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

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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

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