FYI this isnt a joke. the original POM mobs are really up. cards drop too. lithanith and white stallion are still in the forest rather than the black and white room for some reason though edit: seems to be a recreation of the zone from scratch. some mobs are in different spots than in original pom and a lot of mobs seem to stll be missing. the respawn timer seems much faster too as original zone had 72min respawns on most npcs and I've had things respawn in under 15min.
Does anyone running this game actually play this game, have respect for this game or even a clue about the nuances of EverQuest? Whoever had the idea to do this is really....grrr. Seriously.
I could go on and on and on about how nothing is sacred, how doing something as careless as this trivializes and devalues areas of the game that players have taken it upon themselves to find a game within a game, fun within "fun" and by flicking this switch, it just all got destroyed...but that feels like a futile attempt at preventing this sort of thing from happening in the future. First Marcia, now this...good news is there isn't much left in the game to get tarnished by the clueless people that are in charge. Garbage.
I've been playing this game since Kunark, so I understand the "back in my day we walked uphill in the snow" mindset compared to how the game is today; however, in this case I don't understand what you mean. Granted, the guild I was in never did PoM when it was current content (raid leader couldn't be bothered trying to lead a couple dozen free-willed individuals through a zone with 1-way walls and holes-in-the-floor, and I don't blame him).
There is a subculture, I guess you can call it, in this game that has spent years working together and enjoying chasing down old PoM cards and items. Like literally exchanging information and cards for years as sort of a game within a game. Considering how rare the cards are and that they are consumable, it's pretty fun to try and track them down. And year after year, there are less and less because people leave and take the cards with them. Even more, when cards get discovered, they are often used up, depleting the pool even more. So the cards and the items from the cards/zone itself are some of the rarest things in EverQuest. Along with that, it wasn't but 2 years ago that NEW recipes were actually discovered and brand new items were made. Pretty awesome and unique. Now, because some dope had a fleeting idea to make cards drop again after 12 years of not dropping, all of that is destroyed. I just saw the rarest card of them all, White Crown, get linked today in serverwide. That card, before today, would have *easily* sold for multi-millions of plat; asking price. Now, it's worthless or at very best worth less than a fraction of what it was. And the excitement or enjoyment of finding one or tracking one down is nil - gone. Never mind the other 15 cards that are dropping like candy right now. It's just a mess.
On a "positive" note Q, you still can't get a lot of the items/containers to make most items so they will still have a sense of rarity I guess. That said... I also think it was a stupid idea. Even if you wanted to get the cards, like Sirene said, they're permacamped by AFK looters. When I checked track, 99% of the zone was dead except for the forest. Bringing back PoM 1.0 without bringing back PoM 1.0 is a really sick April's Fool joke.
That about sums it up for me. A bit of a thumb in the eyes of all sides: people who could use the quest items don't want to get them like this, and people who want to see the once-great zone in all its glory still never will. Hmph.
Why would you destroy Everquest's history like this? Nothing is sacred. On a different note, does anybody see the little change on the loading screen?
The whole situation is insulting and is just yet another example that I'm playing a game in name only. Literally nothing is left of EQ that made EQ so great.
Spent about 2 hours poking around... only saw mobs spawning in the entry forest, first few rooms of the castle, and the ratman maze. Halflings in the entry room respawned quickly and were dropping Squire cards. Those were the only card drops I saw. Anything spawning in other wings, like the hedge maze or Alice etc.? Also I don't think Clukker was up to get the containers to make the items.
This was really poorly executed. The original PoM 1.0 was such a fantastic zone and I think one of the greatest creative executions in EQ's history. Sadly few people are still playing who managed to experience it. Getting to it was very difficult, you had to click through after your guild had cleared through to the back of Temple of Veeshan. No click-through from Great Divide existed. I was a solo mage bound there for the best part of a year and had a lot of fun finding new quirky mob names or mechanics which I'd missed from the designers. When it was revamped in 2003 it was upsetting and felt like a waste as it threw away a great piece of design to turn it into more of a 'normal' zone. They had an opportunity to let people see the original by restoring it for a short period. They could have removed the drops (i.e. cards) to not insult players who have spent years trying to track the remaining few down. Instead they put live a very shabby zone with only around 10% of the original mobs up and the rest of the zone (and the coolest areas) empty. I can't get my head around this. The only explanation I'm telling myself is that they've lost the original code or couldn't put it back to the way it was for technical reasons. If the quest givers don't exist anymore (not sure?) I'm probably one of the few who have the original containers like the Deck and Pot of Gold so it's been cool to poke around to try and get a couple of cards I was missing but it all leaves a bit of a sour taste. The site linked above is a smack of nostalgia and anyone who is interested in seeing what it was like all those years ago should check it out.
Believe it or not, games are still games if one particular character for one particular player on one particular server is a bare touch less "special" in a way that nearly no one will ever know about. Give yourself a hug, snack on some of the food that's named after your character, pet & polish the unique sword with an amazing function that you and only you will ever have, and jesus try to relax a little about several other people out of the seven billion on the planet also get to have a neat thing once or twice a decade.
