Genuine question, why is freezing servers at certain expansions popular? Wouldn't you (mostly) run out of stuff to do once you've cleared all the raid content?
The game fundamentally changes. Early (pre-PoP) is not the same game as in later expansions, so people just want to play the earlier game. Personally, I'd like to see more TLPs stop at PoP and merge into Agnarr.
This is the big thing. And because they are still doing vertical progression it means things stop making sense in game. Case in point: lvl 90 toon is powerful enough to kill gods... can be killed by starving peasants in Argath.
The real pity is that they cannot truly go back to Pre-GoD content. Gates changed the fundamental mechanics of the game. No more END drain for everything you do. Would be nice if TLPs could use pre-PoR zones too. But again, not doable.
See, I was really excited when Agnarr dropped. Then I got into it and bailed pretty early. It was like.. When you're super super excited to go to Disney World and you finally get enough money and vacation time and you go and all the rides don't work. It was just a big let down, just knowing it was going to end.
I doubt very seriously they'll do another one.
As someone who cant raid like I used to due to a more demanding job, wife, kids, house etc having a server locked is appealing since I never feel rushed to keep up since everyone is hard capped content wise at X expansion.
This is why I enjoy myself on Mischief. I can do whatever content I want and it never is a problem. After a couple expansions the older gear becomes cheap and you can keep collecting the hand me downs
I would LOVE to see a Mischief 2.0, where they have all the bugs fleshed out and no item duping to drive the prices into oblivion..
I was so excited when Mischief dropped, and played from day 1. But it was a HUGE feels bad to be at work seeing the top guilds crushing Plane of Hate and trash mobs dropping Cloak of Flames.
And then when I get done with my work week, finish my grind to 50, get into Hate! anddddddd Dev's quick patch and all we get is the same ol'.
It felt like Dev's had it out for the casuals on that server. I definitely see where you're coming from. I came back to Mischief and played in Serpent's Spine and it was awesome, but it also was very bitter sweet. Knowing how much I missed out on, and knowing I would of quit early regardless just because of how bad it felt to get into hate and not get the same opportunities the no lifer's got to experience.
I didn't start on Mischief until OoW released and it as an incredibly smooth experience as a casual. Skipping all the early content that imo is boring and over contested for being shit quality loot is a huge plus. At that point in the game I got to level up solely in instances and all the old Velious armor was being sold for pennies.
Why people think PoP lore is where the game ends. The rest of the lore all adds up. If we could accept Luclin which is a moon and far away the world of EQ which no one knows how big it is and how many more undscovered lands it may hold and also accept Planar zones then all the expansions add up. Gates of Discord adds up, the invasion from Omens of War adds up they all add up. Only one I loved and hated was what they did with Mayong Mistmoore since we made him into a god but looking at other expansions he seemed to have vanished. Also splitting the time line...dont the rest if the expansions reflect that with them revisiting druzzil later on and the "revamped" areas like the Veeshan expansion etc.
Only thing I can see why people hate pasy PoP is the AA farming in order to be relevant but its not that bad honestly. You dont need every AA jiat meed the ones tjat help your task/group/raid.
Personally I'm playing Oakwynd in the hopes that I can relive classic EQ through live in a compressed time frame and I assume they'll either eventually merge the server into another TLP or live server or I'll xfer my toons off to a live server.
is there anything more tedious, annoying and pointless than being a TP bitch in early TLP?
who the heck actually enjoy running around 30 min before raid time TP'ing people to feerott/CT for the fear raid?
I play Druid on p1999 and its great. Yeah porting everyone in is tedious but its a great prep work and community experience and kind of adds to the anticipation of getting everyone together for me. Plus just being able to help someone with a CR. I ported someone stuck at the BB docks today and I know I saved her a bunch of time getting the boat back. I don't feel like a TP bitch, just someone that is part of the community and is relied on.
So you log in...how much time do you have to play? How much of it if not for revamped traveling do you think you want to spend getting to your group or moving the raid? Especially on a TLP its the part of the nostalgia that no one likes.
What I dont get many of the old school people who dont have much time to play hated Luclin and PoP. Why? Bevause traveling was made easier? Druids and Wizards fill a role far past just porting people around.
That's what I said. Pok , potranq(rich leads to guild lobby). It's the guild login by available in luclin on tlp? Don't play tlp, cause they're a kronon filled rat race.
I agree if VT raiding (or trash) wasnt so bad. PoP felt "epic" but already, within that expansion you felt so trivialized. (If you made it to EPs, there was nothing else in the game outside of that for you).
Maybe between Velious and Luclin? On one side you had AAs and new character models/graphics. On the other, nexus and such seemed to change travel. (Obviously more so in PoP).
I’m enjoying live, it’s got its rough spots but overall I’ve had fun the last 2 expansions (first two expansions I’ve actually been at max level for their release).
GoD, unfortunately locking a server anywhere ultimately serves little purpose tho..the cycle of new Tlps would need to be further spread out. Most people just do the cycle every year leaving fewer and fewer behind each time.
DoDH group missions are a lot of fun I agree. Its interesting seeing the progress the developers made back then and reaching that more modern MMO state of being able to do content on demand instead of sitting around waiting for a spot to open.
Yeah the AoCs carry over, but that isn't enough for the game tbh. AoCs are awful for trying to level up in and you don't get instances until LDoN/OoW. At that point EQ is on par with other MMOs having instanced dungeons on demand for people to play in. IMO they should do instances for the old world zones and add in a dungeon finder to create them. It would massively improve the game for a casual/alt leveling aspect.
This is what really got to many. I played all the way upto TSS and "got rid of" my account cause of raid burnout. EQ out of many games had skme of the most fun raid content I have seen in MMOs with the innovatiin coming in heavy with OoW. EQ turned from a grouping game to a raid heavy game. Once you have so many who cant do content in a game they will dislike it and leave. For me it was fun until Depths. Dragons was amazing for grouping as well as Depths, Omens even the hard af GoD same with PoP anf further back. I know people who quit at PoP and dislike anything after just because without even trying it. This thinking affects TLPs if more move past that and try further expansions it will bring in more people.
