When did Everquest start to really decline in quality of experience?

[magnetaress]

most of the time I spent in pop was hanging out at the entrance to PoD, PoNightmare, or the gnome plane? forget the name the scrapyplace. I didn't 'see' much of PoP.

The 4 or 5 times we cruised through bot in a pick up raid with our servers leet guild was funt ho.

[magnetaress]

GoD actually had some cool zones, and the OoW proving grounsd or w/e that maze like zone at the end were u did all those trials for the +saves was a cool well designed zone but it was all to insanely grindy at that point

[magnetaress]

GoD/OoW should have been their own game and start from lvl 1 on another mmo world.

[foxchris509]

PoP was a masterpiece, the progression and flagging in the expansion was very well thought out. You can really tell the devs went all in for it. All the npc models are great and the zones are just as badass as you would expect from a high end expansion. If you are a raider and haven't experienced it yet you are seriously missing out. Finish it all to make it into time and the amazing loot it just is perfect. The fast travel books obviously suck and ruined some parts of the game but overall if you are into raiding its the best. Things did start to get weird after pop with GoD but OoW was another masterpiece and probably my favorite eq expansion. New epics 1.5/2.0 that really are cool and tie in to the previous epic quests. Awesome raids and loot it really has it all.

[Kohedron]

I stopped playing like the day before Legacy of Ykesha came out

It was clear they were just churning shit out just to churn shit out, luckily 11 year old me figured out it was time to jump ship

[Toomuch]

Personally I feel like it was a gradual progression that way, with Luclin and Planes of Power contributing to it a little bit here and there, with a steep drop-off after Planes of Power. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, what people seemed to fall in love with in Everquest is the realism and difficulty level. You had to talk to people, depend on other people/classes, take the time/effort to travel where you needed to go, plan ahead with a lot of things like food/water/bandages, not venture into dangerous areas if you're not prepared/leveled/geared enough, etc.

I also played on Sullon Zek, and when they introduced Luclin, they introduced hard-coded safe zones (Nexus and Bazaar). I hate to use the cliché term, but it definitely ruined a bit of the immersion. Sullon was so hardcore, so merciless and brutal, always watching your back and hitting a /who hotkey every 10 seconds, and then suddenly you could just be safe/invulnerable instead.

Freebie ports on a timer with the implementation of The Nexus, that took away a bit of the interpersonal communication and interdependency that was so much a core part of the game, and introduced the first real EZ travel mode. If the Nexus only went once every 3 or 4 real hours, or maybe even just once a game day at most, maybe that would have preserved the game a little better?

Being able to vendor your wares automatically in The Bazaar, again it took away a large facet of the interpersonal communication. The zone itself wasn't the worst, it was the vendor-mode that dumbed down the game. If it could have just been the new EC, where it just made more sense to buy and sell wares there, due to the proximity to the Nexus and banks and all that, maybe that would have felt better? Or maybe limiting vendor mode to "open market hours" (like 8 AM to 6 PM game time) or something?

And then PoP came, and doubled-down on ez mode travel with the books. They DEFINITELY needed more limits on that, like maybe waaaay less available books around, and maybe you can only click 1 non-PoP book every 3 hours or something?

I personally liked the raiding in PoP and Luclin. If they could have kept the gear scaling a little more under control, I think it would have made a huge difference too. Like, maybe the 125 HP/mana items in Luclin, scale those back to ~115 and such, and then apply something similar to the PoP gear, so that it's maxing out more around 130. Then also tweak the raid mobs damage/HP/etc as well, to even out the gear tweaks. If they could've done that, then the very best gear from Velious and Kunark would've still been very applicable and worthwhile, instead of almost completely trivialized the moment the next expansion came out.

Basically, it seems like they kind of bumped up the top-end gear stats at about a rate of 25% per expansion, but if they could have kept it closer to 12-15%, then at least most of the old high-end raids are still well worth doing for the gear. And to me, the general lore sticks better too, because the big-bad bosses from previous expansions, that have all this painstakingly well-written story built in, they don't become complete pushovers (while still being gods and such?) quite so quickly.

[Danth]

Declined a little bit with Kunark and Velious, but not badly. Luclin was the first serious decline in quality. Luclin's development was notoriously plagued by internal turmoil within Verant/Sony, and it showed. I still think a decent expansion might've been hidden in there under the garbage, but I have to assess it on what it is, not what it could've been.

Planes or Power is rightly popular among the folks who enjoy zerg raiding, but from my standpoint (I mostly like group content) it mortally wounded EQ. Game never truly recovered from PoP. That singular expansion, moreso than any other, effectively ruined the game for me. Then come Ykesha and Lost Dungeons, both of which were cheaply made insults, then the ultimate insult of Gates and "let's cut this expansion in half and sell it as two!" I quit for the last time in spring 2004 and haven't been back since.

Looking at the above, EQ looks like a tale of poor management. For all its success, given better management and planning it could have been even more than what it was.

Danth
Danth

[Danth]

(can't edit in RNF) Hah at myself, managed to double-sign. Think that's a first.

[imperiouskitten]

Originally Posted by Kohedron [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I stopped playing like the day before Legacy of Ykesha came out

It was clear they were just churning shit out just to churn shit out, luckily 11 year old me figured out it was time to jump ship

Smart! I stuck around until GoD, not that I ever played the content. I totally felt the magic drying out of it with those expansions too. Funny how reliable the child's gut is.

[Izmael]

Luclin is where it went downhill for me.

Places like Shadowhaven, Nexus, Bazaar.. soulless, lifeless places that all look the same.

Mobs that nobody likes. What the fuck is a zelniak? Who the fuck cares? But everyone loves a gnoll or a froglok.

Zones that are all huge and square, a-la Halls of Testing. Fuck that shit. Give me the good old Qeynos and Befallen so I can get lost in there.

Items that made everything from previous expansions a bunch of junk.

AA's that made players without AA's a bunch of junk (or was that later on?).

Mindless keying for boring raid zones and soulcrushing timesinks aka "ring events".

Praise Rog/Bog for stopping at Velious and never going past it. We're all lucky here.