Where did EQ Live go wrong?

[Swarws]

Vah Shir was a blunder.. AAs were Great. and PoP was the best expo in EQ.. Luclin as a whole was kinda shit.. If they skiped Luclin and went straight to PoP it would a been far better. The Flagging and raiding system in PoP was fantastic. It gave you a reason to keep revisiting old bosses and allowed for distinct separation between casual and hardcore players. Not to mention the fights started to become less tank and spank and more interesting and AAs were great. They allowed people to advance their character beyond just the level limit and allowed for some cool new skills to be put in. It was a great way for more casual players to have things to do besides raiding.

[Grozmok]

Don't get it twisted, I had a great time playing PoP.

[Nagash]

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

Luclin was the first mixed bag expansion. All of Kunark and Velious were generally entertaining, but with Luclin came the dumb cat race, the dumb bazaar, the dumb teleportation system, and dumb zones like Paludal and Vex Thal. I generally like it though because AAs were awesome and Ssra was when raiding really took off.

Planes of Power was the same way. Plane of Knowledge was retarded, but the raiding progression (minus the endless backflagging at first) was EQ at its finest.

I quit playing twice in GoD (original and first progression servers) because the theme of the expansion really nerfed my class (shaman). It's hard going from being slightly OP Kunark -> Velious to completely OP Luclin -> PoP to poor buff/heal bot in GoD. Shaman weren't nerfed directly, but the content shift to low hp high dps mobs doesn't mesh well with slows and insane mana regen. Compare that to a fight like Seru that can last 20-60 minutes, where a single shaman can heal the raid, cure curses, keep slow up, and still be on top of damage charts by the end. Also Uqua really crushed the spirits of any raiding guild I was in because it was just so damn hardcore. I still have a lot of respect for GoD because of just how difficult it was, but that expansion is still pretty much the end of EQ for me.

What class you played had a lot to do with it I think. You can't be a shaman and hate AAs because some of those abilities were completely game changing like Canni 5 which was like obtaining an FT200 item and Virulent Paralysis which let you solo literally any mob in the game that didn't summon.

Did you read my mind? You just wrote, almost word for word what I wanted to post. I was playing a shammy too and felt exactly the same way as you about this too.

[gloine36]

Biggest problem I had was the Internet connection and my own PC hardware. Dial up killed me more than anything in EQ, DAOC, and EQ2. I live in a rural area and we didn't get the speed to play MMO's well until 2007. I loved EQ right up until Luclin and then it faded for me because I had problems playing due to technical issues. I switched to DAOC which I thought was an outstanding game, but its first expansion ushered in the same technical problems again.
I really liked EQ2 but again, expansions and its video requirements ended up killing that game for me too. You really have no idea how much I like broadband unless you've played MMO's on dial up for a long time. That and having an improved PC helps. It may not be top of the line, but it plays games well.

[Grozmok]

^
That's a bummer, I was running DSL back in 1998.

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[Nirgon]

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

Cats on the moon

This and when they put PoK books in, oh and when you could use PoK to get to Nexus.

The world just felt small : / and beast lords were a bit short of how cool they could have been.

They needed to set up AA limits like in EQ2 for starters, I think.. or if you got certain AA's you couldn't get others? Or if you earned those AA's you could build saved sets of them to swap between every so often for free.

The arm chairing goes on and on, but the "when" question is answered with that I think.

[Grozmok]

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

This and when they put PoK books in, oh and when you could use PoK to get to Nexus.

The world just felt small : /

This.

That's the biggest issue I have with newer MMORPGs, everything is omg-impulse-ADD-personality-gotta-have-it-now-omfg get you there in a jiffy.

[Nirgon]

I mean getting "ported up to the moon" was OK, it could have been implemented better ....

But connecting it with PoK... woof.

It's funny too, Ssra temple was such a great raid zone but there were so many unused and pointless elements to Luclin... it was really just AAs, Ssra and VT for a WHOLE xpac..

Comparatively? Look at Velious.

[Edrick]

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

I mean getting "ported up to the moon" was OK, it could have been implemented better ....

But connecting it with PoK... woof.

It's funny too, Ssra temple was such a great raid zone but there were so many unused and pointless elements to Luclin... it was really just AAs, Ssra and VT for a WHOLE xpac..

Comparatively? Look at Velious.

Velious was incredible. I wish all EQ expansions had as much effort put into them as Velious seemed to have.

[Nirgon]

Well, the only way to go was up with their stats and they didn't retune the old encounters. Part of the magic I guess was lost when Trakanon started getting solod by druids and pallies for me.