Quote:
Originally Posted by Bisonzabi
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Ports to Luclin and PoK along with an official hub were inevitable. The bigger a world becomes, the more spread out servers will become, Verant/SoE knew this even before SoL's release by even acknowledging the importance of the Freeport area was to the playerbase as a defacto hub hence why RoK/SoV had entry points in its backyards along with exits from endgame zones like Plane of Sky and Veeshans Peak.
And outside of ports; The biggest issue with SoL is that it was a half baked expansion with many zones feeling barren or pointless. Had they took time with SoL and maybe waited another year to iron out not just the zone designs, mobs, and even the revamp player models, I think that expansion would've been better remembered.
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SoL was an attempt to develop an expansion that had exp-able content from lvl 1 to lvl 60. The reason you categorize the majority of the zones as "useless" is simply because you were leveled past them by the time it came out, and because the lower 2/3rds of exp zones contained within the expansion are tuned to a higher difficulty than their respective counterparts in classic, kunark, and velious; they were attempting to avoid the mistake of creating an expansion that only suited the 30+ crowd like they did with velious.
And more zones doesn't mean the player base is spread out more. Once the server opens POP, POP will essentially house 90% of the player base 90% of the time, with classic kunark and velious zones being something you speed run through to get to 46 to zone into POTranq.
After the level 65 expansion rollout; with POP, then the launch of ykesha LDON GoD OoW DoN and DoDH and PoR expansions this constitutes 8 expansions in a row without low level content, the dev team reexplored this concept of a comprehensive expansion again with the launch of TSS, which offered a comprehensive expansion suitable for leveling from 1 to 75 within.
Admittedly, TSS was far more effective than Luclin at accomplishing this aim; providing an exp-accellerated-zem expansion conducive to lvl 1 to lvl-cap gameplay with challenging content even against twink characters at low levels; the biggest reason Luclin didn't become the defacto 1-60 grinding expacs is because the ZEMs weren't boosted enough past Paludal Caverns in the leveling arc to compensate for the increase in difficulty, but the intention was to provide a comprehensive expansion for all levels; the player base's tendency toward following the path of least resistance in experience grinding wasn't foreseen.