I thought Bazaar was lame, and the models.. I guess the rest of it wasn't to bad.

Exactly.

I legit NEVER used mounts because I refused to change my models. With Run AA's, I didn't even care about it. I think by that point they weren't even really faster, it was mostly a boon for casters.

I'm in the minority here but I don't hate Luclin at all. I didn't hate an expansion until GoD. While some don't like the idea of "Cats on the Moon", the actual content in Luclin was pretty good. Luclin had some very fun zones like SSRA, Grieg's End, Akheva Ruins, etc. It had some fun raid mobs, although VT was AWFUL.

AAs were a great addition. It gave you a reason to further your maxed level character.

I don't have an issue with the graphic change that others have. While I don't care for all the models, the graphic upgrade was needed at the time. In my opinion the graphic enhancement/changes should have parlayed across all of the old world, Kunark and Velious zones to keep things consistent.

When Luclin released, I liked that you had to wait 15 minutes for the spires to fire you to the Nexus. In addition, I liked that once you got there, you needed another 5-10+ before they'd fire you back down. That made travel take time.

Some complain about the bazaar, but I actually liked it. While it killed player interaction and haggling, it made it easier to sell things when I wasn't able to be online. I left my machine running 24/7 logged into EQ. When not playing, I was in trader mode. It made moving my gear that I had for sale a lot easier.

All in all, Luclin was a good expansion. PoP was by far my favorite expansion but it did make travel too easy. That being said, the community zone became PoK, which was nice because I felt as though the "community zone" disappeared in Luclin.

PoP confirmed best expansion by population, by ratings and by content being best.

Makes sense. I started playing about 6 months before PoP and our server was bustling with life when PoP launched. Even though there probably were newbies xping in Paludal Caverns, Blackburrow were full of players, the economy was vibrant and there were a lot more groups around. Even though we were two expansions ahead of Kunark, most people on P99 has better gear than me and my guildies had back then. Min-maxing was not that common.

It's not classic.

New head coach taking credit for previous HC's expansion .

Luclin- great content with a huge cancer/PC zem/bazaar Which gave the game rampant gold farmers.

Pop- more great content with even a bigger cancer/PoK books which destroyed travel and bank/spell vendors.

LoY- more of the same with Supa power race

Instance dungeons with massive zem was the final nail in the coffin.

O never really hated PoP for it content i hated the fact thats about when they decided to start the hand holding and mainstreaming it.The community play died down people didnt need Ports anymore and that killed some of the gameplay for the guys who enjoyed porting for gold etc etc.Corpse runs where pointless after the corpse summon guy list goes on community play died.And old school eq players like the game as it is hard .

Having played as an Ench on Live during this time period, I would disagree. Groups were very easy to find, being that everyone and their mother's uncle would congregate in PoK. It was like the difference between a grocery store that uses a single long queue (max efficiency per cashier), and multiple individual queues (less efficient since people will not always choose the shortest/quickest line). PoK was like the single queue. Instead of running to XYZ zone and finding no groups avail, you'd wait in PoK and form up a group, which would then head out to XYZ zone.
The whole thing about porters and social interaction is not really relevant because there was never a great deal of interaction. Anyway, even if you argue it that way, the BUFF ROCK replaced all that. Now, instead of trying to get ports everywhere, everyone would head to the buff rock by Main Bank and send tells for buffs. The exact same thing, only a different service.

Idk when shadow rest was implemented, but I don't think it was during PoK. I quit shortly after GoD released because . . . well . . . GoD. I guess I don't really have a specific reason. It just seemed crappy when compared to PoP.

PoP was the height of EQ's glory imo. Although they had started the hand holding process to be sure, it hadn't really expanded enough to ruin things. After that....not so much.