LDON

[HawkMasterson1999]

maybe when the classic project is finished somebody can put in the work to develop luclin on a new server. Maybe even include /movelog from p99?

[loramin]

I wouldn't count on it. Anyone could make an EQ emulator server that has Luclin, but it would be "modern EQ minus some expansions" not "classic EQ + Luclin." To get the latter you'd need the P99 source, and as AFAIK the P99 staff hasn't shared that with anyone.

[loramin]

(But at least the P99 staff has expressed interest in custom content post-Velious, and that custom content would likely leverage zones from Luclin, PoP, etc.)

[Scrubosaur]

Luclin : VT = awesomesauce
PoP : pretty much every boss fight was damn fun.
LDON : boring as hell, rinse and repeat instanced dungeons

[Erydan Ouragan]

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

Luclin : VT = awesomesauce
PoP : pretty much every boss fight was damn fun.
LDON : boring as hell, rinse and repeat instanced dungeons

I agree with this. In my opinion, PoP was the pinnacle of Everquest.

Luclin brought AAs which were a welcome addition for most classes and amazing for others. Wizards, rangers, paladins and druids became viable at end-game. I understand people hated raids in Luclin because of the stupid amount of hitpoints mobs had and the colossal time-sink it was to key your guild for Vex Thal, but for me, luclin was just amazing. Akheva Ruins is my favorite zone in the whole game.

Then PoP brought more AAs and classes became truly fantastic and an absolute blast to play. Divine Arbitration for clerics, Fading memories for bards, druids becoming amazing healers, blah blah blah. People on p1999 will dislike PoK and the easy-mode transportation it offered, but let's be real here; yes it made life easier, but the game was far from easy-mode even with PoK books. If you died, you were naked, lost xp and still had to get your corpse back and preferably a rez. Still very far from popping a few feet away at the spirit healer, clicking a button to respawn and another button for the repair bill.

This is why, i think, Project 1999 should eventually go up to PoP and stop there. It was the perfect balance between nice quality of life improvement, class balance improvement, and general awesomeness to play. It would offer tons of content for the casuals and hardcore people with plenty of room inbetween. It could offer the option for "classic" guilds to work their way up from hate/fear/sky -> VP -> ssra/vexthal -> planes if they should so desire.

I understand the strong desire for people to keep it "classic", but i have bad news, Project 1999 is not classic anymore. Classic is level 50 max and old world only. We're in kunark now and velious will be out eventually. Stopping at PoP without LDoN would be amazing, keep instances out of the game to keep the exploration and social aspect of the game going, but having the quality of life improvement, AAs to bring out balance and plenty of content for everyone would be so cool, i would cream my greaves.

My 2 copper pieces.

[Zuranthium]

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

Stopping at PoP without LDoN would be amazing, keep instances out of the game to keep the exploration and social aspect of the game going, but having the quality of life improvement, AAs to bring out balance and plenty of content for everyone would be so cool, i would cream my greaves.

Exploration? LOL. PoP absolutely kills it. The whole game except for very specific "chosen" leveling/raiding zones becomes dead 99% of the time.

Social aspect? LOL. People just sit in PoP. There are basically never any more interesting encounters of meeting people and interacting out in the field. Everyone gets SoW/Clarity from a random person standing around and then just goes and teleports around to wherever they want.

AA's are NOT needed to balance classes better. That's something you can do by tweaking the skills and game mechanics themselves. AA's are simply a massive grind. Wow, there is some serious Pavlovian dog shit going on here.

[Xer0]

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

Exploration? LOL. PoP absolutely kills it. The whole game except for very specific "chosen" leveling/raiding zones becomes dead 99% of the time.

Social aspect? LOL. People just sit in PoP. There are basically never any more interesting encounters of meeting people and interacting out in the field. Everyone gets SoW/Clarity from a random person standing around and then just goes and teleports around to wherever they want.

