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Scars of Velious - The best EQ expansion ever?

    • 793 posts
    August 7, 2018 1:46 PM PDT

    I really enjoyed Velious and spent alot of time there, in fact even though I got SoL and PoP, I rarely went to the zones in them.

    But in the end, Kunark has got to be my favorite. It just offered so much variety in zones, they were large with a wide range of leveling. 

    • 1785 posts
    August 7, 2018 1:51 PM PDT

    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.

    • 12 posts
    August 7, 2018 1:57 PM PDT

    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.

     

    • 23 posts
    August 7, 2018 2:06 PM PDT
    I started EQ at the start of Kunark, but I'm going to make an unpopular choice here. First, I'm going to talk about Velious.

    SoV had some fantastic content. Ring war. Shawl walk. The grandeur of Kael. The terrifying number of dragons out there in Western Wastes. But many of the decisions highlighted as its high points are badly flawed. The three sided reputation system was... a series of false choices. The associated "leader" factions (Dain, Tormax, Yelinak) made faction-switching almost impossible. Being anti-dwarf meant forsaking unarguably the most useful town on the continent, and locking you out of the ring and shawl. That's a bad deal. So it came down to "giant friends or dragon friends". Or, in reality, neither, as you rightly killed Kael named and dragon named as targets of opportunity, with very little lost for the decision (except the quest wing of ToV, which was... not the high point of the xpac, and gave largely sub-par loot). Plane of Growth was worse; most good aligned characters were locked out unless they wanted irreversible faction hits to hometown heroes. Sure, the zone sizes were impressive, but places like Eastern Wastes and Great Divide waste an awful lot of space with open, flat whiteness. Yes, travel was sometimes eventful (Wuoshi on the druid port, until he was trivialized enough to be usually-dead), but it was sometimes TOO eventful (Siren's Grotto was inexcusablely bad design) and sometimes just... long, for the sake of length alone.

    So here's my take: Omens of War. It's easy to write off as "Gates of Discord 2", and the fact that most of the models weren't new is certainly a black eye against it. But the expansion was a great return to form after GoD's missteps. There were big outdoor zones, at several level ranges, with piles of camps. Wall of Slaughter remains one of the all-time best grind camp zones. Muramite Proving Grounds is probably the best implementation of an outdoor maze zone in any MMO I've ever played, and that place was huge. I bet few people have ever killed every named possible in there! Riftseekers' Sanctum is a fantastic example of what an "endgame non-raid zone" should be, and offered chase drops worth the time. Omens offered nontrivial travel without being comically long (the run to RSS was 100% invis-safe... unless the one Kyv named was up!; to say nothing of the wandering bosses out in the wilds of WoS and elsewhere). There were challenging events for groups (Trials, at least initially), and a raid progression that was absolutely solid (complete with viable backflagging rules, a lesson learned from Planes or Power).

    Omens wasn't flawless, as no expansion ever will be. Ruined City of Dranik was a strident failure, with weirdly balanced events and raid encounters, and the worst pathing since Akheva Ruins and Vex Thal. But it offered a fundamentally well-balanced selection of content over a broad level range, targeting an enormous spectrum of players. And it didn't demand false choices like the SoV faction wheel or Plane or Growth. It didn't have the limited content struggles of Luclin, the punitive content locks of PoP, or the deeply-seated balance errors of GoD. It was a good time to play EQ.
    • 752 posts
    August 7, 2018 2:25 PM PDT

    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.

    • 23 posts
    August 7, 2018 2:34 PM PDT
    We opted never to kill Dain, deeming his loot substantively sub-par to Kael/ToV options. And with useful loot on AoW and Tormax (well, profitable loot, anyway), there was little compelling reason to make friendly with the giants. Anything happening "after farming Vulak" strikes me as irrelevant; if you're farming Vulak'Aerr, you have effectively beaten Velious and are biding your time for new (Luclin) content.
    • 752 posts
    August 7, 2018 2:53 PM PDT

    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.

    • 23 posts
    August 7, 2018 2:59 PM PDT
    VT shards (and the VP key bits before them) stand as examples of perhaps the worst of all possible ways to do access gating. They stand as notable black marks against their respective expansions.

    Vex Thal in general was a pretty bad zone, and struck me, with likely good reason, as half done. About half the bosses have literally no mechanics of note, except insane poopsock-testing hit points (blobs, this means you!), and the sheer volume of trash (much of which must be killed twice) is taxing.

    Luclin was not the best EQ expansion.
    • Moderator
    • 9115 posts
    August 7, 2018 10:42 PM PDT

    Moved to Off-topic as it has nothing to do with General Pantheon Discussion. Please be mindful of where you post.

    • 14 posts
    December 26, 2018 12:20 PM PST

    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.

    • 2752 posts
    December 27, 2018 11:20 AM PST

    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.

    • 124 posts
    January 11, 2019 12:42 AM PST

    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.

    • 1 posts
    March 10, 2019 7:19 PM PDT

    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.

    • 17 posts
    April 16, 2019 8:41 AM PDT

    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.

    • 724 posts
    April 24, 2019 6:54 AM PDT

    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).

    • 25 posts
    September 24, 2019 10:32 PM PDT

    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.

    • 368 posts
    October 2, 2019 4:53 AM PDT
    Gates of discord was brutal!

    So many keys... So many fails...

    Pop, Oow, dodh were all also solid expansions (for raiding)
    • 223 posts
    October 5, 2019 7:59 AM PDT

    Nunark, then Velius for me.