The Pinnacle of Everquest (In your opinion)

[mokfarg]

When do you believe Everquest reached it's pinnacle in design? When was it best? I have heard many opinions on the matter, which of course the question is opinion. I would like to see what the majorities opinion is.

[Daldaen]

PoP.

/thread

[jarshale]

velious

[sox7d]

Velious (when I hadn't played classic and kunark for 5 years straight prior)

[quido]

Bush / Towers

[Master Roshi]

Seeing LDoN as an option here makes my eyes bleed.

[jolanar]

I'm curious why anyone who voted for PoP would not vote for LoY instead? It's the exact same thing except a few neat new zones, extra bank slots, maps and armor dye no?

Maybe I am remembering wrong.

[Aviann]

I'm curious why anyone who voted for PoP would not vote for LoY instead? It's the exact same thing except a few neat new zones, extra bank slots, maps and armor dye no?

Maybe I am remembering wrong.

Armor dye was interesting, the extra bank slots were ok, and the 'few neat zones' sucked. LoY wasn't even close to PoP in terms of storyplay, raiding, or spell changes.

The only part I didn't like about PoP was how useless ports became. Kind of took from the social atmosphere a hefty amount of player to player interaction.

[Master Roshi]

I'm curious why anyone who voted for PoP would not vote for LoY instead? It's the exact same thing except a few neat new zones, extra bank slots, maps and armor dye no?

Maybe I am remembering wrong.

LoY was a mini-expansion at best, I figured we were voting on what expansion brought the best content greatest immersion for EQ, not simply, "was it better during this expansion or this one"

[jolanar]

LoY was a mini-expansion at best, I figured we were voting on what expansion brought the best content greatest immersion for EQ, not simply, "was it better during this expansion or this one"

I guess its just semantics then, but I saw the question as the former and not the latter.

Anyways I voted for classic so F you all anyways! :p

[stormlord]

This was tough. My gut reaction is to vote "Everquest" without any expansions because there was no mudflation yet. The original game feels very coherent. It continued to feel very coherent until Luclin. Of course, Kunark started the mudflation, so it progressed with every expansion.

And yet I felt the urge to vote for "Planes of Power". Why? Because of these things:
1. Easy teleportation between the noob cities and various other zones - important for grouping at all level ranges, and is a great accessibility feature for people who want it
2. You're battling the Gods; a concluding coherent end to the game
3. No instances yet; not until Lost Dungeons of Norrath
4. A wide variety of raid content; some of it mudflated, but still lots of viable raiding
5. The classic zones are still used; no Mines of Gloomingdeep or Crescent Reach yet
6. No overtuned GOD and no weird stuff like Omens of War

One of the downsides of POP is the epics were less meaningful because of mudflation. The 1.5 was introduced with OOW. And yet epics still had some meaingful uses; not a complete loss.

Now if we're talking about the modern EQ, I'd say it'd be ideal if every expansion before The Serpents Spine (introduced Crescent Reach and the Drakkin) were cut away and the rest was modified so epics and everything else could be done in the newer content. I also think creating new Epics in the spirit of the old - yet without the camping - would be bullseye. I really do not understand why they abandoned them. Epics were a integral part of progressing your class and attaining status amongst your peers. The use a bunch of excuses to explain why they stopped making them, and yet the truth is they just didn't want to invest as much in Everquest as the used to. This is just a sad truth. Much of that money went to other games and ones in development.

In my mind, these're the best sequences in Everquest's life
1. Original
2. Up until Planes of Power
3. The Serpents Spine and after (with some modifications in an ideal world)

Thankfully, I was able to play p1999 before Kunark was launched, so i got to expeirence some of that AGAIN. Yes, I experienced it in 1999. I vowed to not level past 15-24 which I faithfully adhered to. I still think that's the most coherent and least mudflated experience.

Keep in mind hte modern EQ is VERY mudflated. Everything before the current expansion is USELESS. That's not how it used to be. Older raids (from several expansions previous) were routinely played. Teh game had a lot more content back then and felt more vibrant. It mainly felt vibrant because I think they invested more resources into it and because it was still new to us.

[sox7d]

Armor dye was interesting, the extra bank slots were ok, and the 'few neat zones' sucked. LoY wasn't even close to PoP in terms of storyplay, raiding, or spell changes.

The only part I didn't like about PoP was how useless ports became. Kind of took from the social atmosphere a hefty amount of player to player interaction.

Dyes ruined armor prestige, maps ruined muh immersion, bank slots were convenient but I kind of like bullshit in my MMORPGs. But I LOVED the LoY zones. Fucking dulaks harbor was horrifying and the secret underground fishperson cult was straight out of Lovecraft's "Shadow of Innsmouth."

[Beebo11]

I believe the reason PoP is such a fond memory for most, including myself, is that the population of Everquest was booming. PoP on this server would just not work. The only place you would ever find anyone would be PoK. Not to mention Luclin would have to be a thing as well. P99 would turn to a desolate wasteland. The population is perfect for what we have.

But, staying on topic. The first 2 years of PoP were great.

[Nagash]

PoP, that's when I felt the game had the best balance (mage pets were useful, any tank could tank bosses, druids and shamans could heal, etc).

[iruinedyourday]

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.

http://i.imgur.com/FW7Qlnp.jpg

[Colgate]

kunark had the best PvP balance imo

[iruinedyourday]

kunark had the best PvP balance imo

haha I disagree, once again prekunark! Fears, charms and full DD damage was way more gnarly :P and hilarious

[Vexenu]

Voted Kunark for the combination of aesthetic, itemization, lore, scope, "feel" (subjective) and coherence/fit with the game and its previous expansions (in this case, vanilla EQ).

Aesthetic - Kunark has great art and design throughout its zones. It feels like a lost continent, different enough from the old world to feel new and exotic, but not unrecognizably Everquest.

Itemization - Items became more powerful, varied and interesting, but not to the extent that old world items became worthless (with the exception of weapons: Kunark weapons unarguably shit all over pretty much everything from the old world).

Lore - The lore behind the Iksar, Sarnaks, Venril Sathir, the dragons and Kunark in general is very cool.

Scope - Kunark has zones supporting levels 1 - 60, with a variety of terrains (i.e. swamps, mountains, snow, lakes, numerous dungeons, etc...) In this regard it resembles classic much more than subsequent expansions.

Feel - This might be too subjective to even articulate, but I like the feel of being in Kunark zones. There's a sort of frontier feel, like the land is not quite conquered. EQ's version of the Wild West, perhaps. Contrast Kunark's Cabilis (an ancient city fallen into disrepair), Outpost and Firiona Vie (both small outposts/colonies) with the well-settled permanent cities of the old world. And the adventuring zones as well feel more "wild" and unsettled.

Coherence/Fit - Kunark didn't change a ton of core mechanics with the game, and naturally and logically fit into the game from a design and lore standpoint (i.e. a lost continent makes more sense than going to the fucking moon).

I should point out that I think Kunark enjoys an unfair advantage simply by virtue of being the first expansion. All of the ideas that went into it would be the freshest and could address the most pressing flaws of the vanilla game, it had pretty much the same dev team and artists, and the feel of original Everquest could still be easily preserved.

[Larkverdin]

I know I'm not alone in having this be a close race. I voted for PoP personally, the scope of what it allowed us to do as players was amazing. For me it was the culmination of everything we had done before, every enemy we had fought. After bringing down the Gods, everything else paled in comparison, which is of course the reason I quit playing on a regular basis after PoP ended.

[Buriedpast]

The fact GoD is in the poll, but not Omens of War?

OoW was the best expansion released since velious.

It had excellent group and casual play, real accessible progression for armour and epics for casuals, and an extremely well scaling couple of dungeons and XP zones.

Raid wise OoW was a game changer from anything prior in EQ. It had the mystery of old EQ feel where you felt scared and alone, an excellently designed raid scene with properly intelligent trials etc. A tiered access system that worked wonderfully and a SHITLOAD of 6 man content to be done. Endgame raiding was sensational with a trash kill to boss dungeon (anguish), properly difficult strategic fights (not just 1 round AoW style shit) and proper risk v reward with very little patching needed or changing loots.

GoD by comparison was an absolute fuckup and should never have been released.

