Are there any new features in Terror of Luclin?

Little Gnome dude named Eqcam or something like that lol

That's not how that works.

@Ravata Suffer;

Of course not having the discount means not having to apply state tax on the nill.

Not only did you save $3.50, you saved an additional $0.28 by not having to pay taxes on that $3.50 (assuming an 8% tax rate based on your claimed savings if I did that math right).

That means your 10% discount saved you almost 11%.

You might want to consider your thought process about sales tax, who you are holding accountable for it (vendor vs politicians) and adjust your voting accordingly.

I think you misunderstood my post. I was replying to someone talking about having their discount applied to buying the expansion. After discount/taxes, the total I ended up actually paying was 90 cents less than the stated price...which isn't that great.

That's all I was saying. You seem to have read more into my post than I actually posted. I was neither commenting on the way the purchase was calculated, nor was I trying to hold someone "accountable" for it.

I completely and entirely understood your post and your subsequent explanation of the post.

Ummm, RoV was in the trailer for ToV...you've already been there

They have really settled into the "6-7 zones, 4 missions, 9 raids, 6 quests (3 merc/3 part) per zone, copy/paste systems" paradigm, and at least for me it's pretty stale. It sounds like this thread is more so asking about code-related features (e.g. the Teleport keyring), but a large part of what defines expansions, in my mind, is what they do on the design side that's materially different from what was done previously. Some of those changes have had mixed or negative reactions, but I think there's a similar or larger cost to how increasingly cookie-cutter things feel, especially the last two years. I think it's worth going through what previous expansions had post Daybreak acquisition (obviously before that acquisition expansions were much larger):

• The Broken Mirror
  • New Dichotomic spell/ability for every class (some of these were much better than others)
  • New Type 5 augments
  • New scaling gear paradigm for group gear (this did not work very well and was dropped)
  • New AA lines for many classes
  • 17 raids/15 raid chests, 7/5 of which were in level scaling Hate/Fear revamps
  • 15 missions - in general relied heavily on instanced content
  • Artisan's Prize came out mid expansion
  • Con: this expansion only had one new zone (with 2 versions); the revamps did not improve graphical fidelity. I'd also note it was a mess at launch in terms of bugs and had a fairly negative reception overall.

• Empires of Kunark
  • New Synergy AAs for every class, addition of Focus AAs for many spells/AAs
  • New Alliance/Harmonious spells for every class (I would say people have mixed to negative feelings about these), some other new spells
  • Graphical revamps of zones (apart from Droga) improved graphical fidelity
  • Backed off instanced content, but fairly in depth progression, including EotD (mixed to negative reception to EotD)
  • Frontier Mountain Ancients with unique chase items
  • Harcore Heritage Seb was released mid expansion
  • Switch back to more standard gearing
  • TS's to 350 cap
  • Con: this was the expansion that dropped to the 4 mission paradigm

• Ring of Scale
  • No new spells or AA, but this was the first level cap increase in the post-acquisiton era
  • VP "two group" named with chase items
  • VP keying (mixed reactions)
  • Cresta's Earring TS quest
  • New TS recipes and tier of TS gear (Conflagrant/Phlogiston)
  • Established the "acquire strictly better Type 5 augs each year via mission currency" paradigm (probably mixed impressions of this)
  • Con: this expansion dropped the number of mercenary/partisan quests to 3 per zone as a standard

• The Burning Lands
  • Established the muhbis/TS BiS system (mixed reactions to this)
  • New luck stat
  • Four new evolving items and established the Type 18/19 system
  • 10 missions rather than the normal 4
  • More involved, linear progression with mostly locked zones (negative reactions to locked zones)
  • GMM launched mid year with 3 new raids, a new zone, and new gear
  • Six fully new zones
  • Cons: No new spells/AA and no notable alterations to existing spells/AA; very barebones class-wise

• Torment of Velious
  • Level cap increase (no new spells)
  • AA consolidations/changes in beta, though no new AA
  • Ear evo item/TS quest with some new items, though Type 18/19 augs were only upgrades to TBL versions
  • ToFS Keying
  • Leveling via progression paradigm
  • Cons: Base itemization copy/paste of TBL, no new zone, limited questing (only 4 zones with paritsans)

• Claws of Veeshan
  • Cons: Copy/paste of TBL/ToV itemization, no new AAs (same upgrades as TBL, no changes), no new spells, no new zones, no evolving item

• Terror of Luclin
  • Level cap increase
  • 3 new zones
  • Cons: Copy/paste of TBL/ToV/CoV itemization, no new AAs (same upgrades as ToV, no changes), no new spells, no evolving item

There are reasons for the rather dramatic drop off in innovation in the last two years - COVID/WFH, losing Prathun mid-CoV development, and having to train new developers, among other reasons - but that doesn't change the result. The above isn't to say that there isn't some good content in the above expansions. I thought CoV, Arbiter notwithstanding, had the best set of overall raids since RoS, and I really like some of the zones/lore in ToL. I would choose both over the content in TBM, for example, in a second. Unfortunately, strictly more content does not a game make, and the march to push out new things at the expense of improving the existing systems is starting to show.

I guess I need to catch up on my trailer videos.

havent they been copying and pasting items/aa's and spells for a long time now havent they. Be nice to actually see new spells and aa's.

Andarriel

ps still looking for to fishing in ToL! Cant wait haha.

