Thoughts on luclin?

[Psionide]

How do these Luclin and beyond threads ever make it past one page?

[Swish]

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

How do these Luclin and beyond threads ever make it past one page?

Get used to them, the same people who keep making Velious threads will be bored after 2-3 weeks and making demands again [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Teerian]

I'm always amused by all of the Luclin hate I see, especially from people here on P1999. I think most of it comes from the fact that Luclin changed a lot of things (as mentioned before, AA's, mounts, etc), and people tend to be resistant to change. That said, it was not a bad expansion. I thoroughly enjoyed it just as much as what most others deem "original EQ" (up to Velious). Sure, it had some unpolished aspects such as Acrylia Caverns events, but so did the expansions before. Even before Sony really took hold of the reigns, the policy for EQ expansions seemed to be along the lines of release it as soon as it's 'playable' and patch the rest later.

If you're looking for the true killer of EQ, look towards things like Lost Dungeons of Norrath and Legacy of Ykesha. Those so-called expansions were repetitive, dull, and seemingly thrown together in a half-assed manner. I'm always surprised when I see someone praise either in even the slightest.

EQ could have ended and wrapped up fine with Planes of Power. Yes, Plane of Time's ending was kind of a kick in the nuts, but it also made sense considering the whole time travel idea. I'm sure they could have continued on with a meaningful story line even after PoP, but the direction they went in is what killed it. Omens of War and Gates of Discord made less sense than the cats on the moon idea everyone seems opposed to.

While I doubt it would ever happen, I wouldn't complain about seeing Luclin or even Planes of Power on Project 1999. I would, however, like to see it limited in some way. Making it a kind of custom content MUCH later in the future would be cool, but perhaps as either a second server that you can copy a max-level character to after you feel you've 'retired' from Velious (assuming Rogean and crew could afford to start and maintain another), or perhaps have all AA's/mounts/other Luclin+ additions switched off for Velious and older. I suspect this would be a coding nightmare, but at least there wouldn't be a timeline to follow anymore.

[radditsu]

Luclin best expansion, Deal with it.

[fadetree]

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

I'm always amused by all of the Luclin hate I see, especially from people here on P1999. I think most of it comes from the fact that Luclin changed a lot of things (as mentioned before, AA's, mounts, etc), and people tend to be resistant to change. That said, it was not a bad expansion. I thoroughly enjoyed it just as much as what most others deem "original EQ" (up to Velious). Sure, it had some unpolished aspects such as Acrylia Caverns events, but so did the expansions before. Even before Sony really took hold of the reigns, the policy for EQ expansions seemed to be along the lines of release it as soon as it's 'playable' and patch the rest later.

If you're looking for the true killer of EQ, look towards things like Lost Dungeons of Norrath and Legacy of Ykesha. Those so-called expansions were repetitive, dull, and seemingly thrown together in a half-assed manner. I'm always surprised when I see someone praise either in even the slightest.

EQ could have ended and wrapped up fine with Planes of Power. Yes, Plane of Time's ending was kind of a kick in the nuts, but it also made sense considering the whole time travel idea. I'm sure they could have continued on with a meaningful story line even after PoP, but the direction they went in is what killed it. Omens of War and Gates of Discord made less sense than the cats on the moon idea everyone seems opposed to.

While I doubt it would ever happen, I wouldn't complain about seeing Luclin or even Planes of Power on Project 1999. I would, however, like to see it limited in some way. Making it a kind of custom content MUCH later in the future would be cool, but perhaps as either a second server that you can copy a max-level character to after you feel you've 'retired' from Velious (assuming Rogean and crew could afford to start and maintain another), or perhaps have all AA's/mounts/other Luclin+ additions switched off for Velious and older. I suspect this would be a coding nightmare, but at least there wouldn't be a timeline to follow anymore.

I agree. Actual EQ ended after PoP. Pop was a good, fun expansion and other than ruining the travel experience was a lot of fun. The lore ended there, that shit afterwards was just randomly made up.

[Coridan]

Luclin ended all old zone leveling though. No one really hunted anywhere but Echo Caverns, Netherbian Lair and Dawnshroud Peaks. It was too big space wise for the server populations. If they had merged servers and reitemized classic before SoL it might have been ok.

[RiffDaemon]

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

How do these Luclin and beyond threads ever make it past one page?