AA's are NOT needed to balance classes better. That's something you can do by tweaking the skills and game mechanics themselves. AA's are simply a massive grind. Wow, there is some serious Pavlovian dog shit going on here.

Not really.POK only put these pedestals in areas directly outside of major cities. Yes it made it easier to get around, completely killed the travelling/exploring? nay.

[Zuranthium]

Originally Posted by Xer0 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not really.POK only put these pedestals in areas directly outside of major cities. Yes it made it easier to get around, completely killed the travelling/exploring? nay.

For the original game world it VERY much did. Largely the same for Kunark as well. Those areas of the game were already ridiculously obsolete and the easy-mode travel made the zones altogether barren. Most zones it was only you there, despite it being primetime hours. That is a travesty. Plus, aside from the books, everyone was sitting in PoK, so it was extremely easy to get a random Wizard or Druid to teleport you to the other non-book destinations.

When nobody is on Norrath, or a large percentage of people aren't, Everquest is dead to me. I don't want to freaking stand around on the moon or in some random plane. I want to partake in a living, breathing high-fantasy world.

Adding the moon and a ton of planes is a terrible thing for the game. More content can be added to the game by improving existing zones and by adding new zones that connect to existing Norrath zones. When zones are interconnected and all zones are worthwhile, it keeps people flowing through them. That is necessary for Everquest to actually be alive.

You can easily add 5 new outdoor zones and 5 new dungeons to Faydwer, all of them being zones that completely make sense with the lore and geography and most of which are actually depicted on the world map to begin with! You can easily add more content to the western side of the world (Odus/Qeynos/Halas areas), which would significantly improve the game world because because those areas are CRIMINALLY under-represented and underutilized. Plus you can add more to southern Antonica (another zone southwest of Feerott; Innothule Swamp connecting to the Broken Skull Rock zones) and you can add a bunch more the Netuklos and Misty Thicket areas while also interconnecting them with the new zones.

There's SO much extra potential without straying from the original continents.

[Kika Maslyaka]

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

Exploration? LOL. PoP absolutely kills it. The whole game except for very specific "chosen" leveling/raiding zones becomes dead 99% of the time.

Social aspect? LOL. People just sit in PoP. There are basically never any more interesting encounters of meeting people and interacting out in the field. Everyone gets SoW/Clarity from a random person standing around and then just goes and teleports around to wherever they want.

AA's are NOT needed to balance classes better. That's something you can do by tweaking the skills and game mechanics themselves. AA's are simply a massive grind. Wow, there is some serious Pavlovian dog shit going on here.

I think that by the time PoK books were added old world was already a ghost town, from all the previous additions. It was just a flower to the grave already covered with earth.

EQ had inherited problems even in original content design they never went back to address.
For example lets compare:

Crushbone - tiny cramped area, with lev 12 mobs roaming next to lev 5 mobs, caused continuous trains. On other hand - lots of good non generic loot.

Blackburrow - amazingly designed cavern system, and the only classic zone with truly 3-dimentional layout (not just floors, on top of each other like in RunnyEye, but uniquely interconnected system of tunnels and caves). YET - there is not a single name mob here! Not a single loot drop that can equal to what you can get in Crushbone.

Another pair:
EverFrost - a very large zone, but with lots of landscape features
vs
West Karana - dull and empty - no zone geography what so ever, no landscape features. Not even mobs in sight! Nothing. It barely had any players even in classic times, even before Kunark.

Now, Kunark comes along and does 2 things:
-zones that designed a lot better with features and geography
-much better loot drops from same level mobs - this one was HUGE mistake. It immediately made old world zones to devalue, with exception of selected areas/loot camps.

They should have given Kunark mobs either similar quality loot, or go back and rework the old zones that were terribly lacking. They never did.

Then Velious comes along and drops even better loot on same level range for 40+ level game.