Omens of War, and the beginning days of velious and mid-late luclin were the three times I loved the game the most. Exploring velious zones, those crazy races through Ssra temple, and late night MPG trial runs in pugs...epic

[evilkorn]

The only reason I would vote no to just original would be because everyone would have guise and manastone. Endgame 50 would be pretty meh, but I didn't play originally when there was a cap at 50 so I'm probably not the best judge of that.

What zone turn into the best spot to AoE, because you know people will want to do that even if the level cap is 50 and without hell levels to slow the progression down like they did with the run to 60 it's pretty easy to do.

[Master Roshi]

The fact GoD is in the poll, but not Omens of War?

OoW was the best expansion released since velious.

It had excellent group and casual play, real accessible progression for armour and epics for casuals, and an extremely well scaling couple of dungeons and XP zones.

Raid wise OoW was a game changer from anything prior in EQ. It had the mystery of old EQ feel where you felt scared and alone, an excellently designed raid scene with properly intelligent trials etc. A tiered access system that worked wonderfully and a SHITLOAD of 6 man content to be done. Endgame raiding was sensational with a trash kill to boss dungeon (anguish), properly difficult strategic fights (not just 1 round AoW style shit) and proper risk v reward with very little patching needed or changing loots.

GoD by comparison was an absolute fuckup and should never have been released.

Omens of War, and the beginning days of velious and mid-late luclin were the three times I loved the game the most. Exploring velious zones, those crazy races through Ssra temple, and late night MPG trial runs in pugs...epic

+1 TRUTH

[Catashe]

PoP all the way I loved that expansion... sure I coulda done without going to the moon but the planes made up with it. The only real downside about that expansion would have been the knowledge books which made travel too easy(But that might have just been cause I was a druid lol).

There was something pretty much for everyone even raid wise, you had the elemental planes and time for the hardcore guys and you have the other planes for the not-so-serious players. Druid and Shaman got there better heals to help but in the dent of needing all clerics.

[Vexenu]

Let's cut the bullshit and make an original ONLY server. None of this -kunark- -velious- -mabye progression- distractions. There is so much to explore and take in and roleplaying to do. People who want more content aren't cut out for EQ the way it was designed imo. The people who want expansions (yes including kunark and velious) are the people who wanted a sequel to the matrix. Where do these people come from?

No one understands how everquest original hit the nail on the head so perfectly. It's simple. It was made by a team of utter genius experts. Where did they get their expertise? By decades of board and dice DnD. Why? Because that is all they had and they became masters of the mechanics without all the UI and programming languages and other aspects of making a game muddying it and taking precedence. There is just simply no one in the industry anymore with that kind of mastery of RPG mechanics.

There's a lot of truth to this. I think there's a strong argument to be made that from a game design perspective, EQ Classic stands alone. That doesn't mean it's the best from the perspective of being an MMO that people want to play for years on end (obviously the lack of content becomes an issue), but for simply the sheer joy and challenge of starting a character from level 1 and going on an online roleplaying/adventuring journey with other players, it's hard to top the charm and excellent design of Classic EQ.

I wonder how popular a P1999 pure classic server that was automatically wiped every six months (or perhaps yearly, but that might be too long) would be. It would obviously be a server that was much more about the journey and the struggle than the destination. I think that would be pretty cool, and people would approach the game much differently if they knew their pixels wouldn't last, but their memories would.

[Swish]

I'm definitely in the minority but I didn't enjoy Velious on live as much as Kunark, and I felt glad to get out of snow land and onto the moon.

PoP was the golden era however, the Europeans among us got an EQ server that was off the main US server list (Venril Sathir) and it was really great to not start a raid at 1am :p

[maestrom]

I quit after pop as well. Mostly because GoD was just a terrible expansion.

I know a lot of people hated LDoN but I thought it was kinda fun. Sure the zones were ugly and mostly boring (especially as a bard, move into room, lull everything pull a few, repeat). But it was really the first set of group content that was more active than camping. Even if "active" meant your group had to move up to the next room every couple of minutes. Some of the dungeons even had really cool special rooms! Like that one in Miragles with the room with the thing in it. You know.

Edit: LDoN Raids fucking sucked though. I really liked how you could save points and buy useful gear in LDoN though. Some of that gear was on par with SSRA raid gear, which enabled some individual effort pre-raid gearing. Could have been better, but not as bad as GoD.

[Conscript]

I really miss the planes. Those were great times.

[Bazia]

the pinnacle of everquest is zoning into PoF with 8 people and killing 40 raiders who then send you hate tells for 5 hours

so anytime after PoF release i guess

[indiscriminate_hater]

vlassic vanilla is best. when the planes were actually hard and it took a raid force to kill phinny

[Skittlez]

Tbh, Moon Cats is hardcore nostalgia for me and it was when I explored Norrath the most as a kid.

[Malik_Gynax]

Excluding Ikkinz, Gates of Discord has my favorite raids. Great encounters in that expansion at the high end.

So for me it's Gates of Discord > Velious > Planes of Power.

[Faiding]

The absolute only thing worth doing in GoD was obtaining BBoB's from Tacvi for your tanks.

It was tuned for 70+ and made irrelevant by the time people were 70 with OoW

[Bboboo]

http://www.zastavki.com/pictures/originals/2013/Animals___Cats_Drumpy_cat_and_the_moon_043845_.jpg

[webrunner5]

[QUOTE=Swish;1719394]I'm definitely in the minority but I didn't enjoy Velious on live as much as Kunark, and I felt glad to get out of snow land and onto the moon. PoP was the golden era however /QUOTE]

Here, Here. I am the same way. Velious was not a favorite of mine. But I did enjoy soloing on my Ranger in it. Eyepatch of Plunder Quest. I loved it.

Became damn good on my Cleric in Velious which really helped in PoP. That expansion was Hard Mode.

I liked, and still play a Beastlord on live. Sort of the best of two classes to me. Hard to beat a Shaman Monk combo all rolled up in one. :cool: Really one of the best combos on P1999 I think. :)

[webrunner5]

I guess its just semantics then, but I saw the question as the former and not the latter.

Anyways I voted for classic so F you all anyways! :p

Heh, well good reason to play P1999. I guess that is why most of us are here in reality. :D

[Toodles]

Whenever it was still a game and not yet a job.

[Calibretto]

I hated the introduction of armor dyes. I love being able to tell just how bad ass someone is by looking at their visables / weapons.

[myriverse]

Through Kunark was great.

Only three things I liked about Velious: Velk's, ToFS, and Ring War. I hate whiteness and snow and dragons and giants. Blech.

Unashamedly, Luclin was tops for me. Except for the unfinished stuff, which I really couldn't have cared less about, the moon was awesome. And Vah Shir are the best looking race to ever be in EQ.

PoP had absolutely nothing to interest me.

Ykesha had lots to like. Frogs-- they're delicious. It's like watching the Food Network. Thumbs up. Enhancements and dyes and stuff. Thumbs up. Map was cool. Thumbs up. Though sucks for Trolls. Thumbs down.

LDoN had nothing for me.

GoD had Berserker class, which I enjoyed, but the rest was meh.

And that's when I gave up Norrath for the City of Heroes.

[Cecily]

I loved hot pink ogres lol. I vote for Luclin, PoP, LDoN era as my favorites. LDoN was just great for finding a random party and the expansion was all dungeon roaming. I HATE camping stuff.

[mokfarg]

I am surprised so far so many have chosen PoP as the time the game as a whole it was at its best. The reason it surprises me is I guess first the purpose of this server and secondly how much of EQ at that point in time to me felt like a big hodgepodge of multiple games.

I personally felt Everquest without expansions was the pinnacle of Everquest. In my opinion the game felt cohesive and complete. Also to me it felt more about a gathering of friends, role play, and I hate this term that has recently been adopted but here I go "casual". The gear in the original was nice but didn't make you as a character.

Would be nice if there was a wealthy individual that loved Everquest and donated to the project 1999 folks to have a server for every expansion in Everquest. Instead of progression on one server after you had enough of a certain time in the game, you would be able to progress to another server with the next expansion. Certain goals in the previous server would have to be met to "unlock" the next one. Folks who loved a particular time in game, wouldn't have to go anywhere. I guess that could be done with multiple virtual servers, dockers or whatever. What a dream!

