The Joy of Kunark

If you're planning to stick around then don't worry. Kunark will be over in three weeks. As to the pain of PoP, this is what you signed up for. DBG didn't suddenly let Agnarr know one day that we'd stop progression in PoP/LDoN.

The best part about Agnarr is that it has an ending date. I don't plan to play EQ forever so I'm happy to know when the conclusion is here.

I don't count LDoN/LoY as real expansions. They don't really promise much so it's harder for them to fail to deliver.

Velious and Luclin both have more than one viable zone to raid in. Luclin adds a new race, new class, mounts and AA. It also provides the lore to answer many EQ mysteries which existed up to that point. (Shissar, Combine Empire, Wizard Spires, The Veil). It's a great expansion that people think is bad because they disliked it 15 years ago and never looked at it with fresh eyes.

PoP does only have PoTime if you're trying to get best in slot, this is true. But Luclin is 95% VT for best in slot. Elemental Planes are useful to raid for alt gear and filler gear.

PoP introduced the awesome PoK as a centralized hub for most non-combat activities (tradeskilling, buffing, GM use, spell purchasing) and PoTranq as a hub for forming pick up groups. The flagging system is actually pretty cool to experience unless you're stupid and can't read. It has the largest number of multi-group "raid" targets of any expansion. Introduces the Aid Grimel quest which was the most time intensive quest of the day. A few solid smaller quests like Crown of Deceit, Secret of the Planes and The Binden Concertia (PoK gate neck). Tradeskills actually have value beyond a select few, bringing in the obscure ones like Fletching with EP Bows, Pottery with focus Ceramics, and Baking/Brewing with more specific Stat food and drinks. Plus it builds on established tradeskills like JC with Jewelry from almost every plane, Smithing/Tailoring from each EP and a few of the lower tier zones. AAs and spells added in this expansion brought classes far more into balance. Rangers and Druids that typically sucked pre-PoP in a raid setting become invaluable assets to raids.

Really Velious is a dumpsterfire compared to PoP. Continually losing faction on everything trying to kill every raid boss. NToV trashes your CoV faction because reasons while some of the best items drop from Dozekar quests. No level or AA increase in the expansion. The Shawl 8 quest wasn't even Velious it was Luclin. Hell the 10th ring wasn't even added until halfway through Velious. The retroactive additions of focus effects were extremely poorly allocated on raid gear. Lady Nev eye with total Melee stats, yep Mana pres. Eashen bracer with total trash stats, yep affliction Haste. Etc.

I do agree though, Luclin is great. But PoP is superior.

In terms of raid diversity for top-tier gear PoP is actually very shallow once you have unlocked PoTime. Elemental molds are easy to get with small crews and when you aren't gearing for Gates then you may as well just pick up a better slot item in Time.

Velious you have: NToV/EToV, Tunare, Kael, Dain, Cazic-Thule (God), and Sleepers which all drop roughly the same quality of gear (Sleeper a bit less so but melee all want avatar weapons).

Luclin you have: Vex Thal, Emp Ssra/Cursed Cycle, Seru, and to a lesser degree Khati Sha.

PoP you have: Plane of Time, you can do Elemental Planes if you really want to squeeze out as much gear/week you can get but basically everything from elemental planes is inferior to time loot.

LoY: It's a feature expansion, not a real expansion

LDoN: At least 9 different LDoN raids worth farming each week.

PoP is a dumpster fire at this point with tiering that doesn't matter. It essentially becomes like 2 quests and PoTime. Compared to all the other expansions, only Kunark is worse.

LoY isn't really a real expansion, and was never advertised as such. Despite that, it's not really bad set of content.

LDoN is tedious no doubt, but it was never meant to be a rush-to-finish grind (much like BiC). It's really not bad when it's in-era, in that you can gain some exp, get some useful points, and work on a larger goal (the aug). Additionally it has at least as much raid content as PoTime, and the loot in it arguably lasts alot longer.

Velious is probably the 3rd worst. It gets higher marks than PoP and Kunark because the factioning and lore is a bit more interesting, and because of the sheer diversity of the continent. I haven't quite decided if I prefer PoTime P1-3, PoG, or NToV in terms of clearing (they all suck), but it's obvious to me that Velious has more options after that to raid, and that seems better than the 1-zone wonder that is PoP.

