Your dream expansion set

[Overcast]

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

That's kinda brilliant and would've been sweet. The entry to PoI (one of my favorites) could've been in gnome territory. Perhaps an entry to PoD in Innothule, and the list goes on. They could've been really creative in associating old-school zones with PoP content.

Yeah, then - even keying would have made more sense.

[Humwawa]

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

Like the entrance to PoD could have been in the back of Fear, the entrance to PoJ maybe in the back of Permafrost, entrance to PoTime in the back of Plane of Mischief, or whatever - just do away with PoK altogether and put the Plane of Tranquility around Odus somewhere, or whatever..

The Plane of Fear is the realm of Cazic Thule, who while evil, isn't exactly an ally of Bertoxxulous. Their worlds wouldn't be linked. It would have been cool if the planar gates were parts of the natural world instead of some stupid nexus plane. Have the gate to the Plane of Decay portal somewhere near the Karanas, where the Bloodsabres - and Bertoxxulous - hold the most influence.

If the Lore was followed properly, and you had quests to "invoke" the portals - possibly even to seal them afterwards, considering you'd unleash some horrible things on Norrath if you opened a two-way gate to the Plaguebringer's home without the proper wards and locks - it would be a fantastic idea.

[guineapig]

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

The Plane of Fear is the realm of Cazic Thule, who while evil, isn't exactly an ally of Bertoxxulous. Their worlds wouldn't be linked. It would have been cool if the planar gates were parts of the natural world instead of some stupid nexus plane. Have the gate to the Plane of Decay portal somewhere near the Karanas, where the Bloodsabres - and Bertoxxulous - hold the most influence.

If the Lore was followed properly, and you had quests to "invoke" the portals - possibly even to seal them afterwards, considering you'd unleash some horrible things on Norrath if you opened a two-way gate to the Plaguebringer's home without the proper wards and locks - it would be a fantastic idea.

Bertox has many worshipers in A'kanon and Qeynos so the Qeynos sewers or some place under A'kanon would make sense for the Plane of Disease.

If not there then maybe some Kunark zone. Kunark just feels right for it... if you aren't following where the worshipers are.

[Reiker]

Don't just shoehorn LDON in because "it had casual content" because that expansion was horrible. It was like EQ meets Diablo II. And what made it worse was that everyone was required to spend 10 hours a day running the same 20 minute, boring as fuck dungeon to get necessary spells/augs.

It was actually the casual players who suffered, because the rewards were designed around hardcore raiders who could clear Hards with maximum efficiency receiving their shiny new aggro aug in a week. Whereas it'd take your average joe barely being able to clear Normals in the time limit a month to get the same reward.

Only LoY (the worst EverQuest expansion of all time) was a worse idea.

[Harmonicdeth]

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

Only LoY (the worst EverQuest expansion of all time) was a worse idea.

But it brought us Dyes!!!!!!

[Overcast]

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

Don't just shoehorn LDON in because "it had casual content" because that expansion was horrible. It was like EQ meets Diablo II. And what made it worse was that everyone was required to spend 10 hours a day running the same 20 minute, boring as fuck dungeon to get necessary spells/augs.

It was actually the casual players who suffered, because the rewards were designed around hardcore raiders who could clear Hards with maximum efficiency receiving their shiny new aggro aug in a week. Whereas it'd take your average joe barely being able to clear Normals in the time limit a month to get the same reward.

Only LoY (the worst EverQuest expansion of all time) was a worse idea.

Actually, I can't disagree about a lot that LoY brought in.

But.. what I liked about it - was simple... The zones. Unlike many other expansions they were releasing, it was just straight up non-instanced zones.

LDoN would have been a lot cooler if the add dungeons were more like guk and such - I do agree.

[Reiker]

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

But.. what I liked about it - was simple... The zones. Unlike many other expansions they were releasing, it was just straight up non-instanced zones.

There were 0 instanced zones when LoY was released...

