Life after Velious... we can make it better!

[deadreaver777]

I was reading the popular thread the other night about introducing AA's, and in regards to that, I think it would be a god awful idea to put AA's into Velious content. Not only would it make the content immensely easier, it just doesn't fit with the server's vision. The subject did get me thinking though, it got me asking the question, can new expansions be introduced on this server after Velious?

There's no doubt that introducing Luclin, and Planes of Power in their pure form would be a horrible idea for this server, because without question, despite being enjoyable expansions, they were the downfall of EverQuest as most of us knew it. But what if we do those expansions right? What if the devs in P99 removed what made those expansions worse than the original 3 games. I know P99 doesn't have a huge team of developers that have an immense amount of time on their hands to do it, but I still think it's interesting to think of a way to fit them in.

So the question I pose is, what did Shadows of Luclin, and Planes of Power do right, where did they go wrong, and what could be added, removed, or refined in those expansions to make them as good as their predecessors? I'm stopping with Luclin and PoP, because let's be honest, any expansion after that was pure garbage, at least in my humble opinion.

Shadows of Luclin
the good
(1)AA's were a nice addition, and being that there was no level increase past level 60, it gave you ways of improving your characters
(2)Despite the silly idea of cats on the moon, the raiding content was still enjoyable, and right on par with Velious, regardless of the time sinks.
(3)Beastlord's were an enjoyable class, and a good addition to the class list.

the bad
(1) Starting with this expansion, it seems like older content, especially from classic EQ, was becoming completely irrelevant. Zones like Paludal caverns killed other lower level zones, and funneled most new players and alts into one zone. Also loot became significantly better than previous expansions, especially classic, and made a lot of classic loot worthless.
(2) The Bazaar. While convenient, it killed a huge social aspect of the game. I can understand some people preferring The Bazaar, but give me the old fashioned EC tunnel anyday.
(3)Mounts. Poorly designed, and made SoW, one of the signature buffs of EQ, a little less significant. And again... poorly designed. Why do I ride my horse with my arms at my side?!?!?!
(4) Luclin models. Again, a matter of opinion, but just like the mounts, they were poorly designed in my opinion. Despite having more animation, and pixelation, their charisma compared to classic models was daunting.

Improvement?
(1) Remove The Bazaar, keep EC alive.
(2) Make some adjustments to loot, both Luclin, and/or previous expansion loot to give people reasons to go back to zones like Guk, or Sol B.
(3)Remove mounts, and Luclin models

Planes of Power
the good
(1) Amazing zones, amazing music, and one of the best, if not the best raid content.
(2) An increased level cap, and the addition of newer, cooler AA's
(3) The fight against the gods! Kind of goes hand in hand with (1), but there was nothing more satisfying than downing the likes of Fennin Ro, Bertox, Rallos Zek and more.

the bad
(1) Plane of Knowledge. While the zone itself isn't necessarily bad, the books/stones in the zone ruined a key aspect of the game. PoK made travel irrelevant. This addition, and this addition alone is what made the expansion bad, in my opinion.
(2) I'm kind of on the edge about this one, but flagging for zones became daunting at times, especially if you didn't have time to raid. Then again, I did kind of enjoy the flagging aspect as well.
(3) even more irrelevancy of classic content. Item stats became even more increasingly abundant, and once again, older zones began to die off as a result.

Improvements?
(1) Removal of all books and stones throughout Norrath, plain and simple. The only book that should be left in, or left functional, is the Nexus < PoK stone
(2) even more item adjustment, to keep older content alive and well.

Last but not least Ill throw Legacy of Ykesha in the mix. Horrible expansion, with the exception of shared bank slots... Yes please? As a matter of fact, it would be nice to have this without the xpac. All content in the expansion I could do without though.

If this server did expand beyond Velious, I would much rather see these two expansions, with revisions/updates, than brand new content, which some other people are suggesting. Everyone has different opinions, and by no means am I speaking out on behalf of everyone in the community. Everyone has their idea of what made these expansions great, or horrible, and I respect everyone's opinion, and am not trying to start a debate, I'm just trying to throw some ideas out there.

TL;DR
If the game expanded past Velious, into SoL, PoP, or even beyond, what would you like to see removed, revised, or added to these expansions to make them EverQuest worthy? I personally would only like to see the game go up to PoP, but if you feel other expansions could be added smoothly, and justly, by all means, let us know how, and why.

Thanks everyone :) hopefully this gets some good ideas flowing, regardless if they implement them or not. Regardless, we aren't even in Velious yet, and when it is, I'm sure it will be around for a long time, so until then, let's take advantage of one of the best eras in gaming history!

[Humerox]

There was a very good thread started a LONG time ago referencing some ideas about what to do after Velious.

HERE (http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=11879&highlight=custom+content)


This was the original post by guineapig:

So this is all completely hypothetical of course.
I just wanted to see if I could place all the Planes of Power zones (besides Knowledge and Tranquility) in to the original trilogy in a way that would make sense.

