it let so many people see different zones and enjoy the game more then if they were stuck trying to raid like they do here.