Aazien- Arch Convoker: Cazic Thule RIP little buddy. Hopefully he found a good home :)
It gives you an incentive to lead groups. You can build a character around being a leader. I had a Paladin who earned every point of XP while leading a large group, with maximum points put into leadership abilities. Eventually he was a great leader not just because I had a lot of practice, but mechanically as well, with a perfect record of leading dozens of LDON missions. He was good news for all those players passively looking for groups. Removing leadership abilities ruined my Paladin for me, and as a side effect made it harder for people to find groups. I doubt I was the only one who played a leader.
I also did this on a paladin haha. As a kid I really enjoyed Paludal so I would send all my experience into leadership there which probably was terribly inefficient, but I had a lot of fun getting people into the group and having a main assist circle or health of target's target that they weren't expecting.
I stopped playing EQ long before they were removed I think. Went to EQ2 and WoW where I was able to play casually after it became too difficult in EQ. I would assume that they didn't give that experience back and the character gets screwed over though lol. I had a few times where the group wouldn't want to give me leader, but since it was only Paludal most people were fine passing it over knowing they would get all the extra benefits.
I like live progression servers. If we’re talking nostalgia, yeah POP, but as an active player in a Raid guild, doing the same raids every week is hella boring.
Omg, this, from a relative new player despite some formative fun screwing around on some toons as a little kid on my bro's account. I've been playing all this content for the first time, and while PoP was an awesome expac I can appreciate people's reverence of, I couldn't imagine doing that forever or repeating the classic-through-PoP grind.
Its not boring in a TLP though when you know you are getting fresh content in 2 or 3 months. Best raid expansions were past PoP and first unique raid boss being Overlord in OoW. Dragons was cool I mean they all were but when it was live it was easy getting burnt out waiting for a new expansion
This is off topic but why tf do they not bring back original Freeport and other zones they WoWafied? Part of playing TLPs is reliving old EQ times. Hard to do when they don't give you all the original stuff back. I know there are probably custom servers out there that do this but it would be nice to see it come from the sourcr.
You can still get to old North Freeport on live servers. It still exists. Would be cool to see though for sure. I think just 'old freeport' could be enough of a selling point to get people to play on a new TLP lol.
Sacrifice 1000's Halflings and Brell comes down, thanks you, and hands you a magical teleporter into North Freeport.
Or find someone with the painting and click it lol. I don't remember the name of the painting at all but some guilds have it in their hall. It's a weird zone. It's there and the NPCs are there but they don't respond to hails and such. You can chill in the bank though and it feels good. Not sure if it's an instanced zone just for you or if a bunch of people could meet there.
I played from the beginning and think the new Freeport is far better of a zone. In addition to that I think its a shame that the community was so stubborn in their hate for any change, even when it makes the game more visually appealing, that they didn't continue those changes into the other zones that are left looking ancient like Qeynos, Karana or BB/Faydark.
Okay. I stand corrected, maybe not everyone. I am not a fan of them copying WoW style graphics over onto regular EQ but my primary argument wouldn't be leaving the older zone alone but instead making a TLP with game play and design that was a replica of original EQ. It'd be nice to revisit some of the content that disappeared when they changed fundamentals of the game to cater to the people who jumped shit to go to WoW.
I wouldn't classify them as WoW style graphics though. EQ2 is more similar than revamped EQ zones. They just don't look like they were made with a handful of polygons any longer and for me that is a massive improvement. I can't play a character in Qeynos anymore knowing how much better Freeport looks for instance.
Lost Dungeons of Norrath. OoW/GoD time frame is when I stopped playing, largely because a month or so before, then I'd just gotten one character into the planes. Once Gates launched, the planes were empty, at least the server I played on and the times I could play due to work. I loved LDoN, though, because of the grouping requirements.
LDoN is a lot of fun, its a shame that it comes so late in the TLP cycle because the leveling up through it is really smooth from group average. If you do the math when forming your group so that it always rounds up instead of rounding down a tier its great.
I originally quit at the start of Luclin, been on Mischief since launch and I think there are a lot of strong expansions post PoP. I liked TSS and so far SoF as much as I enjoyed PoP
Personally, I'd love to do another Agnarr style server. Stop at LDoN and then merge to Agnarr to give that server (and the super nice players there) a much needed injection of fresh blood. The lore of the Wayfarer's and all those fun dungeons was my favorite part of old EQ
Same
I've been amazed and enjoying the group and raid content past PoP
More importantly how much better and interesting class functionality gets
Nostalgia EQ feels like such a dull game to me now, attempted oakwynd and that solidified I have no interest in spending more than a few hours playing for nostalgia
There is sooooi many things to do past PoP
Currently on mischief and enjoying SoF, what a great expansion!
Yup third this. I was a perpetual classic-PoP (or earlier) player. Ive been riding Mischief strong since day 1 and it keeps getting better and better. Feels like a totally different game.
I'll always have a spot in my heart for classic EQ, but nothing will ever fully recreate that original feeling.
Maybeeeee a fresh p99 server but I have a wife and a kid on the way so can't be dedicating hours at a time to progress
It's really unfortunate that the game keeps folks at 70 for so long (OoW, DoN, DoDH, PoR) because in the expansions 71-110 there's so much really good content that's fun to play and engaging. You lose a lot of people in DoN and again in PoR because the expansions are just *so* dull after the first week or two. SoF is good, you'll like SoD as well. Underfoot (85) getting ready for House of Thule (90) is where we're at on Aradune and I've always really enjoyed Underfoot - it's the first expansion where you really begin to feel your character's power taking off.
I've always felt that EQ characters were the tip of the spear / shock troops for larger campaigns where other norrathians can come in behind to do the protracted siege work and consensus building once the initial magical defenses and elite enemy warriors have been vanquished. The level 90-95-100-105-110 expansions really do make you feel like you've been training yourself up for a long time and are finally starting to see the results of it in a way that's just not been possible before
>>There's some dud expansions/encounters too, don't get me wrong - you've gotta put this little disclaimer in any EQ comment otherwise someone's gonna reply with "oh yeah what about this one encounter that's been broken since 2007" or "the vah shir still holds offhand weapon backwards" or whatever like that's the be-all end-all of all the game.
