“The Great Luclin Comprise”

[heartbrand]

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

There is no idea.

Luclin discussions are a non-starter. Period.

It does not matter how many times you ask. How you spin it. How you dress it up.

It's no to Luclin. No. No. No.

Which part of that is hard to get? Those that admin the server decided on the goal of the project at the beginning. It stops in Velious. End of story.

Your signature is kind of funny considering the amount of RMT on red that went completely unpunished despite being openly transacted.

[Check12345]

Sticky: Luclin? No.

[Kika Maslyaka]

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

Luclin was a bad expansion.

So don't implement it "as it was" - make it as it should have been in spirit of classic.

Or better, yet implement new Norath-related zones instead from later periods:

-Veksar
-JaggedPine Forest
-Broken Skull Isle

Again, don't just go with "it was bad" - make new and better.

[Mead]

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

So don't implement it "as it was" - make it as it should have been in spirit of classic.

Or better, yet implement new Norath-related zones instead from later periods:

-Veksar
-JaggedPine Forest
-Broken Skull Isle

Again, don't just go with "it was bad" - make new and better.

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

Which part of that is hard to get? Those that admin the server decided on the goal of the project at the beginning. It stops in Velious. End of story.

[Yoink1986]

So when is Luclin being implemented?

[zodium]

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

So don't implement it "as it was" - make it as it should have been in spirit of classic.

Or better, yet implement new Norath-related zones instead from later periods:

-Veksar
-JaggedPine Forest
-Broken Skull Isle

Again, don't just go with "it was bad" - make new and better.

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

No

[Bummey]

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

Again, don't just go with "it was bad"

actually


it was good

[Check12345]

VT with the p99 crowd would be pretty funny though

remember, mana burn v1 wasn't nerfed until near pop release

it took about 14 of us to take Sontalak or rhags, etc, you can bet on 114 wizards poofing Emp and Aten with our player base

every 32k dragon would get poofed by 5 wizards and 1 puller within minutes

i just imagine sirken buying vodka by the handle at that point [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Zuranthium]

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

So don't implement it "as it was" - make it as it should have been in spirit of classic.

Better yet, implement new Norath-related zones instead from later periods:

-Veksar
-JaggedPine Forest
-Broken Skull Isle

Again, don't just go with "it was bad" - make new and better.

Absolutely a big yes to implementing more Norrath zones. Obviously not for p99 blue, but another server. For starters, every area that was displayed on the official game map should be a zone in the game. There should be no argument against that, as these are actual areas envisioned and given to the players by the game designers themselves; they simply didn't have the time to put them in the game (later expansions did put some of these areas in, although not well designed for the most part).

Also, on that note, there is an actual listing in the original EQ game files for a zone called "High Cave". Sounds to me like there was supposed to be a dungeon underneath High Pass; this makes perfect sense when you think about the looooong pathway at the bottom of the High Pass ridge that just hits a wall, and also how High Keep has that dungeon-like basement area. I've talked about it before, but there's lots of ways they add more dungeons to Norrath and make those dungeons interconnected to multiple zones sometimes too.

As for Luclin though, I think it's just bad. The design of it was tonally off from classic EQ and not good on its own in the first place. The zones mostly felt like fake boxes filled with arbitrary content, in ways that previous EQ zones didn't. They severely lacked enough interesting landmarks/twists and characterful details, while being simultaneously too smooth and too grainy (smoothed out surfaces but with a grainy rendering). Perhaps some of these zones could work if you completely change the NPC's in them, but the majority are too flawed in physical design.

I don't like the Nexus as it was implemented, too lazy and out of character (why would Wizards allow anyone to freely enter their magical Nexus), but I think it's okay to have NPC Wizards on at 1 spire per continent who can translocate players. There just needs to be several caveats attached: you should have to pay them, they should be level restricted (at least level 30 to use), and they should only appear once every hour for a duration of 5 minutes. This would allow elder enough characters to get a reliable, limited teleport in the rare instance that they are not able to find a regular Wizard/Druid port for transcontinental travel. I think that's fair, it allows the port classes to still be necessary for better mobility, while occasionally cutting down a bit of nuisance for everyone else. I would disable regular Wizard/Druid ports for low level characters anyway, to foster the lower level local communities that are integral to the game world. No more grabbing a port to anywhere at Level 5. You're running and taking a boat if you want to go somewhere far away; that's how the game works for any new server.

As for the bazaar, the zone itself should be deleted, as should the ability to auto-buy. Those things remove an integral part of player interaction/immersion in the game world and literally let people play the game in their sleep. However, I am in favor of a searchable in-game listing that shows what everyone has for sale, including a "bulletin board" type of thing (so people can post what they have for sale and then go out and adventure). This would allow everyone to put their goods up for sale without so much ridiculous spamming, and allow people to sell things they might not otherwise put the effort into, but still keep the player interaction intact.

AA's are shit, a game shouldn't be forcing people to continually exp grind such a ridiculous amount. The game content itself should be good enough to keep people involved regardless of being "max level", and any form of game balancing can be done via directly changing a class ability or item. Mounts are also shit unless they are some kind of super-special class ability and also well-rendered (which they definitely weren't in Luclin and really aren't possible to do well on a sever like this).

TLDR -- This post is so long because I recently read another lengthy Luclin thread where people were arguing what they liked about Luclin (the majority of those people seemed to not start Everquest until 2001 or 2002, so no surprise). I wanted to address every point people had brought up about why Luclin was good, because it definitely was not good. I didn't even get into things like Paludal Caverns being ridiculously easymode and killing off other game content, but I will now - things like that you can balance. It's separate from talking about zone design itself or outside features; people need to realize the things they might have liked about Luclin (of which there are VERY few things worth keeping, IMO) are something you can incorporate elsewhere.

[Muggens]

^true words