Expansions or Reboot?

[Byokii]

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

What about Luclin 'killed' EQ for you? I'm just curious...

I am curious about this also. People seem to say that Luclin killed the game. I do not understand. To me Omens of war killed the game. It was a really bad raid progression expansion, the group content blew. We were farming RSS with in weeks of launch.

IMO if this server was to progress past Velious it would need to be strategic and different than live. There is no need to increase the level caps. Just add the content and tune it accordingly.

It baffles me that everyone says "Luclin ruined the game" but they can not state what about Luclin ruined it. Was it the bazaar/nexus. Was it the poor management of the game as a whole... server crashes, bugs, etc?

[Landis]

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

It baffles me that everyone says "Luclin ruined the game" but they can not state what about Luclin ruined it.

- new graphics were terrible
- the moon (seriously, killed a lot of lore)
- bazaar
- instant traveling
- lolcats as a playable race

[Kerrik]

I'm one of the apparent minority that liked something about pretty much all of the expansions (Legacy of Ykesha is the one I had the least use for). What finally drove me to quit EQ after 9 years was first the fact that so many of my friends had left that it was getting hard to regularly find people to group with (far too many people were boxing/running mercs and weren't looking to group much) and second the fact that Sony was introducing a micropayment system where you could buy items/advantages in-game with real world money. Yeah, the store had crappy items initially, but I strongly believe that no one should ever gain any advantage or bonus (be it better gear or extra experience, etc.) simply because they opened their wallet more than the next player.

If the consensus once Velious is open is to stop, that's fine. If the P99 admins and community decides to continue after Velious (either following the original Luclin+ progression or modifying it to remove the parts that many people dislike, like easy travel through PoK) I'd be fine with that as well. But that's really an issue for down the road, after Velious is out for a while and people had had the chance to explore the zones, do the quests, etc.

[Bumamgar]

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

- new graphics were terrible
- the moon (seriously, killed a lot of lore)
- bazaar
- instant traveling
- lolcats as a playable race

You mean new player models I assume, when you say new graphics? Those were optional, so to each their own eh? I personally liked some of them and disliked others. (New ogre is definitely an improvement, imho).

I agree with you regarding the bazaar and instant travel. Although the Nexus based travel isn't anywhere near as bad as PoK. At least with the nexus you often had to wait 10 minutes for the port up to the nexus, and then wait another 10 minutes for the port back down, and it was only between four main locations so there was still a lot of travel required after using the nexus. Basically it was a way to avoid boats.

As for the lore, I never really paid attention to that. To me it was no different than Kunark or Velious (new continents with strange creatures on them). As far as I am concerned, it might as well have been just another continent.

I fail to see how Vah Shir are any worse than Iksar? I mean really, catlike humanoids or lizardlike humanoids.. both are fairly lame conceptually.

What I don't see are any complaints about the CONTENT of the expansion, or AAs, or horses. I know I personally thought AAs added a lot to the game, and I definitely enjoyed the various zones and raid content that were part of Luclin. Ssra temple was a very well-designed zone, and although Vex Thal was a bit of a grind-fest, it was (once fixed) still a great raid zone.

Personally I'm not that big a fan of mounts, but I know a lot of people liked them.

[Byokii]

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

- new graphics were terrible
- the moon (seriously, killed a lot of lore)
- bazaar
- instant traveling
- lolcats as a playable race

graphics is kind of a personal preference thing.
The cats are dumb. They aren't present anywhere else prior to luclin, and their animations were annoying as hell.
The bazaar and instant traveling can be scrapped.

Would most people be more comfortable omitting Luclin and just stepping onwards to PoP....

With my prefered play style I only play one character, and I like to experience the final boss fights... I know I would get bored if Velious was the end all... People would quit after a few years if Velious was all there was.

It just seems that the community is smart enough to talk out what ruined EQ Live, and correct those issues. Velious may be years away on this server, and may be in for years after that. That gives us, as a community, time to talk over how to proceed. If properly planned, scoped, and designed to acceptable standards of the majority of the community it will be a success. If it is released as SOE released these bad expansions... it would be a flop.

I work as a Software Quality Assurance Engineer. When my company has to produce something for a client with little planning time and development time it is always a rough testing and release cycle, and then after that there are many change requests. When we have the foresight and time to plan projects 8mos prior to release the releases go a lot smoother. This is mainly due to planning, if the project is talked about and designed before development happens then the developer can produce the expected product.

