EQ TLP - Mischief (Free Trade / Random Loot)

Sterling said:

i mean it was basically released as pretty much a raid expansion. even those mid level zones were mostly all shit XP even then.

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I wouldn't say just a raid expansion. It's biggest fault was that things were pretty distant and less familiar, so not as many people gave it a try. TOFS was very good xp dungeon with solid modifier. The keys were a deterrent to randos, but I had many fun groups there.

Crawling skyshrine was a really neat experience back in the day. Soooooo many random bs items that were fun to look at and it's such a huge and interesting zone to go through once with a group and soak it up, and a group can get all the way to the end without that much difficulty.

I always felt like Velious was EXTREMELY overrated as an expansion. Easily my least favorite expansion of the entire "golden era"(Classic - PoP) of EQ. If you don't raid 24/7, that expansion sucks total ass IMO.

Kirun said:

I always felt like Velious was EXTREMELY overrated as an expansion. Easily my least favorite expansion of the entire "golden era"(Classic - PoP) of EQ. If you don't raid 24/7, that expansion sucks total ass IMO.

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It's all about the lore. We fought dragons on Antonica and Kunark, now we're fighting them on their home turf. Places like Sleeper's Tomb and NTOV are atmospheric as hell. Also, ice areas in games have this kind of moodiness about them in general that a lot of people enjoy.

To me the "Golden Era" goes up through OoW, then a new one starts around TSS. People don't know how rich GoD is as an expansion.

Rajaah said:

It's all about the lore. We fought dragons on Antonica and Kunark, now we're fighting them on their home turf. Places like Sleeper's Tomb and NTOV are atmospheric as hell. Also, ice areas in games have this kind of moodiness about them in general that a lot of people enjoy.

To me the "Golden Era" goes up through OoW, then a new one starts around TSS. People don't know how rich GoD is as an expansion.

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GoD could've really been something, but they moved a BUNCH of talent off the team at the last minute to rush design/redesign on EQ2.

Daidraco said:

Velious ended up being just a nostalgia trip for me. Once you've revisited everything, it loses its luster pretty quickly. I know how some people feel about AA's, but I think it's some kind of therapeutic shit to sit and grind out levels or AA's, so Im looking forward to Luclin pretty hard now.

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MMORPGs are at their core, about the "grind". It's just making sure you have cool enough peeps around you to make that monotony fun and enjoyable. I never understand the "hate" for AAs. I think they are the single greatest accomplishment EQ designers ever had for the genre and I love a sense of "perpetual" progress.

Clicky pants - greaves of stability? I know we made sure all clerics have them and their epic, but that's all I (as a non-cleric) have seen prioritized.

Kirun said:

GoD could've really been something, but they moved a BUNCH of talent off the team at the last minute to rush design/redesign on EQ2.

MMORPGs are at their core, about the "grind". It's just making sure you have cool enough peeps around you to make that monotony fun and enjoyable. I never understand the "hate" for AAs. I think they are the single greatest accomplishment EQ designers ever had for the genre and I love a sense of "perpetual" progress.

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When I talk about GoD I'm talking about the modern refined version, not the launch version (which I never got to experience).

They're two completely different expansions, pretty much.

And yeah, if they hadn't gutted the team... people would have very different memories of when the Golden Era ended.

I would have liked to see a GoD+OoW single expansion with a level raise to 70. Would have been a worthy follow-up to everything before it and been on par with the progression curves of previous expansions.

Unsure how they would have set it up (GoD zones first which unlocks Discord zones?) or even if this was ever actually the plan. Depends on who you ask. At the very least it seems like they planned a level 70 raise, split their expansion idea into halves, and left the raise for the second half. It's sorta like if PoP had ended with Sol Ro's Tower and left the elemental planes / Time / level raise for a sequel.

Daidraco said:

Velious ended up being just a nostalgia trip for me. Once you've revisited everything, it loses its luster pretty quickly. I know how some people feel about AA's, but I think it's some kind of therapeutic shit to sit and grind out levels or AA's, so Im looking forward to Luclin pretty hard now.

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Yeah I also love the endless AA grind...when I can solo. It's cool to get on and fight stuff for an hour and have it accomplish something.

Depending on class, there are a few points in the game's life cycle where it's easy to run out of AAs to get even if you only play casually. Monk/rogue/zerker in particular max out relatively fast. Then you have classes like Shaman and Bard that have a metric fuckton of points to spend and take ages to cap even for hardcore players. Especially when it comes to the Focus AAs added at level 105+. I think Bard might have 2x the AAs that Zerker does.

I've had a couple of somber moments where I capped AAs as a zerker and didn't have much else to do.

Leon said:

Original GOD was such a rapefest.

The first blue con Kyv you came across obliterated your tanks in ways AOW would blush at.

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When I was so tanky that that AoW was pretty trivial with only a couple healers, those yellow con kyv trash in the raids could flatten me in half a second. It was not fun having to do XP groups just to deal with my xp drain from raiding. I swear they were worse than the bosses.

Xevy said:

The trash mobs in Tacvi are harder than any other mob in GoD. There's like 12 of them, but each one is usually pulled while healers are medding and the first two people to try and take aggro are instantly dead.

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I don't know, aside from hitting like trucks, they're extremely one-dimensional mobs. Several other bosses in the zone, especially the final boss and one of the snakes, always gave us a lot more grief than they did.

Edit: Just realized I can't wait for GoD