[Infectious]

Kunark. Enjoyed velious. But the pvp battles on tz during kunark era was too much fun and i still fiend daily for one more friday night of that.

[Jimjam]

I started during early Kunark. I think I would have preferred before it was released; kunark seemed to expand a lot on aspects of the game I'm not as interested in (accumulation of amazing gear; old world stuff, especially weapons, all largely sucked and I think that was for the better).

[Daldaen]

I loved hot pink ogres lol. I vote for Luclin, PoP, LDoN era as my favorites. LDoN was just great for finding a random party and the expansion was all dungeon roaming. I HATE camping stuff.

This. LDoN was great to have a good-old classic dungeon crawl where you generally don't know where you are going or the camps/named etc. Felt more explorish, until you learned each of the 5 maps per 5 areas.

I really don't get the hate on instancing, see every raid dispute and camp dispute ever. People on the internet don't play nice.

[webrunner5]

This. LDoN was great to have a good-old classic dungeon crawl where you generally don't know where you are going or the camps/named etc. Felt more explorish, until you learned each of the 5 maps per 5 areas.

Yeah was pretty neat how you got Random Events per say. Made it a lot more interesting, even though like you say, there where 5 of them, it still did mix it up where it was not as boring. :cool:

[Grizzled]

Everquest never really had good expansions. The difference between EQ and other games was the ideas they came up with, however they usually failed at implementation of such ideas.

Kunark- kind of classic with new zones not much dramatically new. Progressive quests for the iksar race was a good concept. It was used again for coldain gear in velious, and pretty much was never seen again.

Velious- The expansion was based on the faction system. Pretty much was never used again. EQ's faction system adds a level of choice and consequences. New games dont have this.

Luclin- all around bad idea. From bazaar to 1 a month spawn for end game key piece. People who play elf sims and want to be a merchant, should not have the computer do it for them. AA was the only thing good to come from this expansion.

Planes- Perfect raid expansion with its progression. The pooh-poohed when they didnt make/revamp the old planes as part of the progression. Other aspects of the expansion not so much

LDON- gear upgrading was a cool aspect. However using a special currency and specific dungeons was a downside. They had plenty of unused zones in the game they could have used for such a thing. Or god forbid make the stuff cost plat and not a special currency. This would have controlled the inflation much better.

MISC- Evolving gear was a great idea, just too late in the timeline of EQ. Gave another reason to get out and group.

[mokfarg]

I wonder if over time Project 1999's player base have changed. I imagine the demise of the MAC EQ server has had an influence since it stopped at PoP. Those folks have probably reluctantly made a home here but wish for their old server back.

I remember when this server was first released a similar poll had completely different results. I recall Velious being the leader.

[SCB]

PoP would stand on its own as one of the best multiplayer games ever made, and it's an expansion to one of the best multiplayer games ever made.

The only downside is that Luclin came out first. Had PoP's bosses and questlines been a natural extension of the EQ world, it would be universally loved and this server would count "classic" as Vanilla - PoP.

[Rararboker]

I'm just glad the devs of the project are adamant about not adding PoK books. Otherwise PoP was very interesting gameplay and lore wise. I always felt it was weird we only had access to Hate/Fear/Sky/Mischief/Growth. Why not all the other gods too?

PoP seemed to understand that confusion and fixed it. Otherwise I vote for Kunark/Velious.

[Ravager]

I like original EQ the best. Raising the level cap is just flat out stupid. Dragons should never be able to be soloed. I also don't care for an additional 30 zones per expansion. I think the expansions should have been at most 1 or 2 new zones to expand the world and the rest of the new content should have come in the form of quests and additional raid mobs that required strategy over numbers.

[stormlord]

I wonder if over time Project 1999's player base have changed. I imagine the demise of the MAC EQ server has had an influence since it stopped at PoP. Those folks have probably reluctantly made a home here but wish for their old server back.

I remember when this server was first released a similar poll had completely different results. I recall Velious being the leader.
Determining the pinnacle of Everquest is not the same thing as "Should p1999 go up to POP instead of Velious?" That's a whole different question. I much value p1999 up to Velious more than p1999 up to POP. It makes it far more .... distinctive. And yet if I have to determine the time when I think Everquest was at its peak and perhaps the most enjoyable for everybody, I'd answer POP.

A lot of people say it should include Ykesha for the map upgrade or OOW for the casual raiding or whatnot, but honeslty when I answered POP none of that was on my mind. Ykesha wasn't on my radar; map doesn't matter to me anyway. OOW and GOD are just weird to me and always felt.... the beginning of the time when everything hit like a truck. There was time early on in EQ when you didn't just get flattened like a pancake if you weren't a tank. It progressed to the point where only a few hits will kill you - like the past several years. What about LDON? I think the reason players liked it was because there wasn't as much camping in one place and also because they didn't have to compete over spawns with other players. And yet I still prefer the open world without the instances, despite the competition over spawns. I just seems more social. I understand though that there's a lot of camping in Everquest. I've never liked camping at a safe spot for hours either, but I don't think LDON is the solution I want in an open world.

I do think the first 20 or 25 levels in Everquest are a very good experience. I think it slowly deteriorates after that, as the game offers less and less and becomes more of a grind. Like one person here said, it was at its pinnacle when it wasn't a job. It was at its pinnacle for me when it was about joining pickup groups, making friends, finding new zones, delving into a dark dungeon, showing my ranger skills. It was at its worst when my mind was centered on "Ok I'm 69.2 and I want 70. My HP is X and I want Y. I need to grind X more hours in zone Z."

[Buhbuh]

PoP was by far the most immersive in raid content, strategy, etc. For PvE, it was amazing.

I'm a PvP guy, so when safe zones came in, I felt like it kind of hurt the essence of no safety. I'm of two minds though. Being able to actually afk in game was a nice thing, and the bazaar was pretty cool. It made the access to wares just way easier.

Some of the AA's made certain classes outrageous in PvP, though. Rangers with endless quiver and AM3 were gods, popped people for 900's non crit.

Ssra was an excellent zone, though.

[Itap]

PoP.

/thread

Lol, before opening this thread, I knew 2 things;

1. Daldaen would be the first to post.

2. He was going to say PoP.

[stormlord]

This. LDoN was great to have a good-old classic dungeon crawl where you generally don't know where you are going or the camps/named etc. Felt more explorish, until you learned each of the 5 maps per 5 areas.

I really don't get the hate on instancing, see every raid dispute and camp dispute ever. People on the internet don't play nice.
Well come on dudebro not everybody has to be the same. I don't like instancing, so you going to hang me? However, listen to me, I agree with you that LDONs were more explorish because they were lightly random - which also puts everyone on more equal footing. LDON's were also tailored for a single group, as opposed to the more chaotic situation where a dungeon is designed for 50+ people of varying level trying to do 6+ groups, even as some of them are soloing or doing god knows what. And of course not having to fight for spawns was popularly liked. This is why instances became so popular. They were the answer to the problems apparently plaguing the open world.

Hear me out. I can't tell you exactly why instancing turned/turns me off. I think it's because it feels so controlled. The open world is more unplanned, mostly because designers can't know for sure what other players are going to do. Players are the ultimate AI who'll use every tool available to manipulate the world and other players. Designers on their best days can only do so much to clamp down on what players do. And here is where the beauty occurs! In all this unplanned mess magic happens, and the magic happens because of the mystery of the human mind which still continues to defy complete explanation. Yes, other players can hurt us either through mechanics or words or their actions, but they can also inspire us and give us some of the most memorable moments we'll ever experience. And those moments will be completely unique to us. They were not created by designers. No money was spent. These magical moments occur on their own.

I just prefer to play in the open world. To ahve the chance to see someoen else when I'm adventuring. I want that possibility, even if I have to pay for it by experiencing some negative things. Note that as soon as a game adds instancing, more and more players will use it and the open world becomes less populated. Players get hooked on instancing because there's less adversity. Soon, the game designers will abandon the open world and spend their resources on instancing. This is why I do not trust even small amounts of instancing in an open world.

If 98 MMO's all have instancing, I want at least 2 which do not have any. I don't care if 50 of them have only a small amount of instancing. I want 1 or 2 which don't have any at all.

[Doors]

Velious was the best for me imo but PoP was easily their pinnacle.

[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.

[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.