This is what I came up with for zone connections:
(UPDATED 5/13/11)


Lavastorm/SolC
* Doomfire, the Burning Lands
- Solusek Ro's Tower


Ogguk (possibly a port from Arena?)
* Drunder, Fortress of Zek (Plane of Tactics)

Qeynos Catacombs, A'Kanon or (Innhotule)
* Plane of Disease
- Ruins of Lxanvom (Crypt of Decay)

Steamfont
* Plane of Innovation

Halas
* Plane of Justice

Plane of Fear
* Plane of Nightmare
- Lair of Terris Thule

Plane of Air
* Plane of Sky
- Eryslai, the Kingdom of Wind

North or South Karana
* Plane of Storms (possible druid port?)
- Torden, the Bastion of Thunder

Plane of Hate
Plane of Torment (reason being that Saryrn is most closely tied to Innoruuk)

Lower Guk (live side)
* Plane of Valor
- Halls of Honor
-*- Temple of Marr

Kedge Keep
* Reef of Coirnav (yes, I know Prexus is not directly related to the plane of water.)

Lake Rathetier
* Vegarlson, the Earthen Badlands
- Ragrax, Stronghold of the Twelve

The Hole
* Plane of Time A
- Plane of Time B


on the fence:
Plane of Knowledge: would not be in the game unless it was somewhere real f'ing hard to get to like through the Tower of Frozen Shadow Mirror.
I think if it just had a single zone in zone out like that and no portals/books to anywhere else then it would be okay.
(In my original draft PoK wasn't even listed... I just added the idea based on posts below)

For the zones that are located in cities: The location of the zone in would always be the corresponding race's Cleric or Shaman guild hall. (Possibly an alter of some sort or what have you.)

This adds a little bit of challenge because obviously you will have members of the raid party that would be KoS in these cities which would further add to the importance of factions in the game. (Alternately you could just invis through the zone every time.)
Also, this creates new life for old cities.

Note that while Kunark and velious zones will be all the rage for the next couple of years, thereby lowering the classic zone populations, the introduction of this version of PoP will reignite the need for travel in the old world zones. There will be multiple options open for low level players and no matter where they go there will be some high level players hanging around as well. This is something that we never see in EQ now, except in PoK on live (or EC tunnel in the case of this server.) Instead of creating one main hub , many cities will have people in them and therefor resons for low and high level players alike to revisit.

I would go as far as to say that most of the things that were added to PoK should be added to the old world cities (and Cabalis) instead.
(Druid and Wizard ports should never be useless in my vision! )

For the Planes that are located within the older planes (Fear, Hate, Sky, Growth) zoning in to the next zone would be a one way ticket. This makes it not possible to use this zone line as an easy way to clear agro and jump right back in. Also the zone line to the second Plane would be somewhat deep in the zone, requiring you to clear your way to torment from Hate (unless the zone was already cleared). Whether or not you need to have killed Inny to be flagged for Torment remains in question (I could care less either way).

I’m on the fence about where to put Plane of Time so I just figured The Sleepers Tomb being the end game in Velious would be appropriate. ( EDIT: Someone suggested leaving out PoT all together... not a horrible idea. )

Level cap increased to 65 with PoP
AA's (if implemented) are capped per level and you can never get them all. You have to specialize.
Re-specialization is an option via a semi-complex quest.
Minimum level requirement (if the zone is even implemented) to enter PoK (somewhere between 46 and 60).

Feel free to add your own opinions and ideas.
(Can you tell I’m bored at work?)


EDIT: Thanks for all that added ideas. I still prefer the use of starting city shaman and cleric guilds for the portals that lead to major deities but there is definitely something to be said for keeping raids from having to zone through a town. So I added both. (Personally, I really like the idea of keeping factions an integral part of the game, something that PoP kind of ruined.)

[Autumnbow]

I would personally like to see gnome/halfling paladins, gnome shadowknights, halfling rangers, vah shir, beastlords, frogloks and berserkers added at some point. Obviously not with the entire expansions they were added during :P

[Ferok]

I don't necessarily agree with all the zone connections as described by guineapig, but that's basically what I've been imagining as well for PoP - no PoK, integrate the zones throughout Old World/Kunark/Velious/Luclin and through wizard portals. This ensures everything stays relevant, travel stays hard.

Also, while it means retuning alot of raids, I'd also no level cap lift to 65. Gear and AA's should be all progression requires - this ensures that Kunark and Velious encounters stay relevant to progression. AA's and some new world loot give late-comers a little bit of a step up to beating these encounters, without completely trivializing them.

[Ferok]

I would personally like to see gnome/halfling paladins, gnome shadowknights, halfling rangers, vah shir, beastlords, frogloks and berserkers added at some point. Obviously not with the entire expansions they were added during :P

I'm fine adding none of those things. Vah shir, beastlords, frogloks, berserkers especially.

[Tecmos Deception]

Bazaar on p99 would just be a formalization of EC forums + wiki pricing + auction-tracking website that everyone already use. It was a big deal on live because these things didn't exist (or at least weren't used by many people). On here? It'd just let people twink their new alt more quickly, sell their bone chips more easily, and whatever.

[Rogean]

Bazaar will never exist.
PoKnowledge will never exist.

Nexus... maybe.
AA's.. unlikely but I wouldn't completely rule them out.. maybe a small amount of them.

But reusing plane of power zones and attaching them to existing zonelines spread out across the current norrath, definitely a possibility. Those zones look great, and lots of room for content. All the mobs and itemization would be custom to stay in line with velious level RvR.

[Ferok]

Bazaar will never exist.
PoKnowledge will never exist.

Nexus... maybe.
AA's.. unlikely but I wouldn't completely rule them out.. maybe a small amount of them.

