The Pinnacle of Everquest (In your opinion)

[Gustoo]

Pre Kunark is the best by far. The content was balanced and meaningful at all levels. I can now solo boss mobs like arch magus and frenzied ghoul as a cleric at level 60. That is in kunark era. Previous high end items like SSOY becoming garbage and amazing zones like Lower Guk being sidelined means that the new expansions are basically dumb, despite the things they bring to the table.

Overall game balance and correct playability is best pre-kunark.

If expansions, then velious by far is the best, because luclin and future expansions damage as much good old content as they create, and for PVP in particular, the bazaar really trashed the game.

POP broke the game with insta-port books, basically destroying community and the large world travel experience, and the dependence on nice druids and wizards to travel quickly.

For me, the less expansions the better, but Velious by far is the last good expansion, because at least kunark is still viable and it doesn't really do much to degrade the already degraded original game content. With Luclin, majority of leveling was done on the moon where absurd EXP bonuses and centralized PC really made the real everquest world a ghost town.

If P99 goes beyond Velious, it should be with custom content to create a more unified and meaningful game experience, rather than just leaving old content in the dust.

It could finish off some of the uncompletable quests from the classic game, give meaning to random items that are good for nothing, and a host of other things. Personally the best would be Classic game, and then open up the dungeons to deeper exploration and add more richness to original content. You can imagine someone found a random hole and was able to go further into Guk and find more mysteries. Ideally, all content should remain relevant. The fact that in classic an SSOY is one of the best 1hs weapons, and in Kunark it is vendor fodder makes it apparent that the expansions were not done the way they should have been.

[heartbrand]

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

Pre Kunark is the best by far. The content was balanced and meaningful at all levels. I can now solo boss mobs like arch magus and frenzied ghoul as a cleric at level 60. That is in kunark era. Previous high end items like SSOY becoming garbage and amazing zones like Lower Guk being sidelined means that the new expansions are basically dumb, despite the things they bring to the table.

Overall game balance and correct playability is best pre-kunark.

If expansions, then velious by far is the best, because luclin and future expansions damage as much good old content as they create, and for PVP in particular, the bazaar really trashed the game.

POP broke the game with insta-port books, basically destroying community and the large world travel experience, and the dependence on nice druids and wizards to travel quickly.

For me, the less expansions the better, but Velious by far is the last good expansion, because at least kunark is still viable and it doesn't really do much to degrade the already degraded original game content. With Luclin, majority of leveling was done on the moon where absurd EXP bonuses and centralized PC really made the real everquest world a ghost town.

If P99 goes beyond Velious, it should be with custom content to create a more unified and meaningful game experience, rather than just leaving old content in the dust.

It could finish off some of the uncompletable quests from the classic game, give meaning to random items that are good for nothing, and a host of other things. Personally the best would be Classic game, and then open up the dungeons to deeper exploration and add more richness to original content. You can imagine someone found a random hole and was able to go further into Guk and find more mysteries. Ideally, all content should remain relevant. The fact that in classic an SSOY is one of the best 1hs weapons, and in Kunark it is vendor fodder makes it apparent that the expansions were not done the way they should have been.

Couldn't disagree more. Pre Kunark itemization is terrible. Trade skills are worthless, most named mobs drop crap that no one uses, sol ro temple quests offer awful items with dumb stats for the most part, poorly itemized planar items, etc. Only a couple of item camps end up being worthwhile, for the most part all located in lower guk, leaving most zones completely pointless.

[iruinedyourday]

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

Couldn't disagree more. Pre Kunark itemization is terrible. Trade skills are worthless, most named mobs drop crap that no one uses, sol ro temple quests offer awful items with dumb stats for the most part, poorly itemized planar items, etc. Only a couple of item camps end up being worthwhile, for the most part all located in lower guk, leaving most zones completely pointless.

dude there is nothing terrible about pre-kunark itimization!!! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Wearing leather the first time you fought nagafin was normal, and AWESOME

the first time I saw someone witht a cof it was like, the most amazing thing ever.

it was a world of mortals on the quest for adventure!

anything past velious and it became a world of gods.

[Stormfists]

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

Pre-kunark is the best EQ hands down.. Seriously just look at any of it, look at HHK, look at Castle Mistmoore, look at Lower Guk.. a city of end game frogs under the feet of lost club wielding trolls looking for their diaper wearing corpses floating in the bubbling swamp.

Look at Rathe mountains, the mysterious named creatures like petrifin.. look at lavastorm mountains, two dragons, in love and separated by fire and ice.

look at the once great Najina, with its trampled doors and festering corpses hanging from hooks in the endless prisons guarded by dark elf wizards studding the dark arts, visit the foreign quarter of Nerriak and see the ogres trying to make a go of it selling jewlry to the narcissistic elves at Shiny Tings, pop in for a drink at the bar by the lake in the commons, see the leatherfoot raider spies swimming by the windows at the waterline.

look at Qyenos, the clock towers, the NPC dwarves that hang out at the bars and get in fights with the other patrons by the docs. Look at the karanas, the majestically great farmer filled karanas.

Qeynos hills, visit the forest city of Surefall Glade, where you can begin a quest delivering mail as a bard across the world of norrath.

