Luclin

[Kika Maslyaka]

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

I like Kunark, but it is definitely a leveling expansion. If you're looking at it from the perspective of a level 60, it's a weak expansion. The top end is very shallow, and I'm not even talking about raiding here. Keep in mind that the majority of people in raiding guilds were not even 60 when Velious launched.

I know praising aspects of 'that game' is a big no-no around these parts, but I think vanilla WoW's model of travel was perfect. You had a system where you needed to travel somewhere first before you could use the painless 'quick' system. Travel still took time, and you physically flew over the terrain so the world did not lose its magnitude. Not to mention the scenery specifically designed for Griffin/Bat/Hippogryph rides. It even served as a money sink.

Players like a big world to travel in, but if the developers enabled binding in TD for a week, 90% of the server would be bound at firepots.

"I want other people to experience the world, but I will personally take convenience."

totally agree on all points.

re: Luclin - it wasn't all bad but it just wasn't thought out well.
Personally I would have:

1. picked a different theme (Shadow World that exists in paralel with normal world and has multiple points of entry, rather than the moon)

2. even if doing the moon, I would have avoided outright sci-fi themes like bogling aliens, neitherian aliens etc.

3. Would not put insane XP modifiers on newbie zones, and would not offer so many new newbies zones to begin with - made the leveling up path just for Vah Shir, and make the rest of expansion in the high end. It was pretty clear that only 1-30 zones on Luclin were mostly in demand, and then most of 40-60 zones were majorly empty, except the raiding parts.

4. general level lay out of the zones was poor. Take Twilight Sea - its a 35-45 zone that is located in between of 3 45+ zones - how would you ever get there if you were 35? WHY would you go there?

5. Vex Thale - the end game zone was beautiful , but time sink to key for it, and play in it was retarded. I don't mind hard questing. I don't mind hard raiding. But what I do mind is retarded endless camp grind of of lev 20-40 mobs for some stupid shard, when I am lev 60. What they should have done instead is spread the shard between 10 RAID target mobs located all over Luclin which would be hard to kill (50+ raid force) but would have a 24 hours repop. It would have been much more reasonable.

Good points:

1. Vah Shir
2. Beastlords
3. Spell updates to sucky classes like Rangers and Paladins
4. SSRA - next level of smart raiding content
5. Spires! (yes! spires!)
6. Bazaar!
7. Mounts! - however I would have made it so you cannot fight/cast from mount - so they are for travel only
8. New Models - I liked majority of new models, and disliked some of them, but model point being moot, since you can turn them off.

[Ryba]

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

Luclin ended up being a really solid expansion - it just sucked at first. Anyhow, long post incoming.

I'd go as far as to say the modrod change was the greatest change to raiding in EQ's history. If you have never raided Velious or Luclin before the change - you basically have magicians face a wall and throw 100s of modrods to the floor so the CHeal rotating clerics never go OOM as your DPS autoattacks whatever bad dude that can't possibly kill your tank getting CHealed every 2 seconds. Post rod change, everything got huge HP nerfs and modrods received a cooldown.

Bazaar > EC. I guess there's some people that enjoy the people aspect of EC, but I liked being able to PvP (arena in bazaar) while buying/selling. I enjoyed being able to leave a second account online selling stuff, but I'm someone who would rather play outside of EC.

The whole cats on the moon thing is overblown since Shar Vhal is way the fuck in the middle of no where. I think I went there twice over my entire course of EQ live.

The spires shrinked the world, but using them was still far less desirable than getting a port. It took up to 30 minutes to go from one limited destination to another.

Like every expansion, itemization was fucked at first, but ended up being great. The AC/HP/Mana difference between Luclin and Velious was very small, but the difference was focus effects, more available ATK gear, and more FT gear. Basically, gear became a lot more attractive for non-tanks. Contrast this to Kunark where I choose to gear my 5th alt over my main because a Crude Stein at 20pp is 95% as effective as an Insignia Protector at 150k.

The concept of elemental and bane damage is interesting, but never fully realized. Elemental damage was generally regarded as 1/3rd as effective as weapon damage; however, the aggro per swing of elemental damage is the same as weapon damage. In other words, they could have made proc-less weapons desirable by tanks but not DPS.

Luclin started to modernize raids. You started to see encounters that weren't just a hitbox with an AOE. I posted about this before, but I think the reason Velious encounters are so well received compared to the more complex Luclin encounters has to do with the NPC models being the same and the bleaker environment. If you're not sold on that idea, go look at how well Gates of Discord was received from an aesthetic standpoint.

SSra Temple was one of the better raid zones EQ ever put out. Every encounter there was quality with the exception of Xerkizh the Creator who was basically a Velious-era fight carried over.

I never did Acrylia 1.0 outside of the Ring of Fire and Burrower. Ring of Fire was an amazing fight when it actually worked. I think only Ring of Valor ever ended up doing Inner Acrylia. There was the whole Grimling War raid that never got done much until EQmac years later.

Vex Thal was a huge disappointment outside of the loot. I'll give this point up to the Luclin haters. So. much. trash. The zone was pretty, the loot was awesome, and blinding Eoms were hilarious, but still a piece of shit zone.

Toward the end of Velious, you started to see a return to groupable gear not being terrible with the revamp of Chardok. This continued in Luclin and probably culminated with the revamp of Cazic Thule. Cazic Thule post-revamp was fucking awesome as an exp zone.

AAs give people progression outside of gear (raiding).

And for the first time in EQ's history, the developers tried to give a fuck about balance. Druids become ok again, rangers stop sucking, paladins get something to do on raids, mages stop being vending machines, necros become a real DPS class, wizards stop sucking in sustained fights, etc.

Luclin, fuck yeah.

I'm glad I read some of this thread or I would have wasted time typing out pretty much this exactly.