[heartbrand]

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]

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!!! ;)

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.

[Nisei]

PoP for me

shut up about ports

[Jimjam]

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'.

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.

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.

[Toodles]

I am surprised so far so many have chosen PoP as the time the game as a whole it was at its best.

That's because the majority of them don't know much before that (with exception Luclin and the tail end of Velious).

Despite all their posturing and quick Allakhazam searches, they in fact are not classic players.

[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.

[kaev]

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.

http://i.imgur.com/FW7Qlnp.jpg

Congratulations! You've won ForumQuest! We'll just pretend that RnF never happened...

[Neno]

SoV was the beginning of the bad. Bears running around on two legs? You can tell pretty easily they just stopped giving a fuck.

[Whirled]

Imo, EQ should have been released with Kunark.

LDoN's gave casuals a way to catch up with instances, decent charm slot drops & other niceties.

[fadetree]

Beta. stupid classic ruined it!

[Jimjam]

Thinking more about how game content/level bloat makes devs have to put in measures to counteract the bloat (pok books, LDoN instance grouping for catching up on levels/gears without having to try camp group content in empty zones, etc)...

Would it have been a natural place for EQ to stop at PoP (the story of adventurers gaining power, then travelling to lost lands learning of the extinct shissar, then discovering they still existed and were in exile for making war with the gods... then finally our adventures try to accomplish what the shissar failed)?

This would leave a natural starting point for EQ2; a world where the Gods were defeated and chaos was beginning to seep into the world... Actually, I never gave EQ2 much of a go; is this what it was about? Is it set in a parallel universe and/or a different point in the time line?

[iruinedyourday]

Congratulations! You've won ForumQuest! We'll just pretend that RnF never happened...

hehe I have no life :cool:

[Sampten]

Planes of Power was the greatest expansion every made, save for the stupid portal stones as it made the world too small at that point.

PoP raiding separated the men from the boys. It was unforgiving and challenging.

Furthermore, you could raid not PoP without doing Velious/Kunark as well as some Luclin content to gear up. You didn't need to be VT geared to get to the Elemental Planes, and you could gear up with Ornate patterns.

Post PoP, Velious/Kunark and even Luclin became obsolete.

The only knock on PoP is those stupid portal stones. Had them made PoK accessible off of the Nexus only, it would have been much better.

[Bodybagger]

I'd give anything for classic UI and blindly roaming Qeynos hills or learning Everfrost in the dark as a newb barbarian warrior with my best friend also playing a barbarian warrior, with no real gear at all, or clue what we were doing, just pummeling anything that didn't con Red as we wandered through the lands.

Seriously... no one min/maxed. You played an ogre because you wanted to be a big dumb evil giant ogre. They were hated. It was impossible to do anything... you were oppressed by the game innately even if no one was roleplaying against you themselves. I quit playing my ogre at lvl 11 or so because I couldn't bear it in classic, and unlike iksar you can't just level 1-50 in zones surrounding your newb city...

Gear also meant something back then... and at the same time meant nothing. You weren't constantly inspected for approval, you were accepted for your presence. People were thankful to have an extra warm body there to take hits, even if you were wearing crafted leather armor (I made QUITE the living as a tailorer In Halas/Everfrost as a young Barbarian) and had sharpened tarnished weapons... me and my buddy ran around HAMMERING shit with rusty halberds we had wrenched form the hands of the local undead plight and I had sharpened and honed the blades by hand, to protect ourselves from the vengeful skeletal bards roaming the snowcaps. Life was epic.

[Daldaen]

Planes of Power was the greatest expansion every made, save for the stupid portal stones as it made the world too small at that point.

PoP raiding separated the men from the boys. It was unforgiving and challenging.

Furthermore, you could raid not PoP without doing Velious/Kunark as well as some Luclin content to gear up. You didn't need to be VT geared to get to the Elemental Planes, and you could gear up with Ornate patterns.

Post PoP, Velious/Kunark and even Luclin became obsolete.

The only knock on PoP is those stupid portal stones. Had them made PoK accessible off of the Nexus only, it would have been much better.

Don't think I'll ever understand this point of view. People already want a small world, evidence by the fact that most who play here will pay for a port to a place 2-3 zone lines away.

Druids/Wizards keep their utility by being able to port faster to more varied locations.

[heartbrand]

Large worlds suck because everyone is too far spread out. PoK helped eliminate that, and still does to this day in live eq. I really don't get the hate.

[heartbrand]

I think what I hate most about Classic EQ is how underutilized so much of the content is due to poor itemization and the lack of meaningful quests. I love the world of Classic EQ but not so much it's content. I would love to play a classic gameplay server that properly itemized all zones, increased difficulty of many of them such as runnyeye / befallen, added more quest lines etc. oh well

[Nirgon]

Read last 2 pages of thread

HB real mersed

[apio]

yeah there seems to be a group of people here who just like to blindly echo the PoK hate and how the bazaar and PoK destroyed the game. I think WoW and other contenders emerging and slowly siphoning off the EQ playerbase is what really killed the game.

[Velerin]

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.

http://i.imgur.com/FW7Qlnp.jpg

Yeah, this is perfect. Classic is when EQ felt more like roaming around another world and exploration rather than just trying to find the next loot dropping mob. It's the only time I would actually walk into a bar in Neriak and buy beer and see other players doing the same thing and start a conversation. Random NPCs muttering stuff and wandering around. You had no idea if it was a quest or what for. Chances are it was just some broken quest or worthless reward but you had no idea. Walk around buildings and read all the signs around, etc. That was immersion. Newer expansions had lore but not that same real world DnDesque immersion.

[webrunner5]

Yeah but you would have done the same thing as Sony did. They were trying to make money off the game, and if it got stale with nothing much else to do people would have quit. So, ergo, a new expansion every 9 months to a year. Keeps lots of people happy, money rolls in.

Nobody on live has ever said you have to buy the extensions or ever play in them. I have no clue why people piss and moan so much about Live. Just stop in Velious on live if you want, never get a Merc, and guess what, same as here almost. Jesus. :(

[Daldaen]

They ended up changing too much of the basic code even if the content stays the same.

That was a solid option on Al'Kabor. If you just wanted Velious you could never take PoK books or level past 60, and just stay in Velious. There was a guild devoted to this for several years infact. Never used any AAs or Luclin spells. Just did their thing in Velious.

They cleared half of NToV and everything else except AoW and Tunare from Velious. Was quite impressive.

[mwatt]

I voted Luclin even though I strongly disagreed with the introduction of the SciFi theme.

Why? There were some great zones and there was AA. LOL I think there was AA, if memory serves. If not, then I go with Kunark.

POP was too problematic. Books, Bazaar and locked out zones. Casuals paying for others to play was a retarded concept. THIS was the beginning of the end. The available gear diverged too much between casuals and raiders. SOE was forced to create two games within the same game. Something had to suffer for it. That turned out to be the satisfaction of the non-raider player base and also it constrained the available development time to develop content during expansions.

[fadetree]

You can't ever go back to your original feels. Those are gone. Even if you played the exact same software/hardware/server as 1999, you STILL wouldn't be young and with your best friend in a world of wonder. So forget that. Given what we're left with, I would much rather play a 'stop at pop' server than anything else.

[Origin]

PoP easily. The depth that you had by the time PoP was released was insane.

[foldupmonk]

PoP was my favorite. I would give anything if this server someday made it up to Pop*










*I play a ranger, I just want AA points.

[heartbrand]

Man I fucking hated how they bloated the world of final fantasy seven after disc one. Didn't they know how great midgar was?

[Cecily]

I woulda been happy being a terrorist in Midgar the whole game, honestly.

[Ravager]

I think what I hate most about Classic EQ is how underutilized so much of the content is due to poor itemization and the lack of meaningful quests. I love the world of Classic EQ but not so much it's content. I would love to play a classic gameplay server that properly itemized all zones, increased difficulty of many of them such as runnyeye / befallen, added more quest lines etc. oh well

This. It would take a dedicated team, but if there were an old world server with semi-dynamic content, it'd be pretty sweet. All new content in the form of quests, better implementation of tradeskills, max level 50 exp and have the option to start over at 1 with an extra starting point for the ultimate AA grind.

[Cecily]

Basically why I hate rogue epic MQs and Chardok so much. Both ruin the game.

