LDON

[Zuranthium]

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

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.

Erm, that's not true at all. There were a lot of people in West Karana pre-Kunark. Bandits, Scarecrows, Cyclopes, and Ogres in that zone were all heavily camped. There are farm houses, big hills, towers, and forest lines throughout the zone, plus the river to the south. I really like the expansive nature of the zone.

Now, I do think Everquest has a design flaw in that running around and trying to hunt random stuff in West Karana doesn't give you a good reward. In zones like this, individual monsters in the spread-out areas should give exp bonuses because it takes you extra time to actually get to them. Groups should be rewarded for having a tracking Ranger in these areas, since they can find stuff to hunt quicker that way. With West Karana being such a large zone there's definitely room for more content as well, although you don't want to overdo it because the point of the zone is that its supposed to be a giant plains/farmland.

[HawkMasterson1999]

So much hate for the karanas... I think they're awesome and norath would feel much smaller and lesser without them.

[Erydan Ouragan]

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

I actually enjoyed AA's, the problem is that they quickly became an e-penis measuring stick above your level. "You only have 1K AA's? lulz"

The AA's in Luclin and PoP made a lot of sense, there were very few garbage AA's. If you look at live today, there are thousands of AA's that have minimal value vs their cost.

Ahh yes, the e-penis measuring stick. Unfortunately, that's a product of human psychology. Most human beings are competitive by nature and are not only satisfied when they have more for themselves, but also when the other people around them have less than they have.

Even if there was an mmo where everybody is the same, have the same spells and items, people would still find a way to argue why they're the best and everybody else sucks.

I agree with your comment about the luclin and PoP AAs, that's why i said i believe PoP is the pinnacle of Everquest. Other expansions just added bloat and unnecessary things to keep people in the rat race, give them something to do.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by HawkMasterson1999 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So much hate for the karanas... I think they're awesome and norath would feel much smaller and lesser without them.

Oh dear god, I actually agree with Hawk on something.

/wrists

[HawkMasterson1999]

There may be hope for you yet... probably not though.

[loramin]

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

Ahh yes, the e-penis measuring stick. Unfortunately, that's a product of human psychology. Most human beings are competitive by nature and are not only satisfied when they have more for themselves, but also when the other people around them have less than they have.

And this was the problem of AAs. EQ is already a game that favors those with the most time to invest in it, but before AAs that only resulted in a few "tiers" of players:

1) casual, not yet 60
2) casual, 60
3) raiding, 60
4) top-end raiding 60

"Social mobility" between those tiers was pretty fluid: even if you weren't yet 60, all you had to do to become "the 1%" was get to 60 and join the right guild (which might require doing annoying work like getting your VP key, but it wasn't that hard).

After AAs you had three new tiers within each of those:

1) no or very few AAs
2) essential AAs
3) tons of AAs

Now suddenly the gulf between the 1% (tons of AAs top-end raiding) and the <60 player was HUGE. Now you had to get to 60, and at least earn all your essential AAs to even be considered by top guilds. And it only got worse as more AAs were added.

TLDR: AAs made it nearly impossible for a casual player to catch up to a hardcore player in a way that new raid zones and new level increases never did.

[Zuranthium]

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

Najena, Dalnir, Gorge of King Zorb... There's empty zones on p99 as well.

Yes and that could be improved. Gorge is a cool zone but there just isn't enough value there for hunting. If it had a better exp mod it would be worthwhile, plus you can add a higher level dungeon that's connected to the zone, so then you get traffic through the zone.

Najena could be given more reward for the depths of the dungeon. The top part of the dungeon is fine for exping already and I've frequently seen people there. Runneye needs wayyyy more reward as you go deeper into it. Dalnir/Nurga/Droga just need better drops. Kaesora could use a bit of love too.

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

So instead, people sit in EC tunnel, get SoW and Clarity from a random person standing around and teleport around to wherever they want from a druid or a wizard.

People can't instantly travel to EC, nor is EC so centralized that everyone automatically goes there. This would be especially true if the game world was balanced better. If there was more content on the western side of the world and in Faydwer, then you would see South Qeynos and Greater Faydark becoming busy, bustling hubs.

[iruinedyourday]

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

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

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

Erm, that's not true at all. There were a lot of people in West Karana pre-Kunark. Bandits, Scarecrows, Cyclopes, and Ogres in that zone were all heavily camped. There are farm houses, big hills, towers, and forest lines throughout the zone, plus the river to the south. I really like the expansive nature of the zone.

Now, I do think Everquest has a design flaw in that running around and trying to hunt random stuff in West Karana doesn't give you a good reward. In zones like this, individual monsters in the spread-out areas should give exp bonuses because it takes you extra time to actually get to them. Groups should be rewarded for having a tracking Ranger in these areas, since they can find stuff to hunt quicker that way. With West Karana being such a large zone there's definitely room for more content as well, although you don't want to overdo it because the point of the zone is that its supposed to be a giant plains/farmland.

Bandits are fantastic XP and Plat in WC for the teens, best in the game! I loved that zone, particularly for the reasons the prior post listed it being dull. It was this place where I felt the 'common man' of eq, lived. Its drastically low level, there are cute human farms, there is that weird scarecrow that chases after you if you walk on the farmers field, there is that interesting family of barbarian fishermen, that you can raise faction with in Halas to shop with, or slaughter if you're evil to loot their family forged bronze armor. Its a beautiful zone. Mysterious ogre's deep in the mountains, where giants roam behind the trees.

Eq is a game that has always had more of a 'world' to it than any other MMO, ever. I attribute this to multiple 'happy accidents' in the games design but one of the main things I believe helps shape that, is the lack of instancing. Yes it means zones are camped & over crowding can be frustrating. But the result is that its an open living world where you have to interact with people. Instanced zones destroy this illusion.

Ill never forget the feeling I had when I hit 40, and went to lguk for the first time, the dead side of the zone was completely camped. You could walk a level 1 toon around in there without fear of death, anywhere (unless a spawn happened to pop right on top of you). Though some people found this to be frustrating, I found it to be magical. The gear people wore running around in this 'player made underground city for the elite' was beautiful, gold, blue, high level spell particles flowing all over the place. The auction channel was on fire, updated with gear you couldn't even find in EC, Ooc chatter was flowing. It was incredible, a secret city under a mysterious dungeon, all run, organized, managed, and exists because of of over crowding & players. The froglock tad hunting trolls of Innothule had no idea what roared beneath their feet.

Classic EQ is 100% about, what you make of it.

[Glenzig]

Instanced content is the roadway to modern mmo crap game play. Never ever ever ever ever add any instanced content to p99 please.

[Kika Maslyaka]

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

People can't instantly travel to EC, nor is EC so centralized that everyone automatically goes there. This would be especially true if the game world was balanced better. If there was more content on the western side of the world and in Faydwer, then you would see South Qeynos and Greater Faydark becoming busy, bustling hubs.

Well people do tend to create their own hubs, though I would prefer them to be more distributed around, using actual cities. Of course game was made such way that Freeport/EC ended up the most "practical" center of the world.