so you guys are looking for EQ Minus....

[Kekephee]

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

I seriously doubt that selling or giving away lvl 85s with a subscription is motivated by the fact that the game doesn't start till 85. People just want that shortcut. We even saw it here, people would threaten to quit this server every time the issue of banning account sales got brought up because leveling up toons was too boring and they demanded the right to buy their lvl 60s instead of level them. But while the sales were allowed here the market was booming, people want that shortcut of getting to max level or a high level quickly, even here in our little "classic" corner of the internet.

The other thing they doing is the smart thing and taking control of a market that already exists, if SOE didn't let you create lvl 85s the Chinese gold farmers would be happy to step up and sell you one.

It's not so much that the game doesn't "start" until 85, it's that there's no point in doing any of it before that point except for sentimental value/fun. WoW is in the exact same place at the moment, and has done the same thing- they made it so you can get 1-80 in like three days, offered special deals where you could buy levels for your characters, that sort of thing. Because unless you get it in your head that you WANT to go and kill Ragnaros just for fun, there is 0 point in doing so. The gear is phenomenally obsolete- you can buy gear that's four times better from vendors in Mists of Pandaria for as much gold as it takes to buy like, a bag. But at level 80, you can just go solo him. So basically every second you spend not being level 80 you're immersed in trivial content that is completely meaningless- your gear is obsolete before you get it, there are very few people (in the case of wow very few, in the case of EQ NONE) who you can group with and kill with for levels, it's pointless. So you just jump to the first level that matters and save yourself the time and if you want to go back and kill some outdated content by yourself, it's open.


Can you imagine leveling 1-90 on EQ with no one to group with, knowing full well that every drop you get is absurdly underpowered for the next expansion that you reach? You hit level 60 and it's like, ok, well, I am shamefully underequipped to kill planes of power mobs because I never got to raid or kill any interesting group mobs because I've been solo this whole time... that'll be interesting. Ok, now I'm level 70, and the same thing applies for Gates of Discord (in fact, moreso) man I'm screwed.

My paladin was 65 when I reactivated a couple years ago to see what was up. I had to solo to 70 on mobs that I couldn't solo because I was in PoP gear and the GoD gear was psychotic, but I couldn't get my hands on any of it because I was solo. It was this horrible Kafkaesque clusterfuck of exp grinding and I made it like three levels before I gave up and said I'm never coming back.

[kaev]

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

Can you imagine leveling 1-90 on EQ with no one to group with?

:foreveralone: [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Valdarious]

It is one of the main reasons I like the earlier levels and I don't race to get there. I know I am a minority when it comes to MMO's in this fashion but that is the good thing about choice. One of the reasons I like p99, I can level with other people that are messing around with alts or new people coming back.

[Velerin]

Probably the thing I like best on p1999 and why I play here is no boxing (and no mercs). Anything else I could deal with. Keeps the game social. Yes, sometimes it can be a pain to find a group..but even worse if people are boxing, in which case forces you to box and perpetuates the problem.

[iruinedyourday]

The very idea that someone is looking at my character and my sweet gear, and what they see is luclin models, makes me want to table flip...

P99 does have that problem but I'm going to tell myself only 1% of the server population has such bad taste.

[Byrjun]

Originally Posted by drew0987654 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

what is it about the Shadows of Luclin expansion you hate so much? the mobs, the environment, music, atmosphere, quests, the introduction of aa's, mounts, the nexus, the bazaar? you can't hate ALL of that... the aa's and bazaar are nice at least, right? what would it be, mainly? my guess is the nexus....

For the most part I didn't mind the moon "environment" that much. It wasn't a huge stretch as most people think, since the Shissar and the Combine living on Luclin was part of the original classic storyline. It was only a matter of time before EQ explored that portion of the lore.

The mobs for the most part were cool. The Shissar are probably my favorite race in the game. I hated the graphics update though, with the new models. Most of them were ugly and removed a lot of the original charm, but the real deal breaker was the animations. And then a lot of the NPCs started using the same system and everything had those weird creepy marble eyes.

A lot of zones were useless (Scarlet Desert), but some were really cool (Sanctus Seru). Fighting through this huge Roman city was awesome, the problem is no one ever really got to see it because there was literally no point to go there. How many people have even seen the huge gladiatorial colosseum in that zone?

AAs were great. Mounts were stupid because you had to use the new models, and I refused. The bazaar was ok but I prefer face to face trading and haggling.

Paludal was very damaging to the game because it forced every old world zone from level 10-20 to become deserted. And then people tended to move on to Netherbian Lair, Dawnshroud, etc. since they were close to Paludal, which made non-Luclin zones feel empty.

