Original SUCKED Kunark-good Velious-AWESOME Luclin-Meh PoP-the end, thanks for screwing us with no kiss SoE SUCKS
That about sums it up for me also.
It was very obvious that a new team was in charge of making new content with Luclin. From the pain in the ass time sinks to the bland uninspired direction of the game. It just seemed like a giant step backwards from the previous expansions.
I totally understand the reasons why many disliked the direction the game took at Luclin but for me personally it was the social aspect of EQ (my guilds) that kept me going. And honestly when you just sat back and focussed on enjoying it some of the content was extremely creative and fun -- worst expansion was probably Luclin by a long shot but it didn't kill the game for me. I actually enjoyed PoP but creating a new hub called Plane of Knowledge was unnecessary -- I agree the cities should have been kept more active. However, I managed to keep going until the fall of 2006 - there was an expansion released at that time which I purchased that upp'd the cap to level 75. I was enjoying what I experienced especially the new questing system, however, I got in to LOTRO closed beta and never looked back -- over 2 years later and still loving that game hehe. So in the end for me it wasn't EQ being bad it was just that I"m such a tolkien geek I couldn't turn down LOTRO LOL. So unfortunately no matter what they do I'm never coming back -- EQ died for me mostly when my guild died towards the end of Dragons of Norath I focussed on alts for the next year or so which was something I"d never done, but my guild died, then my servor died (ayonae ro) and then I found another game. If I went back socially I"d have to start over and that doesn't appeal to me at this point in the game the way it's constructed (well at least the way it was in 2006). One thing that is very true is that the original game Classic in to Kunark and even Velius fostered community WAY better and that went downhill with every expansion afterward.
Planes of Power killed it for me, my druid & wizzy were pretty much out of buisness. Got so pissed with that and all the other changes that I deleted my account. Then I found out that I could of sould my account for a nice chunk of change. Oh well. I tried coming back after a few years but, I could never get into it.
Original was a blast, loved to be a smith in kelthing selling banded armor and running to the windmills for new ore.
I missed the release of kunark and only jumped back into EQ after it was out a while... i found it exciting that there where new dragons!
At the time Luclin came out i was in a guild that tried to raid some... i enjoyed being with so many others doing stuff and killing the emperor to get vex thall key was just awesome.
i liked planes of power and ldon too the first for the raiding the last for the quick random grouping to do an LDON.
After that my memory gets foggy GoD felt like raid farming it created no feeling of achievement at all.
Entering a hardcore raiding guild did not help long - we farmed overlord matha mura and killed our way through the newer content "hive queen and such" I liked the one raid where you had to sing a song during fight but other than that and a 60 minutes fight against some vampire and his skelly lady this expansion forged no memories.
And sony already anounced the next expansion, so i quit. They came too fast after each other and now after 2 years i gave it a nostalgic resub but only to read they announced RMT = end of EQ story for me.
Mainly from the lack of QA in regard to mob strength and geometry changes that broke ALL of EQ. You can't push an expansion geared at level 70 players, when they are locked at 65. Nor can you launch something that had as bad as impact for mob warping and geometry throughout every zone.
It made raiding near impossible with tons of wipes from the warping on easy targets, and grouping with the issues became a chore. It flat out broke EQ.
So me and most of my guild quit at GoD while doing a simple raid in Tactics for back flagging because of the warping and horrible glitches present from the expansion. To top it off, SoE added insult to injury with announcing ANOTHER expansion in game during this raid, when the previous one wasn't even close to being fixed yet., Half the raid was dead again due to warps and geometry glitching, and most had died at least 10 times. That was enough for us at that point.
As far as Luclin goes as being one of the 'worst', I disagree. The problem with Luclin wasn't the lore or setup, but the insane hp's on mobs. For raiding, it was the miserable farming of multiple rare items from various zones. Then when you did raid, you were greated with 1 billion HP mobs that split into even more billion HP mobs. Raiding became an endurance test of patience and not exactly fun. SoE did NOT fix these things in the expansion-- and thus began the long and justifiable accusation that SoE does not listen to players.