[Grizzled]

I like the idea of rolling the levels back to 1 for some kind of a bonus. For a slow progressing server that is a darn good idea. A dedicated server for the serious grinder would be interesting. Take that, evolving gear, and remove ZEM bonuses.

[khanable]

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.

http://i.imgur.com/FW7Qlnp.jpg

http://replygif.net/i/565.gif

[fadetree]

Actually I have the same feeling now as when I first played in 99. So you are wrong. The key is play untwinked and un powerleveled.

Good for you! You sure told me what for. Get em, tiger.

[jolanar]

Good for you! You sure told me what for. Get em, tiger.

I'd say he is right.

[maahes]

Armor dye was interesting, the extra bank slots were ok, and the 'few neat zones' sucked. LoY wasn't even close to PoP in terms of storyplay, raiding, or spell changes.

The only part I didn't like about PoP was how useless ports became. Kind of took from the social atmosphere a hefty amount of player to player interaction.

I always think about an emu server tue to PoP minus books. Man o man that would be great!

[heartbrand]

I just don't get it. If you're level 60+ then what difference do the books make? It's not like you're going to be traveling to nektulos, you're going to be in PoP.

[heartbrand]

Hate to break it to you but in velious the old world will be empty also, with the exception of possibly ec.

[maahes]

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.

http://i.imgur.com/FW7Qlnp.jpg

You sure do bring a compelling arguement to the table. I still will always say PoP, but my god now I want to run around all OG EQ zones and just play!

[Stormfists]

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.

http://i.imgur.com/FW7Qlnp.jpg


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.

[Daldaen]

Would be really cool if they launched the new server with correct timeline and went on to do a Luclin/PoP server for this server.

So many $$$ for PoP.

[webrunner5]

I just don't get it. If you're level 60+ then what difference do the books make? It's not like you're going to be traveling to nektulos, you're going to be in PoP.

He has a point. :p

[Jigawatts]

PoP + PoK = No Bueno
PoP - PoK = Bueno

[heartbrand]

Did you guys play in some bizzaro Planes of Power expansion where you were strolling through Everfrost and Erudin and had your immersion suddenly ruined by the presence of PoK books while everyone else was chilling in the Planes? I remember being in the new zones, seeing tons of people in PoK and PoT, groups 24/7 to the point of there being waiting lists for most spots, a very large and active economy, etc. To be honest no one used the majority of the old world even in Luclin already, nor will they in Velious.

[myriverse]

Did you guys play in some bizzaro Planes of Power expansion where you were strolling through Everfrost and Erudin and had your immersion suddenly ruined by the presence of PoK books while everyone else was chilling in the Planes? I remember being in the new zones, seeing tons of people in PoK and PoT, groups 24/7 to the point of there being waiting lists for most spots, a very large and active economy, etc. To be honest no one used the majority of the old world even in Luclin already, nor will they in Velious.
^ Truth.

[heartbrand]

What "killed" EverQuest, at least in my opinion, wasn't PoK books or the expansion of the world [especially considering the game was at it's subscription peak during PoP], but rather an unfinished expansion in GoD that was not properly tuned to the level of the playerbase, offered almost no content for casual players to consume, had mobs that absolutely raped even elemental geared players in the first zone, an incredibly difficult locked progression that wasn't nerfed until a lot of people quit already, a weird environment that turned many people off [though I didn't mind it], suddenly nerfing raid size from 72 to 54 forcing many guilds to break up, an increased focus on instances for loot and less static mob spawns with loot that you could just "camp" which is what EQ had been based upon up to that point. On top of all of this you then had the simultaneous release of WoW which was incredibly polished.

At least that's my theory!

[heartbrand]

Having said that wall of text, I personally really enjoyed GoD. I actually liked EQ Live for the most part through Underfoot [I loved the incredible difficulty of Underfoot], HoT was where I finally burnt out.

[Daldaen]

PoP + PoK = No Bueno
PoP - PoK = Bueno

PoP + PoK = Muy Bien

But really, I Agree with heartbrand here. Don't get hate on PoK. People don't use half of the classic zones as is. No one is grouping in splitpaw or runnyeye or gorge of King Xorbb or lake Rathetear or west Karana or Blackburrow or permafrost or Kithicor or north Karana or Cazic thule or south ro or north ro or befallen or najena...

There may be a solo guy or two EXPing in those zones. Very rarely are they getting grouped in currently.

[Jigawatts]

PoP + PoK = Muy Bien

But really, I Agree with heartbrand here. Don't get hate on PoK. People don't use half of the classic zones as is. No one is grouping in splitpaw or runnyeye or gorge of King Xorbb or lake Rathetear or west Karana or Blackburrow or permafrost or Kithicor or north Karana or Cazic thule or south ro or north ro or befallen or najena...

There may be a solo guy or two EXPing in those zones. Very rarely are they getting grouped in currently.
Maybe instead of further isolating those zones they could have slightly revamped them to make them more appealing, and/or put the various planar entry points spread across these lesser used zones.

[Jimjam]

revamping zones is a dual edged sword. Some people will be happy for it to be relevant again, others will be disappointed it is no longer classic.

SoE's sloppy handed zone revamps normally ruined loads of quests too.

[heartbrand]

Maybe instead of further isolating those zones they could have slightly revamped them to make them more appealing, and/or put the various planar entry points spread across these lesser used zones.

nothing seems to help make finding people and grouping easier than spreading out all of the new leveling and farming zones across multiple continents

[Larkverdin]

Actually I have the same feeling now as when I first played in 99. So you are wrong. The key is play untwinked and un powerleveled.

Not to derail the post but I'd tend to agree here. I'm playing something race/class wise that I never even considered during Live and its pretty much all new to me so far (only 19 atm). But I agree that starting with nothing and not caring about min/maxing makes for a more enjoyable experience for me than when I did care and pushed the latest expansion/boss in other games. That's why I came to P1999.

[Jaleth]

I voted SoL. Although I didn't care for the Vashir that much. It was strictly the release of AA's. I am also of the minority who enjoy Luclin player models.

But it were the AA's that really got me excited. I liked the idea of my Paladin riding a holy steed (ie DnD) and having Slay Undead (dnd Banish the dead line). It also gave the player base something else to do (other than leveling ) even if the AA grind was obtained in older content.

[Cecily]

I am also of the minority who enjoy Luclin player models.

I'm sure the majority of Everquest players used them, because they looked better.

[RiffDaemon]

SoE's sloppy handed zone revamps normally ruined loads of quests too.

Those revamps and total graphical overhauls killed it for me. Nektulos, Lavastorm, East/West Commons getting merged into one, Oasis and the Ro deserts getting merged into one ...... Yuck.

Leave old zones alone.

[Catashe]

I'm sure the majority of Everquest players used them, because they looked better.

Honestly I didn't, well I did use the halfling, gnome, ogre, and troll luclin models(cause lets face it the old ogre and troll models are butt ugly and always seemed more wide then tall.. although I did miss the butt scratch lol) but for the rest i used the old models cause I liked them better.

[Priceline]

PoP winning ^^^ gg

Luclin models sucked, thankfully I played a bard so didn't need a horse and therefore didn't NEED to have the models on. Rolling into the ele planes with classic character models was the best.

[Shawthis]

Luclin models have creepy soulless faces and genuinely weird me out with their WWE bodies.

[apio]

its a real shame there is no PoP era server out there right now.

[apio]

oh and on luclin models: its a shame they made you switch for horse buff, if not for that I don't think those models would have ever taken off, the animations are terrible, all the races look the same, no buttscratching, no velious armor skins (Ornate armor was using Velious armor skins btw, wtf were they thinking sometimes I really wonder)

[Priceline]

wtf were they thinking sometimes I really wonder

same could be said about the entirety of EQ2

[Daldaen]

PoP winning ^^^ gg

Luclin models sucked, thankfully I played a bard so didn't need a horse and therefore didn't NEED to have the models on. Rolling into the ele planes with classic character models was the best.

This was one reason PoP era was awesome...

You could use a horse on a classic model, you got the buff (and sitting meditate) without the encumberance of the visible horse or slow moving mod. It was sweet.

[loramin]

its a real shame there is no PoP era server out there right now.

