Lavastorm needs some loving

[Keza]

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

Lavastorm sucks. Period. There's a reason why 20+ years later people still use the same 'hotspots' for leveling and other zones are practically empty. If you enjoy the zone, good on you, keep the mobs for yourself. Overall, between the need for levitate to have remotely efficient travel, no major landmarks to direct people other than 'X direction from rings', and a general ugliness, even with a ZEM I suspect most people would pass on Lavastorm in favor of a better zone.

There's a reason people still play WoW instead of FFXIV despite FF being superior in every way in regards to both being themepark MMORPGs. It's because that's what they do and they'll do it because they do it and they won't stop doing it because that's not what they do until they stop doing it which they never will. The reason people go to Oasis is because they do. They did in the past, they do now and they will in the future. They likely don't even know if the mobs in LS are easier or harder than Oasis. These kinds of people need alluring bait to be lured from their caves, like ZEM changes. That said, I don't think Lavastorm needs ZEM changes as it's already viable. It just needs people to actually go there instead of saying it's bad without having any idea what they're talking about.

The only plausible argument against LS would be the terrain hiding enemies. Otherwise it's a centrally located with a TP that makes it easily accessible with several similarly leveled zones connecting directly to it allowing you to go 1-max while barely moving from a city. As for landmarks, there are many, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. You can usually see one by climbing any random hill. Shadowmen rings, gypsy camps, goblin camps, Najena, Nek ZL, and the caldera. It's really simple to remember that the giant caldera is directly across the zone from the Nek ZL, rings are topleft, Najena is bottom right and Shadowmen are bottom left with nothing topright and camps in the middle. You always have a landmark.

I feel like people claiming LS is bad have never tried leveling in a truly bad zone. Anything with goblins is terrible. Tiny hallways, tons of adds, healing through walls, fleeing and massive wizard nukes. You need to make meta groups unless you have twinks/PLs to survive. You'd have to pay most people to exp in Dalnir. Fifteen minutes to get there with a port and knowing the path, trapped once you fall down and an NPC potentially guarding the exit that can obliterate max level players in an instant with an OPAF melee proc. Now that's a zone that wouldn't see groups traverse even with a ZEM buff.