And t0lkien: I usually agree with your posts, but your opinion-- "Luclin *did* break the game, in so many ways, and it has been pointed out in many threads before this" --is still just an opinion, even if it is dressed up like an absolute statement. In fact, a lot of evidence points to Luclin being a profitable and well received expansion. Was everyone who played it foolishly deriving pleasure from a broken game?

Luclin had a bunch of shit in it, but so did EQ classic. Everyone is simply less critical of classic EQ because it was still establishing a baseline for how to think about MMORPGs. So we don't revile things like horrible melee itemization and class balance in classic because we thought that that's Just How It Is.

The whole point is moot because AAs were "gutted" from the code early on. But I would be much more enthusiastic about playing here if I knew the server would stop at PoP where raiding would open up once and for all. Quarm event is somewhat anticlimactic, but it does feel like it put SOME kind of a capstone on the game.

It is odd to me that some people don't see Luclin and PoP as adding anything worthwhile. Sony left the elf fantasy canon to do something original but flawed, and I think it is remarkable that they were able to release 4 playable expansions before coughing up the turd known as GoD. If we were taking sides, I would much rather hang out with the apologists than the purists. Nobody likes a hipster.

[Gadwen]

I had a ton of fun in Luclin and PoP era on Live. in hindsight yes, I enjoyed the classic era more...but a large part of that has nothing to do with the mechanics of the game itself. But when Luclin came out I don't remember thinking that the game was being destroyed, in fact I liked a lot of the features it brought to the game. Yeah the whole moon thing is kinda dumb and it could have used a little more time on the drawing board...but what stage of EQ couldn't have used a little extra dev time or a little more testing etc? But overall I enjoyed myself during Luclin, it never once prompted to me to write a dissertation on the downfall of EQ.

[Splorf22]

I'm told most people either think Velious or PoP was the high point of EQ. I'm curious why people hated whatever expac came after PoP (I quite on Live just after Kunark, so all these expacs are new to me)

[heartbrand]

I loved GoD because of the challenge it presented [even if it was unintentional], OOW was ok, I forgot what came next but if it was DoN I really hated that one, the ones with mayong were fine [DoDH/TBS], I thought PoR was good, TSS sucked imo, SoF was good, SoD good, UF real good, HoT lame.

[Thulack]

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

I loved GoD because of the challenge it presented [even if it was unintentional], OOW was ok, I forgot what came next but if it was DoN I really hated that one, the ones with mayong were fine [DoDH/TBS], I thought PoR was good, TSS sucked imo, SoF was good, SoD good, UF real good, HoT lame.

UF was GoD style hard and HoT was super easy. Thats why your opinions are that way lol.

[Borador]

Hot needs cold, happy needs sad, up needs down.

Original EQ had a lot of severe consequences. That ding when you level is certainly no musical masterpiece, but its significance of your accomplishment is what makes it the greatest sound you could ever hear.

We all love the features that make it easier, but they affect the long term enjoyment in a negative way. Unless of course you add new "features".

There was an article written a long time ago around PoP era regarding SOE subscribers/profits. A small % came from people actually logging in to play on a consistent basis, the majority came from new and super casuals.

[heartbrand]

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

UF was GoD style hard and HoT was super easy. Thats why your opinions are that way lol.

Ya UF was great I think we were 3rd to down TFC or w/e, it almost didn't die b4 the next expansion. Being flagged for the different tiers actually felt like an accomplishment in UF.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

shard camps. Vex Thal, aka candy land.

I liked Luclin. My guild rocked it, and we really pulled together to get to the imo well-designed end game of that expansion. But I agree with the sentiment, that it got unlocked way too early on the progression servers a couple years ago.

No problem with that happening here, of course. I'm guessing Luclin sometime around 2019. You know you want it.

[pasi]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm told most people either think Velious or PoP was the high point of EQ. I'm curious why people hated whatever expac came after PoP (I quite on Live just after Kunark, so all these expacs are new to me)

The first expansion after PoP was a cash grab for armor dye, charms, and bank slots.
The next expansion after PoP was predominately a grouping expansion that was incredibly casual friendly. The raids for it were ridiculously difficult for the rewards though.

The first 'true expansion' after PoP was Gates of Discord which most people attribute to the death of the game. Gates of Discord was intended for and tuned for level 70 characters, but the level cap was still 65. IMO, it was the first time in EQ that the game was actually difficult (and by difficult, I don't just mean very punishing for stupid mistakes like EQ up to then was).

Gates had awesome encounter design, but the content was completely overtuned and I think the expansion had only 6 or 7 different NPC models. Every zone also looked the same.

To give you a rough idea of how difficult the expansion was at release - take Uqua 1.0. For starters, the entire zone had an unresistable permanent AOE that reduced your base stats to 100ish. This was only blockable by archetype-equippable items that dropped 1 per trash mob. Each trash mob quadded for 3000 (what 72man raid bosses in the previous expansion hit for. This was in an era where top end warriors were 10k HP with the zone debuff. Every death in the zone spawned another trash mob that quadded for 3k. Now, you could single pull trash, but pulling was complicated in that mobs were spawned off traps rather than static spawns. The entire zone had a timer so you had to move at a certain pace. As time went on, NPCs got more ATK, HP, Armor, Resists, etc. And that's all before the first bosses of the zone.

Now, I'm sure people who never experienced it like the increased difficulty, but the game was bleeding subs and WoW was in beta at this time. The majority of the playerbase was basically confined to a few really shitty instances simply because they didn't have the gear to progress. If you look back at this time, you'll see most of the 'old uber' guilds died off around this time and there was a changing of the guard of top dog guilds.

Kinda sucked that Omens of War was such a great expansion since the damage from Gates had already been done.