LDONs were one of the most popular offerings in the EQ portfolio during their era. Grouping was rampant and some of the items players could earn were valued for years. How about a successor to these called "Ancient Dungeons of Norrath". It could utilize the existing Wayfarer camps with perhaps 1 or 2 new NPCs (insert lore here) with earnable items that are crowd pleasers...clicky illusions, familiars, clickable teleport items, unique ornaments, mounts or even tradeskill items (100 pcs of a particular ore or whatever for example) or just plain old items, augs, armor, weapons...whatever. Zones would scale from 80? (where LDON left off) to 115? 120? based on the highest level of the person in the party. Instances could be a re-hash of the LDON ones (kill, collect, rescue, etc) and use the same zones or new zones. Maybe crowd source the zone design to players based on the theme of each WB camp. Players can design the zones based on a DB toolkit or design parameters and submit for consideration. What would be VERY cool is if players from different servers could party up together and player together in an instance. Not sure if DB has the technology for this.
If they did make it cross serves zone. Then they would need to make it so you cannot zone out with more loots than you had when you zoned in and the reward from such stuff would only be coins or some like that. Else they would lose a lot server transfer from those that move server for selling or buying stuff. The player made zones could contain "exploits" or such as the EQ developers could miss when checking the zone. So guess players making stuff will not happen that often. Players could suggest stuff and EQ developers make it. Guess that is how far they will go on that subject. And the rewards for such adventure must not be all the items I do not bother farming from other places in EQ, like they did try the other day with PvP coins reward. It must also not be super nice reward for little effort.
They have said in the past that cross server zones are not possible with the current architecture of the game.
Is that a thing? I mean, on scale. If there are more than a handful of these people, I would be surprised.
Just disable trading in those instances. Or make all items (including plat) no drop inside those instances.
LDoN was the worst expansion. I think the OP will find it hard to actually find people who really enjoyed LDoN expansion.
In-eras LDON were awesome, but the points system it hinged on was grindy even by EQ's grindy standards. They didn't age especially well but I did like the variety of dungeons even if a lot of cut & paste was built into the dungeon system, but considering what have come before it that inspired it (aka pretty much nothing) it was pretty amazing they pulled it off.
I enjoyed LDON in era. That being said, love it or hate it, LDON was a critical expansion in terms of the design aspects in Everquest. The introduction of the augmentation system and it's evolution has led it to being one of the focal points of this game. We have ornamentation "augs" for weapons and armor, we have regular slot 7/8 augs, multiple stat aug, focus mod augs, etc. I would argue that outside of AAs, that the augmentation system is the single largest system in this game and the single most noticeable player power manipulator we have. LDON also was the introduction to instance-based grouping. This drives most of what is worthwhile in Everquest these days. The OW grind endlessly until you want to pass out is essentially gone unless you're camping things like...augs. LDON introduced the concept of alternate currency. Now we get different forms of currency every single expansion. Group currency, raid currency, it's all because of LDON.
It'd be pretty cool if there was a quest npc at the entrance of your favorite dungeon that could spawn you an instance that used the same zone and models, but let you scale up the levels of the mobs and dropped gear out of some sort of randomized loot pool.
You are making very valid points. Personally - I did lots of LDoN runs for a very simple reason - my cohort was not strong enough to farm Elemental planes. LDoN was casually doable at 65, PoP - not so much. Granted - I didn't have a top level group of buddies, we were all casual at that time. We've raided when available, but otherwise LDoN was an upgrade from Ykesha zones. And no, we didn't actually like LDoN.
Ldon's actually are pretty decent in regards to lvling a toon and hitting that gap from 65 to 75 .. I think LDons only lvl to 65 or 70 with Hard versions I believe mobs still give decent xp thru 75 .. might be slower than some other things but after lvl 70 it makes it moloable..
Quote Absor: Unfortunately, the way LDoN adventures were made makes increasing their levels a nightmare. It would require remaking the thing for every five levels we want to update it. It would also require some arcane knowledge that would have to be rediscovered. That's why we created the "Errand" system used by what are called Heroic Adventures. A much more functional system that accomplishes pretty much the same gameplay. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/uncap-ldons.218160/
Which pretty much had to be retuned each expansion and due to the lack of arcane knowledge ended up being a mess after a few years.
Please no. LDoN was a terrible expansion. Most popular under what measure? They were terrible content when it was current too. Great idea as to the dungeon generator but the execution was terrible.
I enjoyed LDoN conceptually and the onset of instanced dungeons and augments. The grind was very long... The ideas that came with LDoN are still in game, but executed much better. If we separate the lore from the game play, I would be a fan of an expansion that focussed on the ancient dungeon idea - hidden places underneath norrath. much more to explore in them - Miragul's Menagerie... Rujarkian Hills...