But reusing plane of power zones and attaching them to existing zonelines spread out across the current norrath, definitely a possibility. Those zones look great, and lots of room for content. All the mobs and itemization would be custom to stay in line with velious level RvR.

I disagree with your general disposition on AA's, but otherwise it's like you read my mind...

...I think nexus is a natural certainty, and I don't think it's at all game-breaking. It makes travel a little simpler, but it still takes a bit of time. And since Antonica's nexus hub is in North Karana, it means that part of the world gets a little more use, but also that porting stays relevant.

I don't like the idea of the bazaar, but I wonder that with Nexus being what it is, whether or not EC survives being so far away from a nexus port.

[Autumnbow]

I really dislike the Nexus, but that may be because I come from a Zek server, and it was the introduction of "safezones", the beginning of the end of PvP. Maybe /shout, /ooc and /auction could be disabled there to prevent it from becoming the new auction zone, and people would move the auction zone to GFay where it rightfully belongs :P

[Ferok]

More likely it would become shadowhaven.

Gfay is difficult because there's no evil vendors or bank.

[Frankee]

I think AA's are great BUT they would all have to be retuned. I think if they are to ever be included a new list of AA's per class should be designed from the ground up so that it would better suit pre-luclin content.

So probably a ton of design work and development >_<

[Autumnbow]

More likely it would become shadowhaven.

Why would that zone even be added?

[Ferok]

Why would that zone even be added?

Fair point

[pasi]

Call me crazy, but I actually liked Luclin after they nerfed modrods (the best thing in the history of the game, Project M notwithstanding) and fixed itemization.

The Bazaar (without automation implementation, of course) is better than EC since there is a bank and arena (voluntary PvP!) in the zone.

Paladins, Casters and Druids are brought back to life from Velious. The only huge powergap in Luclin is warriors over the other tanks. High Mob AC, Horses, Focus Effects, AAs, and new spells levels out casters. Druids (and to a lesser extent, shamans) get mini-cheal. Paladins gets rampage tank for life status. Half the classes gaining viability in the raid scene is a good thing in my eyes.

Luclin doesn't make other expansions obsolete. You're at no real disadvantage by exping in classic/kunark/velious relative to Luclin (outside of Paludal). Velious raid gear holds up in Luclin more so than any other expansion progression. The Nexus doesn't shrink the world like PoK does. You're still waiting up to 30 minutes to use the Spires and the Nexus and they don't bring you everywhere.

Unless you were in RoV or play EQMac, no one experienced Inner Acrylia or the Grimling War on live. Ssra Temple is an excellent raid zone. Umbral Plains is one of my favorite highend grouping zones. There's a ton of zones that won't be utilized much (Tenebrous, Mons Letalis, Scarlet Desert, Twilight Sea) but that's true to every expansion.

The graphics suck, Vex Thal blows, and Space cats are space cats, but the rest of the expansion is very good.

[koros]

Luclin was the beginning of the end, but I think that was due to some of the weaker parts of it than the expansion as a whole. Items in Luclin really weren't that better than Velious, so I don't get where that argument comes from.

Luclin had some really great zones/mobs/items, and part of the storyline was good. Sanctus Seru was an amazing zone, and the storyline between Katta and Seru was interesting. Ssra Temple, The Deep, Acrylia Caverns, and maybe Akheva all had their moments as well.

Also, focuses were really necessary and helped balance casters... even if they were poorly implemented.

[Kika Maslyaka]

My take on Luclin:

I think that after giving people 2 expansions, each of which added a new continent, the game creators decided to do something new (the lore about chunk of Odus blown up to the moon have allready existed since time of classic, they just finally decided to put it into the use), plsu players have been begging Brad to make Kerras playable for a longest time.

IMHO, adding the moon as playable area wasn't the best idea, but as I said, they devs wanted something new, and not just another discovered continent. What I would have done is to create a Shadow World (like in DnD lore), which exists in parallel dimension with Norath, but differs a lot. And instead of 1 side light and 1 side dark setting, it would permanent state of twilight, with some areas darker than the others. But we have what we have.

-Overall the moon itself wasn't so bad, but they really should have omitted the obvious sci-fi elements from it: the boglings and the netherians were just screaming sci-fi aliens out loud. The rest f new models were actually pretty nice.

-Overall low-mid end content was decent, but the Paludal ZEM was insane corporate greed idea to get people to buy the expansion. They also added a lot of mid areas that were poorly thought out and were empty 99% of the time - Tenebrous, Grimlign Forest etc.

-The high end was great on some parts - like Ssra, and horrible on other - liek VT. While VT itself is a beautiful zone and I absolutely love Akhevan npc models, the raid quality was essentially tank and spank for all the bosses there who had zillions of hps, and even to get to them you had to go through hundreds of trash mobs with thousands of hps each who kept spawning adds on death. All that was sugar coated with the uber loot, but raiding VT wasn't really the joy like you got out of raiding Ssra, which featured some of the first scripted encounters in EQ history.

-The new graphics is a controversial issue. I welcomed the new engine improvements, and mostly I was pretty happy with improved models for most of the races (specialy the elves and ogres). At the same time some races ended up being worse - like all the shorties in the new graphics are complete look alike, I can barely tell them apart. They should have put more work into those.

-New gear effects - like spell focuses - were great addition to the game - they finally gave casters a reason to get something else out of the gear other than mana.