The good thing about Luclin was the AA experience, still the best way of improving character growth past max level compaired to other systems. Even if you were at cap, you could experience and felt like it was adding something meaningful to your character. There really was never a reason to stop grouping or experiencing.
PoP? It's a love or hate. Obviously the PoK stones are the most voted up there for hate. But PoP had a chance of being something really phenominal but fell short. Overall, I had no issue with the expansion in general.
It wasn't about killing the false gods that chapped players. We'd already been doing that from the original EQ. There's just something magical about invading a false gods plane of existance and killing them and their brainwashed minions on their home turf. I never saw this complaint ever on group, guild, or ooc.
The problem was the locked teirs. Had they opened experience zones or part of the zone for exp or tradeskills, there would have been no complaints.
You can tell the idea was split. At first, you had teir 1 zones (nightmare/innovation/disease/justice). Nightmare was a pretty good experience location along with disease. Justice not so much, and innovation really was abandoned. Had a Teir 1-4 exp area unlocked through group trials or quests, and Teir 1-4 mixed/raiding area unlocked by raiding with the addition of several zones -- there would have been a lot less complaints. Nightmares and Disease had the right idea, the same with Storms and Valor. Had the experience zones been more accessible to the majority of the player base, i think the expansion would have been really phenominal.
Gonna go with Kunark. Yeah, thats right, the first one. Why? Because unlike the main land, Kunark and Velious were both horribly designed. Velious to a lesser degree, but god damn did I hate going to EITHER of them because the geography sucked so badly, and getting from place to place or finding a place to bind was an absolute chore. Couple that with crazy difficult mobs running around everywhere and yeah, its a pretty crappy experience. I spent some time in Velious eventually, but even with the expansion, I avoided the actual area like the plague half the time.
I could not agree more. I loved EQ up to Kunark. Kunark was a mess, the zones were huge and extremely difficult for certain classes to travel around. As a cleric it was hard to make it from the docks to meet up with a party somehwere in Kunark without running into the MANY wandering mobs (they were EVERYWHERE). Kunark was soo different from the original game zones it was like a whole new game that did EVERYTHING wrong. I quit shortly after. Although I did come back in time, I rolled a druid so I could actually manage to get around and hold my own alone. But that shouldnt be what it is all about, having to play certain classes only so you can deal with the extremely harsh and unbalanced game environment. Such a shame, original EQ before any expansions was amazing.
EQ is a perfect example of how expansions can totally destroy an MMO. At least IMO.
I remember going to that dwarf city in Velious and talking to the quest NPCs for the caster gear quests. Then realizing that since I wasn't in a raiding guild I wouldn't be getting any of those quests done. The exp in some of the zones was terrible.
Luclin was sort of the beginning of the end for EQ. The TNL graphics engine was actually a downgrade from the original graphics engine and the attention to detail wasn't there. Some endgame raid zone wasn't finished either but frankly that was someone else's problem.
The expacs I enjoyed most were actually the back to basics content like LDON and LOY. LOY was probably overpriced but there's no denying that alot of players hunted there.
If they would have stopped at the last patch they did for velious and never came out with luclin or any of that other junk. They would still be the #1 game on earth. I mean what kind of crap is that when you can click on a book and be on the other side of the world. Anways they should have stopped at velious.
Originally posted by Wakygreek Originally posted by rat4pay I started EQ when Luclin expansion came out and I loved EQ. After more epansions came out, a big amount of EQ started to suck, like the LDON dungeons and at the time, hard to get LDON spells. I see a lot of people her only like Vanilla,Kunark, and Velious and a lot of people do not like POP. What expanisions and changes with the expansions made you feel that SOE ruined the game?
