Fresh pure classic server opinion?

[ScottBerta]

I’d play up to Kunark or keep it as is.

[Gustoo]

Kunark and Velious are both part of the original vision. It doesn't change the fact that the whole game progression doesn't line up. Kunark obsoletes 90% of old world and Velious kinda does the same thing again except mostly for high end gear.

I think the Kunark -> velious is less world breaking than Vanilla -> Kunark

Except level 60 pvp guys seem to think that PVP gets messed up in Velious because there is just too much +10 all stats items for everyone to wear and the balance between normal people and day-job-raiders gets kinda broken.

[oldschoolguy]

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

Kunark and Velious are both part of the original vision. It doesn't change the fact that the whole game progression doesn't line up. Kunark obsoletes 90% of old world and Velious kinda does the same thing again except mostly for high end gear.

I think the Kunark -> velious is less world breaking than Vanilla -> Kunark .

i think so too. At least Kunark to some degree has factions that matter, although most are useless... (no value in being friends with goblins for example). In Velious your diety is irrelevant, your race is irrelevant... it obsoletes main RP aspect of classic.

I still prefer classic over kunark personally though. just has a better feel, and the difficulty is higher. Kunark brings epics which is nice, but also some very crazy gear for just about every class in every slot. that's the part I think I don't like about Kunark, the obsoletion.

[Jibartik]

I like the zones, lore, and art in classic more than kunark, but the gameplay and loot in kunark is spectacular.

[Weekapaug]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeah but the point is kunark was originally planned to be included as the base game they just didn’t have enough time to get it done. I don’t think the fact that they eventually decided to charge for it is a good argument for treating it differently

Have a source for this?

[Weekapaug]

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

Kunark and Velious are both part of the original vision. It doesn't change the fact that the whole game progression doesn't line up. Kunark obsoletes 90% of old world and Velious kinda does the same thing again except mostly for high end gear.

I think the Kunark -> velious is less world breaking than Vanilla -> Kunark

Been watching a lot of recent dev interviews lately and this is something a couple of of them gave talked about. One of them acknowledged that the jump in itemization was probably too pronounced, but it was balanced around the new content. Another mentioned that Kunark was originally supposed to be another 50 levels of content but there was an engine limitation that prevented them from going beyond 60 so they had to compress it all down to 10 levels. He noted that the spells you otherwise would have gotten about every 5 levels you got every level instead.

Funny thing about that is, from a business standpoint, it probably worked very well. I was in lower guk on bertoxx the night before Kunark went live and it was packed. Everybody who had been playing plus people who'd taken a break all back jazzed for the new content with everyone chatting about it in ooc. There was a minority but not small number of people insisting that it was not going to be a big deal and they were saving their money. After a week of Gem Encrusted Rings falling from the sky you heard none of that again. You might run into someone waiting because of performance issues or something, but nobody took a pass on anything related to content once word got out about the loot that was dropping, much less showing up in EC tunnel.

What's really funny is more than one of these devs said that the original bar for success was considered 75k players sustained for a year then they expected to just be making a new game. Then, with Kunark, that was going to be the expansion then they were going to make a new game.

That mudflation sells game and expansion boxes tho, evidently.

[A Knight]

I started with Kunark and enjoyed it a lot. I would have to enjoy all my spoiledness in Kunark, before I go back to being a neanderthal and hunting mammoths.

It's like Aoe 2, and Aoe 1. Aoe 2 is more controlled, fair, and advanced, so it feeds that need of a new game. But now I love Aoe 1, because it's a legit lack of control game.

I just need to finish Kunark for a while longer.

(Also, Kunark could just be better. I won't know until I get bored of it, and want to try classic only.)

[7thGate]

I will say, Kunark feels really good when its played without using the items to twink. As part of a natural progression where you get your items by questing or camping them Kunark becomes a small upgrade instead of an enormous one because most of the really good stuff doesn't become available until a lot later. Its still a boost; stuff like a Goblin Backstabber is like fourth best in slot if it was in classic and is doable in your 30s, but its not jarringly off like passing down Seb or KC items to a level 1.

There's a lot of good progression quests in Kunark and a lot of neat lore and environments around all of the dungeons there. Was a very good experience leveling up in ALS crawling through mid level Kunark dungeons and old world quest locations alike for upgrades.

[pogs4ever]

if the original trilogy could be tweaked where tradeskills could present a reasonable alternative gearing path, i think it would be quite fun.

I always felt the tradeskills updates were always several months behind relevance.

[cd288]

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

Have a source for this?

I was trying to find some of the statements old EQ devs have made about it, but haven't yet. The PC Gamer article from the anniversary makes brief reference to it:

"Unable to match their initial scope for Norrath, continents and a few features were trimmed from the original release."

I've definitely seen devs say they had hoped to have Kunark in there by launch. Granted, was it the same Kunark that happened with the expansion? Probably not. I'm assuming there are items and some quests and things that were thought up in the time between launch of the original game and Kunark that weren't conceived of back in 1999. But I know there have been devs who said they were working on the lore and continent of Kunark and just didn't have the time to be able to fully focus on it and get it done by launch of the original base game, so they used that as the first expansion. There's other evidence I remember seeing, such as statements from Brad early on in EQ development saying the world is going to be 5 continents at launch (which would seem to indicate Velious was considered too). For Kunark, various Kunark factions were already included in the original game and you could affect them via killing certain mobs etc.; the lore was already partially built into the base game and certain NPCs will reference it if you talk to them, parts of quests were built in as well. But again as I said I think the Kunark we got was very different (especially with things like graphic detail and itemization) from the Kunark that was originally planned for base game launch.

Separately, there's also a sign in Erudin I think it is about boat passage to Velious that was there prior to the expansions launching, but that's not really the same thing because I haven't seen anything that said Velious was also included in the original launch plan besides the statement I referenced from Brad above.