Have to agree with azzar in a broad sense. Luclin made the world more accessible which was good. It provided additional activities for main characters in the form of AA points/skills. It added dynamic new raids (basement ssra thing, worm thing in the deep, a war in acrylic caverns) AND provided means to advance ones character in the preparation for raids (bane weapons). While I'm sure there will be disagreement I also found the VT key quest rather involved and a fairly good time sink. Really it didn't take "that long" either (except for those little orbs from emp ssra). I guess there was mounts too but I was a gnome and liked the original character models so I never used the mounts). Overall i felt it added a ton of great stuff.
As a side note I am one of those people that feel like sitting around in EC for hours is not anymore interactive or valuable than using bazaar. Just my personal opinon that selling gear on level 1 alts who I have no connection to trying to gouge people isn't very fun in the tunnel and it's automation was a time saved to do other more community based activities. Also don't really care abou paludal cavern, by the time sol came out my guild and I had been 60 for a long time and it helped us get new members faster if they could get to 60 faster.

It won't happen here but it's not because Luclin is bad, but because people have rose tinted glasses and are stubborn. To say pre-Luclin raids were even half as dynamic as sol is silly and misinformed

Typed this on phone sorry for typos

Regards

Still strikes me as bizarre the Luclin/PoP hatred. The game reached its subscriber peak in PoP, tons of content for guilds to do, tons of meaningful group content via Ornate molds, meaningful tradeskills that didn't suck, AA's that provided incentive to continue playing, abilities that finally started to balance classes out and carve a niche for everyone, focus effects that brought casters back into line with melees, boss fights that felt epic with amazing [at the time] graphics and very cool music.

Contrast that with Velious which feels small as fuck, can easily be held down by one top guild, has very little to do for non raiders other than farm HoT armor [which sucks for most slots], really no meaningful tradeskills to speak of. To each their own.

swish right now:

http://i.imgur.com/lXGVxvL.gif

i don't know why it's so surprising. SoL and PoP marked a pretty profound shift in the design philosophies of the game. lots of flavorful game elements were removed or trivialized because they were too inconvenient, such as travel time; trading/selling; and evil/good factions. zone progression was streamlined so that 50% to 75% of the old world zones were completely and shamelessly bypassed--why waste time in a "subpar" area when CB is just two loading screens away? the graphics upgrades had higher poly counts but were pretty ugly aesthetically. it also created this really awkward visual discrepancy between certain zones/models, because they never went back and re-did the old zones.

SoL/PoP was also around the time EQ's engine was really starting to show its age. animations were stiff and awkward, controls were rudimentary, clipping was terrible, and the UI was dreadful. going from EQ to WoW, it was almost mind blowing to me just how terrible EQ's UI and gameplay really were.

Classic EQ was far from perfect, and had a lot of holes (despite what its many fans might try to argue), and not everything from Luclin forward was terrible. still, SoL represented a key divergence from the "old style" that was maintained from Classic->Kunark->Velious. it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone why fans of the original game draw the line at Luclin.

It's surprising to him because as an endgame raider type, Luclin clearly improved the game. It made it easier to level up alts, and the existence of AAs encouraged everyone to stay in the high end game. Raids, and the key quests that led to the raids, were very long, so raiders always had something to do.

As someone who isn't an endgame raider type, Luclin clearly killed the game. It sucked everyone away from lower level zones that weren't PC, and the existence of AAs encouraged everyone to stay in the high end game anyway, so you couldn't really LFG outside of PC. Raids, and the key quests that led to the raids, were very long, so people who didn't have as much time were left out in the cold.

It's about the philosophy of playing the game, and I've found that endgame raiders generally don't accept that anyone would be playing EQ for any other reason, so it's difficult for them to understand.

8.5k views in a random Luclin thread, you know Luclin doesn't have to rap, its gonna do numbers.

Let them post against it, Luclin does numbers.

Luclin brings in donations from the largest donor group, the raiders.

FTFY

PoP gave a plethora of things to do for non-raiders and a vibrant economy. Did you not see the 150+ people in BoT on a week night during live?

That's not the poll he's referring to. We had a poll pre awakening, months ago, some time last year at least with similar options, and Luclin/POP dominated the poll.

If they could add the zones from PoP to p99 I would never stop playing, ever. :eek:
I loved PoP,. but I'm personally not a big fan of Luclin.