EQ was one of the best games ever created, the game rocked my socks untill Luclin came out which was the expansion past Ruin of Kunark. Luclin and the nexus made it hard for alot of the vets to continue the game not just because the high graphical requirements for some of the zones, but it also killed the Wizard and Druid classes for transportation income with the stupid books allowing you to get to specific zones faster. I actually liked looking for a druid or wiz or even running to my location through different zones, made it feel more of a real/large world. EQ came out with way too many expansions that ruined the game and it sucks because it was soooooo gooooooood.
Really?
Luclin = Nexus and Spires (that took several minutes to activate).
Planes of Power = Plane of Knowledge. They made PoK a core feature of the game several expansions later...
Originally posted by andy3080 If they would have stopped at the last patch they did for velious and never came out with luclin or any of that other junk. They would still be the #1 game on earth. I mean what kind of crap is that when you can click on a book and be on the other side of the world. Anways they should have stopped at velious.
EverQuest would be 100% dead and non-existent at the moment if they had not released anymore expansions.
The only reason why people are still playing, is cause SOE is still providing them with new content to play.
Games that aren't expanded are boring to play after a certain set of time, that is why most of the people in favor of progression servers are 90% against a progression server that forces to play expansions for 6 month spans of time, or even 3 month spans of time.
EverQuest has been a raid-focused game balanced around raid progression since Kunark. If you didn't see it, you simply weren't looking.
Kunark, Velious, and Luclin actually had pretty similar design when it comes to Raid Progression. Luclin had many PvE/non-raid zones. GoD was designed similar to Luclin, also. PoP was a raid-focused expansion, and you couldn't even get level 65 spells without killing raid-level mobs or buying them from the Bazaar.
LDoN caused the game to go to crap, because they went instance crazy thereafter. People only like it because they are carebears, and not many raiders post here. The best thing EQ has had going for it from Kunark to now has been Raiding. SOE has developed some really innovative scripts/rings/encounters in this game. It's the most brilliant aspect. They are running out of innovation, though, but that's to be expected in a 10 year old game.
If you weren't a raider in EverQuest, you are also missing out on a huge part of the game, which actually shaped the game. It was a whole new level of fun. Anyone can go PvE/RP/Quest/whatever, in any game. But the EQ raiding experience was and is one of a kind. That is what made that game great.
The rest is nostalgia through foggy glasses, unfortunately.
EverQuest has been a raid-focused game balanced around raid progression since Kunark.
You are right and wrong.
You are right that EQ began to become a raid-focused game beginning with Kunark, but you were still able to progress effectively, and in a meaningful way, without having to raid. Even epic Quests required raid elements to them, which forced people to either (1) give-up on the Quest or (2) join a raid guild.
The game became so raid focused, however, probably with Velious in which it became undesireable to even play without joining some sort of guild that at least raided, successfully, some of the time. The game became so raid-focused with PoP and GoD that many people, INCLUDING THE RAIDERS, quit.
Planes of Power + ruined the game for me, but Yak was just so awfull it deserves a mention.
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SoL was probably the expansion that did it for me. I was already thinking about leaving the game (not enough time to play it) but adding the Nexus and the Bazaar took a lot away from the game. The cat people on the moon bothered me as well.
Later my friend tried to get me to return and play with PoP. That was the last straw. Everything that I enjoyed from the original game was gone. People used to trade with each other, travel by boat or by wizard and druid ports...they even changed the graphics of the game. Now I read about what happened to the game and it's slowly being dismantled into a dumbed down MMO.
Aye, Shadows of Luclin is what spelled the beginning of the end for me. Even now, the mobs from that expansion, up to the GoD expansion are ridiculously overpowered and just not fun to fight at all.
I quit EQ after playing LDoN for months. I got burnt out running the same dungeons over and over. Then my PC stopped working and I didn't really have a great income at the time (I was 17 or 18 at the time). Add into the mix of a highly active social life and you have a few of the reasons I left EQ. I can't really blame one expansion on it.
Wow not logging on for awhile really hurts your rank.
