When did Everquest start to really decline in quality of experience?

[Toxigen]

When I hit 60 on my first character.

[Mblake81]

Ere come the hot steppah.

[OuterChimp]

wohurdah uhhpp

[XeroKill]

Planes of Power is what killed it for me. I was a raid leader in a progression guild on Morell Thule, and the flagging process of POP damn near destroyed our guild. Ultimately they survived and still raid on live to this day, but there is no one left from the original guild that stuck together through Vox / Naggy Classic Planes, Sky, VP, NToV / AoW / ST, Emp / Seru / VT and all the way to PoTime Phase 3.

The PoP raid progression system was the absolute worst mistake EQ ever made. It was so frustrating because the way the planar progression worked you inevitably ended up with a large number of veteran raiders that were twiddling their thumbs while we waited for the more casual elements to catch up. A number of the veterans that were ready for Elemental Gods or PoTime would quit or jump ship because they were tired of waiting, forcing us to recruit, forcing us to backflag and re-gear new recruits, which lead to more veterans getting burnt out, which lead to... you see how this went? We did this for about a year, just back and forth between being on the verge of breaking PoTime Phase 4 and having to go back to killing Grummus and Terris Thule.

Although it is my personal favorite fight, ultimately I think it was Xegony that killed my gaming days in EQ. I spent more time and energy trying to bring that bitch down and every failure would frustrate our team that much more. The more people left, and new people had to fill the ranks, the harder she became. She was the pinnacle of raid content in my opinion. Her event was perfection in my eyes. Anyone that has fought her knows just how intense that raid can be, especially in the early days before CoTH bots at the rainbow and most of your raid in full elemental / time equipment. All the other gods were a joke compared to her.

Rathe Council was difficult, don't get me wrong, but it was difficult because it was either bugged or so highly over tuned (I forget which) that I think only 1 or 2 guilds managed to down them before the nerfs. Even after the nerfs, they were a significant hurdle... but if you could down Xegony cleanly, then the nerfed version of Rathe Council was actually quite easy by comparison. It was just tedious and most of what caused wipes were small mistakes piling up as the event slogged on. We only had two kinds of wipes on Rathe Council. We either fucked it up within the first 10 minutes with bad pulls or it was right at the end when the last 1 or 2 were being brought down. By that point you were spread so thin that even the smallest mistake could snowball out of control. However, with Xegony every moment was on the verge of disaster no matter how well things were going. Any one small thing could quickly end an otherwise perfect execution.

But yea, for me, it was Planes of Power and their progression system that cashed in my chips. I think POP is both the best expansion in terms of how raids were tuned to be mechanical and not just HP sponges like VT / Seru, and also the worst expansion thanks to flagging.

[Barik]

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

Planes of Power is what killed it for me. I was a raid leader in a progression guild on Morell Thule, and the flagging process of POP damn near destroyed our guild. Ultimately they survived and still raid on live to this day, but there is no one left from the original guild that stuck together through Vox / Naggy Classic Planes, Sky, VP, NToV / AoW / ST, Emp / Seru / VT and all the way to PoTime Phase 3.

The PoP raid progression system was the absolute worst mistake EQ ever made. It was so frustrating because the way the planar progression worked you inevitably ended up with a large number of veteran raiders that were twiddling their thumbs while we waited for the more casual elements to catch up. A number of the veterans that were ready for Elemental Gods or PoTime would quit or jump ship because they were tired of waiting, forcing us to recruit, forcing us to backflag and re-gear new recruits, which lead to more veterans getting burnt out, which lead to... you see how this went? We did this for about a year, just back and forth between being on the verge of breaking PoTime Phase 4 and having to go back to killing Grummus and Terris Thule.

Although it is my personal favorite fight, ultimately I think it was Xegony that killed my gaming days in EQ. I spent more time and energy trying to bring that bitch down and every failure would frustrate our team that much more. The more people left, and new people had to fill the ranks, the harder she became. She was the pinnacle of raid content in my opinion. Her event was perfection in my eyes. Anyone that has fought her knows just how intense that raid can be, especially in the early days before CoTH bots at the rainbow and most of your raid in full elemental / time equipment. All the other gods were a joke compared to her.

Rathe Council was difficult, don't get me wrong, but it was difficult because it was either bugged or so highly over tuned (I forget which) that I think only 1 or 2 guilds managed to down them before the nerfs. Even after the nerfs, they were a significant hurdle... but if you could down Xegony cleanly, then the nerfed version of Rathe Council was actually quite easy by comparison. It was just tedious and most of what caused wipes were small mistakes piling up as the event slogged on. We only had two kinds of wipes on Rathe Council. We either fucked it up within the first 10 minutes with bad pulls or it was right at the end when the last 1 or 2 were being brought down. By that point you were spread so thin that even the smallest mistake could snowball out of control. However, with Xegony every moment was on the verge of disaster no matter how well things were going. Any one small thing could quickly end an otherwise perfect execution.

But yea, for me, it was Planes of Power and their progression system that cashed in my chips. I think POP is both the best expansion in terms of how raids were tuned to be mechanical and not just HP sponges like VT / Seru, and also the worst expansion thanks to flagging.

I think this sums it up nicely, however for me and the particular guild I was in I was fortunate enough to have a large core of our guild to stick together and not waiver. I remember it like it was yesterday. But I def remember seeing this scenario ALOT.

[Cassawary]

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

When I hit 60 on my first character.

