PoP without Luclin?

[thufir]

For starters: yes, I know the devs' repeated insistence that p99 is not moving past Velious, and that's fine with me, I loved this era of the game.

But a lot of people seemed to like PoP. And in a similar contrasting vein, Luclin seems to be near-universally despised.

Could you even do PoP without Luclin? Is that possible? I'm not talking from an equipment perspective; the easy downing of 90%+ of Velious raid targets by people in full Kunark gear seems to imply that boss-killing equipment won't be an (enormous) issue if you could skip Luclin. I mean from a technical perspective, is it even possible to skip an expansion? I don't have any ideas of the mechanics of it and I'm curious.

[Swish]

I like these suggestion threads, and if it were up to me I'd do something along these lines... but it's not up to me :p

[rollin5k]

Wow this is a great idea for people who don't like classic EverQuest

[Maner]

The items from Luclin raiding compared to velious raiding would show that the Luclin items were far above velious loot. You would need those drops to be able to effectively move into POP. Only reason velious stuff dies so fast is 5 years of Mubarak to gear out in.

[wormed]

Wow this is a great idea for people who don't like classic EverQuest

Color me strange but I don't think anyone would've liked playing classic Everquest for 10 years either.

[thufir]

The items from Luclin raiding compared to velious raiding would show that the Luclin items were far above velious loot. You would need those drops to be able to effectively move into POP. Only reason velious stuff dies so fast is 5 years of Mubarak to gear out in.

Let's face it, even if the devs got a wild hair up their butts right now about including some fantastical idea like this one, we are in for at least as much Velious time as we had Kunark time. Presuming the majority of the raiding guilds are in full NToV/ST drops by then, I imagine that people could at least beat out enough of PoP in the early stages to get it rolling.

That having been said, my question was more about the mechanics of skipping an expansion and how possible that would be, like is there code from Luclin that would screw up PoP if it wasn't included, how difficult it would be to find it and repair it if there was such a thing, that sort of deal. I really have no idea as I have no skill in this whatsoever. Maybe this wasn't the right place to ask this question?

[Buellen]

a lot of this idea was discussed in a very long thread about year ago.


I believe (could be wrong) dev can link to pop zones in whatever way they want, it seemed that it would not be difficult to set up.

Lot of suggestion where about having to port to various planes from certain home cities through local church/temple/ fire pit etc .

[Tahlvin]

Maybe it could fall into the "custom content" realm with the PoP zones being used.

[Celatus]

Luclin was not a bad expac. Its not my fav but it was not bad. It had a lot of good content. Most expacs had both good and bad in them including kunark and velious. I would love to see them do luclin and pop though but its just not going to happen.

[Itap]

Yes yes yes. I'll let Dald come in here and elaborate for me

[Neno]

The items from Luclin raiding compared to velious raiding would show that the Luclin items were far above velious loot. You would need those drops to be able to effectively move into POP. Only reason velious stuff dies so fast is 5 years of Mubarak to gear out in.

Did a quick google search and found this thread on the EQ clerics forum..

http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18488

We formed less than a year ago and did not farm VT. We did NToV a little bit but not really what you could call farming it. Took us a bit to get past RZtW. But since beating him we have been farming the heck out of EP mobs. We now have about 90% of the guild PoEB keyed and will begin doing EP gods soon.

Most people still have several slots with crappy gear. And surprisingly we've done better all around than other guilds who did farm VT (gotten more EP drops, faster).

Same experience as some other people have posted. My guild, too, has skipped Ssra and VT and instead geared up in PoP on our way to the Elementals. Took us about half to threequarters of a year with only raids on saturdays (sometimes sundays) to get 150+ people between my guild and an ally guild, flagged for the EPs

We formed about a year ago with basically Bazaar gear, very nearly completely skipped NToV and Luclin and are currently 7% of Vallon Zek's health away from Phase 5 of Time.

Brell has a Time enabled guild that skipped Luclin.

The thread is from 2004 though so there might be more contributing factors to these guilds successes.

[Daldaen]

Luclin confirmed 2nd best
Pop confirmed best

People vastly over-estimate the travel component of Luclin. Every 15minutes you can port from 4 locations to 1 central location... ooooo. Most players on this server don't have that kind of patience and would pay for a port.

Luclin's AAs and Spells made Druids, Rangers, Wizards all become more balanced on raids and group situations.

Tradeskills became relevant in Luclin. All 7 brought useful items/food/gear/clickies to groupers and raiders alike.

Epic quests - Sigil Earring, Loyalist Shield, Earring of Solstice, Hollowshade War, VT Key - People decry the VT key cause it was a long quest, it was actually a neat one to do for a group of players, you got to experience 10 different camps across the zones, forcing you into various zones you wouldn't have otherwise played around in. Some... like the Deep happened to be really fun.

Adding onto this, people focus way too much on VT fights, which I grant you are boring (though learning to CotH around and split pull the named was fun). However VT was one zone of many, and there were a lot of cool raid targets people forget. Ssra had 3-4 fantastic fights (emperor was a great strategy one, Cursed cycle was nice cause each one threw something different at you, XTC posed a double tank scenario with chain ramps, AL tested your CC skills to the max, Rhag cycle was sort of boring), then there were zones like AR with fights like Shei - Fantastic event, really needed more like this. Forced tank swaps, forced mez CC, forced off-tank CC, forced positioning being crucial. It was a glorious fight.

PoP did all of this and better. Plus flagging $$$.

[Maner]

Did a quick google search and found this thread on the EQ clerics forum..

http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18488









The thread is from 2004 though so there might be more contributing factors to these guilds successes.
AA points have a lot to do with that. Skipping Luclin means skipping a points as well doesn't it?

[Neno]

AA points have a lot to do with that. Skipping Luclin means skipping a points as well doesn't it?

Well you could have the AAs without the zones is how I was looking at. I don't think you can acquire certain PoP AAs without the SoL ones either by certain PoP AAs requiring them as per-requisites or by just needing a certain total number to unlock them.

[Pint]

Luclin gearing easily skippable, luclin AAs would be a different story.

[thufir]

Luclin gearing easily skippable, luclin AAs would be a different story.

Yeah, forgot about that. I no longer think this would be fun even if it were technically possible. Best-case scenario is a lot of t1 planar grinding to catch up on AAs when PoP was released.

[Swish]

Luclin had some good raid content, we never seem to mention it.

[jaybone]

Luclin will happen. You think Rogean going to let this cash cow die? Don't mean that in a negative way.

[Dac321]

Luclin will happen. You think Rogean going to let this cash cow die? Don't mean that in a negative way.

Not saying it isn't happening... (Probably not though), but that'd be illegal.

I personally hated AA points. PoP would be very interesting without AA points active. But I don't see any of this happening.

[redhorse]

Didnt Luclin also grant beastlords? As with AAs I guess you could just add them and just exlude all Luclin zones and gear. Same would go for bazaar. Dem Centi Longswords!

[JackFlash]

Luclin, millions of hitpoints served (in vex-thal)....

Seriously though without AA's PoP would be a bitch.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

Sure but let's keep it simple. In a few years, just add Quarm. And at the end, when that annoying fuck gives his speech, have the server actually reset.

[bluejam]

they threw out as much of the AA code as possible. unless they were to somehow rollback this without messing with the current code basis (impossible I'd say)....

[Jigawatts]

PoP without the PoK would be ok with me.