Quote:
Originally Posted by Fammaden
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Those dungeons are masterpieces of old school DnD style dungeon mapping and full of good lore, art, and danger.
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I agree that some of those old dungeons are masterpieces of design. I disagree about the art however. I've always felt like EQ's graphics weren't *quite* good enough to pull off what the developers wanted to do. Mistmoore Castle is exhibit A: It's obviously trying to be a dark spooky dracula-style castle, complete with the long narrow pathway crawling up the cliffside to the main gate....but the limited graphic quality and framerate concerns forcing a limited vista simply don't do the vision justice. On the other side of it, a few places like Najena are so horror-inspired in design that with more modern graphic quality they might well have earned the game an "M" rating due to the dismembered corpses and gore everywhere. I accept it in spite of its flaws because I don't need superb graphics to enjoy a game, but I'm not blind to that flaw either. Modernized graphics using the SAME** graphic style as the original would be a sight to behold.
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I like the old world's general design best of the three periods P99 covers. The main limitation with the old world is the relative lack of content. It's a fun game but it can't effectively support as many people as (especially) the Velious era can. Lower Guk is a great zone, but it's not a great time when there's 100 people in there. A timelocked pre-expansion server works best if there's a lower population or some sort of layering/etc in place to handle population overload.
Danth
**Therein lies the rub: It's exceedingly rare for anyone modernizing an older game to be able to resist the urge to....tinker with it.