There is a limit to what new can be offered in a game with a 32 bit client and almost 30 expansions. It's almost impossible to do anything that could be called new without be accused of copying it from another game. I can appreciate those limitations. But logging into beta and seeing "new mind drift" and "new pulmonary grip" doesn't make me feel like a lot of effort goes into changing the gameplay.

Honestly though, I think I am okay with that. I really don't mind the spells being the same when the quests, missions, raids and environments are different. I really do believe the Devs are doing their best to mix up the event mechanics within the limitations of the engine. I do wish they would stay on a 3-expansion at a level cap plan instead of the current 2 though.

My biggest issue with copying old content is when it is blatantly wrong to do. We know since EQ launched oh so long ago that blue light is not ideal, yet we just got 2 full expansions loaded with blinding ice. If we're going to copy stuff, let's make sure we apply modern knowledge to the nostalgia.

Otherwise, I'm pretty okay with EQ maintaining a pretty steady gameplay over time. I don't need a fundamentally different game, just new objectives, and they are doing that, and recycling lore isn't terrible, not when I last played it 15 years ago. Actually I joined in about 2003, during evolutions, PoP era, so after 15 years of gameplay, these zones are still new to me. I feel like I am getting a progression server experience on my home server and guild. I'm good with that.

I don't mind copy/paste content with no features as long as that content can last for the year. As it stands now for the majority of the community who wants to do the content, you can be done with almost everything within 2-3 months. After that, you basically have-

Finishing off whatever hunter checkmarks you care about...
Finishing off collectibles/logging in and doing Overseer until you have enough to buy what you are missing...
Repeating missions until you get all the type 5 augments you want...
Camping whatever augment you still want to get....
Do raids 2 nights a week for 3 hours each night, maybe a third night of 3 hours....

And that is it for your main. Which once you get to March boredom starts to settle in. Sure you can play alts if that is what you desire, but you are just repeating the exact same content you just did- just on a different toon. The "newness" is gone.

We are being given a 12 month expansion with a shelf life of probably 3 months. If you are going to cookie cutter then that is fine, but we should have six months worth of content IMHO.

TBM - since I played this on TLP & was subjected to the horribly effed up versions of its Heroic Adventures, serious lack of variety on zones with so much copy pasta I thought the whole expansion was a middle finger to the players - massive thumbs down overall though the one bright spot was the music which i loved.

EoK - liked the content overall, but really let down by lame Heroic Adventures, they felt super drawn out in length for a crap reward.

RoS - some of the content was good, a few really annoying parts though.

TBL - overall I really enjoyed this expansion, the unlocking was nowhere near as bad as I had been led to believe.

ToV - super frustrated by bugs in several parts of the progression, actually made me quit for a while, TOFS was pretty good & once I got past the bugged stuff the content felt pretty good, though there felt like a lack of quests.

CoV - barely bothered with this at all outside of raids, ToV was enough ice already, what I have seen there seems okay but not much to go through, kinda saving up this content for when I am truly bored.

ToL - again seems rather on the small side, though a bit more entertaining since Velious zones have appeared as part of many revisits and Luclin hasn't this one might not leave me feeling quite so jaded.

By saying no new AA you mean, your mean no different AA lines. Those expansions had tons of new AA to get, just stat improvements over older AA.

I thought ToV and CoV picked some of the worst expansions to copy. Just gloomy, dark, cold, boring zones. Where is the new RoK expansion or OOW, PoP??!! How cool would an updated Sebilis be or Lower Guk, SoL B, Karnors etc.. The best expansion zones and even the original EQ zones get overlooked, for these gloomy, boring zones. Pretty much the last expansions I would have wanted recreated. SOOO many good expansions they could have redone.

I haven't played in about 4 months really. I'm sure I will level all my accounts up to 120 now, of course, that's why they do these level increases. But now I'll have to regear my toons again, Ughhh. All the awesome raid armor and weapons I got, will be slightly better than group gear in the new expansion, I'm sure, with a 5 level increase. Not sure if they are doing a normal upgrade % on H/M/E AC or if it will be a large jump from current gear?

Did you somehow miss EoK and RoS?

They missed the best zones in those. Where is the new Sebilis or Karnor's Castle, City of Mist, Lower Guk, Sol A/B, Riftseekers etc? The best zones in EQ history. RoS was a very good expansion. I just don't like the expansions they are copying now, they were the worst ones, imho. Well I guess they are at least getting them out of the way. Would be nice to have an actual NEW zone/dungeon lol. I'd take a few new zones, over several old rehashed zones, from bad expansions.

Hasn't every remake expansion included new zones?

Agree! Also, if Lower Guk, for example, were instanced at zone in, to match my level, but otherwise exactly the same, I'd dig it. Same mobs etc but higher level to match mine, and updated quests and loot. This would be fun! Go back to the old, but still a challenging zone if I want to.

CoV didn't include any new geographical areas.
https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zone.html?zcont=Claws of Veeshan
https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zone.html?zcont=Velious

Only remakes.

It depends on how you define "new," but I think in this context he means zones that are not graphical revamps of existing zones. Torment of Velious and Claws of Veeshan did not include any such zones, whereas the other modern expansions all included at least one. Terror of Luclin does include three - Bloodfalls, Basilica of Adumbration, and Shadow Valley.