"Classic" feeling shifting?

[Taminy]

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

Well said. PoP was the expansion that ruined the game for me, because it was so near perfection, books were really the only true flaw. PoP was too good, every xpac after was clear to be a massive disappointment, as it was. Raiding done perfect!

Not that PoP raiding was bad (it was excellent) but there were other problems besides just the books.

-There were no factions at all in the expansion and whether you were a good or evil race had no meaning at all.

-Excessive AAs. The ones in Luclin were enough to clearly define all classes.

-Flagging/keying system

[Daldaen]

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

Not that PoP raiding was bad (it was excellent) but there were other problems besides just the books.

-There were no factions at all in the expansion and whether you were a good or evil race had no meaning at all.

-Excessive AAs. The ones in Luclin were enough to clearly define all classes.

-Flagging/keying system

1. Faction I agree and disagree. On the agreeing hand, it adds depth to the game and makes the choices your character makes matter. On the other hand... Your characters are adventuring into the planes to kill the gods themselves. If anything merits the putting aside of race and deity affiliation, it is the daunting challenge of fighting actual gods in their planes of existence. Sort of silly that killing your own God didn't have any bearing though I will agree. Though CT and Inny followers kill them already, all the time in classic/Kunark/Velious.

2. Nah. The PoP AAs added so much depth to the game. They were class defining. There were the general stat/resist/TS ones sure. I could live without those (though mastering all TSes was neat). The class ones though were great. Each class got atleast one solid AA that have them more utility, power or roles in a raid and group setting that was unique to their class.

3. Flagging system I had a love-hate relationship for. On one hand it was an epic quest for both your character and your guild. Knocking off each God on your path to the Elemental and eventually Time planes was awesome. It had two failure, both more or less fixed later on.

Firstly, it was WAYYY too restrictive to start. A few months in they removed this restriction by adding in level barriers to certain planes (CoD,PoV,PoS,PoTorment at 55, HoH, BoT at 62). I'd say Tactics and Solusek Ro both warranted being added to the 62 level limit as well. Keeping EPs and Time locked.

Secondly, it was very unforgiving. The Saryrn cycle was the most brutal. Missing Grummus meant the Carprin key wouldn't stick (even after the level barriers were added). Missing Carprin meant you couldn't click down to Bertox. Missing either Bertox or Terris meant the Keeper of Souls and Saryrn flags wouldn't stick. Etc. Etc. It was mainly because the story line doesn't make sense if you do it out of order, but for purposes of flagging you should've been able to get flags whenever so long as you could zone in.

EPs were a great idea though, atleast all of them except PoAir 1.0. They gave elite-cutting edge raiders a playground to get the best exp, the best groupable drops, the best tradeskill drops and access to the final pieces of some long-chain quests. As well as some solid raids to farm + the 4 elemental gods (some of the best, mechanically speaking, raids to grace EQ).

VP in Kunark, ST in Velious and VT in Luclin all were crappy cause they were raid only. EPs allowed some exclusivity to them while also allowing groups to occur there.

Tl;dr - PoP best expansion ever.

[Fountree]

I think the original poster is just reflecting on the fact that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to do that's fresh after 5 years on blue. The rolling nature of content in the original game of EQ (You were beyond PoP at the 5 year mark) kept things interesting until the post-PoP period where its universally agreed that shit got stupid.

I've expressed this opinion several times in the past, but what a lot of the "classic" nazis forget is that in the process of microscopically adjusting every gameplay feature to adhere as close to the original as possible, you have a blue server that is becoming more and more unbalanced due to item saturation, lvl 60 saturation, chardok AE etc. You also have people who would really like to keep playing who become burnt out by doing the same raids and/or camps over and over again, 100s or 1000s of times. An important part of PVE EQ is to progress your character (and also guild as a team)... and if you have nothing to progress onward to, there's little left to do. Some people have kept on playing because they enjoy the little things like Sebilis grinding and the complexity of EQ's group and raid based gameplay, but everything has its breaking point where its like...-_- *sigh* I suppose I'll cut my P99 time.

Saying all that, I'm certainly one of those folks who supports the mechanical and gameplay changes happening now in the hopes that a new, fresh and balanced blue server would eventually be released that follows an accurate timeline, with classic features like /guildwar implemented and perhaps gamebreaking things like chardok AE, item recharging, and epic MQs eliminated.

[kaev]

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

...

EPs were a great idea though, atleast all of them except PoAir 1.0. They gave elite-cutting edge raiders a playground to get the best exp, the best groupable drops, the best tradeskill drops and access to the final pieces of some long-chain quests. As well as some solid raids to farm + the 4 elemental gods (some of the best, mechanically speaking, raids to grace EQ).

VP in Kunark, ST in Velious and VT in Luclin all were crappy cause they were raid only. EPs allowed some exclusivity to them while also allowing groups to occur there.