Amen. Even if there was I'd still play here a ton because the Velious era was straight magic, but it'd be nice to see the Planes again too.

[jstnhickey]

I started live right before kunark and didn't do much kunark til I soloed (druid) outside karnors. I lost interest not long after velious due to new gear making mine trash so in short I go with original.
Right now me and 2 friends who played originally are playing on red (left blue) as characters we never played are lvling without any twinking. It's great. We are gonna take our 3 man group to guk this weekend while we all have a lan party. Just like in 99 minus the towers and huge monitors.

[porigromus]

What "killed" EverQuest, at least in my opinion, wasn't PoK books or the expansion of the world [especially considering the game was at it's subscription peak during PoP], but rather an unfinished expansion in GoD that was not properly tuned to the level of the playerbase, offered almost no content for casual players to consume, had mobs that absolutely raped even elemental geared players in the first zone, an incredibly difficult locked progression that wasn't nerfed until a lot of people quit already, a weird environment that turned many people off [though I didn't mind it], suddenly nerfing raid size from 72 to 54 forcing many guilds to break up, an increased focus on instances for loot and less static mob spawns with loot that you could just "camp" which is what EQ had been based upon up to that point. On top of all of this you then had the simultaneous release of WoW which was incredibly polished.

At least that's my theory!

In my opinion it was the incohesiveness of the poor cobbled together game that was just waiting for something better to come along at that point to topple it. World of Warcraft just happened to be that game. Everquest in my opinion had sloppy expansions with ridiculous mismatched graphics, themes, pok, poor implementation of a auction system, magical teleporting books. It didn't feel like one game.

Here comes Wow that felt like a complete product, everyone jumped ship.

[porigromus]

PoP + PoK = Muy Bien

But really, I Agree with heartbrand here. Don't get hate on PoK. People don't use half of the classic zones as is. No one is grouping in splitpaw or runnyeye or gorge of King Xorbb or lake Rathetear or west Karana or Blackburrow or permafrost or Kithicor or north Karana or Cazic thule or south ro or north ro or befallen or najena...

There may be a solo guy or two EXPing in those zones. Very rarely are they getting grouped in currently.

I just realized what pok felt like. It felt like the amateur attempt at making a emulator by making a zone lined with teleporters. I always hates those attempts of making some custom game. At that point the game has been removed and replaced with some mob killing factory.

[Taminy]

PoP + PoK = Muy Bien

But really, I Agree with heartbrand here. Don't get hate on PoK. People don't use half of the classic zones as is. No one is grouping in splitpaw or runnyeye or gorge of King Xorbb or lake Rathetear or west Karana or Blackburrow or permafrost or Kithicor or north Karana or Cazic thule or south ro or north ro or befallen or najena...

There may be a solo guy or two EXPing in those zones. Very rarely are they getting grouped in currently.

Because many of those zones are shit / massive train town asking for CR. I remember I went to gorge once on live back when the game was still quite new (I don't think anyone was level 50 yet) and vowed never to go back after everyone got charmed and CR was a pain in the ass. A similar thing happened in runnyeye. IDK though, maybe it was because none of us knew the zone at all.

Also the xp bonus sucks in a lot of those zones and the server is 5 years old so there is a lot of stratification at the upper levels and a lot of the low levels running around are twinks and can solo.

A lot of the zones are not used because they are just plain... bad zones for one reason or another.

It's not even all that different with vanilla WoW, most of the low-mid level dungeons were extremely underutilized because they were a general PITA. How many people did you see in Desolace for that matter?

Anyway I don't think underutilized means we should have books to skip across continents. It just means some zones go underutilized. Big deal. You don't even have to cross most of those zones for anything. And they do give a "safety outlet" for xp if the server is particularly crowded with a certain level group because of double xp or holiday weekend or some other reason.

[Danth]

I like the original pre-expansion Everquest best. I feel that both of the early expansions were little bit worse overall (for different reasons) with the expansions from Luclin onward starting a much more rapid and--more importantly--irreversible decline. I particularly loathe Planes of Power--quite understandable since I don't enjoy raiding as a mode of gameplay.

--------------------------

How many people did you see in Desolace for that matter?

Off-topic of course: Not a disagreement, but merely a comment on this quote: That zone received considerable traffic when I played Warcraft (from launch). It had both the quest track plus a few weeks later folks going to and from Mauradon. Granted, while it was used, Desolace was disliked by most folks because it was ugly and boring. As soon as Blizzard increased the leveling rate that zone fell largely out of use.

Danth

[Taminy]

Off-topic of course: Not a disagreement, but merely a comment on this quote: That zone received considerable traffic when I played Warcraft (from launch). It had both the quest track plus a few weeks later folks going to and from Mauradon. Granted, while it was used, Desolace was disliked by most folks because it was ugly and boring. As soon as Blizzard increased the leveling rate that zone fell largely out of use.

Danth

Interesting. On my sever even early on no one used it - though I did play alliance so I'm not sure if it was more popular with horde? It was also a pvp server so I think had a bit lower pop than pve servers.

[Stonecrush]

I feel like PoP was an interesting expansion but Gates of Discord gave more guilds a lot more raid targets, when they wanted them. Effectively ending the race towards targets. Instanced Raiding was nice for people that didn't want to deal with contested mobs.

I chose Luclin not for BSTs, Space Kittens, or the AA's.
I chose Luclin for the raid content. That was a real raiding expansion with the loot saturation off the charts, it made Velious look like a kids sand box.

I really enjoyed SSRA and Vex Thal.

[Velerin]

Classic EQ was so unforgiving and not conducive to easy grinding. What game now puts wandering high level npcs in newbie zones? Classic EQ had:
Griffins roaming around EC
High level evil eyes roaming around low level goblin areas In Runnyeye
Level 8-10 orc camps where a lvl 20 named can spawn that any exp group couldn't even kill
etc. etc.

Problem is people learned those inefficient areas rather quickly and rather than deal with those challenges those areas go unused and people go elsewhere. EC a little different since high levels are there to assist.

[wwoneo]

I had to choose Kunark as the best expansion. I agree that PoP was amazing and would have been the best, but Luclin was SO terrible that it negates the greatness of PoP.

I would choose PoP, if you could have PoP without Luclin.

I wouldn't vote for Velious because I don't like that gear is so absurdly good in the expansion that it makes everything else a lot less difficult. Also, I feel Velious makes raiding less of an option and more of a mandatory event.

Classic would be my second choice, but only because there wasn't enough to do in Classic by itself.

[Zuranthium]

Classic was the best, because people actually played it as a roleplaying game and hadn't broken things down into a technicality. It was about living the moment, adventuring, trying new things, and facing new obstacles because of the excitement of it all. The game at that point was set up so well for the community to interact, with such a strong vision in the design. If you didn't play the game in 1999 then you sadly missed something unique and special.

Kunark was great for the look/feel of the zones themselves but the new levels and items were poorly conceived and it hurt the game.

Velious had a few good ideas but it mostly just hurt the game. Ridiculous amount of HP + Resists on the monsters = extremely long and boring fights (and Clerics more of a necessity than ever). Huge powercreep on equipment, particularly melee = way too much mudflation and melee classes made damage casters look like a joke. This era was when Everquest really started to stop feeling like a roleplaying game and instead more of a grind and a checklist. It already was heading in that direction with Kunark era, but the game world became too fractured in Velious, with the old world zones in particular becoming too sparsely populated.

PoP raiding separated the men from the boys. It was unforgiving and challenging.

Raiding was more challenging in classic and FAR more unforgiving. Some people couldn't even get their corpses back at all back then.

I'm surprised so many people have voted PoP. I imagine the demise of the MAC EQ server has had an influence since it stopped at PoP. Those folks have probably reluctantly made a home here but wish for their old server back.

No doubt!

[Pookieson]

This is a tough question, too many facets. I think PoP ruined a lot with the pok book system, but it brought epic raid and group conent in the planes and an awesome hub zone. The books fucked up a lot of player interaction.

As far as my favorite times playing EQ, i loved OOW. Wall of Slaughter, MPG, RS, Anguish raiding. Lots of good times had in OOW.

PoK books ruined so much though, imo.

[Spriggen]

I voted POP just because I believe it was harder. Needing keys to get into certain zones was awesome, and weeded out those that couldn't cut it.

