The Bazaar of Nexus/Luclin

[Striiker]

The bazaar was great in my opinion. I could put stuff up for sale and go to bed. I didn't have to haggle over pricing, I could find cheap items and could sell stuff that I can't be bothered to sell in EC. I have very little play time and I don't want to spend that time siting in EC. I just wind up with bags of stuff in my bank which I either sell or give away. Bazaar didn't kill the game. The thing which killed the game was the expansion which housed the Bazaar zone.. PoP. The PoK books shrunk the world down. That plus adding zone with insane XP (Paludal Caverns on Luclin comes to mind) really made a ghost town of the classic starting zones.. Luclin was the start of the decline with the Nexus. It shrunk the world down too much.

[astuce999]

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

The bazaar was great in my opinion. I could put stuff up for sale and go to bed. I didn't have to haggle over pricing, I could find cheap items and could sell stuff that I can't be bothered to sell in EC. I have very little play time and I don't want to spend that time siting in EC. I just wind up with bags of stuff in my bank which I either sell or give away. Bazaar didn't kill the game. The thing which killed the game was the expansion which housed the Bazaar zone.. PoP. The PoK books shrunk the world down. That plus adding zone with insane XP (Paludal Caverns on Luclin comes to mind) really made a ghost town of the classic starting zones.. Luclin was the start of the decline with the Nexus. It shrunk the world down too much.

You've contradicted yourself a couple times there. You talk about how you have little time to play, and that bazaar was a great convenience and that you didn't want to spend time sitting in EC.

Then you mention that what killed the game was the PoK books (people didn't want to spend time waiting on boats or looking for ports), and you also mention zones with insane xp (people didn't want to spend time in the low levels).

The same argument is used in all three situations, but in the first you mention it as a good thing, and the other two as a bad thing.

To me, they're all bad things. There are two things that made everquest great, community and difficulty. Anything that entrenches on those two aspects kills the game.

Community is having to interact with other players. It has a lot of aspects (i.e. grouping, trading, competing for limited resources, showing off, chatting, raiding, and the illusion of distance).

Difficulty also has a lot of aspects like being limited on what you can kill because of level, class, skill, gear, numbers. It can also mean being limited on where you can go because of level, travel time, or dangers along the way. It can also mean being limited on what you can acquire because of level, distance to the trading zone, availability of items in said trading zone, and time you're willing to devote to trading items.

In every expansion since Velious, at least one aspect of community and difficulty was negatively effected, and this is why people didn't like them and thought it killed the game.

For example, in Luclin, the Nexus zone attacked both the community and the difficulty of the game. It created a hub where all races could bank and bind, and had portals from the 4 corners of the world that all lead there. It became almost stupid to be bound anywhere else.

If the nexus had been mutiple zones from multiple areas on luclin, and that the nexus portal required you to wait for the spaceship, and that once on the spaceship it took 15 mins to get to luclin, and that no one else could enter the spaceship while it was on the way to the moon, and that the zone the spaceship traveled was a real zone and not just the nether, then it would have had a shot.

I have lots more to say about this, but I have to go to work,

cheers!

[Odeseus]

As someone else has said, the bazaar took the human element out of the equation. I have no problem with the fact that it made things easier. But you couldn't haggle over prices because everyone was AFK. You couldn't trade items because they were AFK. You couldn't keep a higher price on an item hoping the other person with the item would go to bed. You were forced to put the rock bottom price down, and then wait 5 mins to see you get undercut and your item doesn't sell.

People got very rich by playing with how it worked. They could drive down prices by posting it at a low price, then buy up the now greatly discounted items as others reacted to you. Then selling them at a monopoly price. Or by constantly searching to catch errors (like someone forgot a 0, so a 1k item is listed at 100pp) and taking advantage of it.

[Knightmare]

I kind of hated Luclin personally, and left shortly after PoP was released. And I was one of those 2 boxers who had a character online in the Bazaar and one to play on. It wasn't just the Bazaar.. it was shoddy lore, silly changes and then the later effect the Bazaar had on the economy.

