Why do people seem to hate luclin so much?

[maskedmelon]

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

Which were?

Still most content required groups.
Still all raid mobs required raids
Still much of the best gear was the result of quests
Still if you want to group you go to a zone where grouping occurs and LFG
Still if you want loot someone has to kill the mob and sell it to you or you have to kill it yourself

I don't see any deviation from "classic" in Luclin or PoP. The main deviation I would cite is the lessened importance of race/faction in those expansions. Which is based on lore. These people on Luclin, they don't know much of the people from Antonica, Faydwer or Odus so they are friendly to all, or in many cases they are apprehensive. In the Plane of Knowledge they have transcended the infighting among races as a greater threat looms (the gods themselves) and the unity of all the mortals of Norrath is required to meet this new threat. So even that is acceptable.

Race had a large importance with the stat bonus and innate bonuses early on, read every thread min/maxers make on these forums. Come PoP however, those bonuses are mostly irrelevant, which was a good development because people who started way back when didn't know anything about stat differences etc. It allowed everyone to get on an even field despite their original stat allocation or character creation. Where as a dark elf warrior is at a sizable stat disadvantage to a barbarian or ogre in vanilla.

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

There are several reasons SoL is a departure from Classic Everquest:

1. Setting - the game changes from adventures in slaying dragons and orcs to battling aliens in outer space.
2. Community - introduction of the nexus/bazaar was the beginning of unraveling of the Classic Everquest community. The world expansion also furthers dilution of the player population.
3. Mechanics - the alternate advancement system was a radical departure from original EQ game design. While it has it's merits, it would ultimate trivialize a vast amount of content on a locked server like this one.

SoL was not classic Everquest. It was a departure from it. Some people do not consider Velious or Kunark classic for their roles (albeit to a much lesser extent) in some of the above (expanded world, changed mechanics, etc.), but most just view the tweaks in those expansions as a fleshing out of the original design.

I think I would be most appropriate to refer to Luclin as the beginning of the end. It set in process a set of design philosophies that ultimately transformed classic EQ into something different. On it's own, it is closer in design to the original trilogy than subsequent expansions were to the original trilogy, but the original trilogy was obviously more uniform with itself than Luclin was with it.

Incrementalism makes it difficult to establish cut offs because each person values things differently from the next. In the case of classic EQ I make that cut-off based on clearly identifiable change. Personally, I would prefer just vanilla and Kunark because Velious radically alterred end game, placing too much emphasis on it. Of course Kunark increased level cap and added a new mechanic (disciplines), but otherwise largely let be the way we played the game.

In the end preference can't really be reasoned with. I like what I like because I like it and you like what you like because you like it. We can come up with all sorts of reasons why, but ultimately those reasons only make sense to those with shared preferences ^^

[Neoptolemus12]

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

Incrementalism makes it difficult to establish cut offs because each person values things differently from the next. In the case of classic EQ I make that cut-off based on clearly identifiable change. Personally, I would prefer just vanilla and Kunark because Velious radically alterred end game, placing too much emphasis on it. Of course Kunark increased level cap and added a new mechanic (disciplines), but otherwise largely let be the way we played the game.

This I think hits the nail on the head, the gameplay changes of Luclin were a natural response to the change in priorities that happened during Velious. As players became more concerned with raiding and less concerned

[kaev]

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

...
Personally, I would prefer just vanilla and Kunark because Velious radically alterred end game, placing too much emphasis on it. Of course Kunark increased level cap and added a new mechanic (disciplines), but otherwise largely let be the way we played the game.
...

Completely agree. All of my RL & in-game friends from original EQ, except for one die-hard roleplayer, were gone within a couple months of Velious release. It was the emphasis on the raid game in the content design that chased them off.

Original EQ was a casual gamer's paradise. At release, there was only Naggy and Vox. The planes were not obvious as the harbingers of doom that they were, at the time they were reservations to keep the self-proclaimed ubers away from normal decent human beings.

Kunark was allright. The dungeon bosses of Kunark were in the style of Vox & Naggy, Kunark's overland dragons were an extension of the concept of original EQ's zone sweepers like the EC griffins and NK's Grimfeather, and VP was just another plane to keep the epeen-obsessed occupied someplace away from the sane population.

Then the brakes came off with Velious.

Once you've gone Velious you're not :classic: anymore. The emphasis on interesting bits of lore and minor quests and storylines for low level characters and roleplayers is gone with Velious. Everything is about mechanical loot acquisition. Storylines & lore drive nothing, they are pasted on afterthoughts in the style of the shittiest of the epic quest storylines from Kunark.


Even so I'm having fun. Done lots of things I didn't do the first time around on live. Looking forward to doing plenty more stuff that's new to me in coming years of Velious.

[Seltius]

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

I think I would be most appropriate to refer to Luclin as the beginning of the end. It set in process a set of design philosophies that ultimately transformed classic EQ into something different. On it's own, it is closer in design to the original trilogy than subsequent expansions were to the original trilogy, but the original trilogy was obviously more uniform with itself than Luclin was with it.

Incrementalism makes it difficult to establish cut offs because each person values things differently from the next. In the case of classic EQ I make that cut-off based on clearly identifiable change. Personally, I would prefer just vanilla and Kunark because Velious radically alterred end game, placing too much emphasis on it. Of course Kunark increased level cap and added a new mechanic (disciplines), but otherwise largely let be the way we played the game.

In the end preference can't really be reasoned with. I like what I like because I like it and you like what you like because you like it. We can come up with all sorts of reasons why, but ultimately those reasons only make sense to those with shared preferences ^^

Wasnt SoV the last expansion that Verant did completely? IIRC Sony took over right before SoL was released(well before it was ready to be released) So alot of the change in direction and the mechanics in the game along with the rushed releases were due to an almost complete overhaul of the team working on the project.

Anyone who questions how incomplete SoL was on release need only look at archived threads about VT, AC, and other zones, mechanics, and encounters that were broken or unfinished some of which I am sure you would still find broken today.

[maskedmelon]

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

Wasnt SoV the last expansion that Verant did completely? IIRC Sony took over right before SoL was released(well before it was ready to be released) So alot of the change in direction and the mechanics in the game along with the rushed releases were due to an almost complete overhaul of the team working on the project.

Sony was always involved. VI started in Sony, was spun-off and re-acquired. However, the spirit of your question/argument is spot on because the original developers (Brad & co) departed to form their own company (Sigil) and begin work on VSoH around that time.

[Seltius]

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

Sony was always involved. VI started in Sony, was spun-off and re-acquired. However, the spirit of your question/argument is spot on because the original developers (Brad & co) departed to form their own company (Sigil) and begin work on VSoH around that time.

Right I guess I should have clarified that the dev team that worked on the project changed and they dropped the Verant section when they just changed it to Sony Online Entertainment. So with the changes in the Dev team and direction so changed the feel and spirit of the game.