EQ Never

Having a NTOV/ST geared melee join any group that wasn't doing specifically ToV or ST was a massive increase in dps/survival in velious. Luclin was similar except the cap didn't increase as much as it did from Kunark to Velious, where mostly the difference was in the guys with endgame gear and 500aa, vs PoP was just an overall massive increase in power from entrance to Time. The mudflation was strong in PoP, but the increase in character power from start of an xpac to end was definitely there before.

Also, is anyone surprised when supertouch is wrong?

Yea, I would even go as far as to say that in Luclin you could ignore all gear / content and I would argue simply having a tank with 500aa meant more than any other equipment upgrades. The AA grind in Luclin was slow as shit too, so to gain hundreds of AA was definitely out of reach for the casuals you speak of. Rose colored glasses, my friend.

Jysin_sl said:

Yea. The AA grind in Luclin was slow as shit too, so to gain hundreds of AA was definitely out of reach for the casuals you speak of. Rose colored glasses, my friend.

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When Luclin came out I needed 45aas on my ranger (gayyyyy) to get AM and endless quiver. I timed it and it took over 4 hours per AA. Ahh good times!

The only people getting 100+ AA's in Luclin were AE Groups. Wizards, Clerics, Enchanters, and who ever they were kind enough to let into the group to leach exp (ie. Guild Main Tank). Everyone else was stuck to beating their heads against the wall maybe to get their one class defining AA and a few other minor ones. The discrepancy was pretty retarded, but that was EQ. Have's and Have Not's.

Velious and luclin pre-ssra sucked for monks. We went from solo powerhouse in vanilla and kunark to utter shit. Then Emp Ssra stick turned that around again. That thing was still a top end solo item throughout PoP as well.

Dandai_sl said:

The first expansion I truly loved was Pop because it segregated the casuals from the more hardcore players.

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Except backflagging, goddamn fucking backflagging ruined the enjoyment of the expansion.

AAs were pretty strong. Once my BST had the defensive ones I could pretty much solo named and farm the shit out of molds which the good ones were selling for about 90k. Also fun to farm old items like Amulet of Necropotence, etc.

Beastlord was fun, more games need melee pet classes.

Why isn't this in the Shaw yet?

No one wants to put EQ in the shaw, and FFXIV graveyard needs to be forever alone.

maybe the death of EQN will lead to the birth of EQ 2.0 ... a company does not just sit on IP's it bought for $$$ ... they will do something with it.

Fight_sl said:

The only people getting 100+ AA's in Luclin were AE Groups. Wizards, Clerics, Enchanters, and who ever they were kind enough to let into the group to leach exp (ie. Guild Main Tank). Everyone else was stuck to beating their heads against the wall maybe to get their one class defining AA and a few other minor ones. The discrepancy was pretty retarded, but that was EQ. Have's and Have Not's.

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I remember the "fun" of our crazy monk wanting to aoe to gain lots of AA by pulling the entire scarlet wastes to the grey zone line. We would sit their twiddling our thumps for 5 mintues then we just see this mass on the horizon of everything in the zone chasing our monk he would bee line right at us and wait till everything was close then flop and we would aoe like mad men. It was one of those things that death was not exactly uncommon but every time you did it without dying was so good xp wise it did not matter.

Quaid_sl said:

Why isn't this in the Shaw yet?

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This thread has provided some insightful commentary from previous employees that we may not have seen in the shaw.

Fight_sl said:

The only people getting 100+ AA's in Luclin were AE Groups. Wizards, Clerics, Enchanters, and who ever they were kind enough to let into the group to leach exp (ie. Guild Main Tank). Everyone else was stuck to beating their heads against the wall maybe to get their one class defining AA and a few other minor ones. The discrepancy was pretty retarded, but that was EQ. Have's and Have Not's.

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This is accurate of AA's through most of the expansions.

Even in PoP a Chanter charm group was pulling in AA's at least 10x the rate I could. And when I joined them it was basically sit in the corner and don't fuck things up.

xadion_sl said:

maybe the death of EQN will lead to the birth of EQ 2.0 ... a company does not just sit on IP's it bought for $$$ ... they will do something with it.

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IP's get bought all the time and nothing happens to them. DBG was probably not purchased because of EverQuest and I doubt we ever see a new title.

Voldeth_sl said:

EQ pre-PoP had a fuckton of segregation between casuals & hardcore players. The casuals would get lost in Lguk and end up dying trying to make it to a camp. Good luck trying to get a FBSS if you couldn't commit serious hours since the wait list alone could be absurdly long. Kunark had Seb to repeat that and they even introduced a key to make sure that true casuals couldn't even make it in the zone. Lets not forget they introduced Epic weapons during that era, you know, weapons with a huge distinctive graphics that told you if the person you were playing with was worth a shit (sure, there were exceptions to this for some classes). Velious? Casual friendly? Surely you gest? Luclin: VT keys alone ruin any idea of it being a casual expansion.