-I like the idea of mounts overall, it was a great cash sink for the economy.

Overall, the sci-fi elements mentioned above, and poor work on the VT (+the insane key grind) are the 2 significant downside feature of the expansion for me, but otherwise it was acceptable.

[Nirgon]

If you didn't know how to boss hop in VT, you need to talk to Rogean..

[Kika Maslyaka]

well if you mean mage planting by the switch on the 2nd floor - yeah we did that.
It was the only reasonable way to do VT in 2 days, 4 hours each, without turning it into 8 hours raid if you wanted to get to Aten Ha Ra.

[ArumTP]

Luclin is good for the much need class improvements, AA, horses and ports. The rest the server doesn't need.

[Rogean]

More likely it would become shadowhaven.

Gfay is difficult because there's no evil vendors or bank.

I see no reason to introduce shadowhaven. Cat people will never exist on P99.

I'd also like to avoid Nexus being the new EC, if it was introduced even just as a zone to get across continents. Maybe make it a "void" like zone.. you can't speak, can't do anything but utilize the porter pads. AFK Long enough and you're ported back to wence you came!

[Rogean]

If you didn't know how to boss hop in VT, you need to talk to Rogean..

wut?

[Hailto]

I don't get the irrational hate of Vah'Shir, we already have lizard people, how is cat people any more goofy? Its a fantasy game.

[Rogean]

My general opinion of Luclin as an expansion is that it will be skipped content wise. I'd rather not take any of the content that it introduced. Won't be using models, no horses.

How do people think of augments? Not exactly the same way that they were introduced with loy, but custom slots and different ways to get them.

We'll probably never have instancing, I destroyed that code a while ago.

Something I could see us doing is finding ways to improve epic weapons, sort of like how 2.5's worked.

[Rogean]

This is all a very long way off btw, but it's kind of cool to brainstorm about it.

[Hailto]

Tell me why you hate cat people rogean.

[Mythdar]

I disliked the addition of the cat people, and don't think augments should be introduced, game isn't broken. What was that terminology again.. if it ain't broke don't...

[Doeboy]

Rogean, it's great to see that you are at least open to some of this. Though I agree with others that Vah Shir isn't nearly that big of a stretch and is even supported by previous lore. There are even old school cat models to fit in visually.

IMO, there is lots of great content in Luclin that would be foolish to skip.

Some if the more basic AA such as mitigation, innates, and spell casting mastery would be great as well.

[Mythdar]

I believe people fail to realize - these "AA's" were released to handle content we don't have intentions of seeing

[Doeboy]

I believe people fail to realize - these "AA's" were released to handle content we don't have intentions of seeing

Well, if you read back in the thread it appears that it hasn't been explicitly ruled out by staff. I think it's too early to tell really. After Velious has set in a good while this server might very well need a boost to player retention. Population WILL dwindle at a certain point and its up to the staff to either be smart about it or accept it as is.

Also, like it or not, EQC will be knocking on the door at some point. P99 could take steps to set itself apart in a positive way.

[Purdee]

My general opinion of Luclin as an expansion is that it will be skipped content wise. I'd rather not take any of the content that it introduced. Won't be using models, no horses.

How do people think of augments? Not exactly the same way that they were introduced with loy, but custom slots and different ways to get them.

We'll probably never have instancing, I destroyed that code a while ago.

Something I could see us doing is finding ways to improve epic weapons, sort of like how 2.5's worked.


definitely cool brainstorming the future of the server openly

[Autumnbow]

Cat people will never exist on P99.

They already do! :P

[Reiker000]

My general opinion of Luclin as an expansion is that it will be skipped content wise. I'd rather not take any of the content that it introduced. Won't be using models, no horses.

How do people think of augments? Not exactly the same way that they were introduced with loy, but custom slots and different ways to get them.

We'll probably never have instancing, I destroyed that code a while ago.

Something I could see us doing is finding ways to improve epic weapons, sort of like how 2.5's worked.

Ssra was one of the best raid zones in the game, no denying that fact really. Nothing else really remarkable about Luclin though, except AAs were a good addition and the Nexus port system wasn't very overpowered (and it was becoming necessary, as people became more and more spread out it became increasingly difficult to find a port).

LDON was kinda similar... awful expansion, but augments were a good addition. It was kinda dumb at first, but that was mainly because all the best augs (hp, aggro proc) were mostly at one camp (Miragul).

Augs are cool because... well say you put in all kinds of time to get your epic. A lot of them become replaced by Velious. So, you put in all this effort to get this bad ass weapon that's supposed to be a token of your class, only to kill some random mob in Velious and upgrade it. If augs were around, they could have put in a mini "1.5" quest to get an aug that would fit in the epic to upgrade it, keeping them relevant.

And then you have things like BiC... which was kind of a love it or hate it thing. It was a quest introduced in GoD that took an enormous amount of time to achieve (made epics look like hand outs) and rewarded an augment so powerful people were still using it and doing the quest many years later. To me, this quest was one of the only good parts of GoD, only tainted by the fact that well, the entire quest takes place in GoD.

Quest: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/search.html?q=breakdown+in+communication

Augment: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=36269 (archetype dependent)

[Rogean]

BiC was brutal.. but it was nice because you could get a really beastly aug without raiding, and then keep upgrading it as you did the raids. By the end of the expansion after getting the Tunat piece, that thing was better than pretty much anything until Serpent Spine.

