Where did EQ Live go wrong?

[danceparty]

every time i would get my toon decently equipped with a current expansion's gear, then another expansion would come along and all my shit would be ghetto again. just got tired of the arms race. quit at towards the end of POP. ...looking forward to this server maxing at velious...gearing up with all the velious goodies and then just enjoying the content till for ever.

[Galelor]

GoD. shaman/druid/knights became almost obsolete. Raid encounters were fun after various retuning...

[Grozmok]

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

every time i would get my toon decently equipped with a current expansion's gear, then another expansion would come along and all my shit would be ghetto again. just got tired of the arms race. quit at towards the end of POP. ...looking forward to this server maxing at velious...gearing up with all the velious goodies and then just enjoying the content till for ever.

This.

This is pretty much the EXACT path I followed when I quit playing in 2004.

[Faisca]

Perhaps, in some cases, EQ Live didn’t go wrong at all.

After some time playing the same game people will get fed up with it eventually, and sometimes a change in the game, even if a small one can be the last drop in a full glass and an excuse to quit.

[Grozmok]

The problem, I think, is that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

In a group centric game like EverQuest, the model requires a constant influx of new players. New players have rely on the existence of other lower level players to group with (for the most part) or they're pretty much screwed. As the player base ages (meaning: gets to higher levels), typically there are not enough new players and alt characters for new players to group with.

This pretty much fucks the new players, giving them a poor experience which will only entice them to want to quit.

p1999 is no different. Playing my level 6 Necro, I found that there aren't enough players already exping in Befallen. That the best exp dungeon in the game, but no one is really doing it. So I can either find a new place to exp or try and get a group of my own together or form a 'PUG', which can be a bit of work. In the end, I had to get some friends together so we could do it. Bring your own group was pretty much the only feasible solution.

[eqravenprince]

All games - people will leave them at some point mainly due to needing a break.

Great games - people will come back to play.

Bad games - people will not come back to play.

With that being said, EQ was a great game up to Velious. It was no longer great with Luclin and Pop, wasn't bad, but wasn't great anymore. After PoP, the game just turned bad altogether.

[medievalerror]

I LOVED the Vah Shir, though yes it would have made more sense for them to start on Kerra Isle. Never did play Beastlord. That said, I HATED the Frogloks. Here's what they should've done: Instead of having them look so completely different than the old school froggies, they should have given you the option of playing one looking like the older frogloks (e.g., old graphics vs. Luclin). Second, rather than having them start in Rathe Mountains or taking over Grobb, they should have started in the Froglok city that was in Swamp of No Hope (or did anything good drop there? IDK).

[Lenowill]

It got ready to jump the shark when Luclin launched, then actually jumped the shark after PoP was done.

As I understand it, PoP was kinda-sorta designed to be "the end" of EverQuest, with the intent being that people would then move on to the up-and-coming EverQuest II. I don't know if that's a fact or not, but it seems to be true, given just how "end-game" PoP felt. It was a fitting conclusion to what had led up to it. Both in terms of Lore and Gameplay, Plane of Time felt like the final zone of EverQuest, and Quarm felt like the final boss.

I think, after that, the game pretty much jumped the shark. I loved a lot of EQLive content after PoP (LDoN and DoN are two of my favorite expansions, about as near to my heart as Kunark is) but it really did become a totally different game from then onward. The high-end focus, gear resetting, and endless streams of new (and often not that useful) AAs turned the game into an increasingly silly grind and arms race, as others have noted.

Of course, Luclin laid the groundwork for a lot of the "endgamey" changes that would be consummated in PoP (AAs, travel made easier for unsociable players, the Bazaar).

Personally, I feel like the original trilogy is indeed a good "stopping point" for this server. Velious era was a solid game that still felt cohesive, and wasn't setting up for drawing the game and its world toward some epic conclusion. So I support that notion.

I'd also like to eventually see a server that used Luclin as a stopping point, though, and perhaps one that used PoP/LoY/LDoN as a stopping point as well. There are several good "stopping points" in EQ's history - points when the game's flavor was fairly cohesive and sensical.

[Craigmandu]

The expansion Luclin is what started EQ down the road of no longer being the dangerous, exciting and high risk game that it started out as.

PoP further relished Kunark/Velious completely obsolete, as players in the upper level range but not quite yet at the highest level, simply piggy backed in the starter planes for the great xp and the easy items that outshined even some raid items in previous expansions.

Since EQ is going F2P, I started a trial account to see how the start of EQ is now. Made an iksar SK and literally went from 1-19 in about 4 hours...it felt cheapened and the starter items were better than endgame items in the kunark/velious era. It just feels cheap and easy now. I liked it much better when Velious was the endgame.

[fischsemmel]

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

1-19 in about 4 hours

and I think most people on live right now would laugh at that for being slow.