Because everyone wants to take the opportunity to throw in what he'd be acceptable with, e.g. "I'd be cool with everything up to [Expansion A] but without [feature 1] from [Expansion B] and [feature 2] from [Expansion C] .... and so forth and so on."

[drmccollum]

I actually really liked Luclin and would like to see it added here in a couple years. I can see where a couple things like the bazaar changed things for the worse, but overall the positives outweighed the negatives.

It was PoP that ruined EQ for me. I disliked the whole idea of the quick travel and it was with PoP that mudflation took a drastic turn for the worse. As a caster, up to level 60, you could take a few hits if you messed up and be ok. After PoP, I found myself face down in my own pool of blood from just a couple hits. I would not play again if PoP went live here as it was implemented on live.

[TheRusty]

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

And finally, like Sanctus Seru, make the zones interesting. How many people have interesting stories from Marus Seru, The Scarlet Desert, Echo Caverns, Grimling Forest, Hollowshade Moor, etc? No one - and a similar amount of people most likely never went to these zones unless they were doing their VT key or had to get to a connecting zone.

Not everyone entered Luclin as a NtoV-geared raid guildie. So I can say I played in these zones, and I had fun in... almost all of them. marus Seru is about the worst zone ever designed. ever. And that's counting gates of discord.) Running around Hollowshade trying to jigger the war with my guild, hanging out camping bandits with the (vain) hope our beastlord would be a server first epic, and the Scarlet Desert and Twilight Sea were just frankly gawjuss-looking. And there was the hideous fun / frustration time of farming nameds in the Umbral Plains.

There was plenty of good stuff in the pre-raid section of the expansion, in terms of both content and story (or at least, as far as story ever goes in Everquest...) and while not without its bogus content - including the two worst zones in the entire game, bar none (Marus Seru and Mons Letalis) it was thoroughly enjoyable.

If you came in as a raid-geared 60, in a raid guild, yeah, I can see where the expansion would pass you by - your experience would have pretty much consisted of fighting other groups over three mushrooms in Fungus Caverns for three weeks for AA, then moving on to competing for shards and bane weapon drops.

I've seen these zones used well on custom servers - they can be fun, but the biggest disconnect between Velious and Luclin was how uninteresting and dead the world felt. Comparing those two expansions in that regard is like night and day.

Luclin's big flaw was immersion.

First off, it looked very plastic, and the zone design was very clearly using a set palette across the board. Velious armor textures were abandoned for the new models, when a better idea would have been to update them and add new Luclin textures. It was also jarring to travel between old content and Luclin - you're traveling from a world painted in straight line and angles, and entering one that has discovered curves and circles. A little more individual zone design would have been an excellent direction. I can't rag on the new models, since the old ones aren't exactly eyecandy either.

Second - and this is actually huge - it was mostly silent. There's some cued ambient noise - crickets, rocks falling, tavern noises, wind and water... but they all started abruptly and ended just as abruptly when you left the cue area. But worst of all? There's no music. Unless VT has some, at least - I never made it there - the only music is some nasty stuff in Grieg's End. I think one of the reasons I hold a soft spot for Scarlet Desert is because I played the soundtrack from the Sci-Fi channel dune movies when I hunted there.

I liked Luclin. It was odd, but it was mostly good - the bazaar was wretched (though admittedly convenient) and Paludal set EQ down the path towards its modern system of everyone having the same newbie zone... but still, mostly good.

In fact i think Everquest kept being pretty strong right up until Gates of Discord - that was the expansion that took a hatchet to Everquest. Aside from all the rampant bugs and failed QA, it was just bad content - drab, and catered exclusively to progression raiders - an the one bone thrown to non-raiding players was a class so broken as to be unplayable for another two expansions. Omens of War was almost good... but then DoN, DoD, and Prophecy of Ro just made it all feel like SoE was secretly working for Blizzard.

[Brut]

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PGTuTiyEXwrunning around, compounded by the fact they're named Kitty Pawpaw

Thousand billion times this.

All the zones looked awful, too. Compare solusek A to Akheva ruins and you should get the idea. Dungeons in classic EQ were mostly confusing and had good visible landmarks scattered all over. Velious they already start having a couple of places that are just copy pasted hallways (see: skyshrine, sleepers, ToV). Luclin they were basically all that. There could be tops two interesting spots there like some big invisible bridge over a huge chasm, but everything else would just be a continuous cave going down with mobs scattered at convenient intervals. VT looks like they literally made one quarter of a zone and then copied it over 4 times.