And finally Luclin:
-Lev 25 mobs drop weapons with ratios of what 45+ named droped in Sol A/Permafrost
-Low level zones with insane ZEM
-and at the same time, the map of Luclin is poorly designed, with some zones clearly being superior in content and loot, while others super out of the way and worthless right from the start.

When people say that after initial EQ release all Brad McQuad did is smocked crack and talked about "Vision" - I am starting to believe: - its like expansions had no general oversight. No senior designer to make sure that things progress smoothly, and actually fit together. One designer was making one zone with one idea with respect to game balance, and another was working with completely different set of ideas.

So as you see here - this trend was quickly piling up. By the time of PoP - books or no books, didn't really matter. The game HAD TO BE OVERHAULED, but they didn't care - they wanted to sell another expansion.
Yes PoP actualy for the first time ahd interesting raids, but at least half of the zones again were poorly designed.

yes, Torment was awesome. Plane of Time- the pinnacle zone of entire expansion - SUCKED - there is literally nothing there.
I could go on for another 3 pages comparing in details what could have been done, and what wasn't, but I think you get general ideas.
They started good, but then were continuously pressed to get the next expansion out of the door, and ton of things went half done or not done at all.
And whats worse, they barely ever admitted to this flaws, and never fixed most of them.
Today, EQ lead designer is beating himself in a chest proudly saying "EQ is the largest MMO in the world - we 700 have unique zones!"
700 EMPTY zones, I may add. And then he comes in rerolled forums (http://www.rerolled.org/showthread.p...s-free-to-play) and start asking questions - why people are still playing EMU if EQ is f2p???
Poor sob.

[webrunner5]

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

When people say that after initial EQ release all Brad McQuad did is smocked crack and talked about "Vision" - I am starting to believe: - its like expansions had no general oversight. No senior designer to make sure that things progress smoothly, and actually fit together. One designer was making one zone with one idea with respect to game balance, and another was working with completely different set of ideas.

So as you see here - this trend was quickly piling up. By the time of PoP - books or no books, didn't really matter. The game HAD TO BE OVERHAULED, but they didn't care - they wanted to sell another expansion.
Yes PoP actualy for the first time ahd interesting raids, but at least half of the zones again were poorly designed.

yes, Torment was awesome. Plane of Time- the pinnacle zone of entire expansion - SUCKED - there is literally nothing there.
I could go on for another 3 pages comparing in details what could have been done, and what wasn't, but I think you get general ideas.
They started good, but then were continuously pressed to get the next expansion out of the door, and ton of things went half done or not done at all.
And whats worse, they barely ever admitted to this flaws, and never fixed most of them.
Today, EQ lead designer is beating himself in a chest proudly saying "EQ is the largest MMO in the world - we 700 have unique zones!"
700 EMPTY zones, I may add. And then he comes in rerolled forums (http://www.rerolled.org/showthread.p...s-free-to-play) and start asking questions - why people are still playing EMU if EQ is f2p???
Poor sob.

Well the big problem was after the first release of EQ they started needing more developers for each zone. And if you play a Puller class, ergo Monk, you will find that X amount of the zones are alike but different. Meaning say 3 different developers designed say 5 zones each. All different mindsets with different pathing, spliting difficulty, etc.

So that is what I think made some zones great and other sort of sucked. More expansions put more pressure on the developers and some were good at it, others not.

I agree, WK, SK and NK all sort of sucks mobs wise, and feature wise. The Overthere is not far behind but at least has some mobs in it. Only a Bard can like it lol.

If you still play live like I do at times, it is SCARY how many zones there really is now. And they are doing a Lot better job at them than they did in the past. Live is really pretty cool if you just take your time on one toon and think past PoP. Start one up and play it the hard way like we did years ago you could spend 5 years and never find, or be in all of the neat places, there are on live. It is that good.

I don't want to hear about PoK stones and Cats on the Moon. You DO NOT have to use them if you don't want to. You are allowed to play a Human Monk and walk 12 zones if that is what you want. Hell it isn't a race to the top just like it should not be here.