RIP Everquest Travel and other mechanics

Isn't the persona travel really only a significant time saver early on? Like if someone wants to get their Barbarian Shaman to Freeport to play with friends on server launch right away. They can be there in three minutes as opposed to facing a very long (and dangerous) run without SoW.

In the grand scheme of things, it's just an added quality of life change that people can buy the new expansion for. It won't shake enough up to make any meaningful difference on the porting market; especially with such a large server population.

From my "home base" in the Commonlands the places I usually want a port to with Kunark open are:

• The Karanas
• Emerald Jungle
• Skyfire
• Toxxulia

Maybe I'm just a weirdo that doesn't go do anything in Faydwer but with instant transport across OOT I usually just run there anyways.

So of my frequent destinations, being able to origin to any home city would mean I no longer look for ports to....Toxxulia.

If they just short-circuited the whole thing and put "personal teleporter to starting city X" in the shop for $15 I'd honestly be fine with it. It might degrade the authenticity slightly but I also recognize that more revenue means more EQ.

[Double Post]

Yeah, this is almost entirely about getting early groups together that aren't co-located conveniently, those people aren't paying for ports anyways. Someones going to throw you 20p to move their three boxes from EC to wherever a lot more often than they're going to run into FP, switch all of their toons to another persona, die or origin, swap back, and then start running. Especially for the locations that aren't near starter zones. Doubly so once velious and luclin hit and you get no start cities and one starter city respectively.

I port from the guild lobby to the guild hall. Ports still rock.

A lot of this is looking back with rose colored glasses. The amount of people that want corpse runs can be counted on one hand and they are in psych wards currently.

The amount of people that prefer the tunnel over the bazaar, while slightly more popular then corpse runs, but instead of being in psych wards they just never left mom's basement even upon their 40th season or are fully automated toons that DPG refuses to lockdown.

The amount of people that enjoyed boats and the 40 minute real world time to journey from Faydwer to Antonica are the same people that wish the old tradeskill system was back with drag and drop 1 at a time no option to craft all, no bandolier, no click from inventory, no stacking to 1000. None of that is EQ defining. Thinking they are just highlights masochism who enjoy self harm and are perfectly happy with the life long pain of carpal tunnel.

People still congregate in main areas for buffs. Said location seems to have migratory pattern from CL to Nexus, to PoK, to eventually the Guild Lobby as the final congregating point.

Porting is still super valuable.

Personas aren't free, people will still look for ports and personas can only take you to starting cities. Not as effective as some ports. Trust that porting isn't irrelevant.

You can never relive 1999/2000. Your computer is to strong. Your connection is to strong. You can't unlearn the game. You can't re-experience the greatness of something for the first time 25 years later.

They would have a lot of expansions to refund then. The benefits are purely for early game grouping and early/mid game main changing. I would never have bought personas if it didn't put my new persona in their starting city.

Back in original eq, literally no one said "boy I'm glad I must spend 40 minutes waiting for/riding a boat and running through all these zones just to get to my dungeon, so that my group breaks up 30 minutes later".
Exactly zero people would turn down a gate so they can spend an hour traveling instead. Everyone hated travel then and still do. No one forced them to use the books (or the nexus gates) as soon as they appeared. Yet 100% of the game stopped traveling as soon as it was an option...

I believe it is a great update to the game, but said that it should no be available on a TLP at startup it should be available post POP like most other better living items added to the game

Funk it up.

It's not that people don't want difficulty, it's that what people consider rewarding and difficult changes over time.

And this game is at the point an exercise in becoming Amish to plug into its reward system, and even that requires DPG to drench the darn thing with freedom to box, persona, trade, loot anywhere, farm the heck out of it, and so forth.

So this thing is what it is, because it can't keep the lights on otherwise. Everything, every change, every decision, is designed around that one absolute reality. Someone is always still enjoying it, or enjoying it period, but if one feels any disaffection with Norrath you can't blame anything other than time itself.

