Adding the Planes of Power in to the original trilogy

[Shadey]

Now to address something that will be a huge problem with skipping Luclin.

NO player geared with the best that Velious has to offer will be able to survive a PoP raid encounter in a normal raid setting. No guild will be able to do this without throwing massive amounts of people at the mobs (i'd say 150+ in raid).

The only way to accomplish this will be to dumb down the encounters to a point where its not PoP anymore.

[Kika Maslyaka]

well, with fully NTOV and ST geared raid, specially some of that amazing gear dropping off Boss of NTOV - Vulak`Aerr - you CAN do PoP tiers 1-3 - my guild did them on live

but you will NEVER make it past RZ without Ssra/VT gear

[Shadey]

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

well, with fully NTOV and ST geared raid, specially some of that amazing gear dropping off Boss of NTOV - Vulak`Aerr - you CAN do PoP tiers 1-3 - my guild did them on live

but you will NEVER make it past RZ without Ssra/VT gear

Aye. I was thinking past the beginning easy mobs. should have specified. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Still the point is skipping some content is fine sure. Skipping an entire expac will not work unless you dumb things down.

I knew of a few guilds that skipped VT entirely and just farmed SSRA and zone bosses and then moved to PoP. Now i'm not saying leave VT out as they did have a hard time of it a bit till they got more of the new PoP gear farmed from the lower tiers. VT is a great zone.

[semadurgun27]

Nice share boss...

[falkun]

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

Aye. I was thinking past the beginning easy mobs. should have specified. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Still the point is skipping some content is fine sure. Skipping an entire expac will not work unless you dumb things down.

I knew of a few guilds that skipped VT entirely and just farmed SSRA and zone bosses and then moved to PoP. Now i'm not saying leave VT out as they did have a hard time of it a bit till they got more of the new PoP gear farmed from the lower tiers. VT is a great zone.

You can skip from Velious to PoP. If guilds get decked out in max Velious gear prior to PoP, they will stomp on the first 2 tiers. Then they will settle into Tier3 for a while gearing up on ornate patterns before making the push into T4 (Elemental planes). A gear block is almost a good thing, hell, take a look at the velious armor tiers. Most guilds will generally start out on the inferior dwarf armor before moving to dragon and finally to giant (I think that's the right order). Now the top guilds might have the gear to be able to skip the dwarf tier, but they will have to decide between the giant and dragon armors. This will be a good thing as not everyone will be fighting for the same raid content (which isn't instanced). This gear discrepancy will filter guilds to different bosses.

[Dumesh Uhl'Belk]

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

3 problems:

1.the sun doesn't move in Luclin zones - will have hard time explaining that if its another continent
2. no luclin models is non enforceable - once expansion is enabled, anyone can activate them
3 kerran models - its impossible to just force them onto players, unless you use a perl script to keep them under illusion effect all the time- they also won't have any armor textures. On other hand, there are dumb down vah shir models in style with old ugly models [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

1. See number 3 in my list.

2. True enough, this list ended up being an odd hybrid of "what I would have done" + "what might could be done with the emu"

3. see #2. Although I imagine the model could be put in the global file and textures could be created by the community and shared.

[Dumesh Uhl'Belk]

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

Updated Char models were awesome! No more square heads and bodies. YAY!

Matter of opinion certainly. There are many of us that disagree. Also, it marks a clear line of departure from the classic look.

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

I'd leave the cats like they are. Don't like the Kerrans any better then the Vah Shir prob less as they look like funky starwars wookie (spelling) rejects with cat heads.

again, matter of taste. I prefer the classic look and a tighter integration with classic lore.

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

Don't mind the idea of another continent though.

Room for agreement after all.

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

Bazaar was there but not implemented for use (seen this on a number of threads and number of times here). Guess you all don't remember that. EC was alive and flowing during ALL of luclin. LOL

Yes, it took a while, but the bazaar did go live about 3 months before PoP was released. In any event, I don't want it.

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

Leave the raid content as is. Why mess up something that is GREAT already. VT was a great raid zone, just time consuming.

I liked many of the raid encounters in Luclin, especially Ssra temple. However, I was approaching this more from a desire to revamp the lore to avoid aliens and anything that looked too divergent from original Norrathian biology. Shissar are cool. Xin Thall Centiens, Netherbians, and Ahkevans are all a bit weird.

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

the rest isn't so bad and wouldn't destroy the expac. (IF all zones are still there and connected in the same way).