That quest in it's entirety in current content was harder than any of the Epic 1.5 and 2.0's.

[Kika Maslyaka]

Augs are cool because... well say you put in all kinds of time to get your epic. A lot of them become replaced by Velious. So, you put in all this effort to get this bad ass weapon that's supposed to be a token of your class, only to kill some random mob in Velious and upgrade it. If augs were around, they could have put in a mini "1.5" quest to get an aug that would fit in the epic to upgrade it, keeping them relevant.


Its an inherit problem with any sort of epic weapon and any future content.
You essentially only have 2 options:
a) Your epic will become obsolete. period. Which will undermine entire gigantic quest that will take 6-12 month to complete.
or
b) if your epic can be continuously upgraded with each new expansion - then all new weapon drops are useless. Why have them when your epic will always be better?
Even if you approach this with "epics are for hard core raiders while dropped weapons are for casuals", it still sucks to be permanently locked into using the same weapon over and over again - all the other weapons and weapon types and weapon skills - they all become meaningless.

IMHO, while cool in concept, epic quests for epic weapons are BAD for an MMO that looks to add more content beyond the expansion in which epics were introduced.

Otherwise this will happen over and over again:

http://www.gucomics.com/comics/2000/gu_20001124.jpg

[Ferok]

Augs are cool because... well say you put in all kinds of time to get your epic. A lot of them become replaced by Velious. So, you put in all this effort to get this bad ass weapon that's supposed to be a token of your class, only to kill some random mob in Velious and upgrade it. If augs were around, they could have put in a mini "1.5" quest to get an aug that would fit in the epic to upgrade it, keeping them relevant.


I don't have an issue with augs, though where epics are concerned I'd prefer just continuing the quest like 1.5/2.0 etc did.

Curious, what epics are upgraded by random mobs in Velious? That sounds much more like WoW than Velious. All the caster, priest epics were still BiS at the end of Velious as I recall. Some vulak loot was better than melee epics, and some other dragon loot made for some arguments but hardly random mobs as far as I can remember....

Even in Luclin the caster epics were still very relevant and for casual melees as well...

[Phats]

Frogloks were an awesome race id agree, any chance on including them?

[Ferok]

Frogloks were an awesome race id agree, any chance on including them?

Awfully high poly count next to old models.

[Phats]

you can already turn on luclin models as is, so not exactly game breaking.

[Doeboy]

Awfully high poly count next to old models.

Force Krup models, lol.

[Ferok]

you can already turn on luclin models as is, so not exactly game breaking.

I thought they had them somehow disabled here, but I'd never turn them on to find out.

[Frieza_Prexus]

Its an inherit problem with any sort of epic weapon and any future content.


I agree completely on this. Epic weapons were VERY poorly designed. Each class should have had a single item to quest for that was "epic" in nature. Rangers should have had, maybe one off-hand sword, Paladins a shield or something, vary the slots. Wizards could have been a ring, etc.etc. Keep the slots different and unique so you don't have scenarios where main hand items never get used again.

I am of the opinion that epics should have been allowed to obsolete, and I feel the same way about primal. Avatar procing weapons were just STUPID. Make them proc Primal Essence and maybe an extra +20 atk on it or whatever.

[Yeska]

I'd just reset the server after 2 years of velious. The cycle would be.

1.5 years of classic.
1.5 years of kunark.
2 Years of velious.
Reset the server, delete the characters/transfer them to the red server or something like that and start over from classic.

Diablo 2 uses a system similar than this and its fun.

[Lynxvarn]

Random points I can think of off the top of my head.

The Good: Caster Dps and Druid/Sham healing viability, Beastlord, Ssra, Acrylia Caverns, Greig's End

Frequently Misunderstood or Poorly Executed: AA's, random mid-high lvl zones with little
incentive to visit, Vah Shir, Grimling Wars, Sanctus Seru, Nexus

The Bad: Majority of Luclin models, Horses, Bazaar, Paludal Caverns, Vex Thal,

I also really really really do not understand the hate on vah shir, especially considering how much love the other animalistic races get... I mean, catmen are no more stupid than frog, dog, or rat people, all of which we have atm.

Their lore made sense (weird shit happens on Norrath) and they did not have shoddy attack animations like iksar, or complete over the top casting animations like froglok.

From what I have gathered, this hate on vah shir (and at least half of the general SoL hate) is 100% irrational and is almost always people just trying to find one more reason to hate on a expansion that helped destroy their vision of EQ.

[pasi]

Curious, what epics are upgraded by random mobs in Velious? That sounds much more like WoW than Velious. All the caster, priest epics were still BiS at the end of Velious as I recall. Some vulak loot was better than melee epics, and some other dragon loot made for some arguments but hardly random mobs as far as I can remember....

Even in Luclin the caster epics were still very relevant and for casual melees as well...

I think he meant random mobs as raid mobs, not snow cougars and shit.

The only epic not replaceable in Velious (outside of clicks) is the bard epic.
Wizard, Enchanter, Mage, and Necromancer - Staff of the Silent Star
Cleric - Blackstar + Sprinkler
Shaman/Druid - Sprinkler of Spirits
Monk - technically DoVassirs qualify here, but not realistically upgraded until PoP imo.

The melee weapons all have numerous examples.

