So what happened in luclin-pop?

[Philss]

Short story : im an old mmo player started with ultima online late 90s but i wasnt able to play everquest because my computer couldnt run it and my parent couldnt affort a better one ( i was 15 when eq was released .)

Just started here and im having alot of fun .
So my question is , what changed so much in luclin pop? Why is p99 locked at velious?

I did read about the xp on wiki but id like some player perspective.

[Rygar]

A lot of people liked the Alternate Abilities in Shadows of Luclin, but I am in the minority there. I feel AA's ruined the game experience for me.

As if investing in equipment for your high level toon wasn't enough work, Alternate Abilities made you commit to your main level character even more. It completely demoralized me from making any alts because the idea of getting all those points was overwhelming.

I also recall the abilities making classes SUPER powerful. If you think racing to a dragon is stressful now, there became small groups of wizards that would use their Manaburn ability to in instantly destroy mobs like Gorenaire. Planes of Power added more levels and more powerful items and spells, as a result other mobs and zones could be farmed easier.

AoE groups stepped it up big time to get lots of AA points, if you think Chardok is bad now you ain't seen nothing yet. Some guilds wouldn't let you in for reaching max level, you needed like 120+ points or something ridiculous.

I never raided any of this content, so can't comment there, but I hear it helped spread raid targets to more guilds. On my server I remember Veeshan's Peak not even being farmed, zone was near perma empty.

I would have liked AA's more if they just kept the first level of the abilities, such as increasing some of your base stats, tradeskills, and run speed.

On current live its crazy, High Level + tons of AA's can let a cleric solo the Avatar of War. To me, that is just a sad day, that was never meant to happen. I think the line needed to be drawn somewhere between 'classic' and 'the new day of Everquest'. Velious is that perfect line in my opinion.

[Daldaen]

AAs are good for that very reason. There was a desire to continue playing your character at the max level. Even for inconsequential things like Innate Dexterity on a caster. To start out, really after the first about 80-100 AAs everything else was fluff. You'd get a few big key things like Mass Group Buff, Spell Casting Mastery, and a class specific thing here or there. After that they were largely irrelevant in Luclin and PoP.

AAs also provided balance to the game. Currently in Velious melee reign supreme. However once AAs come in casters can regenerate more mana, save more mana, and do more damage. It greatly leveled the playing field on the archetypal level. More specifically it brought balance to individual classes. Rangers got Archery Mastery/Endless Quiver to bring their bow DPS up to par with other melee DPS when discing Trueshot. Wizards got Critical Blasts / Quick Damage / Harvest of Druzzil greatly increasing their value to a raid. Etc. etc. while the very OP classes got some very good abilities but not ones such that they remained head and shoulders above the others.

PoP was probably the point in EQ when classes were the most balanced of any time in EQ for both the raid and group scene.

Luclin raids were very good. People unfortunately tend to only remember their bad experiences with them, typically that means Vex Thal. However they also tend to forget the very cool encounters in Ssra like the Emperor, Cursed Cycle, Rhags, Arch Lich and XtCreator. Each tested another aspect of your raid. Akhevan Ruins probably had the expansions single best raid though.

Shei Vinitras was a glorious event that far too many guilds avoided/didn't ever get to experience. Every 2 minutes he would DT your tank forcing a tank swap. Every 3-4 he would spawn 4 adds, mixes of mezzable non-slowable and slowable non-mezzable. Forcing you to CC with both your enchanters and your shaman + Paladin/Knight offtanks. The room would mana drain people who stood in the center so you had to be wise about your mob positioning. And the room would spawn an additional random add every death that occurred, preventing a Zerg style fight and encouraging solid play. This type of event is what separated EverQuest raids from all other MMOs for awhile until they started stealing from EQ. Too many people think EQ became more like other MMOs and that's false one regards to raiding. They made challenging raid content way before others and did it in many different ways.

A cleric on P99 could solo Nagafen right now if not limited by the banish effect. All raid mobs will fall eventually to solo artists, that's the nature of the game. As the game progresses you inevitably get more powerful while old content stagnates. Too much "back in my day" thought goes into the mysticism of raid boss power from when you remember it. It's like getting upset over your Commodore 64 not being the powerhouse it was 30-35 years ago.

[Naethyn]

AA's are the best thing to ever come out of Everquest. It allowed for character development outside of gear that persists through new expansions. Leave any other mmo for two years and you are completely behind. With AA's that is not the case.

ToV becomes a harder raid zone with rooted dragons and ring events. Luclin added a ton of fun and challenging events for all levels. The grimling wars are a good example of lower level fun content. It also much improved all of the tradeskill level up paths. Luclin is classic. Please Luclin!

[xexbis0]

Dald made a great post. I think the answer you are looking for with "why capped at Velious?" is stripping down Luclin and PoP to classic code would probably be an insanely stupid amount of work compared to what time the devs are willing to put in. Velious took 4+ years to come about, and that's pre-Daybreak. Velious is largely an extension of Kunark.

[Herp]

Nilbog plz...

[maskedmelon]

The old world became obsolete.

[Evia]

What changed?

Luclin brought AA abilities (which I loved, but some like above poster disliked), cats on the moon! updated graphic models (which look -ok- for the most part but have HORRIBLE animations which make them ugly imho), Also new race the Vah Shir (CATS!)

PoP imho was the shittiest expansion for the immersive gamer. It brought portal books which basically made the game feel instanced and single player. The huge, vast, expansive norrath was crushed with the PoP books. I could travel from odus to faydark in minutes. People argue "but ports are the same thing!" no, no they are not. Ports require me to get involved in our community and thus still keeps me immersed and in the game world. Clicking a book just de-valued everything EQ was.

HOWEVER supposedly PoP had the greatest raiding but I never experienced any of it at the time. So I can't speak for that. PoP books though sucked.

[Rygar]

I respect what everyone says in terms of AA's balancing classes and reasons to play your mains, like I said, I know I'm in the minority here. For me, a lot of those things should have been done via patching or trainer points and not spending months and months grinding AA's to balance out your character only once you reach end game level.

I just had that nasty feeling looking at my AA screen, adding up how much time I'd need to spend to get all those points. It made the game feel like a grind / time sink more than ever.

[Spyder73]

I have a theory on this, and it has to do with the gaming climate of the era. Back in 1999 you had 2 options – Ultima Online or Everquest. Both games became massively popular and were generating HUGE revenue streams that gaming developers realized could be exploited…thus the age of the MMORPG was born. Around the PoP era EQ had devolved into a MASSIVE time sink (it still is) that very much was about exclusiveness. The casual player was all but relegated into obscurity. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel, new games similar to EQ were being developed. Soon we had the releases of Asheron’s Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Final Fantasy XI, multiple Ultima Online X-pacs, Shadowbane, EVE, Starwars Galaxies, Lineage, Horizons….All of a sudden gamers had TONS of options, and Everquest all of a sudden became synonamous with the “Obese basement dwelling man child” that we like to make fun of on these forums all too often.

So when the “new” wore off these new games and people tried to go back to EQ, they found the land of Norrath COMPLETELY different than when they left…Cats on the moon, AA’s, Plane of Knowledge, OMGERD – WHAT HAPPENED!!@!@!#????

So it is my contention that why people here love Velious so much is noting but a symptom of “good ole days” syndrome from when they remember actually enjoying EQ before they left to another game.