Mostly, i suppose if I went through it with a fine tooth comb, there might be one or two alterations I'd make to make sure it seemed like a continent with some subterranean areas and not the moon.

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

Oh and I don't think the spires were a big deal. It added a little convenience for those that didn't have a way to be ported around or didn't want to pay for ports. While not giving access to every single zone in the game (there were only one on each continent). And thats if you waited for the spire to take you up and then again to take you back down. Not much different then the boat ride imo in terms of time spent.

Sorry man, I'm big on in-game geography. I love for things that are far away to be... far away. I much prefer boat access. There would still be the port spells to the nexus, and the other port spots, was it scarlet desert and where else? anyway, I'd add combine portal and druid circle art assets to those zones to unify the theme and reason for ports existing in the first place.

[Jave]

Originally Posted by Dumesh Uhl'Belk [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Luclin had great potential, but ultimately it was a bomb in my eyes, and I would definitely mark it as the beginning of the end in terms of gameplay and story elements that I enjoyed.

How I would remake Luclin to make it fit classic EQ...

1. It's not on the moon, it's another continent on the far side of Norrath. These are already known to exist form the globes in Skyfire.

2. No aliens, netherbians are gone, 4 arms are gone, grimlings are reflavored as a different kind of gnome/goblin hybrid or something, or just replaced with an existing race.

3. The sky in all outdoor zones is replaced with the standard Norrath sky.

4. NO NEW CHARACTER MODELS.

5. Kitty city is still Kitty city, but they are Kerrans, and Kerrans are now playable... include lore about their ancestors flight from Erudite persecution.

6. Massively expand the backstory and faction dynamics between Katta and Seru, re-write a stronger tie in to the lost Combine empire. Velious style armor and or weapon quests with the opposite city as a raid/xp zone in the style of Skyshrine vs Kael Drakkel.

7. reflavor thought horrors as being servants of Cazic and/or Terris Thule, possible entry point for plane of torment if we wanted to go farther...

8. No bazaar

9. No automatic portals from old world

10. borrow another zone to connect to Shadow Haven that has docks and run a boat from there to stonebrunt mountains... and release warrens + stonebrunt

11. not entirely certain what I would do with Vex Thal yet.

Good ideas but HOLY COW. Talk about massive expectations from our VOLUNTEER dev team. That would take YEARS and many thousands of hours to do all that. Lets take your ideas and simplify them a bit[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

EDIT: I couldn't stand Luclin anyway. I vote skip it.

[Shadey]

Originally Posted by Dumesh Uhl'Belk [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Matter of opinion certainly. There are many of us that disagree. Also, it marks a clear line of departure from the classic look.

For me and many others Luclin is considered classic and prior to the ruining of EQ by SOE. and the Char models were part of that. And yes is a matter of opinion. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[/QUOTE]again, matter of taste. I prefer the classic look and a tighter integration with classic lore.[/QUOTE]

Had no problem with the lore change for the most part. Was mostly speaking to the funky looking wookies with cat heads idea. Which was bad IMO. And i'm sure others would agree.

[/QUOTE]Yes, it took a while, but the bazaar did go live about 3 months before PoP was released. In any event, I don't want it.[/QUOTE]

I stand corrected. It was right before PoP was released. Looked up the patch history and verified. I could swear it was with or after PoP though. heh.

[/QUOTE] I liked many of the raid encounters in Luclin, especially Ssra temple. However, I was approaching this more from a desire to revamp the lore to avoid aliens and anything that looked too divergent from original Norrathian biology. Shissar are cool. Xin Thall Centiens, Netherbians, and Ahkevans are all a bit weird.[/QUOTE]

Same could be said about other mobs in what you consider classic that are not classic D&D type monsters. Though these were a bit more weird yes. heh. But I they fit well into what the xpac was, based on the moon above Norath.

[Kika Maslyaka]

Originally Posted by Dumesh Uhl'Belk [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

1. See number 3 in my list.

2. True enough, this list ended up being an odd hybrid of "what I would have done" + "what might could be done with the emu"

3. see #2. Although I imagine the model could be put in the global file and textures could be created by the community and shared.

1 - not going to work - sky textures have NOTHING to do with day/night changes. You can put any sky texture you like - the SUN WILL NOT MOVE - the zones will be perma locked into a specific time of day - its hard coded into a client

3. well you could replicate kerra model on top of a vah shir model - but this change would be totaly voluntary, as you can't force players to use it [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]