[Layne]

Halfling rangers just make sence. I played so many different race/class combinations on live but never got into any of them as much as I did my halfling ranger.. I would be playing right now I think if the race/class combo was opened up.

[Nirgon]

The rationale was very good.

If a race can be a warrior and a druid, they could also be a ranger.

Some with necro+war (SK) and cleric + war (Pal).

[Picked]

Bazaar will never exist.
PoKnowledge will never exist.

Nexus... maybe.
AA's.. unlikely but I wouldn't completely rule them out.. maybe a small amount of them.

But reusing plane of power zones and attaching them to existing zonelines spread out across the current norrath, definitely a possibility. Those zones look great, and lots of room for content. All the mobs and itemization would be custom to stay in line with velious level RvR.

For the sake of Wizards and Druids...I hope that AA's or something is implemented before Nexus would ever go live. I know this is all way down the road just throwing out suggestions. These 2 classes become extremely hard to get a group with when you take away their ability to port. It's really the only reason they get groups now.

Unless given some AA's to adjust their in game lifestyle both of these classes will be an after thought when Nexus goes live.

[Galelor]

BiC was brutal.. but it was nice because you could get a really beastly aug without raiding, and then keep upgrading it as you did the raids. By the end of the expansion after getting the Tunat piece, that thing was better than pretty much anything until Serpent Spine.

That quest in it's entirety in current content was harder than any of the Epic 1.5 and 2.0's.

BiC was super brutal, and I agree that it was much much harder than any epic quest. What made it worse for non-raiders was that GoD basically made knights and shaman/druids worthless due to the difficulty of the content. Even after the nerf, most casuals could not do any of the useful content.

This said, BiC kept a lot of people busy for a long time! ;)

[pharmakos]

Halfling rangers just make sence. I played so many different race/class combinations on live but never got into any of them as much as I did my halfling ranger.. I would be playing right now I think if the race/class combo was opened up.

COMPLETELY AGREED

this is one non-classic change that i think would fit in perfectly with classic

even in 2000 i was baffled about why halflings couldn't play rangers

[Kurze]

I would primarily like to see Halfling Pallies/Rangers, Gnome Pallies/SKs (even though barely anyone played those, lol), and Beastlords. I could easily forgo having Vah Shir and the entire moon, but I must admit that I did like the beastlord class and I loved the extra race/class combos. Heck, my main on live of was Halfling Pally and I loved it.

Oh, and I forget when it was implemented but would like to see DoTs stack again. (i.e. more than one necro tossing DoTs up)

[Brut]

Gnome Pallies/SKs
Pallys yes, SKs nothx.

Ridiculous midgets named Anklebitur/Daethbringur/Necrognomicon/et cetera scampering around with plastic mini-Inny's Curses is just shameful.

[greatdane]

There's no doubt that introducing Luclin, and Planes of Power in their pure form would be a horrible idea for this server, because without question, despite being enjoyable expansions, they were the downfall of EverQuest as most of us knew it.

I don't see why. Eventually, after two or three years at the pinnacle of Velious, something new will have to happen or the server will be dead. That's a self-evident fact. At that point, I'd frankly put greater faith in the actual expansions which, while a step back, were at least decent. It's not like Luclin and PoP was some kind of unplayable atrocity, it was just worse than than what preceded them. However, I think it would be arrogant and naïve to presume that a handful of amateur hobbyists could design better expansions for a game for which they don't even have the original source code or full client freedom. As much as Luclin/PoP made Everquest worse, I think they'd be better than what can be cobbled together by some people who have never designed games before. Consider also the overwhelming workload it would be to design something new from scratch, compared to simply copying and reverse-engineering what already exists. How many custom-content emus have had any kind of long-term success? Isn't it rather against the spirit of this server to suddenly introduce new, non-canon content after sticking to the classic mantra for so long like some kind of old-time married couple?

[pharmakos]

oh yeah, i forgot about gnome SKs

gnome SKs were f'n awesome

they should add gnome monks while they're at it

[Calabee]

yeah why so much hate on vah shir.. they fucking own, if you didnt intend them to be playable, at all, at some point, why allow the graphic here on p99?

http://imageshack.us/a/img823/3534/meowyb.jpg

PS: wasnt there some weird gm event long ago about blowing up the moon (luclin) wouldnt that be kinda hypocrite to talk of bringing luclin zones.

[Calabee]

PS: im all for luclin / pop and aas... custom content, not so much, i dont play on the ezserver. If they are -ever- gonna be introduced, should be integrally.. but that's just my 2 cents.

[Phats]

There is nothing wrong with cat people, its just that cat people are on the moon and that is wrong.

[Splorf22]

Well realistically I don't think you can reimplement PoP/Luclin without some sort of progression. MMOs are a treadmill: your player and guild gradually become more powerful and more skilled. To maintain the challenge, you need new encounters and new itemization and so on.

AAs seems like a very reasonable idea to me and would be perfect for our top-heavy server if implemented correctly (moderate increase in power, huge increase in grinding time). Imagine if we implemented in Kunark an AA system where you could get +5 to any stat at a cost of n^2 AAs. Getting +25 str would cost you ~50 AAs or about the same amount of xp to level from 50-60. Its not particularly OP and gives our superhardcore playerbase something to do. I like AAs for the same reason I like augs: its a way to give people a way to customize and specialize a bit rather than everyone using the same BiS gear.