Luclin began the trend of instant self-ports, which would be carried farther in PoP and was really annoying to the 2 porting classes.

The Shissar. A mighty, enslaving, god killing race long thought dead is found alive on a far away moon. Not conquering the race that was there but rather hiding in a locked atmosphere-free zone out of pure fear. Oh right.

The Bazaar itself:

First, what made EQ so great then is the same thing that makes P99 great right now: personal contact with players. Beyond just grouping. You could avoid groups by soloing, but if you wanted to buy/sell anything decent, you had to make contact with people. Yes there are some jerks, but mostly, good people. It encouraged contact, like any good MMO should. The Bazaar began a rift in the personable economy that gave rise to such impersonal things as the modern WoW Auction House. An MMO in which you need no personal contact? Why even call it an MMO?

Second. In any game that releases expansions there is a degree of "mudflation". This is where old items drop drastically in value. However because the Bazaar changed the entire way the player driven economy worked, it caused an unbelievable amount of mudflation. In fact it was so drastic that the term became popularized because of the Luclin expac release..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudflation

And this is why so many people are against, and hate it. Myself included [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Felizcat]

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

Second. In any game that releases expansions there is a degree of "mudflation". This is where old items drop drastically in value. However because the Bazaar changed the entire way the player driven economy worked, it caused an unbelievable amount of mudflation. In fact it was so drastic that the term became popularized because of the Luclin expac release..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudflation

And this is why so many people are against, and hate it. Myself included [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'll take this statement with a grain of salt. And I fear the wikipedia article might not be fully accurate, either. Mudflation is not caused by new expansions, accelerated, yes, but not caused. Primary cause is, that unlike in a real world economy, goods are produced (looted) but they never disappear. You may sell them at a vendor, but you still get money for them. The impact of consumables like food, arrows and potions is minimal. Making tradeskill armor helps somewhat, since the money that needs to be paid for the materials is non-trivial.

Thus, the more hours people put into the game plus the more people play, the larger the amount of money that is generated gets. The amount of goods held by the players is limited by bank slots and other constraints. Thus, a lot of cash is available on the one hand, and a fixed or limited amount of goods on the other hand. That's inflation. The prices go up. The existence of a bazaar doesn't change anything in this equation.

But the Luclin horses do. There's now a way to dump a lot of money into. Which deflates the amount of available money and lowers prices somewhat. Of course it won't stop mudflation, because the item and plat drops keep producing money: 1 fine steel, 1 velium gets you 5plat. And nobody is using those anymore and they will be sold instantly. And the money bubble gets bigger.

In re-reading this post, it comes to mind that with Luclin also the number of available bank slots increased. Thus, more items could be stored in the bank and wasn't turned into platinum. Which has probably helped even more to keep mudflation at bay.

As an additional example, look at WOW. 5000 gold for fast flying. A money sink right there.

[Foxx]

bazaar is good for the economy and great for people who want to buy and sell things without sinking time into it

other than that, luclin is garbage... especially aa points, vah shirs, beastlords and just about every zone. one exception was paludal caverns, it was the #1 place to pk people on my twink delvl 24 sk on rallos zek, especially killing many other peoples twinks for A++ gear

[Kassel]

Luclin was "ok"

I liked:
Nexus Ports
Bazaar AFK selling and browsing.
AA points that where not super OP
Horses?

I Hated
New Graphics
CAT People
The Moon
Cats from the moon
Snakes
Bane weapon grinds
CAVES!!
Monks got nerfed -(

I dont think that Nexus ruined the scope and scale of the world, i do think that it was the slippery slope that lead to POK books.

[Grizlor]

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

I Hated
New Graphics
CAT People

Luclin models are to EQ what Male Draenei are to WOW

[Psionide]

I think the pinnacle of my frustration with luclin was when I saw netherbians.

[Ellia]

To avoid creating a new zone, the Arena could be used...pop an NPC vender and NPC Banker. Dervs could sill keep the Arena function, outside area for /bazaar.