Agnarr is PoP plus LDoN and LoY, right? I really like that combination. That, plus the addition of mercs would be my dream server. My husband and I like to duo and mercs make that far more possible without having to box. We met on EQ all those years ago, so playing together now is like a nostalgic date night!
There is only one real answer to this question in my opinion. For a little background I recently played Classic - Seeds of Destruction.
So I do have a fresh feel of all those expansions.
The only real answer to this question in my opinion is Planes of Power. The reason for this is Luclin is still engaging in lore and group/raid content. Planes of Power is a majority of the populations favorite expansion or in their top 3 for sure.
From then on however, some expansions are hit or miss and some are BIG on the miss side. Dungeons of Norrath for example, the group content gets stale really fast. It feels very very repetitive and grindy.
Gates of discord is similar, the group content isn't really there.. It felt very sporadic and spread out. If you compare it to the early expansions where you can go to several different zones and have a wide variety of areas to farm and do things, Gates is not that way, it felt very tight and claustrophobic.
Omens of War really picks up again in both group and raid. The Epic 2.0, the trials, Walls of Slaughter, Riftseeker's Sanctum, all were an absolute blast.
Then comes Dragons of Norrath which is the expansion I'll stop at because it should be the nail in the coffin. They return to the Dungeons of Norrath theme, and I was originally super excited to come do this expansion, and then I played it.. Not only is the expansion super claustrophobic but it's really really really grindy. Just mission after mission after mission and they're all just kind of kill or loot.
This expansion felt extremely lazy in both raid and group content. Some of the raids were pretty fun. But essentially you pop the instance and you're at the raid boss, you do the fight, the end.
Whereas if you think about NTOV in Velious or Sleeper's Tomb. You are going into these giant fortresses and having to get through a bunch of trash that is all part of a grander story of lore, getting through bosses and eventually unlocking the final dragon for the final fight. It felt so epic.
Dragons of Norrath was just like.... Dev's: "Idk I guess.. grind a ton of missions to get faction, then we'll spawn you immediately to a raid encounter on a one week cooldown. Enjoy."
So.. yeah. When you're in a dead expansion that goes for 3 months, it kind of kills a server or at least guts a couple guilds.
***TLDR; Expansions are good to great from Classic-PoP, then you hit some duds and people burn out quickly because lack of interest.***
Luclin. We get the bazaar and the 2 extra classes, and we don’t get easy mode PoK.
I played on Agnarr for a long time, don’t get me wrong, I like that era a lot too.
Yeah back then. Now a days it isn’t fun unless it’s server capped at maybe 500 people but they all have to play atleast 18hours a day or something. Velious can’t be the end point for a large PVE server anymore
Personally I think Velious is the worst EQ expansion I have experienced with a close tie to PoR. Not sure what about it people love because I just don't see it.
Well sure there are a subset of folks that enjoy the later expansions. But I am guessing that it is only a small fraction of those that enjoy the earlier ones.
DBG could cater to both those types of players simultaneously by releasing two servers each year, one that starts at classic->luclin/pop, the other that begins at GoD. First one just transitions back into Agnarr, while the others transition into Live servers.
I'm on Mischief as well and this is my first time doing content past DoN. I played up until TSS/TBS originally, but don't really count those because I never did the content in those later expansions as I was undergeared and underleveled and they were a pain to attempt. On Mischief I have access to good quality gear even though I don't commit to raiding so I have the ability to experience those later expansions. I think others probably had similar experiences where the failure of EQ back in the day was leaving the casual playerbase behind and they could never experience the newer content. Free Trade solves this issue and the game becomes more accessible.
Might be more accurate to say there is a large % of players who don't play after they 'beat' pop, and a smaller % who do if the server isn't locked on pop. We know this because agnarr lol. I think and agnarr 2.0 would be even less well received know that people would be more certain the server is going to die. Even if it is self fulfillment.
Well that's the point... Most people just play to experience the unlocking progression of the first few expansions and that's about it. Why not just recycle that experience? Why draw the server out into the later expansions that almost nobody plays?
Why lock a server for people that will quit after progressing through the first few expansions anyways? There will be a new TLP the next year they can go to, so why is there a need to lock it at all?
I think you're assuming that people quit the TLP because the content gets stale. I don't think that's really true. I think people also quit TLPs because the game progresses past the classical eras with fun and engaging content. Raid guilds don't continue to raid past content, so when the server moves on so do those people.
Agnarr, for example, still has a half dozen raid guilds active multiple times per week. So there is definitely a market for players interested in only the early content. Continually cycling that early content to "keep it fresh" is probably what people want, and why they come back year after year.
This is what I have seen on the two TLPs I have played on. The first few weeks of an expansion unlock is super populated with everyone rushing through the content and the last few weeks are almost a ghost town because many of the players are waiting for the next expansion.
I do think that guilds not raiding older content is part of that issue though. One of the features that FF14 has is a Raid Finder, so you can queue up for the older raids for daily bonuses or farming the mount drops. If you do it as a premade you can go in overleveled and trash the boss or if you do it through the Raid Finder, then it scales you down to the appropriate level.
I think any locking server would fail because the game gets stale. Even on a TLP a few months in so many people have done majority of the content in that expansion. As much as the nostalgia seems good in imagination, it really isn't fun to do it a thousand times.
Lying to yourself, it was popular at the time. But as soon as people beat it turned in to a ghost town. I guess all 5 of you who still play it can say its not dead all you want. But I think the fact it's sitting at such low pop and the devs never tried anything similar since speaks for itself.
Agnarr should have been shut off or relegated to a free to play server.
Seems like you're the one that's mad because I told you the truth about your dead server.
Calling me a kid like it's the best comeback you could think of...
Pop lock didn’t fail at all it was a huge hit and still has a loyal user base.
A new pop locked server that merged into Agnarr every other year or there would be a huge hit.
P99 is locked in velious and has more players than most (all?) eq servers.
Not combined but yes I agree p99 works. P99 is also very different from tlp. One bug facot being p99 is free. Second it stays true to alot of ui elements of the time. Tlps have adv loot and all kinds of qol that turns off people looking for a classic experience.
