In the Rain of Fear expansion we saw the use of old world zones . . . updated of course. We even had an updated Temple of Veeshan for a raid zone. I'm not suggesting, the use of existing zones as a replacement of newly created zones, but a means to augment new expansions. Essentially, making new expansions slightly more robust. To give you an idea of what I'm suggesting, I'll give you an example . . . We know the old world had many Combine structures. Things like the portal room in Timorous Deep and pyramids in Dreadlands. I believe the portal system in the Nexus was of Combine origin also. So lets say that after the defeat of Calix, a group of Combine used a Combine created machine to go back in time to the old world Combine empire - taking the device with them. Al'kabor tasks your group with finding a way to follow them. They took the device with them, but Al'kabor remembers seeing part of the device in Trakanon's Lair. So, T1 of the new expansion could consist of retrieving parts of the broken device (the same device that was taken back in time with the Combine group, but in current time broken and spread across Norrath). So, you could venture out into a series of revamped old world zones to retrieve the now ancient broken device: Old Sebilis - Trakanon Howling Stones - Drusella Sathir Karnor's Castle - Venril Sathir City of Mist - Lord Rak'Ashiir Crypt of Dalnir - The Kly Chardok - Overking Bathezid Temple of Droga - King Dronan Once the parts are all retrieved, Al'Kabor will reconstruct the device and enable the group to travel back in time to an old world Kunark - all new zones. In the past, you could fight the living Trakanon, The Sathir's (together and alive), anyway the possibilities are endless. In essence, we can double the size of the expansion. For the first half of the expansion, the zones are already created, NPCs and their names already exist, itemization already exists. Essentially, the first half of the expansion would be like Hardcore Heritage zones - like the recent Nagafen's Lair and Castle Mistmoore. T1 raids could be in a revamped Veeshan's Peek - similar to the revamped Temple of Veeshan in RoF. This is just an example, of course. The result would be an expansion and content that will keep us occupied for a much greater period of time. I could also see something like this reaching out to old players that a sentimental about old EQ - progression players etc. and could even ring back players that have left EQ. Anyway, what are your thoughts on using old world zones as introductory T1 zones for a new expansion - similar to Hardcore Heritage, but wrapped into the new expansion storyline?
Good idea, I'm always in favor of seeing revamped old clasics. But I know what devs are gonna say.. "too much work, not enough resources"
I'd love to be able to "like" this post and idea about a hundred billion times. I absolutely LOVED RoF because it had a mix of old and new zones to play in. The reuse of the Velious expansion was REALLY cool. Every time I'd enter "New Velious", I'd remember something different about my time spent in "Old Velious". Heck, I was shocked that I remembered my way around Kael and also remembered how much fun I had grouping and raiding there.
I think they would include revamped zones or reimagined zones as part of a new expansion and not extra zones on top of it. Sort of how TDS had reimagined versions of Katta. I am all for revamped zones though. But I like your idea. My personal favorite idea is to have a zone called The Hall of Yesterdays with zone connections to all the old versions of zones and let revamped (to the high end game) versions replace them in. So if there was a revamped Misty Thicket the old version has its zone connection replaced by one in the Hall of Yesterdays and the new one ends up being connected via the zones the old one was. It would make things seem more dynamic but is probably way too much work for the devs and would cause issues with quest entries on eq sites referring to the old zones etc.... but too much work....
No more 'lost' continents, please. Alaris was pushing it. Revisiting Kunark and Luclin would be great.
Ok, you say it takes too much time and resources . . . However, think about what it takes to design a new zone from scratch, not to mention the cost associated with doing so. You have to develop the zone from concept to physically creating the zone, populate the zone with NPCs, some of which have to be created from scratch also. Name the NPCs and also itemize the NPCs. Itemization is extensive, from creating new visible designs to naming etc. Then you have to create named and the spells they cast . . . When updating a zone, like they do for the Hardcore Heritage, they still need to increase the power of the npcs and also add new stats to the old equipment. However, this process is significantly less work than creating a zone from scratch. I'd go as far as saying it probably take about 4 or 5 times the total amount of time and development - and $$ to create a completely new zone. So, one new static T1 zone that you are going to push through as fast as you can on the way to T2? Or, would you prefer 4 or 5 revamped hardcore Heritage type zones in its place?
I love your ideas but I don't think we would get more zones. From a business perspective they are going to say.... what it the least amount of work we can do and still get people to pay $40.00 for an expansion. Not because the Devs don't want to do a lot of cool stuff.. just for business reasons. So if they did revamped zones we wouldn't get more because they take less effort.. or at least I don't think we would we might get a bit extra... like a zone or two. But that's just my opinion.... the only one who can answer the question I guess is a business type at Daybreak that makes the budget decisions. Keep posting ideas like this though you never know when you might strike pay dirt.
Alaris is on the globes in Skyfire. It's was one of the longest running unused content hooks. Splinter zones and adding places that have been referenced in lore both have endless potential in EQ. And that's what we've seeing for the past 3 expansions.
The problem with messing with these zones is they have epic mobs, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0. So you have to be careful about revamping these zones.
What are some other examples of unused places like that? I wonder of alaris was intended to be an alien place from the start or if they changed it to that.
I agree it's a bad idea to recycle zones in expansions. For expansion zones, reimagining zones in a modern way, like PoFear in HoT expansion, is a better way than using the old zone layout. Revamping zones seems to be highly divisive, they revamped Mistmore ~10 years ago and removed it. IIRC, They agreed to undo the PoGrowth revamp but said they didn't have the old zone files. If they use old zones, it should be as instances imo. ===== To me, a problem with revamped, etc, zones is that nostalgia is too heavily based on the classic-to-Velious era. Do we really need a 50th Velious or Velious-like zone? I would like to see more revisiting of later content, such as PoP, GoD, OOW, and DoDH. I think they'd be able to make some good instances based off of things like PoP mini raids, Tipt, Ikkinz trials, MPG trials, or Dreadspire. For raids, I think an Anguish 2.0 would be a better idea than NToV 2.0. Sure, Velious nostalgia holds no bounds, but Velious content has proven to be hard to translate to the modern raid game.
would be nice to see the gods that you hardly ever see or never seen in game yet, like Rodcet Nife as example who appears to that of an alien and have there own spaceship in qeynos you can say. (for those who been to Temple of Life) some Gods you see way too often like Innoruuk, (he appears and is killable in multiple different expansions)
I wasn't really suggesting revamping current old world zones. These zones would always remain the same. The point was using pre-existing zone geometry for new T1 zones, in a new expansion, in order to add more content to the currently very small expansion sizes. For example, you have Temple of Veeshan in Velious - a level 60 raid zone - and Corrupted Temple of Veeshan in RoF - a level 100 raid zone. The overall reception of the new raid zone was very positive. I understand everyone wants new zones. However, if the next expansion is going to be eight new zones, would you rather have those eight new zones to adventure through for a year, or eight old world zones as the first tier and then the eight new zones for later tiers? In other words, a sixteen zone expansion, rather than an eight zone expansion. The use of old zone geometry, NPCs, and equipment (updated to current level) is significantly less cost to produce than creating an entirely new zone and content within that zone.
Long story short, Quellious cursed the Estate into the situation it's in now. (It turns out that doing something horrible enough to anger the Goddess of Tranquility is a bad idea.) The group mission The Curse Begins depicts what happened on the day the estate got cursed.
