You made a circus out of the game, the world is no longer believable and meaningless.

I'll grant you the snowman head maybe, but enchanters have been able to change people into other things since day 1. It's not really anything new, just more commonplace now.

While each person may have their own opinion, one pass through EC tunnel circa ~99-01 (preluclin) would put a hitch in your story.

Yeah because skeletons, elementals, werewolves, chokidai, bears, wolves, etc are never KoS. That's why illusions of them have been in since Classic *sarcasm*

Maybe it's just me, I happen to agree in relation to some of the things (Halloween/Frostfell Hero's Forge...the 'brawlers" line of SC ornaments, the paper towel roll and ruler ornaments etc) but the mounts...the illusions....I fail to see how that breaks any inconsistency.

Odds are this thread is less about art direction and consistency and more about EQ no longer being as it was during Classic. Sorry, but you're about 10 years too late for this argument....

So true. Better itemization, very wide level range amongst players, huge population.

None of that is really worse then having all the good and evil aligned people working together since the game launched

It helps already to turn off ornaments. Atleast the stupid hats will be gone.

And now guess why I'm so thankful for the option "New Armor: NONE"
Everybody has a different taste, and that's ok.
But since I don't wanna see that Freakshow, I'm happy that SOE gave us
the option to chose what we wanna see.

Enjoy your weekend

Yeah, having the option to not even see any of this stuff is a godsend.

As lover and master of Illusions i enjoy to do a good show-off in the lobby. Owning illusions others dont have seen nor own is a part of Everquest, has always been and will always be. Recalling the times when members of the most succesfull guilds showed of their blinky weapons and others inspecting them and asking where to get them and such .. well, good old times.

Today nearly every weapon has light and sparkling effects. What was some kind of of elitary in the ancient times, everybody can buy in the item shop or get through LoN. That was, what most, who didnt have the time or the power to get, were yelling for over years. Now here it is.

Hero armor i dont need to comment because there are already dozens of posts saying more than a few words here can tell anyone. When it came out, i was very happy to find the option to turn it off. I did not believe in the possibility to make something look worse than the armor itself. The christmas halloween and christmas ornaments somehow taught me a lesson how wrong i was. Who ever designed them has earned "the cup of worlds most tasteless design" regardless.

And to state the title of this thread: I think to say.... no, to name this a circus is way wrong. I mean, have you been to Cirque de Soleil? What we have here in Everquest is not a circus, it is a freak show. Though most of us pay for being allowed to see this.

Cheers

Doesn't bother me too much. However, I do find it curiously odd for the amount of Christmas celebration stuff that get's placed into the game now. After all it is a game focused on killing gods. I keep wondering when "that" expansion is coming out! There's been so much lore added about Christmas it leaves me wondering!

why is that bad? personally, i am totally against isolation of the alignments. in real life, less than perfect people work together always so why should the game be so different? and other than a dark elf or troll or ogre, how can you tell who is evil aligned? froglok rogues follow inny, but wood elf rogues follow tunare. are they so different because of their race? and there are necros among humans, erudites and dark elves. yet people see the dark elves as innately evil and the other races more neutral. why? and why would we not want them to work together?

if you don't like it, don't wear it - to each his own.

it's just another festival. it is actually called frostfell and yeah it seems to only respond to the christian "christmas" - other religions are totally left out- just as gold players are totally left out during the 12 days of frostfell. they couldn't think of anything fun to give us so they only focused on free and silver players. however, festivals are always fun and give a break to the grinding. personally the thing i hate most about this game is that it gets impossible to solo a mob as you get higher. i am a loner and prefer to play my games as a loner. i see the game as a break for me and it is supposed to be relaxing. going around having to look for a group is not my ideal of relaxing.

While I agree with some of this, the Iksar skeleton is perfectly in line with the games lore.

Necromancer undead form.

If anything the Iksar necro defaulting to human skeleton was the immersion breaker for me for years: You are supposed to be becoming your own skeleton, when the flesh tears off necro's bones when they go undead form Iksars should have their own skeleton.

As for the rest: so the gnome is cmap, so what? The hat: yeah not medieval. The other species: they're intelligent things in the game world, if anything the segregation makes no sense in PoK than anywhere else and especially once all the player races adventurers got together. Unless you believe the invisible player race / NPC boundary made IC sense.

Only thing I really hate is the hand thing and the weird bird. I just think they look ridiculous but thats me. And the snowman hat is a seasonal thing, just ignore it while its here.

What's wrong with hand mounts? Animated hands have been in eq since Kunark, so that's nothing new. If you dislike the braxi mounts is your problem, not SOE's, because it's in the lore of VoA. The Skelly illusion is older than most of eq players, Drachnids and all illusions came from enchanters, it's one of their jobs. Christmas ornaments? Yeah, these are horrible, but hey, just enjoy, kill, do quests... Everquest has always evolved adapting to the new era, but maintaining the lore. If you don't like new ornaments, just turn off new armor graphics. In my opinion it's an unnecessary complain.

Ok, lets recount your pictures. Amygaldon(sp), PoFear, before kunark. Walking Hand, original EQ, take a visit to LGuk. Iksar Skeleton, kunark. Banshee was TSS and definetly fits with the ghastly apparitions that are present in Unrest which was original. Drachnid were a race from Kunark.

The snowman head/pumpkin heads/mummy heads, yeah I agree look silly. The top hat a little bit so as well, but the alaran ghost, totally fits the idea of EQ past just like the banshee. Gnomes with rocket packs, really unbelievable? they're tinkerers.

So while I don't really disagree with your point, i think your examples are pretty bad at getting it across =)

the banshee happened before TSS.

Yep, Prophecy of Ro.

I stopped being immersed when deduced all Norrathians must be born as full grown adults.

I know they existed within the world. Inside the zone they are within their element, the spider in the forest makes sense, a skeleton in befallen makes sense.

But when you put them all together in a world and actually change the players into those illusions and change their mounts and pets into creatures, and pull them outside of their habitat, and personify them, it starts to go from believable to ridiculous.

In RL, I wouldn't think it would be weird if I encountered a spider, I could even buy dragons and magic and all sorts of things as long as they are within their element.

However, the picture I showed is a jumble of incoherency without any clear art direction, with player studio this will get even worse.

I read that it's a 'fantasy world' by someone, even a fantasy world has limits. Dragons are acceptable, everyone walking upside down and having legs for arms would become unacceptable for most because you're chipping away too much of what we know to be normal, there is a limit, even in a fantasy world.