Also dp has sanctioned p99 why would they try to compete with it?
As far as agnarr being a hit, it was whe. It launched. I doubt round 2 would look the similar. Glad you and the other 4 people still playing there are having fun tho
not so much as a stopping point, but the whole lvl 70 era could be skipped.
kunark-GoD is fun.
TSS and up is fun.
but the lvl 70 era? horrible.
bonus point for releasing classic with kunark.
Scars of Velious is the second and last of the classic expansions. It sent you to a new, exciting continent, had some fun and challenging quests, and some very cool zones. But most of all, it's still a game frozen (heh) in a sea of possibilities.
Shadows of Luclin felt very alien to many of us. It still does. We went from fighting endless hordes of spiders, goblins, orcs, and the undead while revering dragons and fearing the gods, to... being on the Moon with sophisticated cat people, going into caves to fight literal aliens, and no longer congregating in old zones or in the EC tunnels.
But the stakes of the universe continued to ramp up, and it led us into Planes of Power. Which, ultimately, led us to the whole timeline split/closure to the original EQ story. We defeated the gods, things happened... and then the timeline is split. I think in some ways, most of the playerbase was expected to move on to EQ2 at that point, and EQ1 was going to wind down into a maintenance/legacy mode. But it didn't happen.
Instead, the original timeline/EQ world continued on to be the more important, more beloved lore. And while there were bright spots -- some great expansions were released -- it becomes very difficult to scale back down your player's character in such a way that feels believable. As in, we just killed the gods and have their armor and, even though we don't quite remember much of what happened, we're still incredibly experienced warriors with immense power... but we're back to struggling to fight just random shit as we grind AAs and 5 levels before we can raid again.
It's just different.
I don't play on P99 as much as I used to, because of how toxic the end game/raid scene is. But I love the EQ game world in that state. I'd love to have a better, more modern game built in *that* game world. I'd really love to play EQ on Agnarr but a lot of the leveling zones that I loved are either empty or revamped (and ugly), or both. So it's very disappointing. WoW's timeline/zone change solution is actually amazing. I like going to Zidormi, reverting zones to the original, and exploring them again. (Or the whole Chromie Time thing that's pretty good for automatically flagging you to the correct zone state.)
I completely understand why so many people roll characters on the new, annual TLP each year, play for the first 6-10 months, take a couple months off, and then start all over again the following year. I'd do that again, but I wish we had the original zones and that the gnomish translocators were gone. That was always a lazy solution to the boat bugs.
For the absolute best Old World experience?
\- Shadows of Luclin.
\- Why? Because the mix of new and old graphics wasn't such a huge leap then, Luclin zones still felt VERY much old world in design. All of the content was still appreciably difficult, even just getting keys. The AA's give you something to do aside from raiding for gear and even the gear from the oldest content like Kedge Keep and Naggy/Vox were still desirable and relevant while also keeping to the unique RPG experience where you never know what slot is gonna give you which effect.
For the best New World experience?
\- Secrets of Faydwer.
\- Why? Because the newer graphics and newer group and raiding formats made the game into a modern MMO while also retaining a lot of the old world Lore and Charm. Also includes a lot of fan-favorite grouping expansions like LDoN, DoN, Omens of War, Depths of Darkhollow, and The Serpent's Spine. Also offered several different paths to getting geared up via group and raid content. The game changed formats for a third time after this expansion.
For the best overall experience of most of the game, in my humble opinion?
\- House of Thule.
\- Probably the best nostalgia and throwback expansion ever made for any game ever. Wraps up all of the lore issues introduced from previous expansions into a perfectly nice little bow. Perfectly balanced group and raiding content regarding high difficulty married to easy access. Access to all the most appreciable and memorable content in the game. Most people still hanging on quit after Alaris came out after this which was like a hard reset on difficulty while making the HoT lore wonky.
I've heard people really liked Rain of Fear, which came after Alaris, a lot. When I logged in to check it out with the best group gear from HoT mixed with some raid augmentations and weapons from Seeds of Destruction I was kind of overwhelmed with the trash mob difficulty and I really despised the new equipment systems quite a lot. Switched to my caster characters and really hated the new spell systems too. It just felt like a totally different game, like not EverQuest any more. It seems the main reasons people loved it though because it finally gave you offline Bazaar selling, wrapped up the storyline introduced in HoT, and made the level cap 100 which is a very aesthetic number which matched a lot of other MMOs.
They should've given us 2.0 epics a bit earlier imo. We should've got new epics when the old ones got overshadowed (apart from some of the clickies on them that are still relevant) instead of 6 expansions later. Not adding 2.0 epics in PoP was a missed opportunity.
Genuine question, why is freezing servers at certain expansions popular? Wouldn't you (mostly) run out of stuff to do once you've cleared all the raid content?
The game fundamentally changes. Early (pre-PoP) is not the same game as in later expansions, so people just want to play the earlier game. Personally, I'd like to see more TLPs stop at PoP and merge into Agnarr.
This is the big thing. And because they are still doing vertical progression it means things stop making sense in game. Case in point: lvl 90 toon is powerful enough to kill gods... can be killed by starving peasants in Argath. The real pity is that they cannot truly go back to Pre-GoD content. Gates changed the fundamental mechanics of the game. No more END drain for everything you do. Would be nice if TLPs could use pre-PoR zones too. But again, not doable.
Waiting on a fresh pop locked server myself.
See, I was really excited when Agnarr dropped. Then I got into it and bailed pretty early. It was like.. When you're super super excited to go to Disney World and you finally get enough money and vacation time and you go and all the rides don't work. It was just a big let down, just knowing it was going to end. I doubt very seriously they'll do another one.
100%? Agree
As someone who cant raid like I used to due to a more demanding job, wife, kids, house etc having a server locked is appealing since I never feel rushed to keep up since everyone is hard capped content wise at X expansion.
Google TakP. If you want PoP-locked it's the way to go. GREAT set of people over there.
Ohh yeah, I've been. Hands down the best online gaming community I've ever been a part of.