Just implement PoK and the books from the get-go, without all the PoP stuff. Problem solved, at least in my book - Then again, i dont intend to play a port bot, so i might be biased.

I remember an "" that had that type of setup. They collected 'donations' and pretty much did a bunch of crazy stuff, kinda like PXX but I'd never recommend those types of EMUs. Daybreak is da best!

weird.. I remember an

e mu la tor isn't allowed?

It's kinda sad how far the TLP experience has strayed from classic EQ

I think the difference of opinion on travel illustrates that the EQ playerbase really has separated into two broad groups, neither of which ever gets really satisfied with new TLP editions.

One group, arguably in the majority now sees the base game as tedious. They want leveling to go as fast as possible, they want the best gear fast as possible, they don't want to waste time traveling. They are in favor of things like faster xp, extra loot, free trade, letting out of era gear slip (looking at you tower), more options to travel quickly (store clicky items). This group wants a quick raid and wouldn't mind if MOTM was removed. They also seem incredulous at those who don't hold the opinion (what bro? how can you not want extra loot!!).

Then there are also a number of folks that the first group might call a bit nostalgic, but most of those in this group realize the game has changed and they still want the quality-of-life improvements. They don't want P99, but this group would like somewhat of a challenge and not have everything handed to them. Time investment has some meaning. Gear scarcity has some meaning. Everyone having BiS before the next xpac is disappointing for this group. Good RA should mean better gear, not the same gear due to extra loot or buying it via Free Trade. One-shotting all the raids is disappointing. This group might favor increasing Raid boss difficulty, revisiting MOTM to make it stronger, lowering the AOC raidcap to 54, and perhaps even rebalancing overpowered classes like enchanter and monk in the classic age. This group would eliminate anniversary/event driven gear that is not in line with what the current expansion would normally offer.

Pretty different visions of fun. Neither are wrong and no single TLP or Live itself can satisfy them.

I dont think you are correct in your assessment here, the majority does not want EQ to be "easymode", of which it is clear you are hinting at - We just dont want to waste our time with slowing down the game for no reason. I am an advocate to NOT get extra loot drops, which we sadly will on Teek as i feel it ruins a sense of accomplishment - I do however think that traveling is NOT a fun aspect of the game and spending time to travel across the world, to join an exp group somewhere, will cut down on the time i get to actually PLAY the game. Also, MoTM destroyed the game for a ton of casual players, thats a fact and it serves no purpose other than to force people to just straight up zerg things with numbers - To me, thats the opposite of having fun. If i didnt want to have fun, i'd be on P99 hating my life instead.

I agree with the original poster. The Plane of Knowledge with its insta-travel portal stones was one of the biggest mistakes in MMORPG history. It trivialized both exploration and socialization which are two fundamental player archetypes in fantasy virtual worlds according to Dr. Richard Battle's research. Wizards and druids pay a price for having the utility to port and evacuate players. That utility is eroded by those stones. The socialization where players cooperate and interact to find transportation is also eroded.

Another thing that bothers me is that the Plane of Knowledge has become like a 1980s style mega-mall for EverQuest players. It's convenience driven game design. As a result, all of the racial starting cities in Norrath became obsolete after the release of Planes of Power and were largely abandoned by the players.

The true magic of EverQuest resides in the original release where each race had their own starting city and newbie experiences. Players got to experience the unique culture of each race. That's what fantasy and role-playing is all about. The Plane of Knowledge erases all of that,

In addition, from a tactical point of view, the Plane of Knowledge would be a liability to any race's city. For example: a thousand ogres could enter POK from the stone just outside Ogguk and enter the Kaladim stone and a thousand strong army of Ogres would be invading the gates of Kaladim from Butcherblock Mountains. I don't think the designers every stopped to contemplate the lore implications for Plane of Knowledge existing.

That would defeat the greatest part of personas, sharing keys and flags with other personas.

Personas is going to make it much more viable to main change to a beastlord. No more going back and rekeying and flags and any tradeskills done on the previous main will not need to be done again.

If they were to limit it to an expansion it should be Luclin, no later