Fresh pure classic server opinion?

[oldschoolguy]

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

Kunark and Velious are both part of the original vision. It doesn't change the fact that the whole game progression doesn't line up. Kunark obsoletes 90% of old world and Velious kinda does the same thing again except mostly for high end gear.

I think the Kunark -> velious is less world breaking than Vanilla -> Kunark .

i think so too. At least Kunark to some degree has factions that matter, although most are useless... (no value in being friends with goblins for example). In Velious your diety is irrelevant, your race is irrelevant... it obsoletes main RP aspect of classic.

I still prefer classic over kunark personally though. just has a better feel, and the difficulty is higher. Kunark brings epics which is nice, but also some very crazy gear for just about every class in every slot. that's the part I think I don't like about Kunark, the obsoletion.

[Weekapaug]

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

Kunark and Velious are both part of the original vision. It doesn't change the fact that the whole game progression doesn't line up. Kunark obsoletes 90% of old world and Velious kinda does the same thing again except mostly for high end gear.

I think the Kunark -> velious is less world breaking than Vanilla -> Kunark

Been watching a lot of recent dev interviews lately and this is something a couple of of them gave talked about. One of them acknowledged that the jump in itemization was probably too pronounced, but it was balanced around the new content. Another mentioned that Kunark was originally supposed to be another 50 levels of content but there was an engine limitation that prevented them from going beyond 60 so they had to compress it all down to 10 levels. He noted that the spells you otherwise would have gotten about every 5 levels you got every level instead.

Funny thing about that is, from a business standpoint, it probably worked very well. I was in lower guk on bertoxx the night before Kunark went live and it was packed. Everybody who had been playing plus people who'd taken a break all back jazzed for the new content with everyone chatting about it in ooc. There was a minority but not small number of people insisting that it was not going to be a big deal and they were saving their money. After a week of Gem Encrusted Rings falling from the sky you heard none of that again. You might run into someone waiting because of performance issues or something, but nobody took a pass on anything related to content once word got out about the loot that was dropping, much less showing up in EC tunnel.

What's really funny is more than one of these devs said that the original bar for success was considered 75k players sustained for a year then they expected to just be making a new game. Then, with Kunark, that was going to be the expansion then they were going to make a new game.

That mudflation sells game and expansion boxes tho, evidently.

[Jibartik]

I like the zones, lore, and art in classic more than kunark, but the gameplay and loot in kunark is spectacular.

[A Knight]

I started with Kunark and enjoyed it a lot. I would have to enjoy all my spoiledness in Kunark, before I go back to being a neanderthal and hunting mammoths.

It's like Aoe 2, and Aoe 1. Aoe 2 is more controlled, fair, and advanced, so it feeds that need of a new game. But now I love Aoe 1, because it's a legit lack of control game.

I just need to finish Kunark for a while longer.

(Also, Kunark could just be better. I won't know until I get bored of it, and want to try classic only.)

[7thGate]

I will say, Kunark feels really good when its played without using the items to twink. As part of a natural progression where you get your items by questing or camping them Kunark becomes a small upgrade instead of an enormous one because most of the really good stuff doesn't become available until a lot later. Its still a boost; stuff like a Goblin Backstabber is like fourth best in slot if it was in classic and is doable in your 30s, but its not jarringly off like passing down Seb or KC items to a level 1.

There's a lot of good progression quests in Kunark and a lot of neat lore and environments around all of the dungeons there. Was a very good experience leveling up in ALS crawling through mid level Kunark dungeons and old world quest locations alike for upgrades.

[pogs4ever]

if the original trilogy could be tweaked where tradeskills could present a reasonable alternative gearing path, i think it would be quite fun.

I always felt the tradeskills updates were always several months behind relevance.

[Weekapaug]

The reason I asked is I just spent a bunch of time last weekend watching a bunch of dev interviews from fairly recently and one of them was the guy who created Kunark. Said it sat in his desk for a year before it became apparent that they were going to need more content so he pitched it. But from your elaboration, what you describe isn't necessarily mutually exclusive from that, either. I was just curious.

I gather you might dig this dude's channel so here's a link...

https://youtube.com/channel/UCFl_3ktLNPYUeicLmhSvB1Q

It seems he was a junior dev at the time but has continued on in the industry. Started a twitch channel just to hang out and talk about eq and it evolved into him bringing on pretty much everybody. Sounds like he plays on p99 also. These interviews are great tho, if you like longform discussions that go deep.

[Danth]

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

Said it sat in his desk for a year before it became apparent that they were going to need more content so he pitched it. But from your elaboration, what you describe isn't necessarily mutually exclusive from that, either.

No, it fits just fine. From the earliest designs there was intent to have landmasses called "Kunark" and "Velious" but they were cut from initial release and little or nothing was actually built. Fast forward a bit, EQ becomes a commercial success, Verant decides to make an expansion out of the planned-but-shelved Kunark concepts and incorporates some of this dude's ideas into it.

It is flagrantly obvious looking at Kunark zones and art styling that it was created much later than the pre-expansion game given the zones aren't even built the same way, textures and monster models are styled differently, polygon limits are higher, etc. Heck, it was originally described as a dead land that was the original home of the trolls. Seems like all that was carried over from the original concept was the name and not a lot else.

------------------------------------

I like classic-era design the best, but it isn't very tolerant of high populations. Guk and Sol-B with 100+ people aren't much fun. It reeeaaalllly could've used one of those extra landmasses.

Danth

[Weekapaug]

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

I like classic-era design the best, but it isn't very tolerant of high populations. Guk and Sol-B with 100+ people aren't much fun. It reeeaaalllly could've used one of those extra landmasses.

Danth

Me too. I'm a huge fan of guk so watched the interview with they guy that designed that on that channel. Might be the same guy that did the spells, but I'm fuzzy. I watched like 9 of these last weekend. Anyway, he said guk was supposed to be one zone but they had to split it into two because at full size nothing at the time could reasonably run it. It's not a stretch to imagine that extended to pretty much every other zone. And how cool it is they pulled off the big outdoor zones.

[cd288]

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

No, it fits just fine. From the earliest designs there was intent to have landmasses called "Kunark" and "Velious" but they were cut from initial release and little or nothing was actually built. Fast forward a bit, EQ becomes a commercial success, Verant decides to make an expansion out of the planned-but-shelved Kunark concepts and incorporates some of this dude's ideas into it.

It is flagrantly obvious looking at Kunark zones and art styling that it was created much later than the pre-expansion game given the zones aren't even built the same way, textures and monster models are styled differently, polygon limits are higher, etc. Heck, it was originally described as a dead land that was the original home of the trolls. Seems like all that was carried over from the original concept was the name and not a lot else.

------------------------------------

I like classic-era design the best, but it isn't very tolerant of high populations. Guk and Sol-B with 100+ people aren't much fun. It reeeaaalllly could've used one of those extra landmasses.

Danth

I'll work on finding the stuff I read, because I definitely remember quotes from devs saying they had been working on some Kunark stuff with the intention of including it in the base game and then ended up not having the time to finish it before launch. Like I said in an earlier comment, it's entirely possible that some of the things we saw in Kunark (such as graphical stuff) would not have been present had Kunark launched with the base game; could have used the additional time to flesh things out more.

But yeah there's some Kunark associated content in base original EQ such as factions etc. that didn't get fleshed out till the expansion.