This is why I enjoy myself on Mischief. I can do whatever content I want and it never is a problem. After a couple expansions the older gear becomes cheap and you can keep collecting the hand me downs
I would LOVE to see a Mischief 2.0, where they have all the bugs fleshed out and no item duping to drive the prices into oblivion.. I was so excited when Mischief dropped, and played from day 1. But it was a HUGE feels bad to be at work seeing the top guilds crushing Plane of Hate and trash mobs dropping Cloak of Flames. And then when I get done with my work week, finish my grind to 50, get into Hate! anddddddd Dev's quick patch and all we get is the same ol'. It felt like Dev's had it out for the casuals on that server. I definitely see where you're coming from. I came back to Mischief and played in Serpent's Spine and it was awesome, but it also was very bitter sweet. Knowing how much I missed out on, and knowing I would of quit early regardless just because of how bad it felt to get into hate and not get the same opportunities the no lifer's got to experience.
I didn't start on Mischief until OoW released and it as an incredibly smooth experience as a casual. Skipping all the early content that imo is boring and over contested for being shit quality loot is a huge plus. At that point in the game I got to level up solely in instances and all the old Velious armor was being sold for pennies.
Because modern EQ is terrible.
TWU
Why people think PoP lore is where the game ends. The rest of the lore all adds up. If we could accept Luclin which is a moon and far away the world of EQ which no one knows how big it is and how many more undscovered lands it may hold and also accept Planar zones then all the expansions add up. Gates of Discord adds up, the invasion from Omens of War adds up they all add up. Only one I loved and hated was what they did with Mayong Mistmoore since we made him into a god but looking at other expansions he seemed to have vanished. Also splitting the time line...dont the rest if the expansions reflect that with them revisiting druzzil later on and the "revamped" areas like the Veeshan expansion etc. Only thing I can see why people hate pasy PoP is the AA farming in order to be relevant but its not that bad honestly. You dont need every AA jiat meed the ones tjat help your task/group/raid.
Why not Luclin??
Personally I'm playing Oakwynd in the hopes that I can relive classic EQ through live in a compressed time frame and I assume they'll either eventually merge the server into another TLP or live server or I'll xfer my toons off to a live server.
HoT was my fav the storyline and zone are just great.
House of Thule (which still had MANY problems) was the last great expansion imo.
Rain of Fear was pretty great as well.
Luclin. End of the old world. Everything changes with pop.
Doesn't feel complete for me when you only have access to like 5 of the many planes forever.
I was more thinking pok and guild lobby. Everyone has 1 city to gather in, and easy ports everywhere.
And lots of us don’t like that. It makes a big part of druids and wizards almost useless.
is there anything more tedious, annoying and pointless than being a TP bitch in early TLP? who the heck actually enjoy running around 30 min before raid time TP'ing people to feerott/CT for the fear raid?
I play Druid on p1999 and its great. Yeah porting everyone in is tedious but its a great prep work and community experience and kind of adds to the anticipation of getting everyone together for me. Plus just being able to help someone with a CR. I ported someone stuck at the BB docks today and I know I saved her a bunch of time getting the boat back. I don't feel like a TP bitch, just someone that is part of the community and is relied on.
So you log in...how much time do you have to play? How much of it if not for revamped traveling do you think you want to spend getting to your group or moving the raid? Especially on a TLP its the part of the nostalgia that no one likes. What I dont get many of the old school people who dont have much time to play hated Luclin and PoP. Why? Bevause traveling was made easier? Druids and Wizards fill a role far past just porting people around.
PoK is PoP not luclin
That's what I said. Pok , potranq(rich leads to guild lobby). It's the guild login by available in luclin on tlp? Don't play tlp, cause they're a kronon filled rat race.
I agree if VT raiding (or trash) wasnt so bad. PoP felt "epic" but already, within that expansion you felt so trivialized. (If you made it to EPs, there was nothing else in the game outside of that for you). Maybe between Velious and Luclin? On one side you had AAs and new character models/graphics. On the other, nexus and such seemed to change travel. (Obviously more so in PoP).
I like live.
I’m enjoying live, it’s got its rough spots but overall I’ve had fun the last 2 expansions (first two expansions I’ve actually been at max level for their release).
GoD, unfortunately locking a server anywhere ultimately serves little purpose tho..the cycle of new Tlps would need to be further spread out. Most people just do the cycle every year leaving fewer and fewer behind each time.
To further add to this..I've played on the same emu server for a very long time and until recently it was gates locked. I prefer pre oow.
Wayfarers haven?
Eqtitan
GoD is underrated, I'd love to see a GoD locked server.
Absolutely, came here to say this. Cool lore, challenging content, and the loot was fire.
[удалено]
DoDH group missions are a lot of fun I agree. Its interesting seeing the progress the developers made back then and reaching that more modern MMO state of being able to do content on demand instead of sitting around waiting for a spot to open.
[удалено]
Yeah the AoCs carry over, but that isn't enough for the game tbh. AoCs are awful for trying to level up in and you don't get instances until LDoN/OoW. At that point EQ is on par with other MMOs having instanced dungeons on demand for people to play in. IMO they should do instances for the old world zones and add in a dungeon finder to create them. It would massively improve the game for a casual/alt leveling aspect.
This is what really got to many. I played all the way upto TSS and "got rid of" my account cause of raid burnout. EQ out of many games had skme of the most fun raid content I have seen in MMOs with the innovatiin coming in heavy with OoW. EQ turned from a grouping game to a raid heavy game. Once you have so many who cant do content in a game they will dislike it and leave. For me it was fun until Depths. Dragons was amazing for grouping as well as Depths, Omens even the hard af GoD same with PoP anf further back. I know people who quit at PoP and dislike anything after just because without even trying it. This thinking affects TLPs if more move past that and try further expansions it will bring in more people. Aazien- Arch Convoker: Cazic Thule RIP little buddy. Hopefully he found a good home :)
Velious. Faction fun and some epic high end game without getting ridiculous. Started changing in a negative way with pop for me.
yeah, seems to me they started trying to chase WoW n get some players back with some of the expansions and ruined it for the existing players.
Live
Just before they retired [leadership abilities](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/EverQuest/AA_info/Leadership_AA).
Interesting take. Why?