If you ever played original EQ you knew most people who were 'hardcore' on your server. You knew the guy who owned the market in commonlands, you knew the top guilds, and if you ran into a player you could probably look at him and within half a second you knew just how much time he put on his character. If you saw a cleric in full purple armor with yellow boots, you understood he had spent a lot of time in PoH and had probably camped efreeti in Solb a fuckton. If you saw a monk with a tranq staff and robe in Kunark, you knew he put in a fair amount of time. Warriors by their weapons, etc, etc.

Most hardcore players played in hardcore group with their friends and guildmates. Sometimes they brought Johnny casual in because they needed an extra body. This was true throughout most of EQ. It continued in PoP, it was just more frustrating since Johnny causal started to make the clearing significantly slower now.

Tldr; you're remembering the game wrong.

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I think what Supertouch meant was in PoP there was a lot of content blocked from the casual than it was in Kunark/Velious. The expansion was also almost all about raiding with less than 20% about grouping. Compare that to Kunark and Velious where you can venture through many content as a group than you can with PoP expansion. The flagging thing was also ridiculous as for many of the zones inaccessable unless you belong in a high tier raiding guild. It was a direction many casuals hated which was repeated when GoD expansion was released this is when I quit EQ.

PoP made the FV trade system amazing. I made so much money selling people the ability to key to a plane it wasn't funny.

Laura_sl said:

I think what Supertouch meant was in PoP there was a lot of content blocked from the casual than it was in Kunark/Velious. The expansion was also almost all about raiding with less than 20% about grouping. Compare that to Kunark and Velious where you can venture through many content as a group than you can with PoP expansion. The flagging thing was also ridiculous as for many of the zones inaccessable unless you belong in a high tier raiding guild. It was a direction many casuals hated which was repeated when GoD expansion was released this is when I quit EQ.

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See, I hear this a lot and its totally bunk. The POP flagging system was accessible toEVERYONE, but it wasn't handed over on a silver platter, yes,you did have to work for it. Effort was required. The game was what, four years old, and the majority of the player base was 65, so it only made sense to make an expansion that catered to the higher level players. The POJ trials were a frikkin breeze and actually required very little effort as they had groups running people through 12 hours a day. Not just guild groups, just whoever was there. I was in an upper tier guild but didn't even need to group with guild mates because another guild was just running anyone who showed up through a cue, so I put in my name and an hour later they jammed me in with a bunch of total strangers and we breezed through it. I actually got a few lower tier flags (Disease, Nightmare, Storms, Torment) just running through with pick up groups because I was working a lot of nights and missed a few guild raids.

My point is, if you tried, you could conceivably join pick up raids for all but Time, and later in the expansion, there were even pick up raids in Time. It was possible if you tried, and those who didn't and just complained, well honestly, the flagging system was great because it filtered out the crap, immature, annoying players, so if you zoned into say, POF, the only groups there were serious, dedicated players and the game became ten times more enjoyable as you didn't have to deal with garbage players, KS'ing, that idiot who will run in circles around the group jumping every 10 feet while waiting for pulls, arguing in OOC or SHOUT, none of the usual crap one has to put up with in the "open" zones.

Besides, the "casuals" were not even capable of grouping in the higher level Luclin zones, most casuals were still hanging in Chardok, KC, and Sebilis. They are called casuals for a reason.

Merlin_sl said:

See, I hear this a lot and its totally bunk. The POP flagging system was accessible toEVERYONE, but it wasn't handed over on a silver platter, yes,you did have to work for it. Effort was required. The game was what, four years old, and the majority of the player base was 65, so it only made sense to make an expansion that catered to the higher level players. The POJ trials were a frikkin breeze and actually required very little effort as they had groups running people through 12 hours a day. Not just guild groups, just whoever was there. I was in an upper tier guild but didn't even need to group with guild mates because another guild was just running anyone who showed up through a cue, so I put in my name and an hour later they jammed me in with a bunch of total strangers and we breezed through it. I actually got a few lower tier flags (Disease, Nightmare, Storms, Torment) just running through with pick up groups because I was working a lot of nights and missed a few guild raids.

My point is, if you tried, you could conceivably join pick up raids for all but Time, and later in the expansion, there were even pick up raids in Time..

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I don't think this is accurate. The alternate flagging quests were added later and pickup Time raids weren't a thing during the time that PoP was the most recent expansion. You're thinking about after LoY, LDoN, and probably GoD were released.

Yeah, on Innoruuk we only had 3 guilds that were Time-flagged for a long time and I don't think we got a 4th until OoW was out or close to being out. I only remember that because I was a leader by that time and the 4th guild tried to take over the Time rotation.

I did come back to the game and lead a Time pick up raid for my alt at some point, but I don't think that was until DoN or later. Obviously each server could have progressed differently, but I doubt any server was doing that until a few expansions down the line.