Shadows of Luclin

[Solist]

Classic, kunark and velious are flooded with empty, unused, unfinished zones.

There's 20 i could name off hands that are extremely broken, underutilised, unfinished, etc. Adding luclin barely adds any more, but it does open a shitload of content up for people.

If you applied luclin level content to p99 asbergers it would be truely remarkable gameplay. I'd love to see the novel approaches to many of the ring events, steps that can be skipped, quests half bypassed etc. Would be unlike luclin ever done on EQ before excepting the all but perfected endgame farming of Al Kabor for rotated AHR necks.

The content is really fun, zones are far better tuned than velious was.

[Danth]

Luclin was trash, Planes of Power even worse, and they'd ruin P1999 insofar as I care. I'm here specifically because those expansions ruined the game for me, and they'd ruin it again.

Danth

[Croco]

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

Luclin was trash, Planes of Power even worse, and they'd ruin P1999 insofar as I care. I'm here specifically because those expansions ruined the game for me, and they'd ruin it again.

Danth

Enter the extremely vocal extreme minority I was referring to. Ok Boomer.

[putrid_plum]

i like how people say most hate luclin and dont want it then there is a forum post where 95% of the people want luclin... irony?

[Croco]

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

i like how people say most hate luclin and dont want it then there is a forum post where 95% of the people want luclin... irony?

The vast majority of the server would love Luclin. There's about 2 dozen salty sea dogs who shout very loudly into the void every time this topic comes up and there's a reason it comes up often.

[A Knight]

I wouldn't mind a Luclin server but I would prefer an original only server.

Or reset the server every 5 years, as it should be for any mmo. And not a progression server where its bam bam bam next expansion.

[Zuranthium]

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

The vast majority of the server would love Luclin. There's about 2 dozen salty sea dogs who shout very loudly into the void every time this topic comes up and there's a reason it comes up often.

Do you not understand what website you're on? The goal of P99 was to recreate pre-Luclin Everquest.

I'm not surprised people are bored, though, and think adding an expansion will suddenly make things better. It won't change the flawed game mechanics, the time waste, and the fact that the info is already out there and you're not doing anything new or interesting or skillful, only repeating tired old grinding. Things will only be worse, as instead of staring at carefully created pixels that were part of a well-considered world, you'll be staring at artistically defunct pixels.

[Croco]

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

Do you not understand what website you're on? The goal of P99 was to recreate pre-Luclin Everquest.

I'm not surprised people are bored, though, and think adding an expansion will suddenly make things better. It won't change the flawed game mechanics, the time waste, and the fact that the info is already out there and you're not doing anything new or interesting or skillful, only repeating tired old grinding. Things will only be worse, as instead of staring at carefully created pixels that were part of a well-considered world, you'll be staring at artistically defunct pixels.

That's literally the same argument against releasing the Green server. It's hilarious you think that all the pixels created during classic-velious are from a well-considered world. Dev's had no idea what they were doing with classic & kunark loot and only barely figured it out in velious. Luclin is the first time you see loot that was fully balanced across all classes without any garbage stats like int on monk gear and the like.

Luclin is the culmination of the EQ dev team firing on all cylinders and you can tell by how well crafted and iconic the vast majority of the Luclin raids are, minus vex thal which is just them throwing up their hands and adding 10x hp to all the mobs to create the illusion of difficulty. Ssra Temple is easily one of the most iconic zones in the history of EQ.

Obviously we all understand that this project was meant to cap at velious. This thread and conversation is with that caveat in mind and we're discussing the merits of releasing Luclin.

[Izmael]

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

Luclin is the first time you see loot that was fully balanced across all classes

That's also when live EQ became boring.

The imbalance, the imperfection is the essence of classic EQ and that's the reason we're here.

Otherwise we'd play other, newer, "better balanced" (but desperately boring) MMOs.