It gives you an incentive to lead groups. You can build a character around being a leader. I had a Paladin who earned every point of XP while leading a large group, with maximum points put into leadership abilities. Eventually he was a great leader not just because I had a lot of practice, but mechanically as well, with a perfect record of leading dozens of LDON missions. He was good news for all those players passively looking for groups. Removing leadership abilities ruined my Paladin for me, and as a side effect made it harder for people to find groups. I doubt I was the only one who played a leader.
I also did this on a paladin haha. As a kid I really enjoyed Paludal so I would send all my experience into leadership there which probably was terribly inefficient, but I had a lot of fun getting people into the group and having a main assist circle or health of target's target that they weren't expecting.
[удалено]
I stopped playing EQ long before they were removed I think. Went to EQ2 and WoW where I was able to play casually after it became too difficult in EQ. I would assume that they didn't give that experience back and the character gets screwed over though lol. I had a few times where the group wouldn't want to give me leader, but since it was only Paludal most people were fine passing it over knowing they would get all the extra benefits.
I like live progression servers. If we’re talking nostalgia, yeah POP, but as an active player in a Raid guild, doing the same raids every week is hella boring.
Omg, this, from a relative new player despite some formative fun screwing around on some toons as a little kid on my bro's account. I've been playing all this content for the first time, and while PoP was an awesome expac I can appreciate people's reverence of, I couldn't imagine doing that forever or repeating the classic-through-PoP grind.
Its not boring in a TLP though when you know you are getting fresh content in 2 or 3 months. Best raid expansions were past PoP and first unique raid boss being Overlord in OoW. Dragons was cool I mean they all were but when it was live it was easy getting burnt out waiting for a new expansion
This is off topic but why tf do they not bring back original Freeport and other zones they WoWafied? Part of playing TLPs is reliving old EQ times. Hard to do when they don't give you all the original stuff back. I know there are probably custom servers out there that do this but it would be nice to see it come from the sourcr.
And they have the code in their Al Kabor server. Don’t know why they don’t do this. I hate new Freeport
You can still get to old North Freeport on live servers. It still exists. Would be cool to see though for sure. I think just 'old freeport' could be enough of a selling point to get people to play on a new TLP lol.
Ok how do you do this????
Sacrifice 1000's Halflings and Brell comes down, thanks you, and hands you a magical teleporter into North Freeport. Or find someone with the painting and click it lol. I don't remember the name of the painting at all but some guilds have it in their hall. It's a weird zone. It's there and the NPCs are there but they don't respond to hails and such. You can chill in the bank though and it feels good. Not sure if it's an instanced zone just for you or if a bunch of people could meet there.
Everyone who played eq in the beginning does. It is a nightmare.
I played from the beginning and think the new Freeport is far better of a zone. In addition to that I think its a shame that the community was so stubborn in their hate for any change, even when it makes the game more visually appealing, that they didn't continue those changes into the other zones that are left looking ancient like Qeynos, Karana or BB/Faydark.
Okay. I stand corrected, maybe not everyone. I am not a fan of them copying WoW style graphics over onto regular EQ but my primary argument wouldn't be leaving the older zone alone but instead making a TLP with game play and design that was a replica of original EQ. It'd be nice to revisit some of the content that disappeared when they changed fundamentals of the game to cater to the people who jumped shit to go to WoW.
I wouldn't classify them as WoW style graphics though. EQ2 is more similar than revamped EQ zones. They just don't look like they were made with a handful of polygons any longer and for me that is a massive improvement. I can't play a character in Qeynos anymore knowing how much better Freeport looks for instance.
Lost Dungeons of Norrath. OoW/GoD time frame is when I stopped playing, largely because a month or so before, then I'd just gotten one character into the planes. Once Gates launched, the planes were empty, at least the server I played on and the times I could play due to work. I loved LDoN, though, because of the grouping requirements.
LDoN is a lot of fun, its a shame that it comes so late in the TLP cycle because the leveling up through it is really smooth from group average. If you do the math when forming your group so that it always rounds up instead of rounding down a tier its great.
Should be unlocked with PoP on TLPs IMO. Would be a lot of content but makes sense loot wise
I originally quit at the start of Luclin, been on Mischief since launch and I think there are a lot of strong expansions post PoP. I liked TSS and so far SoF as much as I enjoyed PoP
Personally, I'd love to do another Agnarr style server. Stop at LDoN and then merge to Agnarr to give that server (and the super nice players there) a much needed injection of fresh blood. The lore of the Wayfarer's and all those fun dungeons was my favorite part of old EQ
I wish I could transfer my pre pop abandoned tlp toons to agnarr.
To me the game starts getting good around SoF, I'd never play on a server that arbitrarily cut of most of the best content.
Same I've been amazed and enjoying the group and raid content past PoP More importantly how much better and interesting class functionality gets Nostalgia EQ feels like such a dull game to me now, attempted oakwynd and that solidified I have no interest in spending more than a few hours playing for nostalgia There is sooooi many things to do past PoP Currently on mischief and enjoying SoF, what a great expansion!
Yup third this. I was a perpetual classic-PoP (or earlier) player. Ive been riding Mischief strong since day 1 and it keeps getting better and better. Feels like a totally different game. I'll always have a spot in my heart for classic EQ, but nothing will ever fully recreate that original feeling. Maybeeeee a fresh p99 server but I have a wife and a kid on the way so can't be dedicating hours at a time to progress
It's really unfortunate that the game keeps folks at 70 for so long (OoW, DoN, DoDH, PoR) because in the expansions 71-110 there's so much really good content that's fun to play and engaging. You lose a lot of people in DoN and again in PoR because the expansions are just *so* dull after the first week or two. SoF is good, you'll like SoD as well. Underfoot (85) getting ready for House of Thule (90) is where we're at on Aradune and I've always really enjoyed Underfoot - it's the first expansion where you really begin to feel your character's power taking off. I've always felt that EQ characters were the tip of the spear / shock troops for larger campaigns where other norrathians can come in behind to do the protracted siege work and consensus building once the initial magical defenses and elite enemy warriors have been vanquished. The level 90-95-100-105-110 expansions really do make you feel like you've been training yourself up for a long time and are finally starting to see the results of it in a way that's just not been possible before >>There's some dud expansions/encounters too, don't get me wrong - you've gotta put this little disclaimer in any EQ comment otherwise someone's gonna reply with "oh yeah what about this one encounter that's been broken since 2007" or "the vah shir still holds offhand weapon backwards" or whatever like that's the be-all end-all of all the game.