Aye, Shadows of Luclin is what spelled the beginning of the end for me. Even now, the mobs from that expansion, up to the GoD expansion are ridiculously overpowered and just not fun to fight at all.
Expansions didn't ruin the game for me it was actually High Levels that ruined it for me. When I got up to 50 the game really slows down and its just not as fun anymore like it was. Raids can be fun but they can also be boring to a point to where u just dont want to play. So i dwithered away due to the higher levels.
You know, I don't think any expansion ruined it for me. Maybe the Prophacy of Ro, with all of the old zone revamps! Bah I liked the old zones, North Ro, Freeport and the Eastern and Western Commonlands the way they were! But I did quit after Depths of Dark Hollows. I think I got sick and tired of buying expansions every 5 months.
EverQuest has been a raid-focused game balanced around raid progression since Kunark.
You are right and wrong.
You are right that EQ began to become a raid-focused game beginning with Kunark, but you were still able to progress effectively, and in a meaningful way, without having to raid. Even epic Quests required raid elements to them, which forced people to either (1) give-up on the Quest or (2) join a raid guild.
The game became so raid focused, however, probably with Velious in which it became undesireable to even play without joining some sort of guild that at least raided, successfully, some of the time. The game became so raid-focused with PoP and GoD that many people, INCLUDING THE RAIDERS, quit.
The raiders quit in GoD because Uqua was balanced for level 70 characters and not 65 (which was the max level). Only one guild was able to beat it before SOE revamped it and nerfed it down so that end-game guilds of level 65 players could successfully beat it. By that time, the new expansion was near, so most guilds just leveled up to 70 and then rolled throug it (especially those that had a lot of Time and Pre-Uqua gear already). I was there when Uqua was "hard" and the mobs 1-2 rounded most people who got agro and weren't tanks. A lot of end-game guilds quit as a result of it.
It had nothing to do with the game being raid-focused, and more to do with the fact that even a full guild of hardcore raiders with top gears not being able to beat a zone that isn't even end-game. Uqua is a mid-GoD progression Zone. It was not supposed to be that damn difficult...
See... Uqua... Right in the middle. There was issue with other expansions and bosses being unbeatable in the past also. People just got fed up with SOE releasing expansions with unbeatable bosses until they could fix the encounters in them.
GoD was a hard expansion. I honestly think SOE underestimated how fast guilds would progress through GoD content. It was really challenging, and fun. But they dropped the ball @ Uqua. They should have put the roadblock in Tacvi at the first boss. That would have given them enough time to get the expansion out. They could have kept the difficulty up a bit high to slow down guild progression a bit, but unbeatable mid-progression content is not acceptable.
What killed EQ for me wasn't a particular expansion. It was the fact that I'd had to take a break due to school and work commitments only to come back a few weeks later to find my guild 20+ levels above me and doing nothing but raiding every night.
The thought of spending 20+ levels on my own trying to catch up while they were still advancing at the same time was the last straw. I quit and never went back.
Oddly enough, for all the hate that the PoP expansion gets, I loved it. My Druid was no longer swamped with tells demanding that I stopped what I was doing to port someone across the world. I could just play the game in peace. Also, the books made it much, much easier to play non-porting classes, and for my boyfriend and I to try different race/class combos rather than starting in the same area. It was great, and really opened up the game world, IMO.
I am looking forward to the progression server. These more recent games are boring. EQ is the only game that mixes grouping/solo/raiding at an acceptable level for me. I won't quit my other game, but I'll definitely cut my time dedications to it dramatically to play on the progression - hopefully in a guild that is willing to do ALL the content and not skip stuff.
What killed EQ for me wasn't a particular expansion. It was the fact that I'd had to take a break due to school and work commitments only to come back a few weeks later to find my guild 20+ levels above me and doing nothing but raiding every night. The thought of spending 20+ levels on my own trying to catch up while they were still advancing at the same time was the last straw. I quit and never went back. Oddly enough, for all the hate that the PoP expansion gets, I loved it. My Druid was no longer swamped with tells demanding that I stopped what I was doing to port someone across the world. I could just play the game in peace. Also, the books made it much, much easier to play non-porting classes, and for my boyfriend and I to try different race/class combos rather than starting in the same area. It was great, and really opened up the game world, IMO.