Tl;dr - PoP best expansion ever.

I could not disagree with this more. The EPs elaborated and perfected the premanent separation of EQ players into larger population of casual scum who might maybe get a few content crumbs and a minority of privileged players who got to play the game that everybody payed equally to play. It was this divide in the player population that led inevitably to EQ's decline. Fewer and fewer players found enough interesting about the game to keep paying a subscription. When you're effectively locked out of vast swaths of content, why would you pay to continue developing and elaborating that content?

Quite a few casual and/or RP players could see where EQ was headed once they got a good look at Velious. Many of my friends, both RL and those I had made in-game, bailed on EQ early in Velious. More left early in Luclin, most of the remainder bailed as soon as it became clear how PoP content worked. Amongst gamers who were not obsessed with ordering their real lives around high-end EQ raiding, PoP sucked ginormous necrotic donkey balls for exactly the reason you are applauding it.

PoK & PoK books were stupid, but they're not why PoP sucked. PoP sucked because it offered next to nothing to the overwhelming majority of the players who paid for its development. Velious prepared the stake, Luclin held the stake in place and handed up the mallet, and PoP struck the killing blow, driving the stake mercilessly into heart of EQ, killing the greatness of the game for all time.

[Zuranthium]

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

The PoP AAs added so much depth to the game. Each class got atleast one solid AA that have them more utility, power or roles in a raid and group setting that was unique to their class.

They add nothing to the game. AA's themselves are nothing but a time sink. You can simply add all of those class-adjusting abilities into the game regardless.

Something that would actually add DEPTH to the game would be making it so that every class has significantly different specializations and ways to build the character. Aka, attribute trees that every ability is linked to and having a limited number of points to spend that decide how strong each attribute is for your character.

Then, also have a limited number of skills that a character can use at any given time. Casters already have 8 "skill slots" and you could give everyone "skill bar" like that, where melee attacks like Bash would take up a slot. Those 8 skills are locked in until the character goes back to a town or meditates for a long period of time. Some of them can be interchangeable for PvE purposes, like the various teleports or illlusions, and in general you could also link skills to other ones such that they can be "morphed" into them, allowing multiple functions for a single skill slot. This makes it so that everyone is now playing very unique characters.

Of course, all of that is also dependent on the skills and combat system having more depth than what is seen in Classic EQ.

[Leopaz]

though I played from the beginning, Luclin and PoP were definitely my favs. Gates burned me out, so by Omens I straight quit

[webrunner5]

I still play live and have 3 toons level 100. Lot more toons less. I have a ton of fun on there even on the latest expansion because it is a new challenge.

I mean I like it a lot here and I play the Sleeper server also so pretty much the same as P1999. But I have been playing EQ since 2000. So it can get boring going to the same zones, same gear, so that is the reason I still play live. I have more people on friends list on Live than here. There are people I play with that I played with in 2000 yet on live.

But I am retired and have the time, so not knocking people that have limited time to play. I would probably just play on here if I was still working with a family. Live is a pretty big commitment to do all the quests to even get into the new zones. You can't just go to any zone without a lot of work involved like here. Well there is a few quests here like Seb and HS keys, but they are easy as hell compared to live to get. YMMV.

[h4tch]

I would play PoP if Luclin didn't exist, and no PoK ports.

[kaev]

Originally Posted by h4tch [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I would play PoP if Luclin didn't exist, and no PoK ports.

Luclin sucked, PoP sucked, hell Velious sucked in a lot of ways but we seem to be stuck with it. I say we should just skip to LoY without Luclin or PoP. No new classes, races, or race/class combos beyond what we have in Velious, especially no "mounts". Let the various flavors of furries (swamptoads, mooncats, pervertlords, mounties, all of 'em) get their jollies elsewhere.

[Secrets]

I still think EQ1 without the classic planes (Sky, Hate, Fear) would be a great server in itself if it never progressed past classic.

Realistically speaking, Velious and Kunark have very little content that reminds me of the style of content in the original release. When you found an item with stats in pre-Kunark, you either had to farm for days or go to Lower Guk/Nagafen's Lair - and even then, the two major dungeons felt out of place realistically speaking from a content perspective.

Prior to those dungeons, you had to farm all over the world to get your drops and gear as opposed to just two dungeons on the same continent. There was virtually no point in the many merchant-sold weaponry or classic crafted after getting a SSoY or one of the many other visible armor slot drops in both of those zones.

Maybe I just hold the newbie experience in high regards, but I still think it's a bit silly to have Mithril BPs dropping in Nagafen's Lair around the same time you'd probably make enough plat to make Fine Plate armor.

It's almost like two different developers had designed half of the content. It's weird. I really don't know how to explain it other than 80% of the content gets invalidated with Kunark, and there's so much of it in the game prior that gets overlooked.