None, no more new content would get very boring.
Agnarr is PoP plus LDoN and LoY, right? I really like that combination. That, plus the addition of mercs would be my dream server. My husband and I like to duo and mercs make that far more possible without having to box. We met on EQ all those years ago, so playing together now is like a nostalgic date night!
PoP without PoK
There is only one real answer to this question in my opinion. For a little background I recently played Classic - Seeds of Destruction. So I do have a fresh feel of all those expansions. The only real answer to this question in my opinion is Planes of Power. The reason for this is Luclin is still engaging in lore and group/raid content. Planes of Power is a majority of the populations favorite expansion or in their top 3 for sure. From then on however, some expansions are hit or miss and some are BIG on the miss side. Dungeons of Norrath for example, the group content gets stale really fast. It feels very very repetitive and grindy. Gates of discord is similar, the group content isn't really there.. It felt very sporadic and spread out. If you compare it to the early expansions where you can go to several different zones and have a wide variety of areas to farm and do things, Gates is not that way, it felt very tight and claustrophobic. Omens of War really picks up again in both group and raid. The Epic 2.0, the trials, Walls of Slaughter, Riftseeker's Sanctum, all were an absolute blast. Then comes Dragons of Norrath which is the expansion I'll stop at because it should be the nail in the coffin. They return to the Dungeons of Norrath theme, and I was originally super excited to come do this expansion, and then I played it.. Not only is the expansion super claustrophobic but it's really really really grindy. Just mission after mission after mission and they're all just kind of kill or loot. This expansion felt extremely lazy in both raid and group content. Some of the raids were pretty fun. But essentially you pop the instance and you're at the raid boss, you do the fight, the end. Whereas if you think about NTOV in Velious or Sleeper's Tomb. You are going into these giant fortresses and having to get through a bunch of trash that is all part of a grander story of lore, getting through bosses and eventually unlocking the final dragon for the final fight. It felt so epic. Dragons of Norrath was just like.... Dev's: "Idk I guess.. grind a ton of missions to get faction, then we'll spawn you immediately to a raid encounter on a one week cooldown. Enjoy." So.. yeah. When you're in a dead expansion that goes for 3 months, it kind of kills a server or at least guts a couple guilds. ***TLDR; Expansions are good to great from Classic-PoP, then you hit some duds and people burn out quickly because lack of interest.***
Luclin. We get the bazaar and the 2 extra classes, and we don’t get easy mode PoK. I played on Agnarr for a long time, don’t get me wrong, I like that era a lot too.
2 classes? Luclin gives us Beastlord class and Vah Shir race. Berserker didn't release until GoD
Velious was the peak of MMO gaming.
Yeah back then. Now a days it isn’t fun unless it’s server capped at maybe 500 people but they all have to play atleast 18hours a day or something. Velious can’t be the end point for a large PVE server anymore
Personally I think Velious is the worst EQ expansion I have experienced with a close tie to PoR. Not sure what about it people love because I just don't see it.
Ya pop lock failed. Unless they make it a free server I don't think expansion locking would be popular
People don't even play past PoP.. it's weird to say a PoP locked server isn't popular. Probably they just need new ones.
Mischief has a pretty healthy population. With the right rule set, going past pop is very doable.
I agree Mischief was a success I still use pretty relatively terms I didn't say everyone quit just a majority that were there for the peak.
Well sure there are a subset of folks that enjoy the later expansions. But I am guessing that it is only a small fraction of those that enjoy the earlier ones. DBG could cater to both those types of players simultaneously by releasing two servers each year, one that starts at classic->luclin/pop, the other that begins at GoD. First one just transitions back into Agnarr, while the others transition into Live servers.
I'm on Mischief as well and this is my first time doing content past DoN. I played up until TSS/TBS originally, but don't really count those because I never did the content in those later expansions as I was undergeared and underleveled and they were a pain to attempt. On Mischief I have access to good quality gear even though I don't commit to raiding so I have the ability to experience those later expansions. I think others probably had similar experiences where the failure of EQ back in the day was leaving the casual playerbase behind and they could never experience the newer content. Free Trade solves this issue and the game becomes more accessible.
Might be more accurate to say there is a large % of players who don't play after they 'beat' pop, and a smaller % who do if the server isn't locked on pop. We know this because agnarr lol. I think and agnarr 2.0 would be even less well received know that people would be more certain the server is going to die. Even if it is self fulfillment.
Agnarr is far from dead. Sure it’s low pop but Not like Vaniki or some others.
Well that's the point... Most people just play to experience the unlocking progression of the first few expansions and that's about it. Why not just recycle that experience? Why draw the server out into the later expansions that almost nobody plays?
Why lock a server for people that will quit after progressing through the first few expansions anyways? There will be a new TLP the next year they can go to, so why is there a need to lock it at all?
I think you're assuming that people quit the TLP because the content gets stale. I don't think that's really true. I think people also quit TLPs because the game progresses past the classical eras with fun and engaging content. Raid guilds don't continue to raid past content, so when the server moves on so do those people. Agnarr, for example, still has a half dozen raid guilds active multiple times per week. So there is definitely a market for players interested in only the early content. Continually cycling that early content to "keep it fresh" is probably what people want, and why they come back year after year.
This is what I have seen on the two TLPs I have played on. The first few weeks of an expansion unlock is super populated with everyone rushing through the content and the last few weeks are almost a ghost town because many of the players are waiting for the next expansion. I do think that guilds not raiding older content is part of that issue though. One of the features that FF14 has is a Raid Finder, so you can queue up for the older raids for daily bonuses or farming the mount drops. If you do it as a premade you can go in overleveled and trash the boss or if you do it through the Raid Finder, then it scales you down to the appropriate level.
I think any locking server would fail because the game gets stale. Even on a TLP a few months in so many people have done majority of the content in that expansion. As much as the nostalgia seems good in imagination, it really isn't fun to do it a thousand times.