Yes it did make things more convenient but I don't play games just for convenience sake. PoK, books, Luclin Spires, Nexus, Bazaar, Cats on a Moon, etc etc .. all poor design descisions and poor lore decisions. These things killed the wonderful feel of EQ. For you it appears if they add something that makes the game more convenient no matter what it is then it is welcomed. For me it is how does it fit in the world and does it enhance the lore or make it absurd.
Say they decided to make travel easier by adding big slingshots you get into to shoot you across to world or expanded the world by making planet stinky with aliens that fling poo. Yes this stuff would add to the game but would it fit in, I don't think so. My question is if they wanted some instant travel that didn't hurt the world, and wasn't obtrusive in the wonderful fantasy landscape EQ had, why not add some wizards to each city to transport you instead of the horrid books? Why add PoK at all to kill the wonderful cities the game started with and faction system?
That is my thoughts. I think they could have added some instant travel but they should have been more careful on implementing it.
Comments
That about sums it up for me also.
It was very obvious that a new team was in charge of making new content with Luclin. From the pain in the ass time sinks to the bland uninspired direction of the game. It just seemed like a giant step backwards from the previous expansions.
I totally understand the reasons why many disliked the direction the game took at Luclin but for me personally it was the social aspect of EQ (my guilds) that kept me going. And honestly when you just sat back and focussed on enjoying it some of the content was extremely creative and fun -- worst expansion was probably Luclin by a long shot but it didn't kill the game for me. I actually enjoyed PoP but creating a new hub called Plane of Knowledge was unnecessary -- I agree the cities should have been kept more active. However, I managed to keep going until the fall of 2006 - there was an expansion released at that time which I purchased that upp'd the cap to level 75. I was enjoying what I experienced especially the new questing system, however, I got in to LOTRO closed beta and never looked back -- over 2 years later and still loving that game hehe. So in the end for me it wasn't EQ being bad it was just that I"m such a tolkien geek I couldn't turn down LOTRO LOL. So unfortunately no matter what they do I'm never coming back -- EQ died for me mostly when my guild died towards the end of Dragons of Norath I focussed on alts for the next year or so which was something I"d never done, but my guild died, then my servor died (ayonae ro) and then I found another game. If I went back socially I"d have to start over and that doesn't appeal to me at this point in the game the way it's constructed (well at least the way it was in 2006). One thing that is very true is that the original game Classic in to Kunark and even Velius fostered community WAY better and that went downhill with every expansion afterward.
Luclin killed EQ for me. I never came back.
Planes of Power killed it for me, my druid & wizzy were pretty much out of buisness. Got so pissed with that and all the other changes that I deleted my account. Then I found out that I could of sould my account for a nice chunk of change. Oh well. I tried coming back after a few years but, I could never get into it.
For me it was:
Original was a blast, loved to be a smith in kelthing selling banded armor and running to the windmills for new ore.
I missed the release of kunark and only jumped back into EQ after it was out a while... i found it exciting that there where new dragons!
At the time Luclin came out i was in a guild that tried to raid some... i enjoyed being with so many others doing stuff and killing the emperor to get vex thall key was just awesome.
i liked planes of power and ldon too the first for the raiding the last for the quick random grouping to do an LDON.
After that my memory gets foggy GoD felt like raid farming it created no feeling of achievement at all.
Entering a hardcore raiding guild did not help long - we farmed overlord matha mura and killed our way through the newer content "hive queen and such" I liked the one raid where you had to sing a song during fight but other than that and a 60 minutes fight against some vampire and his skelly lady this expansion forged no memories.
And sony already anounced the next expansion, so i quit. They came too fast after each other and now after 2 years i gave it a nostalgic resub but only to read they announced RMT = end of EQ story for me.
cheers
Snorfen
EQ died for me at Gates of Discord.