Luclin is the expansion, as Protocol points out, that I've had the greatest turnaround in my views on. Going in to this round of TLP, I likely Luclin only marginally better than Kunark (which has always been the worst expansion). After getting to play it and compare it again, I think of all the expansions that Agnarr will have access to, that it's my favorite. It's simply got a ton of raid content, it's got small group content, it's diverse in it's zones and experiences, it's got AA, it's got plenty of little things to do, and it's just more fun to spend time in during month 3 (or 4 as we had on Phin), than month 3 (or 4) of all the other expansions.

I totally agree with this, however, out of respect for Velious we gonna count in the fact that we were stuck in that expansion for almost 4months+. I would say Velious three months sounds like a fair time before you start getting tired of the Trash heavy + long fight zones. PoG + NToV and Sleeper's are just exhausting over such a long time especially if the RNG isn't favoring you.

And yes, that's where Luclin shines - VT is trash heavy (well, if you actually clear it legit ), but a good sport!. Seru and Ssra temple are very quick clears and the best thing of it all is that it's all accessible zones in OW, making it very interesting if you engage openworld content because you never know what's on the menu for the raid that night.

While yes, there is some change in scenery for raiding top end content for those expansions, I don't see that as being superior.

Velious is 100% tank and spank. Slow mob, CH rotation, corner, AFK.
Luclin gets marginally better with Shei having some more interesting mechanics and Emperor if done properly having more interesting mechanics. But it's largely the same.

PoP you've got fights with a *little* more flavor in the way of event mechanics. Certainly not as much as later expansions through.

Agnarr really should consider disabling 85/15 flag bypass rules on the server so that you are forced to backflag or do backflag quests to add longevity to a timelocked server. Running full backflag circuits for Alts and apps would help spice up raid Variance.

So when you get that recruit who isn't flagged, they just sit in potranq until your guild finally decides to do a backflag run. Seems well thought out.

Sort of like permanently locking a server in PoP with the same code base as Phinigel, where the expansion was completed in 3 days?

When we had unflagged apps on Al'Kabor we just let them play someone's box and earn DKP / raid attendance while on that loaner character. We would end up doing an entire backflag cycle every 3 months to keep getting new blood into EPs and Time. At least these server would have checklist flags so you can do hails out of order.

Sharing account information is a violation of terms of service. You're also asking for a world of pain to let some random new app #73 have access to any of your accounts.

So your argument here is that DBG made a terrible server, and you want to further that with another terrible idea?

I concede.

Nah, I don't think it is a terrible server, just not well thought out with how quickly the content will be consumed with the code base they are using. Changing the flagging system as described would help slow down the consumption for more casual players.

Apps sit out on VP or ST or VT raids when they lack keys. Granted PoP flagging is mostly raids while those keys are mostly group content, but still. I don't see it as a horrible idea to make everyone on a time locked PoP server need to complete the flagging system fully.

It would be interesting to find out how many people have been banned for this. I'd wager 0 since DBG took over. We'll never know. I don't disagree that letting an unflagged play someone's alt account is a bad idea, but not because they might get banned for it.

Remdag had actually banned quite a lot of folks for this in the last month. Anything including logging in from multiple IPs or changing your credit card can be enough to get you flagged and the response is a full ban.

They've been blanket banning even innocent people (husband/wife/kids) who 'account share' because different credit cards (with the same last names, same home addresses) are being used. Fun times we are living in.

A few people in my guild have been hit, and I know them to be non-cheaters or third party users.

I'm not going to sit here and say the majority of the people who are getting targeted are innocent, but they're definitely hitting innocent people too. It seems like an extremely wide net. Seems like a poor time in the game's life to be doing such massive indiscriminate bans.

Unbelievable.

This not even make ogre sense. You think problem is ogre who not lift boulder because it heavy and not fun so went away and get drunk. So solution is make boulder more heavy? Silly troll thinking.

Problem is boulder too heavy because it had to hold down troll. Troll is dead now, do not need large boulder. Problem is now ogre all at bar, need to get ogre back. Only solution is remove boulder that not have use now.