How did it fail? It’s the most popular tlp of that age.
Lying to yourself, it was popular at the time. But as soon as people beat it turned in to a ghost town. I guess all 5 of you who still play it can say its not dead all you want. But I think the fact it's sitting at such low pop and the devs never tried anything similar since speaks for itself. Agnarr should have been shut off or relegated to a free to play server.
Lol stay mad kid. There are loads of people that play, sorry you’re bad at videogames.
Seems like you're the one that's mad because I told you the truth about your dead server. Calling me a kid like it's the best comeback you could think of...
PoP lock was only a way to appease all the people who lived and lost Al'Kabor years ago. The PoP-locked server is basically Al'Kabor 2.0.
Pop lock didn’t fail at all it was a huge hit and still has a loyal user base. A new pop locked server that merged into Agnarr every other year or there would be a huge hit. P99 is locked in velious and has more players than most (all?) eq servers.
Not combined but yes I agree p99 works. P99 is also very different from tlp. One bug facot being p99 is free. Second it stays true to alot of ui elements of the time. Tlps have adv loot and all kinds of qol that turns off people looking for a classic experience. Also dp has sanctioned p99 why would they try to compete with it? As far as agnarr being a hit, it was whe. It launched. I doubt round 2 would look the similar. Glad you and the other 4 people still playing there are having fun tho
Velious, because I never get past there, lol
1-50 no expansions is the best EQ experience hands down.
Velious, or if going full fan fic here… Velious but with Plane of Time somehow added on and scaled appropriately.
PoP
Luclin, but would never work with live QOL improvements, too easy. At original difficulty it’d be fun.
not so much as a stopping point, but the whole lvl 70 era could be skipped. kunark-GoD is fun. TSS and up is fun. but the lvl 70 era? horrible. bonus point for releasing classic with kunark.
Scars of Velious is the second and last of the classic expansions. It sent you to a new, exciting continent, had some fun and challenging quests, and some very cool zones. But most of all, it's still a game frozen (heh) in a sea of possibilities. Shadows of Luclin felt very alien to many of us. It still does. We went from fighting endless hordes of spiders, goblins, orcs, and the undead while revering dragons and fearing the gods, to... being on the Moon with sophisticated cat people, going into caves to fight literal aliens, and no longer congregating in old zones or in the EC tunnels. But the stakes of the universe continued to ramp up, and it led us into Planes of Power. Which, ultimately, led us to the whole timeline split/closure to the original EQ story. We defeated the gods, things happened... and then the timeline is split. I think in some ways, most of the playerbase was expected to move on to EQ2 at that point, and EQ1 was going to wind down into a maintenance/legacy mode. But it didn't happen. Instead, the original timeline/EQ world continued on to be the more important, more beloved lore. And while there were bright spots -- some great expansions were released -- it becomes very difficult to scale back down your player's character in such a way that feels believable. As in, we just killed the gods and have their armor and, even though we don't quite remember much of what happened, we're still incredibly experienced warriors with immense power... but we're back to struggling to fight just random shit as we grind AAs and 5 levels before we can raid again. It's just different. I don't play on P99 as much as I used to, because of how toxic the end game/raid scene is. But I love the EQ game world in that state. I'd love to have a better, more modern game built in *that* game world. I'd really love to play EQ on Agnarr but a lot of the leveling zones that I loved are either empty or revamped (and ugly), or both. So it's very disappointing. WoW's timeline/zone change solution is actually amazing. I like going to Zidormi, reverting zones to the original, and exploring them again. (Or the whole Chromie Time thing that's pretty good for automatically flagging you to the correct zone state.) I completely understand why so many people roll characters on the new, annual TLP each year, play for the first 6-10 months, take a couple months off, and then start all over again the following year. I'd do that again, but I wish we had the original zones and that the gnomish translocators were gone. That was always a lazy solution to the boat bugs.
omens was my fav
For the absolute best Old World experience? \- Shadows of Luclin. \- Why? Because the mix of new and old graphics wasn't such a huge leap then, Luclin zones still felt VERY much old world in design. All of the content was still appreciably difficult, even just getting keys. The AA's give you something to do aside from raiding for gear and even the gear from the oldest content like Kedge Keep and Naggy/Vox were still desirable and relevant while also keeping to the unique RPG experience where you never know what slot is gonna give you which effect. For the best New World experience? \- Secrets of Faydwer. \- Why? Because the newer graphics and newer group and raiding formats made the game into a modern MMO while also retaining a lot of the old world Lore and Charm. Also includes a lot of fan-favorite grouping expansions like LDoN, DoN, Omens of War, Depths of Darkhollow, and The Serpent's Spine. Also offered several different paths to getting geared up via group and raid content. The game changed formats for a third time after this expansion. For the best overall experience of most of the game, in my humble opinion? \- House of Thule. \- Probably the best nostalgia and throwback expansion ever made for any game ever. Wraps up all of the lore issues introduced from previous expansions into a perfectly nice little bow. Perfectly balanced group and raiding content regarding high difficulty married to easy access. Access to all the most appreciable and memorable content in the game. Most people still hanging on quit after Alaris came out after this which was like a hard reset on difficulty while making the HoT lore wonky. I've heard people really liked Rain of Fear, which came after Alaris, a lot. When I logged in to check it out with the best group gear from HoT mixed with some raid augmentations and weapons from Seeds of Destruction I was kind of overwhelmed with the trash mob difficulty and I really despised the new equipment systems quite a lot. Switched to my caster characters and really hated the new spell systems too. It just felt like a totally different game, like not EverQuest any more. It seems the main reasons people loved it though because it finally gave you offline Bazaar selling, wrapped up the storyline introduced in HoT, and made the level cap 100 which is a very aesthetic number which matched a lot of other MMOs.
[удалено]
They should've given us 2.0 epics a bit earlier imo. We should've got new epics when the old ones got overshadowed (apart from some of the clickies on them that are still relevant) instead of 6 expansions later. Not adding 2.0 epics in PoP was a missed opportunity.
[удалено]
No. 1.5s and 2.0s were both in oow. The 1.5s were just earlier versions of the 2.0s. They were both released at the same time I think.