Mainly from the lack of QA in regard to mob strength and geometry changes that broke ALL of EQ. You can't push an expansion geared at level 70 players, when they are locked at 65. Nor can you launch something that had as bad as impact for mob warping and geometry throughout every zone.
It made raiding near impossible with tons of wipes from the warping on easy targets, and grouping with the issues became a chore. It flat out broke EQ.
So me and most of my guild quit at GoD while doing a simple raid in Tactics for back flagging because of the warping and horrible glitches present from the expansion. To top it off, SoE added insult to injury with announcing ANOTHER expansion in game during this raid, when the previous one wasn't even close to being fixed yet., Half the raid was dead again due to warps and geometry glitching, and most had died at least 10 times. That was enough for us at that point.
As far as Luclin goes as being one of the 'worst', I disagree. The problem with Luclin wasn't the lore or setup, but the insane hp's on mobs. For raiding, it was the miserable farming of multiple rare items from various zones. Then when you did raid, you were greated with 1 billion HP mobs that split into even more billion HP mobs. Raiding became an endurance test of patience and not exactly fun. SoE did NOT fix these things in the expansion-- and thus began the long and justifiable accusation that SoE does not listen to players.
The good thing about Luclin was the AA experience, still the best way of improving character growth past max level compaired to other systems. Even if you were at cap, you could experience and felt like it was adding something meaningful to your character. There really was never a reason to stop grouping or experiencing.
PoP? It's a love or hate. Obviously the PoK stones are the most voted up there for hate. But PoP had a chance of being something really phenominal but fell short. Overall, I had no issue with the expansion in general.
It wasn't about killing the false gods that chapped players. We'd already been doing that from the original EQ. There's just something magical about invading a false gods plane of existance and killing them and their brainwashed minions on their home turf.
I never saw this complaint ever on group, guild, or ooc.
The problem was the locked teirs. Had they opened experience zones or part of the zone for exp or tradeskills, there would have been no complaints.
You can tell the idea was split. At first, you had teir 1 zones (nightmare/innovation/disease/justice). Nightmare was a pretty good experience location along with disease. Justice not so much, and innovation really was abandoned. Had a Teir 1-4 exp area unlocked through group trials or quests, and Teir 1-4 mixed/raiding area unlocked by raiding with the addition of several zones -- there would have been a lot less complaints. Nightmares and Disease had the right idea, the same with Storms and Valor. Had the experience zones been more accessible to the majority of the player base, i think the expansion would have been really phenominal.
I could not agree more. I loved EQ up to Kunark. Kunark was a mess, the zones were huge and extremely difficult for certain classes to travel around. As a cleric it was hard to make it from the docks to meet up with a party somehwere in Kunark without running into the MANY wandering mobs (they were EVERYWHERE). Kunark was soo different from the original game zones it was like a whole new game that did EVERYTHING wrong. I quit shortly after. Although I did come back in time, I rolled a druid so I could actually manage to get around and hold my own alone. But that shouldnt be what it is all about, having to play certain classes only so you can deal with the extremely harsh and unbalanced game environment. Such a shame, original EQ before any expansions was amazing.
EQ is a perfect example of how expansions can totally destroy an MMO. At least IMO.
Velious, Luclin.
I remember going to that dwarf city in Velious and talking to the quest NPCs for the caster gear quests. Then realizing that since I wasn't in a raiding guild I wouldn't be getting any of those quests done. The exp in some of the zones was terrible.
Luclin was sort of the beginning of the end for EQ. The TNL graphics engine was actually a downgrade from the original graphics engine and the attention to detail wasn't there. Some endgame raid zone wasn't finished either but frankly that was someone else's problem.
The expacs I enjoyed most were actually the back to basics content like LDON and LOY. LOY was probably overpriced but there's no denying that alot of players hunted there.