[Kelven]

Classic -> Velious + Bazzar and PoP

Velious will always be my favorite expansion, I loved the dragon lore and the sleeper. The raids, the loosening of the stranglehold certain guilds had on every raid mob in the previous expansions. It opened the game up for me.

I hated every single tiny detail about Luclin *except* for the bazzar. I liked the ease of buying/selling without sitting in EC for hours and hours spamming a macro auction. Granted some people like that , but what a huge waste of time .. oh and F**K Vex Thal, and your key quest.

PoP was another ground breaking raiding expansion, and the last one I enjoyed. After killing the gods of EQ, the game should have been over, or Veeshan should have come down and blown everything to kingdom come... something like that. EQ was exit stage left after that expansion.

[frefaln]

I respectfully disagree, Reiker. First, it wasn't "the same instance" every time, each LDoN flavor had several different instances. Second, while they were admittedly repetitive, name any aspect of early EQ that wasn't? Was LDoN any more repetitive than sitting at a camp waiting for respawns? And lastly, LDoN got a lot more people to get on board with dungeon-crawling as opposed to sitting around in Overthere zone lines because it was safe.

I personally witnessed a lot of players mature and become bolder thanks to LDoN, and they made less excuses for avoiding groups in the depths of existing dungeon zones as a result of it. But I digress, I'm breaking my own OP rule of avoiding expansion-specific rants.

[Reiker]

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

I respectfully disagree, Reiker. First, it wasn't "the same instance" every time, each LDoN flavor had several different instances. Second, while they were admittedly repetitive, name any aspect of early EQ that wasn't? Was LDoN any more repetitive than sitting at a camp waiting for respawns? And lastly, LDoN got a lot more people to get on board with dungeon-crawling as opposed to sitting around in Overthere zone lines because it was safe.

I personally witnessed a lot of players mature and become bolder thanks to LDoN, and they made less excuses for avoiding groups in the depths of existing dungeon zones as a result of it. But I digress, I'm breaking my own OP rule of avoiding expansion-specific rants.

Dude, compare any old world dungeon with its LDON counterpart. Upper and Lower Guk had a unique style and were well designed. I'm sure you can remember tons of awesome locations in those dungeons, but what stands out about Deepest Guk?

LDON began the dungeon design that basically every MMO has unfortunately emulated since: hallway, room, hallway, room, hallway that splits into two rooms, etc. And to make the poor design even more painfully obvious, each "main" LDON dungeon had 4 or so "subset" dungeons that were nothing more but hallways and rooms arranged in a different order. The entire expansion felt like it was thrown together on some dude's lunch break. There's no place for randomly generated dungeons in a static fantasy world. And LDONs felt like randomly generated dungeons, except they didn't have the technology so the mobs were placed randomly. But in the end, it didn't matter if one dungeon was two hallways into a big room and another was hallway into small room into small hallway into big room, the expansion was shit.

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

But it brought us Dyes!!!!!!

And this is what makes LOY the worst expansion ever. Not particularly for dyes, but if you had some deep disdain for Velious, you could play the game without ever having to interact with it. Not LoY however, it forced bright pink troll warriors into your group, and took away armor recognition from the game. An important aspect of EQ was "wow, that guy is in full dark blue armor, he's a powerful warrior with a full set of Cobalt." This is coming from someone who mained a shaman and made a assload of plat from dyes. LoY is the only expansion where every single idea was fucking stupid. Frogs, charms, dyes, maps, trolls losing Grobb, low end versions of powerful milestone spells (ie. Stoicism). The entire thing was an abortion. And don't get me started on the actual zones, they were so bad no one ever used them except to get Pure Blood or whatever spell they needed so they could get back to Planes of Power.

Edit: Okay, the entire expansion wasn't horrible; LoY was the first expansion offered as a digital download and digital downloads are cool! Saving a 15 minute trip to Gamestop: the only good thing about LoY.