Where did EQ Live go wrong?

[Daldaen]

Yes, because planets cannot have moons that orbit them with a feline-humanoid species in them... in a fantasy game?

[medievalerror]

I must say, I liked the Vah Shir and absolutely LOVED the Luclin graphics (I immediately switched to Iksar on Live in part because of how much I loved their new look in particular--I cannot bring myself to play one in the original graphics b/c the aesthetic is such a downer for me). I do think that many of the Luclin zones began taking a radical turn that represented a downward slope in EQ. (If only we had the option of using Luclin graphics on P-99 it would be perfection!).

[webrunner5]

The main problem was they got rid of the need for Porters and Crack dealers. Druids, Wizzys, and Enchanters. Luclin expansion I think killed pretty most all of it. I think Bazaar was both a good and bad thing. Mostly bad.

Then the Merc's got rid of the the need for Healers. So the need for anyone in a group went to poop. So everyone 4 boxed to hell and back. They made a pot for every thing. And started the Marketplace. So now you spend more money buying XP and Haste pots a month then the cost of the game. Pretty smart of Sony!!!

[Daldaen]

What crack dealers are you talking about? Bazaar was a nice idea, implemented poorly. Having to leave your character on afk was stupid. But it would've been great if you could set it up to do that without your character being there.

Mercs were an addition to SoD, around 2008-2009 iirc... way past the scope of the Luclin discussion but I guess that could qualify for when EQ live when wrong.

[medievalerror]

We need not only discuss Luclin, it just seems to me that for a lot of people that's where things really started to change.

[mwatt]

There is no single reason, it is a combination of things. My own vote for the biggest issue was the disparity in gear and power between two "types" of players that occurred due to "forced" raiding and keying that later expansions brought on. As new expansions came out, they had to be tuned to those with the powerful gear, leaving "casual" players unable to effectively play. Unfortunately, the players that tended to be able to gather power need to play as expansions kept getting more difficult, are also players that tend to burn through content and then leave.

On a somewhat different topic, I thought AAs were great.

[astuce999]

The biggest mistake that caused the decline of EQ was implementing characteristics that diminished the need for a community; the need to rely on (or compete with) other people.

People will point to PoK books or Bazaar or instances or mercs or guild hall or certain AA's (among others) as the scapegoats; the common denominator is that it all took away from the immersion that gave EQ its unique feel, which is having to interact with other players.

'Stuce

[Edrick]

Two biggest complaints I have about how EQ Live went wrong.

First is the progression. This hit really hard at Planes of Power. There was a very harsh progression that you could not deviate from, your only way to get into raids you weren't flagged for was to fall into the 85/15 rule. Everquest's biggest strength during classic, Kunark, and Velious was that it wasn't so linear. All you needed to get into Veeshan's Peak was the key. The key was a long, difficult quest, but most of it you could do on your own. In Velious, to get into Sleeper's Tomb you needed a key you could get from killing dragons or certain giants. If Velious was remade today, you would have to complete 6 tasks in Iceclad Ocean to get access to eastern wastes, then complete another quest chain to choose which faction you want, then complete a number of instanced raids to work you way up.

The other is mudflation. This wasn't a problem during classic, Kunark, and Velious, because all stats mattered. Once we got to Planes of Power, you didn't have to worry about making sure you got enough of a certain stat, since eventually all of your equipment will have maxed them out. Items were losing their "individuality" and just becoming something with every single stat vomited onto it.

[Daldaen]

Mudflation I definitely agree with, progression I'd tend to disagree though.

A players without Veeshan's Peak key can't do anything with a guild who wants to raid it. He can't zone in for rotting items, he can't help them out on events, nothing. He is forced to sit out and work on the long boring quest by himself or with other unkeyeds while his guild does VP (or any keyed zone for that matter).

Whereas in PoP if you were just a fresh noobly app who had no keys or flags, you could still tag along in that gimp space with the 85/15 rule or more specifically 5/1 flag:unflagged ratio. The problem with PoP was the layering of it. Missing one flag from say Bertox meant you were screwed for the rest of your flagging through until your guild went back to kill Bertox.

Had they figured out a better backflagging method (IE doing a raid a tier above, flags you for all the previous tier raids) that would've been excellent. PoP raiding encounter wise, was easily the most vast amount of raiding available in a single expansion. Ranging from 2 group events to events that guilds would get over a full raid (72+) and still wipe to due to failures of CC / Tanking / Healing / DPS etc.

Another minor issue I had with PoP was the lateness that they came out with the relaxing of the flagging rules. IE when it was new only PoJustice / Innovation / Nightmare / Disease were available to non-raiders.

Later on they opened up CoDecay, PoStorms, PoValor, Hall of Honor, Bastion of Thunder, and PoTactics based on level requirements (keeping the elemental planes and Sol Ro's tower still locked). Had they done that off the bat it would've been much better off. Instead of making those require raid flags to enter.

[Edrick]

Good comments. It was definitely annoying having to backflag in case you missed some early raid. I remember our guild working out agreements with other guilds earlier in progression to allow our members/apps to piggyback for backflags. If your guild was raiding elementals, it was a large time investment to go back to an earlier raid, say Bertox, and flag one or two people.

I liked that expansion enough even though the exploration aspect of EQ had been discarded at that point. Despite the extreme convenience of PoK books, I hated what they did to travel/exploration in the game.