That wonder of what is on any of the myrad of islands you pass by as you travel to the mainland city of Freeport to begin your adventures as an elf or a dwarf.

The dark thermagotists in Befallen, the lizards of Cazic Thule trying to summon the dark lord for thier bidding, the snow capped Everfrost peeks where Karg Ice bear wanders...

It is endless, the depth and detail of pre-kunark EQ.. it was about your imagination and for exploration.. it wasn't about gameplay and min maxing or pixels.. it was a magical time.

Classic EQ pre kunark is by far the best EQ ever created.

As if you needed all that, when all you need is to just look at this SS.

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Failpost due to no mention of Gfay, unrest or CB... =P

I suppose with all these expacs Sony has ruined their own lands ruined lands.

[squarez]

PoP ? you guys are gross

[fastboy21]

i'm honestly torn on this question. PoP era was the most fun and most immersed (I mean real life time dedicated to a game) that I've ever been online.

PoP was awesome...it was the height of big guild raiding. in that sense, it was the culmination of "progression style bring 70 of your best friends" raid content and it felt truly truly epic.

the problem was that it wasn't sustainable. and when they tried to up the ante on EQ again in OoW and GoD they fell so flat on their face that the game started to implode.

If nothing else, it is very interesting that so many folks are picking PoP---on a classic emu server.

[heartbrand]

I don't know why people say PoP killed community. You had tons of people gathered in PoK and PoT, tons of groups in all the new zones, pickup raids, huge guilds for 72 man raiding, trade skills that mattered, tons of tradable gear and a great economy (ornate armor anyone?), difficult grouper content (BoT bosses), and the best raids. Also had the coolest zones and coolest music (sol ro tower / poearth / potime some of my favs). I don't remember once thinking to myself "man that nektulos pok book is ruining my immersion." Prolly cuz I was balls deep in the new content.

[Jimjam]

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

I don't know why people say PoP killed community. You had tons of people gathered in PoK and PoT, tons of groups in all the new zones, pickup raids, huge guilds for 72 man raiding, trade skills that mattered, tons of tradable gear and a great economy (ornate armor anyone?), difficult grouper content (BoT bosses), and the best raids. Also had the coolest zones and coolest music (sol ro tower / poearth / potime some of my favs). I don't remember once thinking to myself "man that nektulos pok book is ruining my immersion." Prolly cuz I was balls deep in the new content.

People think PoP and the PoP books is what killed the newbie game, I think it actually helped save it.

During kunark the newbie zones were generally packed; lots of opportunity for player interaction as soon as you rolled your guy. By the time SoL was ending, often if you rolled a character you would be the only one in the zone if you rolled the wrong area. PoP let you roll the character/class combo you wanted, without penalising you by giving you an empty starting area. Furthermore, PoP meant you could ensure that there would be a group where you wanted to hunt (as a newb) as you could more easily form up and travel there. Notably, the pop books particularly aided travel between the lowest level zones; for higher levels there was still a sense of scale in the game as PoK books didn't do much to open up Velious or SoL.

The problem is EQ was getting too big; there was too many similar zones, and the level cap was getting too high. I imagine these are problems more MMOs are facing; I think I read something like WoW reset level 0 to level 80for paying customers as the catch up was getting silly? EQ I think created a fast track levelling/gearing up path with the drakkin expansion so all the newbies would be concentrated in one area and be given quests where their gear would be more 'meaningful'.

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

If kunark+ didn't exist then would they still be pointless? I am asking because I don't know but I assume they were good relatively in pure classic.

Expansions are solely to make money and they always make old stuff obsolete (mudflation). By making an expansion what you really did is start sacrificing the game for money and eventually you kill it completely. Don't get me wrong there should be fixes and tweaks to get it to where it was originally intended but "expansions" as we know them are commercilization of a brand and nothing more.

It's not like Kunark just knocked a couple of points of delay off weapons, or maybe added a DMG, some stats or a new proc... The problem is kunark gave weapons that were obtainable in the late teens (Iksar berserker club, even the crappy forest giant hammer) that invalidated so many of weapons you could quest/loot in classic. The improvements in the weapons were not small increments but orders of magnitude better.

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

Couldn't disagree more. Pre Kunark itemization is terrible. Trade skills are worthless, most named mobs drop crap that no one uses, sol ro temple quests offer awful items with dumb stats for the most part, poorly itemized planar items, etc. Only a couple of item camps end up being worthwhile, for the most part all located in lower guk, leaving most zones completely pointless.

The best items were in a high end dungeon. That makes sense to me.

Most stats don't really achieve that much, I like how Sol Ro armour had stats your character didn't need as it made the itemisation seem real; not that it was a game where everything was optimised towards the class system. Besides, the Sol Ro armour had decent AC on it for the most part.

You complain that everything pre-guk sucked, but surely that puts it on a rough parity?

I think part of the reason most equipment was such a small upgrade / sidegrade to ringmail and bronze was to prevent people becoming to item-orientated in their gameplay.

[Nisei]

PoP for me

shut up about ports

[heartbrand]

Classic was great, but many of the things thats made it great had nothing to do with the game itself and more about it being completely revolutionary at the time.