[webrunner5]

You do realize that is like, I bet, well over 300 zones on live now. If they did not have the pok books it would take you 5 hours to run to some. So they are there for a reason like it or not. :p

[Pookieson]

Thats why druids and wizards exist! I think the timed spires in nexus were a good move, though. Sparse auto-teleporting, and not to necessarily central areas. A PoK book was just too convenient. Killed the adventure aspect i think. Its not always just about the destination, its about the journey, and in the case of EverQuest, how long and/or treacherous it can be. Look at poor iksars. Getting out of Cabilis is a fucking mission if you want to do it at low level. Not with a pok book though :(

[heartbrand]

Did you guys all start playing EQ in 2001 that the PoK books traumatized you so much? I spent the vast majority of my time in Plane of Tranquility and the PoP zones. I don't think I went to somewhere like Cabilis even once. They put the books in because no one was using the three year old content and it was a hinderence to game play. Obviously had the books been in the game in 1999 it would've been a different story.

[Pookieson]

i mean, i agree that PoT and PoK were awesome hub zones, and that the planes probably brought more good than bad. i spent hours in PoJ, PoI, and grinding in Fire(still one of my favorite zones). i just didnt like the simplification of travel to such an extreme. maybe less books would have been better.

[webrunner5]

i mean, i agree that PoT and PoK were awesome hub zones, and that the planes probably brought more good than bad. i spent hours in PoJ, PoI, and grinding in Fire(still one of my favorite zones). i just didnt like the simplification of travel to such an extreme. maybe less books would have been better.

I would agree with you about less books. PoT was really too easy to get to other planes.

[Daldaen]

PoT was fantastic because it allowed a hub for all group-making and raid-prep.

I really hate group-making in this era of the game. You can /ooc LFG in KC or Seb... or you can put up LFG. But getting a tell for a Seb group when youre in KC and aren't a porter, is lame. Sure... I would love a Sebilis group, but that actually means I have to spend like 30 minutes running from KC -> DL -> FV -> SoNH -> FoB -> EJ -> TT -> Seb. By the time I'm arrived maybe the group has broken up or lost a crucial member, or wiped. Then I am stuck in Seb for awhile.

Whereas during PoP, I would say LFG in PoTranq if nothing, would check the zones applicable to my level. At 50ish, I'd check PoJ, PoN, PoI, and PoD. Each zone contained atleast a group. At high 50-low 60s PoV had a few groups and PoS usually had a group doing giants or frogs.

I can't say enough good stuff about PoP. I really can't think about any of its failures other than the alpha-flagging system without the level-barrier of entry for higher planes. Once they added that, it was damn near perfect. Raiding, Grouping, Soloing... the spell system, the AAs added, the tradeskills, the quests added in PoK and PoT.

The central hub of PoK and PoT really increased player interaction rather than decreased it. You were all pushed together into those zones depending on level, and would interact and group far more with randoms.

[Jimjam]

If people weren't so keen on /anon and /role while Xping it would be easier to /who all (my level range) and see people who are potentially in a group I could join (or might be willing to join a forming/existing group).

[Zuranthium]

The central hub of PoK and PoT really increased player interaction rather than decreased it.

Increased as compared to the shit state the game was in during Luclin, maybe. You might as well be playing Starcraft, sitting in the virtual chat lounge before entering a match. There's no more true fantasy immersion or adventure game left at that point; everyone in the world beaming up to some "plane" that feels like you're all floating around in a weird box up in the sky where a bunch of random vendors have taken up residence and everyone can just beam down almost anywhere at will.

I really hate group-making in this era of the game. You can /ooc LFG in KC or Seb... or you can put up LFG. But getting a tell for a Seb group when youre in KC and aren't a porter, is lame.

There's other places to go. City of Mist. Burning Woods. Chardok. Skyfire. Howling Stones. Do a /who all, ask people in the zones, and/or put your own group together. Granted that's less options for the Seb area but plenty for the other side.

PoT was fantastic because it allowed a hub for all group-making and raid-prep.

That's not how raids are supposed to operate, though. They should be epic, not something routine.

[Danth]

I prefer the pre-expansion game most, and the classic era in general, but I agree with Daldaen when it comes to building groups: Putting together groups was far more annoying than it ought to have been. It was tolerable only because most game servers were overcrowded, hence zones usually had sufficient people to build groups. P1999, with its lower 1-50 population, suffers much more. There's nothing wrong with liking something in general whilst accepting its faults, and even at its best I've never thought of Everquest as remotely near perfect. Rather, to me it's always been a case of taking the bad with the good.

I consider some other faults of the early game, in no particular order: Lousy class balancing (never really fixed), terrible user interface (eventually fixed), Lopsided risk vs reward (never fixed), horrible new player game experience (half-hearted improvements came too late).

Note that I permanently quit EQ-Live in spring 2004 so I have zero knowledge of the game past that era. I know some folks on this board stuck around far longer.

Danth

[douglas1999]

that actually means I have to spend like 30 minutes running from KC -> DL -> FV -> SoNH -> FoB -> EJ -> TT -> Seb.

No need to hit FoB or EJ just run through the river tunnel in SoNH that leads to TT.

[webrunner5]

Increased as compared to the shit state the game was in during Luclin, maybe. You might as well be playing Starcraft, sitting in the virtual chat lounge before entering a match. There's no more true fantasy immersion or adventure game left at that point; everyone in the world beaming up to some "plane" that feels like you're all floating around in a weird box up in the sky where a bunch of random vendors have taken up residence and everyone can just beam down almost anywhere at will.



There's other places to go. City of Mist. Burning Woods. Chardok. Skyfire. Howling Stones. Do a /who all, ask people in the zones, and/or put your own group together. Granted that's less options for the Seb area but plenty for the other side.



That's not how raids are supposed to operate, though. They should be epic, not something routine.

Oh come on. The average person did not want to be stuck in KC, Seb then, no more than they want to now. That was the reason for all the expansions, Boredom. I liked Luclin, and PoP, and a hell of a lot of others did also. So I am not knocking it if you like playing in CoM for 2 years, but don't knock people that want more new content. :)

[eqravenprince]

Pre expansions was when EQ was the best for me. Take away most of the raid content except for a 2-3 raid bosses for Kunark and Velious, then they would also be just as good as the original game.

[SCB]

That's not how raids are supposed to operate, though. They should be epic, not something routine.

In what way is meeting in one place in PoK to go raid the homes of the gods less epic than meeting in one place in WC to go raid the homes of the gods.

I just don't follow.

[solias]

IMO it was Kunark - Velious and PoP added cool stuff for sure, but for me Everquest was all about the dungeons and small group stuff - raiding was sorta fun in it's own way but also a huge mess in many many ways. The best part of Everquest was going to a dungeon with some buddies and just crawling through trashing the place, pulling several rooms at once just for the extra challenge, maybe getting some loot maybe not but just having fun playing the game. You didn't need to farm a ton of sweet gear to do anything, gear definitely made stuff easier and made you feel good, but in that time I never felt like I NEEDED to get a piece of gear just to do things. With Velious and beyond it was so much more raid oriented, sure there was some dungeons and group stuff but it seemed so much more raid-focused, then of course Planes of Power was almost all raid stuff and even the stuff that was group oriented was just not fun at all... Luclin was somewhere in there and it was alright, but I didn't like the new models at ALL or the new graphical style they were going for, which was a big factor pushing me towards WoW instead of EQ2 or Vanguard (ignoring any other discussion on the merits of those games).

ANYWAY. That's a lot of words to say I really liked the Kunark zones the best, even as a Erudite Enchanter I bone chipped my faction in Cabalis up to be friendly to everything, even the necro guild which took a lot of extra time because I spent so much time there. And frankly, everybody knows the froglok dungeons are the best, guk + sebilis for life. I certainly had fun in Velious and Luclin also, just not as much as with Kunark. Then PoP sucked the last enjoyment out and EQ lost it's magic for me.

[Danth]

Here's a chart which approximates how I feel. I feel the game peaked in early 2000, in the period around Kunark launch, and remained pretty good through until Luclin launched.

[Slathar]

i woke up on the floor in a pile of shit feces and throw up and carried my bloated sausage body to the computer to play 19 hours for another day. i have a nice gamer film developing on myself.







