After Velious

[Kyronix]

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

I too am for Luclin-done-right. Use the same zones minus those that negated the Classic feeling (i.e The Nexus and Bazzar). Retune items, content and AAs to reduce the gap between Luclin and previous expansions. Basically, carrying on from Velious following the path set by The Vision.

People will either stop playing because the game continues past Velious and is no longer 'Classic', or because it doesn't and stagnates. Some people won't be happy either way.

Ahhh, we are all here for the glory days. The days when everquest was "Done Right" and thats the problem. Luclin was where people really started getting divided on how content should not only be produced, but run and implemented.

Before I give my opinion (yeah I know, too many of these already without any action) I'm gonna kind of lay out a few things the way I see it.

Like I stated, Luclin was where I really started to see people get discouraged by the direction the game was going, and like many above, it wasn't so much the raid content or the shinies that people didnt like, but the BS zones and the dumbing down of the game. Talking about BS zones, I think pludal was terrible because it was basically where you went from like 5 to 40 in one straight line and that sucked. There was no having to change zones every few levels in order to find the new hot exp and explore your way to it. However a zone like Marus Seru that had a rather closely defined Level range was amazing for the lowly soloing shadowknight gaining a few exp's in his late 20's (or was it early) on some rockhoppers. Then afterwards going back to some old world content for your 30's. Switching around and exploring and so on.

This is what I think made Classic so appealing, it wasn't a straight shot to max level and beating the game like current MMO's. It was a journey and an accomplishment in itself to actually progress in general. There was no WoW style quest in GFay saying "I see you are X level, you may wanna talk to my buddy Snarglefargle in Crushbone, he may have a task for you." You didn't know when to go to crushbone, shit you didn't even know there was a crushbone, but when you found it you were in awe of the Orc stronghold you stumbled upon. The increasing difficulty as you got further in. Not being able to get very far upon first entering and having an undying curiousity of wondering what was behind the hill, then what was behind the door, and finally what was up the hall behind the throne.

IT WAS THRILLING! to say the least. And you did that, you accomplished that, it was your small victory but a victory none the less. And the big mobs in the zone had a prize! There were rewards if you were lucky enough to kill the Emperor and he happened to be carrying something valuable. And it was fulfilling and amazing. This was lost on players unless you were in the endgame raiding zones when it came to later expansions.

Next thoughts are about AA’s. AA’s I thought were absolutely AWESOME, at first! But as time went on it was all about the grind for a higher number and maxing them all. They were a dime a dozen and in stead of one point getting you a level or rank in something a few buying you a huge rank of something, you were spending more and more points because of the ease to farm them.

The basic stats increasing and such was kinda stupid, even the archetype with crits and things were annoying and didn’t really add anything to the game. However Run speed was amazingly important and useful, and the Class specific abilities were also in my opinion a neat thing to shoot for. Just like Having certain high level spells drop off mobs rather than being available from a vendor, or requiring research, these abilities were something you had to put in time and prerequisites for. My free horse as a Shadowknight although the envy of many a caster, was frankly awesome and it kinda made sense (an unholy KNIGHT) same with paladin’s and their White Horse. Also improvements upon the Harm Touch via the AA system were awesome. So the class specific implementations were kinda cool but beyond that they were all a little stale.

As for full user created content beyond Velious, I think it would take WAY too much time and effort with the creation, debugging and implementation of a whole expansion. Although I for one would love to see Original content with the classic spirit, I have a feeling that taking the current content available (up through PoP at least) and tweaking it WITH user content and input we could make it as a community, as close to perfect as would be possible in a democratic-ish society. Many votes, many testings, and above all, there would be a LOT of donated hours and hard nights toiling away, basically taking on a second job for little to no pay other than our thanks and some recognition.

To summarize a little bit, as much as I would love original user content, I would also love to re-experience Luclin and Pop with a thriving population along with the tweaks to make it more of a Classic feel as well. And logistically speaking, doing it this way would be much simpler and have a much greater chance of success.

I am still in awe of Rogean, Nilbog, and others who actually had the drive and know how to implement these boon’s to gaming and the Classic Everquest community. We owe them all a debt of gratitude among other things, and they have enough on their plates with Classic, Kunark and Velious Coming out. If we were to build a larger team for the specific purpose of Developing content and/or doing what Nilbog and Rogean do, then we could discuss and plan what will happen after Velious. The present course with slight adjustment and retune’s seems to be the logical progression with our resources at hand.