I would say Kunark and Velious were the golden age of EQ, as expansions go. Luclin tried to be good, but just didn't resonate well with players, and PoP made the mistake of giving us what we were asking for without thinking about the consequences of doing that. Subsequent expansions tried to start telling us a story, but by that point a number of factors were making the game overall feel less meaningful.
I'll give a shout out to LDON though. While it wasn't really an "expansion" like Kunark and Velious were, it managed to really nail the sweet spot for procedurally generated repeatable content when it was launched.
is it just me or are we all just yurning for old EQ.... if thats the case go checkout https://www.project1999.com/ while you wait for pantheon
im trying to make sure my expectations for Pantheon is not EQ, although classic EQ ( original/Kunark/Velious ) got alot of things RIGHT. which i can see pantheon is taking note of.
I had no problem fixing or sticking to a single faction in Velious. You just needed to know exactly which mobs to kill or what items to do turnins to revert the faction. If you were in an active raid guild you were able to accomplish this. And, yes, there were times people sat out on a certain boss raid because they had a turnin to do, but once they were complete with that they were free to join in again.
If you followed the progression of the zones and completed quests in the proper order it looked like this.
First you started with Coldain armor/ring/shawl quests while killing Giants to increase dragon and coldain faction.
Next, Once all coldain quests were completed you moved into Halls of Testing in TOV.
Once all early Dragon faction quests were completed - you moved into NTOV and worked on Giant faction by killing NTOV and Dain.
At this point you didnt really need to use Thurg anymore as Kael was a more central meeting location and you could bank/sell there. And fixing Tormax faction was pretty easy if you had Yeli on your list.
Once everyone had Sleepers keys and Vulak and Tunare had been farmed you worked on ST quests on Dragon faction. While farming AOW.
If you made a misstep or were off on your quests you might have issues, but as long as you kept up with the guild on this progressive timeline it worked out nicely. I still remember helping guildies out by collecting coldain heads for thier giant faction as they needed to do a turnin.
I think we mainly did him for the faction hits. And the Sleepers warder quests offered some nice items. And this was purely the faction progression that i was listing. Most people in my guild just went for Giant armor quests and then NTOV/Sleepers loot. But i helped a lot of guilds out during downtime and they mostly followed the faction progression. And once luclin came out it was basically nobody cared about faction anymore. And the luclin faction was silly. The only thing that mattered was camping shards, i hate vexthal shards.
Honestly, I thought Kunark and Velious were way too big. They got the zone sizes right in classic EQ. Zones like the Dreadlands and Timorous Deep were insanely huge. Another problem is that with each expansion the world gets bigger and bigger, but the server roughly supports the same population of players. This makes the world feel more sparse and barren. I think that needs to be addressed in Pantheon.
Kunark was the best by far.
Amazing lore, great zone designs (in general), cool new creature and item models, full level range resulting in something for everyone, and of course the Iksar. It really felt like exploring a rich, dangerous new frontier when playing as a vanilla race on the continent.
When i started, at the age of 15, in a foreign language, the game was a bit overwhelming to me. Till i got the hang of the english language and started making friends. When i started getting into guilds it was already Kunark where i have plenty of fond memories. Karnors, Skyfire (damned cleric epic) Trakanon, Seb and City of Mist. Shortly after velious came and this is basically where i actually started to raid, so never really gotten the hang of Kunark. For me Velious would be the best expansion, however i really liked planes of power. But that primarily had to do with being a warrior and having to hike everywhere.
I do agree with what most people said however, that planes of power as expansion had a bit of an easy mode. I liked the planes of power progression however, with the trials and keys. Plane of Tranquility was the main acces point to all the content was just convenient. But it did lose some of the game where everything prior to that was dangerous, no matter the way you looked at it. either thru passive roams or people training area's to get their own skin to safety. This step was ofcourse already made in Luclin, with the spires becomming active and giving a more 'centralized' setting to replace the EC tunnel (*snickers*).
So for content, excitement and general gameplay i vote for Velious. For quality of life, accesibility i vote for planes of power.
I just joined today, and am browsing the forums. Sorry if this counts as a necro.
For me, Velious was my favorite of the two. The raid content was excellent. The armor quests were great.
I don't feel there is such a thing as a zone that is too large or has too much content. OK, Western Karana felt like a waste. But fill that up with stuff and I'd be happy.
Kunark was great. Although I take off some points for the Burning Lands. This was *the* place to grind for a while, and I got sick of it.
kreed99 said: If the factions had worked more like velious in Luclin than yes it was good expansion as the original aa’s were unique and exciting. And the raids were hard. PoP - if they had just not done a fast travel hub world and just had POT it would have been perfect. That was enough of a hub world and we already had bazaar/nexus.
I totally agree 100%. I hated that hub to everywhere but did find the content from PoP fun.
Now that I think of it, EQ was the only game which had expansions - most games after that rather added smaller content updates. I haven't played most of the EQ expansions. I stopped playing after GoD back then. When I returned, I played mostly through Serpents Spine (? the expansion that adds the Drakkin). When I decided to play on a TLP server, I played again through the initial expansions (up to PoP), this time as a member in a raid guild. Playing as part of a raid guild was a totally different experience from my original play - and arguably more enjoyable, since I simply got to see more of the world :)
Of the expansions, I enjoyed the Serpents Spine the most. Probably because I wanted to do more on my own when I returned, and with the mercenaries I could do just that. The expansion has a nice progression path, and a number of well done zones (both size and content).
I spent most of my time in the original release areas, Kunark & Velious.... i explored the moon, and would visit PoK for a KEI before returning to Velious or Kunark.
What was very special about Kunark xpac to me was: it had multiple bioms (snowy, or giant forests, etc) Everything was HUGE in scale, it seemed. I felt the world truly DID expand with that release, and also developed the lore in a way that directly tied in with each class (Epic quests).... The Nature Walker's scimitar blew my mind... I remember seeing it for my first time, a human female druid sitting inside the dwarf city of Kaladim had one (FV server). That sword became my reason to raid and in going after that goal, I was able to enjoy so much content leading up to it, which was a discovery process the entire journey. What a huge quest.
Velious appealed to me mainly due to Thurgadin lore and my affection for the Othomir... I always wanted the Otter people to be a playable race, and loved everything about their society.
Luclin was fun, & I think my playstyle was so casual (although I spent a lot of time, it was mostly soloing as a druid, taking my sweet time RP'ing or just running through trees with SoW after having someone cast Lev on me) lol. I mostly enjoyed exploring areas that were extremely dangerous/risky, so the Kunark areas were perfect for that as everything seemed so massive.