[Zuranthium]

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

That's literally the same argument against releasing the Green server. It's hilarious you think that all the pixels created during classic-velious are from a well-considered world. Dev's had no idea what they were doing with classic & kunark loot and only barely figured it out in velious. Luclin is the first time you see loot that was fully balanced across all classes without any garbage stats like int on monk gear and the like.

How are you trying to argue that someone not wanting Luclin would be the same as not wanting a Green server? What does stats on gear have to do with the actual game world? This paragraph is nonsense and you seem very confused.

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

Luclin is the culmination of the EQ dev team firing on all cylinders and you can tell by how well crafted and iconic the vast majority of the Luclin raids are, minus vex thal which is just them throwing up their hands and adding 10x hp to all the mobs to create the illusion of difficulty. Ssra Temple is easily one of the most iconic zones in the history of EQ.

Ssra isn't iconic, 99.9% of the playerbase never did it. Almost nobody had the playtime and guild to being doing the content, and PoP came along quickly with better gear for less effort, invalidating the Luclin content to a bigger degree than had been seen in any previous expansion jump (the high tier Luclin loot was actually very underwhelming when it came out and was later buffed). Tons of people were still playing Velious content during Luclin, since the Luclin shit was gatekept and too difficult for most guilds anyway. PoP content offered options right away and was the more important raiding path, so people just skipped high-end Luclin. Also, this is when many Classic-era players were starting to quit the game anyway.

You only speak of raids though. Raids are not all that EQ is, they weren't even supposed to be the most frequently played aspect of the game, at least in the form they took on. Most of Luclin does not look good (especially with trash like the mounts) and does not feel like EQ proper. You can feel the artificiality of the zones as you go through them, the boxiness and the poorly placed and designed assets, how there is little sense of it being an actual world with real inhabitants. It was not a well-conceived concept, it was just supposed to seem cool in its "departure from Norrath", to get more people to buy it. There's plenty of stuff I don't love about Velious, but it at least had a vision and cohesion with the Dragon/Giant/Dwarf angle and being an iceland, which was a terrain type that Everquest didn't have much of yet. Doing quests in Velious, you actually feel like you're participating in a story or epic thing at times, whereas with Luclin it takes on more of the bad, modern MMO feeling of things just standing around and being there in service of the superficial fetch-quest itself.

What's iconic is taking the boat to Velious for the first time and running past the massive Tower of Frozen Shadow, seeing giants roam around, as other creatures that actually make sense inhabit the shoreline. Or running down through the massive chasm towards Kael for the first time. Or wandering around the wastes, feeling the chill in your bones, and getting a sense of the cultures that authentically exist there.

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

Luclin and Pop are the pinnacle of EQ.

Planes of Power is especially garbage. Plane of Knowledge and its stupid bookstands across Norrath totally spit in the face of an actual immersive world, and the Planes are underwhelming boxes that demystify and make generic these big concepts, which are supposed to be expansive and complex and magnificent. The planes introduced in earlier eras, while definitely not full "alternate planes of existence", are at least atmospheric. Plane of Fear and Hate are truly iconic, with the way an entire raid was in jeopardy of wiping from the moment they entered, and in the very horror-esque detailing. Plane of Mischief, although seen by almost no players during the actual Classic timeline, is wonderfully zany and definitely feels exactly like an ironic Van Gogh-eqsue madhouse that spawned from this God's imagination. Plane of Growth is more generic but at least it's very big and green, giving the sense of an aspect of Tunare's realm, and while the content in Plane of Sky never quite made sense, the islands-in-the-air design (and danger of falling off!) did feel on the outset like a proper high fantasy place.

What's further underwhelming about Planes of Power is the unmemorable way in which they are entered, starting with just clicking in from some random stupid stone in a tiny zone that people of all levels are bunched up running around in. It's SO artificial and unsatisfying. That expansion being so linearly raid-focused is despicable too, it's empty spoon-fed gameplay, no real adventure, just this pre-set script sitting there for people to go through the motions, so that they can keep on the gear treadmill and feel like they are advancing. A rat race.