/wave [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Jimjam]

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

Planes of Power is what killed it for me. I was a raid leader in a progression guild on Morell Thule, and the flagging process of POP damn near destroyed our guild. Ultimately they survived and still raid on live to this day, but there is no one left from the original guild that stuck together through Vox / Naggy Classic Planes, Sky, VP, NToV / AoW / ST, Emp / Seru / VT and all the way to PoTime Phase 3.

The PoP raid progression system was the absolute worst mistake EQ ever made. It was so frustrating because the way the planar progression worked you inevitably ended up with a large number of veteran raiders that were twiddling their thumbs while we waited for the more casual elements to catch up. A number of the veterans that were ready for Elemental Gods or PoTime would quit or jump ship because they were tired of waiting, forcing us to recruit, forcing us to backflag and re-gear new recruits, which lead to more veterans getting burnt out, which lead to... you see how this went? We did this for about a year, just back and forth between being on the verge of breaking PoTime Phase 4 and having to go back to killing Grummus and Terris Thule.

Although it is my personal favorite fight, ultimately I think it was Xegony that killed my gaming days in EQ. I spent more time and energy trying to bring that bitch down and every failure would frustrate our team that much more. The more people left, and new people had to fill the ranks, the harder she became. She was the pinnacle of raid content in my opinion. Her event was perfection in my eyes. Anyone that has fought her knows just how intense that raid can be, especially in the early days before CoTH bots at the rainbow and most of your raid in full elemental / time equipment. All the other gods were a joke compared to her.

Rathe Council was difficult, don't get me wrong, but it was difficult because it was either bugged or so highly over tuned (I forget which) that I think only 1 or 2 guilds managed to down them before the nerfs. Even after the nerfs, they were a significant hurdle... but if you could down Xegony cleanly, then the nerfed version of Rathe Council was actually quite easy by comparison. It was just tedious and most of what caused wipes were small mistakes piling up as the event slogged on. We only had two kinds of wipes on Rathe Council. We either fucked it up within the first 10 minutes with bad pulls or it was right at the end when the last 1 or 2 were being brought down. By that point you were spread so thin that even the smallest mistake could snowball out of control. However, with Xegony every moment was on the verge of disaster no matter how well things were going. Any one small thing could quickly end an otherwise perfect execution.

But yea, for me, it was Planes of Power and their progression system that cashed in my chips. I think POP is both the best expansion in terms of how raids were tuned to be mechanical and not just HP sponges like VT / Seru, and also the worst expansion thanks to flagging.

Ironically this wouldn't be a problem on p1999, where the culture is to kill as many raid targets as much as possible. As well as constantly doing backflagging, p1999s would be still raiding plane of fear for spined dragonclaws.

[Tunabros]

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

When I hit 60 on my first character.

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

[Beebelbrox]

Based on most of the responses seems like the community is pretty conflicted over which after velious era xpac started to ruin the game, but that's definitely the tending theme it started to grow mold "somewhere around there".

Primal was probably the devs first big booboo in item power scaling during velious, but my god was it awesome to have! It was just TOO good.

For me the game lore and ultimate play experience was at the pinnacle during Luclin.

It all made sense to me, leaving velious for the evil that was banished to the moon, all the mentions of shissar' in world items previously through Kunark, the deep ties to the Iksar race, the greenmist item coming into game.. all that really breadcrumbed the story experience for me and got me excited to face the Shissar in Luclin. I really really enjoyed that part.

Being in a server first raiding guild on Erollisi Marr, the best part of luclin was racing FOH, Afterlife, Triton, Legacy of Steel and several others I can't remember for Luclins hidden raids. Literally being one of the first few dozen people to obtain a Ssra, Seru and Vex-Thal keys were some of the most memorable gaming experiences of my life.

Spending so much social time in and out of the game with guildies on IRC trying to puzzle solve quest text and hunt for items across the world was something I found so unique to everquest, the mystery and then sharing it with the community once you discovered something.

But no matter how much I loved the luclin story themes and those very unique end game guild only experiences of getting first keys or kill attempts -- Luclin was the worst expansion and the largest step in the wrong direction. 95% of other players were given community destroying gameplay loops such as:

** Bazaar killing the player-run economy, haggling a thing of the past.
** Nexus killing the real interactions needed for portals, and just made everyone goto luclin. Bye bye old world.
** The horses destroyed slow travel and again community interaction for buffs,
** The horses also destroyed casters wanting to indoor dungeon kill because you could meditate on the horse in combat outdoors,
** The AA's while giving us so much to progress in, gated people out of simple things like groups or guilds more so that gear checks ever could. You had a max level that could make raids and levels, but not neckbeard 200AAs, now you have this endless AA point hampster wheel were good players and dedicated guildies up to that point got left behind.
** AA's also killed the alt experience, less people leveling new classes after hitting max level
** Bane weapons for raids bosses, if the RNG wasn't bad enough already.
** Really boring raid encounters, Vex-Thal was a put you to sleep raid crawl.


All of those things set the wheels in motion for me to feel like the game had changed. I pushed on from Luclin into POP with all my vex-thal shinies and by exactly plane of war or whatever fight in planes of power, I was done.

I would be really disappointed if P99 ever went to luclin without taking out all of those things and class changes. That would be the only way I would want to go back and do it again.

[Gustoo]

Yes despite all the awesome fun of progressing further, we can all agree that the overall game balance and experience tanked with luclin which is why we don't go there.

We can still all agree that there is a ton of content we would lvoe to see added to the game.