Also I agree with whoever said that Luclin and PoP, while flawed, were the product of a paid full-time design team. There is just no way that two people working in their spare time are going to do better. So I think its much better idea to tweak things than do new content from day one.

Lastly, one of the things I'm curious about is that I'm told raids in 'modern' eq are a lot more strategical than classic. Could anyone give me an example or two?

[Huddaan]

Bazaar will never exist.
PoKnowledge will never exist.

Awesome

[Kika Maslyaka]

yeah why so much hate on vah shir.. they fucking own, if you didnt intend them to be playable, at all, at some point, why allow the graphic here on p99?.

Technically speaking they disallowed and even disabled. The fact that people hack the client to get Luclin graphics is a different matter.

[Pringles]

But reusing plane of power zones and attaching them to existing zonelines spread out across the current norrath, definitely a possibility.

Curious how you do this without "redistributing" SOEs content? Since you would have to dish out new zone files etc right? Or is it a non issue as far as EULA shiz goes?

[Kika Maslyaka]

those zones are already in on your hard drive - aka Titanium client :rolleyes: (10 expansions worth to be exact)
all they need to do is to change zone in coordinates - about 30 sec worth of work

[Galelor]

Well realistically I don't think you can reimplement PoP/Luclin without some sort of progression. MMOs are a treadmill: your player and guild gradually become more powerful and more skilled. To maintain the challenge, you need new encounters and new itemization and so on.

AAs seems like a very reasonable idea to me and would be perfect for our top-heavy server if implemented correctly (moderate increase in power, huge increase in grinding time). Imagine if we implemented in Kunark an AA system where you could get +5 to any stat at a cost of n^2 AAs. Getting +25 str would cost you ~50 AAs or about the same amount of xp to level from 50-60. Its not particularly OP and gives our superhardcore playerbase something to do. I like AAs for the same reason I like augs: its a way to give people a way to customize and specialize a bit rather than everyone using the same BiS gear.

Also I agree with whoever said that Luclin and PoP, while flawed, were the product of a paid full-time design team. There is just no way that two people working in their spare time are going to do better. So I think its much better idea to tweak things than do new content from day one.

Lastly, one of the things I'm curious about is that I'm told raids in 'modern' eq are a lot more strategical than classic. Could anyone give me an example or two?

Luclin could still be zerged down for the most part. Even some of the encounters that were not meant to be straight zergs like burrower beast, seru, ssra raids could still mostly be zerged.

Some examples of pure non-zerg content are all instanced raids in PoTime. Many of the raids to progress through the PoP tiers are good examples too. Magnetic Behemouth in PoI was a pain in the ass while learning progression... Much of the raid content after PoP relied on non-zerg tactics. (Examples - Instance raids that only allow x amount of members to enter at once, events where you off tank several mobs while the main raid force killed other adds, text triggers that if the correct action is not taken the char dies. There are TONS of examples...)

Honestly, the EQ raid game was much more fun (with the exception of VT) from Luclin on. IMO I would consider PoP the pinnacle of EQ raiding and I raided all the way from old world content through to the Underfoot expansion.

[pasi]

It's funny that Vex Thal is remembered as "tank and spank" more so than -almost- everything before it due to the use of the same models/environment and exceedingly high AC/HP of the mobs. Vex Thal encounters - while less complex than Ssra - were as complex as NToV and the Velious Era Tank-N-CHeal encounters. Yet, one set is remembered far more fondly. Really goes to show how little encounter design matters relative to environment.

[Kika Maslyaka]

True, everything pre Luclin was exclusively tank and spank.
The problem with VT was:

-INSANE 3 months long shard grinding to get the key
-Endless trash mobs with gazilion of hps that added no extra difficulty other than to tie your raid force down to 8+ hours raid what otherwise would be 2-3 hours content in Velious
-And after you endure the above, THEN you got nothing more but another boring tank and spank

So yes, the Ssra was the pinnacle of creative raiding during Luclin, while VT was half-done. If you read the history behind the VT release it was initially suppose to come BEFORE the Ssra. Original loot that dropped in VT was inferior compared to Ssra loot. But at the last moment some devs at SOE decided to swap VT and Ssra around progression wise. But they were in such a hurry to release the expansion they even forgot to upgrade the VT loot, so when the first guild finally broke into VT they found extremely sub-par loot drops, that were even inferior to Velious loot. It was only 6 months AFTER Luclin release that VT loot got upgraded to the loot you now remember.
But VT bosses remained inferior to Ssra challenges.

You can find all this history if you read through allakhazam posts.

PS. In EQ2 SOE tried to pull the same shit during Echos of Faydwer expansion. The final raid zone - Emerald Halls was VT 2.0 in every sense. Before you could get to the bosses you had to plow through HUNDREDS (i kid you not) yes HUNDREDS of trash mobs who kept spawning wave after wave for 3-4 hours straight. This was SOE attempt to slow down the top guilds so they don't run out of content too fast. :rolleyes:

[pasi]

True, everything pre Luclin was exclusively tank and spank.
The problem with VT was:

-INSANE 3 months long shard grinding to get the key
-Endless trash mobs with gazilion of hps that added no extra difficulty other than to tie your raid force down to 8+ hours raid what otherwise would be 2-3 hours content in Velious
-And after you endure the above, THEN you got nothing more but another boring tank and spank

So yes, the Ssra was the pinnacle of creative raiding during Luclin, while VT was half-done. If you read the history behind the VT release it was initially suppose to come BEFORE the Ssra. Original loot that dropped in VT was inferior compared to Ssra loot. But at the last moment some devs at SOE decided to swap VT and Ssra around progression wise. But they were in such a hurry to release the expansion they even forgot to upgrade the VT loot, so when the first guild finally broke into VT they found extremely sub-par loot drops, that were even inferior to Velious loot. It was only 6 months AFTER Luclin release that VT loot got upgraded to the loot you now remember.
But VT bosses remained inferior to Ssra challenges.

