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

[Gustoo]

For a while it was great trying to murder people at the spires before the Luclin teleport timer ran out. There was still a lot of activity in Gfay during early Luclin as people didn't all get the expansion at the same time and there was some transition. I even made money buying things from Gfay and selling them in the Bazaar and similar such dumb stuff.

Like any PVP player the non PVP zones in Luclin totally destroyed the game and I quit for a long time. I came back and didn't buy any other expansions and kept playing for a while. I eventually got POP on my last bout of playing and enjoyed getting KEI and SLN on a low level character and going around with infinite mana and health casting low level spells on people. It was pretty fun and there were players here and there but thinking about the difference between what Gfay was and what it was during POP era brings actual tears to my eyes.

I played much longer than I should have, but LDON really put the nail in the coffin because it made it so all rallos zek PK twinks had augmented no drop gear so there was no point to PVP them anymore.

I did enjoy the noobie quests added in the LDON era or so and I enjoyed getting to play on the Discord permadeath server that was similar era.

At some point what they needed to do was a total game rebalancing that made the old world relevant again, and made old world items more than just vendor trash. I mean you could get a centi longsword for like 100pp and it was better than almost all droppable weapons through velious.

What was interesting is that the majority of the stuff added in Luclin and afterwards was no drop or non tradeable. What this meant is that while I was trading and low level PVPing well past Velious era I can hardly remember a single item beyond velious except the centi long sword, the tool that increases fletching success, and the super low delay thrown item from luclin also that I was like the only person to pharm and stockpile and use.

Of course you get a new expansion like Luclin and you try to enjoy it because, what choice do you have. I loved all the expansions and the excitement they brought, but they all just made more and more of the game irrelevant which meant I was no longer really playing everquest but instead a new game based around the content of the new expansion. That sucked.

Ultimately the game got worse with every expansion and should have had a more organic perpetual improvement program that kept the whole world progress aligned rather than obsoleting entire continents.

For me, Vanilla is the best but without modifying the game and adding custom content, velious is the right place to stop.

They should for sure disable waking the sleeper on servers that aren't going to reset though.

[Gustoo]

I just like when Monks had to be the worst race (humans) and got not weapons, and were still quite strong and awesome. They were truly minimalist, really special class.

In Kunark and beyond they get so many crazy ass items and weapons that they're just like any other class that its a real downgrade for the direction of the class.

[Nirgon]

Trannies

[Atmas]

Like many have said PoP was the peak.

Lore was great and still in step with the original ethos of the game. AAs which were one of the best points of Luclin got further expanded in scope and usefulness. Gear stats and bonuses felt significant and had bonuses that were great enhancements to class abilities. The progression system was extremely engaging. The zones were diverse and pretty well tuned with a few understandable exceptions. New interesting spells, some of them weren't very useful but still exciting.

GoD was a huge disappointment. The zones and enemies seemed so random in design. The zones in a lot of cases looked like lazy heavy use of Ctrl + V. The spells were very uninspired. I played a wizard and the new top nuke was literally just the damage of the previous one +10%. The enemies were ridiculously poorly tuned. I heard later on the level cap had intended to be raised to 70 but they scraped that but didn't properly adjust the mobs.

Part of the reason things declined was because PoP was so good honestly. It's hard to follow up something where you kill the gods in an epic story and make huge gear gains. After that everything will really feel just contrived and like you are just doing the next thing just to get the next percentage of increase. I played a bit of OoW which was much better than GoD but really the game was just no longer the same. I had enjoyed Luclin a lot because of AAs, mounts, and Vex Thal loot (not the zone itself) but I understood how people could dislike it because it was so removed from the original game. Post PoP was really just a very different feel.

[Tunabros]

just logged on eq live and made a fresh character

my eyes

[Delekhan]

Luclin began the decline and PoP set the trend. Yes PoP was a wonderful raiding experience but it left the general community bifurcated and it never recovered.

[GnomeLuvr]

I played up to Prophecy of Ro, and quit shortly after the expansion came out.

What killed EverQuest for me, was the endless conveyor belt of expansions. The vast majority of people had not had time to enjoy a lot of what was offered in one expansion, before the next expansion rolled out.

The majority of people that played on my server (Fennin Ro) were not "hardcore, play all day/every day" people. We had jobs and lives outside the game, and it often felt that we were being punished for not making EQ our number one priority in our lives. I felt that I was constantly playing catch-up at the beginning of each expansion, so that I might have one character at max level before they raised the level cap again. Then it was trying to grind out the un-fun AA's that were required for most guilds, and even many groups.

Adding to the mounting burden of trying to keep up, the PoK books and the Bazaar pretty much killed any sense of community I felt from the game, and it just became another job.

[Ravager]

After Velious they should have dialed back how many zones they added per expansion and just worked on revamping existing zones to keep the game fresh without making 95% of the game lifeless deserts. New dungeons tucked in the existing zones would have been fine, but should have left a single "core" game that still had to be traversed and used to keep things lively.

[Bardp1999]

The decline started in Velious and continued through Luclin and PoP. All raid content and forgetting about the rest of the world. After Kunark the 'neck beard' aspect of the game really started to spiral out of control.

[Tunabros]

I think they just ran out of ideas