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If they would have stopped at the last patch they did for velious and never came out with luclin or any of that other junk. They would still be the #1 game on earth. I mean what kind of crap is that when you can click on a book and be on the other side of the world. Anways they should have stopped at velious.
EQ was one of the best games ever created, the game rocked my socks untill Luclin came out which was the expansion past Ruin of Kunark. Luclin and the nexus made it hard for alot of the vets to continue the game not just because the high graphical requirements for some of the zones, but it also killed the Wizard and Druid classes for transportation income with the stupid books allowing you to get to specific zones faster. I actually liked looking for a druid or wiz or even running to my location through different zones, made it feel more of a real/large world.
EQ came out with way too many expansions that ruined the game and it sucks because it was soooooo gooooooood.
Really?
Luclin = Nexus and Spires (that took several minutes to activate).
Planes of Power = Plane of Knowledge. They made PoK a core feature of the game several expansions later...
Get the info straight!
The only reason why people are still playing, is cause SOE is still providing them with new content to play.
Games that aren't expanded are boring to play after a certain set of time, that is why most of the people in favor of progression servers are 90% against a progression server that forces to play expansions for 6 month spans of time, or even 3 month spans of time.
EverQuest has been a raid-focused game balanced around raid progression since Kunark. If you didn't see it, you simply weren't looking.
Kunark, Velious, and Luclin actually had pretty similar design when it comes to Raid Progression. Luclin had many PvE/non-raid zones. GoD was designed similar to Luclin, also. PoP was a raid-focused expansion, and you couldn't even get level 65 spells without killing raid-level mobs or buying them from the Bazaar.
LDoN caused the game to go to crap, because they went instance crazy thereafter. People only like it because they are carebears, and not many raiders post here. The best thing EQ has had going for it from Kunark to now has been Raiding. SOE has developed some really innovative scripts/rings/encounters in this game. It's the most brilliant aspect. They are running out of innovation, though, but that's to be expected in a 10 year old game.
If you weren't a raider in EverQuest, you are also missing out on a huge part of the game, which actually shaped the game. It was a whole new level of fun. Anyone can go PvE/RP/Quest/whatever, in any game. But the EQ raiding experience was and is one of a kind. That is what made that game great.
The rest is nostalgia through foggy glasses, unfortunately.
You are right and wrong.
You are right that EQ began to become a raid-focused game beginning with Kunark, but you were still able to progress effectively, and in a meaningful way, without having to raid. Even epic Quests required raid elements to them, which forced people to either (1) give-up on the Quest or (2) join a raid guild.
The game became so raid focused, however, probably with Velious in which it became undesireable to even play without joining some sort of guild that at least raided, successfully, some of the time. The game became so raid-focused with PoP and GoD that many people, INCLUDING THE RAIDERS, quit.
Planes of Power + ruined the game for me, but Yak was just so awfull it deserves a mention.
*LordRelic on Age of Conan nudity: Why cant people leave this be? Yes there are boobs.. god smite the man who made them..oh wait.....
*Pandorra on Darkfall IRC: No one plays anything "like" anything right now.. we are all melee, ranger, mana missle casting noobs...
*<FBA> DF irc: im ready, got a stockpile of sugar free redbulls, carton of marlboro 27s and 4 pack of toilet paper, lets roll!
it still lost tons of players so they should have just left it alone.
SoL was probably the expansion that did it for me. I was already thinking about leaving the game (not enough time to play it) but adding the Nexus and the Bazaar took a lot away from the game. The cat people on the moon bothered me as well.
Later my friend tried to get me to return and play with PoP. That was the last straw. Everything that I enjoyed from the original game was gone. People used to trade with each other, travel by boat or by wizard and druid ports...they even changed the graphics of the game. Now I read about what happened to the game and it's slowly being dismantled into a dumbed down MMO.
Aye, Shadows of Luclin is what spelled the beginning of the end for me. Even now, the mobs from that expansion, up to the GoD expansion are ridiculously overpowered and just not fun to fight at all.