TL;DR:
Basically, we know what we don't like about Luclin+, but what do we actually like? What stories, content, game mechanics fit in the design and feel of EQ-Classic.

[Mordachai]

As a ranger main, I can easily say that AA's were my favorite part of Luclin, but I really enjoyed the majority of the expansion. Nexus ports really are not much different than the translocators we have now, but I would really be ok with the nexus spires not working, and leaving it to wizards (and druids if decided..) I don't see a need for the bazaar though.

I liked going in sanctus seru and trying to sabotage them for the katta folks, I really enjoyed the tradeskill recipes and the further expansion of tradeskill-related quests.

Same thing with PoP, I really enjoyed the raid content that was introduced. The odds of me ever being able to reach it in P99 are slim to none, but it was still very well done. The only thing in my opinion that hurt the community with PoP was PoK travel, I would be strongly against that, the planes should be hard to get to, just like Hate and Sky.

[Kerrik]

re: PoK travel. As I mentioned to Bum last night, I thought it might be interesting for an emu to try a modified version of PoP where you can use the books to travel from locations around Norrath to PoK (and from there to the other PoP planes) but when you left PoK to return to Norrath you were always returned to the same location that you left. If you leave Qeynos to travel to the planes, you return to Qeynos when you leave the planes. If you want to go to Velious, you would have to travel across the world or pay a Druid/Wizard to transport you. From Velious you might travel to PoK from the Great Divide to join your guild or friends in the Planes, but this time when you returned you'd go back to the Great Divide, not Qeynos. Thus PoK isn't a subway for all of Norrath, but it can still be a meeting place and a jumping off point for just the PoP expansion.

With the large group of dedicated fans of EQ on this server, I'm sure we can come up with solutions to most of the things that annoyed us about how Sony advanced EQ, while retaining the things we agree worked. That said, it would not be "classic", and I can respect the fact that there are going to be people that won't agree with even those solutions. Ultimately Rogean, Nilbog and the other developers will have to decide what to do when the time comes. I will support whatever their decision is at that time.

[BlackBellamy]

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

What about Luclin 'killed' EQ for you? I'm just curious...

Hated even the idea of playing on a moon. Like what, we ran out of room on the planet itself?

New race was awful. Meow meow meow.

Beastlord class added nothing to the game. Didn't think we need another hybrid or a pet class.

Bazaar inflated prices.

Nexus was the beginning of the end for non-trivial travel.

New graphics made me physically sick.

Time sinks. Time sinks. Time sinks.



Now a lot of these are purely personal preferences and everyone can argue back and forth. But these are what did it for me. It was the beginning of the end. The first major dumbing-down of the system I enjoyed. Maybe dumbing-down is not the correct phrase, I don't know, some things certainly got more complex, but in the end Luclin felt like a slap in the face.

Luclin made it very very easy for me to get into Dark Age of Camelot.

[Zithax]

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

Personally, I'd like to see new content after Velious is done ala SoD, only more in line with how original progression could have been had the powers that be not sold their soul to the devil.

this

[lumin]

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

re: PoK travel. As I mentioned to Bum last night, I thought it might be interesting for an emu to try a modified version of PoP where you can use the books to travel from locations around Norrath to PoK (and from there to the other PoP planes) but when you left PoK to return to Norrath you were always returned to the same location that you left. If you leave Qeynos to travel to the planes, you return to Qeynos when you leave the planes. If you want to go to Velious, you would have to travel across the world or pay a Druid/Wizard to transport you. From Velious you might travel to PoK from the Great Divide to join your guild or friends in the Planes, but this time when you returned you'd go back to the Great Divide, not Qeynos. Thus PoK isn't a subway for all of Norrath, but it can still be a meeting place and a jumping off point for just the PoP expansion.

Good idea, but I don't know if I totally agree with it. What will happen is that new level 1 players will start the game, port to PoK, and then have their high level friend port them to wherever they like. In fact, I could see Druids and Wizards becoming powerfully unbalanced just by hanging around PoK getting paid for porting players around the world.

I think PoK should have no port stones, books at all and magic porting spells should be disabled here. But there should be an easy way from each starting city to get there to chit chat with other players and learn stuff, but not be able to zone out to other locations. The Plane of Knowledge should be just that: a place to learn things about the game from NPCs and experienced players. Players should only be able to port to each individual plane via spell,stone, or book and disable zoning completely from PoK.

If you give the players a meet-up "zone-able hub" of any kind you seriously damage the idea of having to travel great, epic, distances to meet up with one another.