I think Luclin will always be seen as the beginning of the end for a lot of us that were around back then. It wasn't all bad, and I do have -some- fond memories of stuff that dropped back then. Some of the raid content, Vex Thal for instance, was really top notch.
But it certainly drained a lot of the old zones dry of population, because leveling on the moon was just
that much better than leveling on Norrath. Bazaar was... well it was nice being able to just plug an item into the search bar and go buy the best price, but it also killed negotiations and barter by a bloody ton. And you know, horses. Casters on horses everywhere as far as the eye could see. I won't touch the graphics, everyone has their own opinion on which set is better.
Not all bad, not all good. But the addition of a new race and class along with a brand new direction for game/class mechanics (AAs/Horses/Nexus/Etc) it was certainly the first major shift away from the classic vibe that the entire Trilogy had followed.
As for PoP, eh... Books killed it even more for me. With Luclin, people usually waited for the early teens to hit up the spires to the Nexus and level up there. With books, a lot of non-optimized starting zones were even more vacated than they ever were. True, if you started in a zone you didn't like, it was as simple as a two zone hop through books to get to one you wanted without having to flag down a druid/wizzy and get someone to bind you.
On the upside, I really loved a lot of the Planes themselves. And the process of getting your guild through all the keys for the zones was enjoyable back then, especially since I loved my guild.
All that being said, Trilogy is still my favourite timeframe for EQ (Being someone that still plays on Live from time to time) and I have zero issues not having this server go past Velious. Unless, of course, this one hit Luclin as they released a brand new p99 server with proper classic pacing that would eventually lock at Velious like others have mentioned in the thread. Because then I'd simply play on both
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