NEXT

[Whisky]

Didn't care for anything after LDON so it's what I chose. It was fun having lower level mission grinding groups.

[Alanus]

I am in the minority, but I think PoP ruined the game with three things:

- Highly-inflated stat items
- Easy to get AA
- Tuning content to fit AA instead of the other way around
- In raising the cap to 65, you had to exp in PoP from 61-65 (this didn't ruin the game, but I didn't like it)

Because of PoP, we got items that increased ridiculously each expansion and we had to grind out more AA. That is what killed the game for me. You miss one expansion and you are screwed. You don't grind tons of AA and you are screwed.

I did like the content itself, though. Excellent zones, easy to get groups, etc...

I also think Luclin was underrated -- again, excellent zones, easy to get groups. The downside is the time sinks and Vex Thal being broken.

Velious had time sinks, too (see: faction) but it didn't seem as bad since you could kill SoRZ to get real quick claws faction or WW dragons for giant faction.

The epitome of Everquest to me was classic, but I voted Velious since that was the most fun for me.

[Breeziyo]

i miss my scaled wolf warder :\

[Zuranthium]

No need to hit FoB or EJ just run through the river tunnel in SoNH that leads to TT.

Yeah, it's approx 22 minutes to get from KC to Seb, without SoW or Jboots. With SoW (which was nearly always available from a group in KC or DL), it becomes 14 minutes. There are frequently ports available to cut that time down as well.

Oh come on. The average person did not want to be stuck in KC, Seb then, no more than they want to now. That was the reason for all the expansions, Boredom.

Child, no. You were never "stuck" in KC. Yes, going to Seb and not finding a group does make you a lot more isolated (still not "stuck"), but that's the entire point of a dungeon like this. It's high investment, high risk, high reward. Adding Velious doesn't do anything at all to help, it just makes it far worse. That era is when the community gets fractured too much and travel does become a big issue, because there are less people in Kunark and it takes forever to get to Velious zones from there without a port.

The "reason" for the expansions was to make money. During Kunark era it wasn't even an issue of people needing more content to progress through. No guild had many people (or anyone at all?) with full Veeshan's Peak gear before Velious came out and it was often only 1 guild per server even going there. Only a very small amount of people had epics and for some classes (Mages!) it was one person per server and I recall that some servers still hadn't even gotten it yet before Velious came out.

There's much that can be said about this but taking travel out of the game is not the answer. In a more properly developed Everquest, I would have a better boat system that would make the continents much more interconnected (including things such as the Steamfont area being a hub that would connect to all of Erudin, the west side of Velious, and the NE corner of Kunark).

[Jimjam]

Zuranthium, if you look at the signs at the docks in game you can see the plans for the expansions boats were different to where the kunark boats ended up travelling from.

[apio]

I think being ''forced'' to level in Kunark 50 to 60 is way worse than being forced to do 60 to 65 and AAs in PoP, personally

[miso1337]

Velious.

As soon as travel became trivial in PoP, the game lost its sense of adventure and interdependence.

[Fregar]

I think kunark was the pinnacle when speaking about content.
I like exploring interesting zones, and kunark is full of that. Places like LOIO, Seb, Kurn, CoM, Dalnir and many other ones.
On the other side of the coin, grind from 55 to 60 is awfull and I don't like beeing forced to group.
Also there's pretty much nothing to do after hitting 60.

Velious also has interesting content but in lower supply than kunark imo.
Quality raids is the interesting side of this expansion.

I liked AA very much with SoL, and thats why I think SoL is still damn near the pinnacle.
Sure it also added some not-to-good stuff, but it was mostly content-design related and since the level cap was not raised, you could still play in kunark/velious while getting the benefits from AAs.

PoP destroyed the game for me, and it's when I moved on to another MMO.
The game started to be almost 100% raid focused.
I slowly started to hate having no choice about what to do when logging on my character and the constant fighting with other guilds.
Game was not fun anymore: it was a second job after a day of work :0
Sure PoP did not start this trend, but it was more of the same shit with nothing else added to the mix.
Nothing to explore, trash mob hitting for 400ish, WTF?!
I liked it when they eventually added veksar, but it was too late.
I'd love seeing this zone on p99, even if the dev would have to change some things to keep the game classic-like.

So I'd say the pinnacle was around kunark, but the game remained good untill PoP and then collapsed.


From what I read some later expansions were not too bad? (the serpent thing?)
I may want to try exploring live some day, since its now free to play, but don't really know where to start from o.0

[Messianic]

I know this is probably Anathema on this board, but at the time Luclin was a phenomenal expansion. Believe it or not, most people really liked the Nexus/Bazaar as a pretty darn innovative way to remove a couple timesinks from the game.

We look back at those as affecting the social fabric in a negative way, but i'll create my own social atmosphere and save the timesink any day.

[Danth]

I appreciate automatic trading; granted EQ's system was clunky and inefficient compared to the auction house systems used by most other games. I hate manual selling/buying and the massive nuisance associated with doing so. It's a necessary evil I tolerate in order to use P1999 but I'll never enjoy it. I disliked the Luclin expansion for other reasons including hideous art, massive levels of technical problems, stupid setting, and so forth. I don't think Luclin was conceptually flawed so much as badly built. I don't see much about it that couldn't have been acceptable with some additional work or different styling.

Danth

[Messianic]

Eh. You only make money if your goal is to create an experience people want. So they were trying to create the experience people wanted, and in doing so, have a business that is successful (defined as making more money than it costs to run).

So duh. Part of everything is "surviving and prospering" which in modern, sophisticated economic terms is "making money". But it's such a poor explanation for discussions to which you're not privy.


Lots of EQ fanboys should face facts - The bazaar, the Nexus, PoK books, the other massive changes to the game through PoP and beyond - these weren't bad decisions motivated by some scrooge bathing in his gold coins. What makes you money is what keeps subs going and new game purchases flowing. That requires content people *want* to play. So, to "make money", they had to focus intensely on what people want to play. So don't do the trite "they only want to make money omgs everything after velious sux cuz sony".

WoW actually made far more money than EQ ever made doubling down on the easymode MMO principle and did many of the things EQ did in releasing the expansions it did up to PoP. So it's really, really easy to argue that EQ didn't go in that direction far enough to prosper, not that "a bunch of greedy executives only wanted money so they made more expansions that would ultimately fail and not earn them money".

So it's really amusing to watch players - however knowledgable about the game, and however hardcore - judging business decisions as if "gosh if only they had listened to me and other hardcore players of their now niche game 14 years later they would have succeeded".

[Zuranthium]

Lots of EQ fanboys should face facts - The bazaar, the Nexus, PoK books, the other massive changes to the game through PoP and beyond - these weren't bad decisions motivated by some scrooge bathing in his gold coins.

Yes they were, for the most part. That's exactly what they were. The devs implemented lazy "fixes" in order to satiate the masses and make quick money, instead of understanding what made Everquest special in the first place and working to continually make it a more enriching game.

WoW actually made far more money than EQ ever made doubling down on the easymode

That's because there's been no better option. EQ failed itself. It was "Jurassic Park" and continually kept coming up with worse versions of itself, in order to chase more $$. Eventually people stop buying from your product line and move onto any better option.

I think being ''forced'' to level in Kunark 50 to 60 is way worse than being forced to do 60 to 65 and AAs in PoP, personally

You can get to level 60 without going to Kunark. The Hole, Permafrost, Sol B, Kedge Keep, and City Guards/NPCs.

[Rheon]

Planes of Power for me, only thing i disliked entirely was the introduction of the new character models..they were terrible! the armor textures were ugly and the char models didn't move or swing weapons correctly.

[Messianic]

Yes they were, for the most part. That's exactly what they were. The devs implemented lazy "fixes" in order to satiate the masses and make quick money, instead of understanding what made Everquest special in the first place and working to continually make it a more enriching game.

That's because there's been no better option. EQ failed itself. It was "Jurassic Park" and continually kept coming up with worse versions of itself, in order to chase more $$. Eventually people stop buying from your product line and move onto any better option.


So these folks were so greedy they were unwilling to take the route that (you think) would make them more money?

K.

[Zuranthium]

Not sure what kind of unintelligible argument you're trying to make.

They thought short-term, not long-term, and they didn't think enough about quality of product. Yes, it's being greedy.