Ssra Temple is possibly the best raid zone of all time. It was the first time where raid encounters started to add some complexity outside of tank a mob while it AE damages everyone. It culminated with Emp Ssra, one of the most epic fights in MMO history.

The problem is that after Emp Ssra (and the most lengthy, frustrating quest until GoD's BiC) you gained access to Vex Thal, possibly the worst zone in the game. The fights took forever (even trash), everything was named the same, the zone rotated through about 2 models (4 armed alien dude and slime), and every single raid encounter was the same AEs over and over. It was complete garbage.

All in all, it was a mixed bag, but the ending was the worst so that's what a lot of people associate the expansion with.

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

I don't remember the specifics of where they placed the spots but they would all work like PoFear now. Basically a spot in a zone where there is a portal/item to click that brings you there if you meet the requirements. I want to say Bertoxxulolus realm was in Qeynos Sewers, in the suggestion? Rallos Zek's zone-in would be somewhere near the Ogre homeland, perhaps inside the town? Etc for each of the individual planes.

Just about every unused zoneline in the game would make sense for planar access. There's an unused zoneline in Oggok for Rallos Zek, and one behind Yael in the Hole for Brell, in Qeynos Catacombs for Bertoxxulous, etc. It's too much of a coincidence to imagine that the original intent wasn't to have more planar connections to the old world eventually. Plane of Tranquility was a cop out.

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

That's a good suggestion Sirken, but i can see several issues by doing that.

If you skip Luclin and directly go to PoP, how do you fix the gear progression? Would it be possible to go from Velious gear and transition directly to PoP, hp/mana/dmg wise?

It's funny since one of the main criticisms of Luclin was the poor loot quality. There really wasn't much gear progression from Velious to Luclin outside of ATH and a few outliers. Vulak's loot was still better than the majority of Luclin, which is why they artificially increased the difficulty of the encounter via the ring event.

PoP attempted to address this complaint but they overshot it by quite a bit, so you had players going from stuff like Sprinkler of the Spirits or Mace of Confusion to Time's Antithesis, which is just an unfathomable power leap.

[bigshowtime]

P99 classic style

FFA pvp, with item loot

Active gms for hackin scum

Resist code and mitigation done correctly

Time appropriate progression (no 5 year long expansion etc)

[drew0987654]

woah, the whole power level difference is way exaggerated. look at original eq for example... the gear you get at lvl 1 is as much worse than the gear you get at lvl 50 as the gear you get at level 50 is from the gear you get at lvl 70, and it takes about as long to get from 1-50 as it does from 50-70 so it makes perfect sense. of course your gear is "obsolete" b4 you're even max lvl, I'd like it to always be obsolete compared to something... it's eq. you get better gear so that you can get better gear.... as soon as you have the best gear, I imagine you just reroll....

what do you guys do on this p99 server when you reach lvl 50(60 with kunark?) and acquire the best gear? there's no longer any way to improve w/o any aa's or achievements....

being "alone" is exaggerated as well, I was rarely alone while questing. I quit recently b/c I couldn't party with anyone b/c they were too powerful with their freely given aa's. if I was content with questing alone I wouldn't have quit, there were plenty of ppl my level and there would be more if there were no shortcuts.

and eq isn't great just b/c of antonica, there are over 900 zones now. over 100k trees! 20k spells! its land area is estimated at one third the size of texas! it's by far the biggest game ever made, the sheer magnitude is daunting.... that's what drew me back, just hearing those things I knew I had to see what I had missed out on. it's a shame so many of you can't appreciate all that content b/c of some silly models or b/c some insignificant portion of the playerbase multiboxes. it's sad that to over 70% of you, removing the hand-holding, freebies, and shortcuts wouldn't be enough....

and I can't believe not a single one of you knows of any guild that plays on an official server that doesn't allow mercs etc.........

[skulldudes]

biggest game ever made?

you better go look up daggerfall, bubby

[iruinedyourday]

Originally Posted by drew0987654 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

it's sad that to over 70% of you, removing the hand-holding, freebies, and shortcuts wouldn't be enough....

Never say its sad that somoeone cant enjoy one type of mmo becuse they enjoy a different type of mmo.

the only thing sad about any of this is that we dont go camping and build log cabins and stuff... we live under blankets and kill virtual ghosts and dont hang out with our friends IRL... you wana talk sad there is no, one person is sadder than the other here.

we are all less than zero here folks.

BUT I DONT GAF NORRATH FOR LIFE!

(classic Norrath, like the Karanas bro > all expansions)