Partly agree. SoL was also lacking graphical splendor.
I quit EQ after playing LDoN for months. I got burnt out running the same dungeons over and over. Then my PC stopped working and I didn't really have a great income at the time (I was 17 or 18 at the time). Add into the mix of a highly active social life and you have a few of the reasons I left EQ. I can't really blame one expansion on it.
Wow not logging on for awhile really hurts your rank.
hehe.
thats when SMOKE was SMOKE......
Expansions didn't ruin the game for me it was actually High Levels that ruined it for me. When I got up to 50 the game really slows down and its just not as fun anymore like it was. Raids can be fun but they can also be boring to a point to where u just dont want to play. So i dwithered away due to the higher levels.
You know, I don't think any expansion ruined it for me. Maybe the Prophacy of Ro, with all of the old zone revamps! Bah I liked the old zones, North Ro, Freeport and the Eastern and Western Commonlands the way they were! But I did quit after Depths of Dark Hollows. I think I got sick and tired of buying expansions every 5 months.
It had nothing to do with the game being raid-focused, and more to do with the fact that even a full guild of hardcore raiders with top gears not being able to beat a zone that isn't even end-game. Uqua is a mid-GoD progression Zone. It was not supposed to be that damn difficult...
Vxed/Tipt -> Kod'Taz -> Ikkinz -> Yxxta -> Uqua (Sorry, Cannot Pass) -> Qvic -> Inktu'ta -> Txevu -> Tacvi
See... Uqua... Right in the middle. There was issue with other expansions and bosses being unbeatable in the past also. People just got fed up with SOE releasing expansions with unbeatable bosses until they could fix the encounters in them.
GoD was a hard expansion. I honestly think SOE underestimated how fast guilds would progress through GoD content. It was really challenging, and fun. But they dropped the ball @ Uqua. They should have put the roadblock in Tacvi at the first boss. That would have given them enough time to get the expansion out. They could have kept the difficulty up a bit high to slow down guild progression a bit, but unbeatable mid-progression content is not acceptable.
What killed EQ for me wasn't a particular expansion. It was the fact that I'd had to take a break due to school and work commitments only to come back a few weeks later to find my guild 20+ levels above me and doing nothing but raiding every night.
The thought of spending 20+ levels on my own trying to catch up while they were still advancing at the same time was the last straw. I quit and never went back.
Oddly enough, for all the hate that the PoP expansion gets, I loved it. My Druid was no longer swamped with tells demanding that I stopped what I was doing to port someone across the world. I could just play the game in peace. Also, the books made it much, much easier to play non-porting classes, and for my boyfriend and I to try different race/class combos rather than starting in the same area. It was great, and really opened up the game world, IMO.
I am looking forward to the progression server. These more recent games are boring. EQ is the only game that mixes grouping/solo/raiding at an acceptable level for me. I won't quit my other game, but I'll definitely cut my time dedications to it dramatically to play on the progression - hopefully in a guild that is willing to do ALL the content and not skip stuff.
Yes it did make things more convenient but I don't play games just for convenience sake. PoK, books, Luclin Spires, Nexus, Bazaar, Cats on a Moon, etc etc .. all poor design descisions and poor lore decisions. These things killed the wonderful feel of EQ. For you it appears if they add something that makes the game more convenient no matter what it is then it is welcomed. For me it is how does it fit in the world and does it enhance the lore or make it absurd.
Say they decided to make travel easier by adding big slingshots you get into to shoot you across to world or expanded the world by making planet stinky with aliens that fling poo. Yes this stuff would add to the game but would it fit in, I don't think so. My question is if they wanted some instant travel that didn't hurt the world, and wasn't obtrusive in the wonderful fantasy landscape EQ had, why not add some wizards to each city to transport you instead of the horrid books? Why add PoK at all to kill the wonderful cities the game started with and faction system?
That is my thoughts. I think they could have added some instant travel but they should have been more careful on implementing it.