You can find all this history if you read through allakhazam posts.


Yeah, I mentioned in my first post that itemization was a huge problem in Luclin. I also mentioned in the same post that the modrod change made the expansion playable.

Vex Thal's biggest issue was that it forced you to clear it in a single night (which I think we both agree on). The mob HP/AC was high, but nothing astronomically higher than normal. The problem was that once you got to the second floor, you had to keep pushing. If your guild was insane enough to double up on wing bosses, it just added to this.

I don't think shard collecting was half as bad as people remember. I did 5 or so VT keys and 4 VP keys on live. I'd rather do an entire VT key before I camped Pained Soul once. I'm also considering saying I would rather collect shards than camp Comm1/Comm2.

Acrylia sucked before they gutted the zone - that's really the only one that was both RARE and difficult. IIRC, only 2 mobs dropped the shards before and I don't remember if we pulled them with AE groups. Conversely, Maidens Eye sucked after PoP came out since the best way to get this shard was to just pay one of the 7 groups in the zone for loot rights.

High-five to loving Ssra though. All the big (not Rhag1/2) encounters there were top notch other than XtC.

[Galelor]

I also remember VT shards being way easier than VP.

While the VT clears were horrible, they became exponentially better once your CoH bots are in place.

[pasi]

Blinding Eoms too. Forgot about them.

We only had CotH bots setup at Blob 1, and the first 2 wing bosses. I didn't think it was possible to put em elsewhere. In PoP, having SoS rogues (or horse warping) to get targets of mobs and then assist targeting + taunting from the floor below made PUGing VT not complete shit. They eventually ninja patched the zone to have vertical leashes.

[Ele]

VT key you could actually get xp/AA to make the camps worth while.

[Autumnbow]

Rogean, will halfling paladins ever happen?

[Ele]

Rogean, will halfling paladins ever happen?

Probably not.

These race/class combinations were added with a patch 3 months after Luclin was released:

------------------------------
March 19, 2002
------------------------------

We wanted to start by letting everyone know how grateful we are for all
of the suggestions for improvements that we've received both in EMail
and on the various class and server boards. We appreciate all the help
you've provided us.

** Changes for Low Level Characters **

- Characters no longer lose experience for death below level 11
- Characters now begin first level with a stack of 20 food and drink
- Items no longer appear on a corpse if you are below level 10, they
reappear with the character
- When a character "dings" level 10 you will be informed that your
items will now be on your corpse
- Characters will no longer appear with a Tome of Discord. They must
get one from the Priest of Discord
- New resurrection, evacuate and corpse summoning spells have been
added at lower levels
- We've moved the newbie bind points closer to where characters first
start out, not outside in their newbie areas
- Halflings and Gnomes have new classes available to them: Halfling
Rangers and Paladins as well as Gnome ShadowKnights and Paladins. All
of the necessary NPCs and items should be available for these new
classes

[Pringles]

those zones are already in on your hard drive - aka Titanium client :rolleyes: (10 expansions worth to be exact)
all they need to do is to change zone in coordinates - about 30 sec worth of work


Let me spell it out for you: The modified zone files to get to the PoP zones are not on my hard drive :rolleyes: You're going to have to modify existing SOE zones and redistribute them in order to allow people to zone into any new / non original zones.

:rolleyes: <---- does that help you?

[Kika Maslyaka]

Let me spell it out for you: The modified zone files to get to the PoP zones are not on my hard drive :rolleyes: You're going to have to modify existing SOE zones and redistribute them in order to allow people to zone into any new / non original zones.

:rolleyes: <---- does that help you?

If you playing on this server - then you have Titanium client, no?
Titanium includes everything up to DoDH. Anymore questions?

P.S. Oh I get what you saying - you think that to make people to zone from say South Ro to Plane of Fire you need to modify the zone files? Its not how it works. As I said its a 30 sec job server side, without modifying any of the zone files.

[Pringles]

If you playing on this server - then you have Titanium client, no?
Titanium includes everything up to DoDH. Anymore questions?

You aren't getting it. Of course I already have the *original* files, thats not the point.

In order to create a brand new zone line in existing zones - which will enable you to zone into any new enabled zones (eg: POP zones, without the use of POK), you're going to have to modify existing SOE zones, add zone lines, and redistribute the the zone files.

[Kika Maslyaka]

You aren't getting it. Of course I already have the *original* files, thats not the point.

In order to create a brand new zone line in existing zones - which will enable you to zone into any new enabled zones (eg: POP zones, without the use of POK), you're going to have to modify existing SOE zones, add zone lines, and redistribute the the zone files.

You don't need to create a new zone line ;)
You can emulate zoning with:
-a clickable object LIKE a PoK Book or a Door
-with invisible proximity triggered NPC script