Expansion #5 - Return of Antonica?

It might have already been stated, but Halas is already in game... if i remember right it's submerged in the North West of Everfrost.

I agree. There is a glaring discontinuity between the last two expansions and old world zones/content that makes them seem like entirely different games. You make an excellent point in that new players being lured in by an expansion might be scared off by dusty, poorly itemized, outdated zones/content.
Well said, OP!

Choraz@Antonia Bayle wrote:

There is more than enough T2 content and no reason to revamp Ant and CL again. A new player will most likely pick a class and starting city, do the T1 and T2 quests there and be on their way. Even a vetern player that knows where all the T2 content is cannot play it all before out leveling it. No amount of xp locking or debt farming is going to be sufficiant to enjoy all the T2 content available.

Why would it make sense for there to be more T2 content than T7? T2 is a tier utilized for all of an hour by the power grinder, maybe a whole week for the casual one to two hours a day new player. T7 is a tier hundreds of players have been in for almost 2 years. There is plenty of T2 content and absolutely no reason to develop or revamp more. They don't have to put TD gear in every T2 zone. There are plenty of gear quests in T2 no matter which city you start in that are absolutely fine even for grouping.

T2 plays perfectly fine and needs no adjustments or additions. Revamp the arena.

I would love to see the shattered lands be drastically revamped; however, this would require a tremendous amount of work. I feel they should revamp a few zones at a time with each expansion. This would put them into a transition appearance that would not fit in at first but would allow a gradual change.
For example: Release the continent of Odus (Fairly small continent, not really a chance of it growing in size). This could include 2, maybe 3 of the super-sized RoK zones along with the city (The hybrid city with 2 towers) and a lot of raid zones (AA expansion, not level increase). On top of this, revamp Qeynos, Freeport, Antonica, Thundering Steppes, and Nektulos (This would probably need to be the biggest revamp). For Qeynos/Freeport, shrink the cities by removing the smaller suburbs (including their influence on the design of the 4 main areas) and open up the middle of the cities such as seeing Elddar forest from Qeynos harbor, change castle wall into a large moat around the castle.
I feel they should merge some of the shattered lands (still would be shattered, but would have more land travel and not as disconnected). Ro to the Commonlands and Feerrott and Lavastorm to Nektulos. Zek could be connected to Antonica and Everfrost to Zek. Rivervale should be made into a starting city (using lore, say halflings drove demons out of rivervale into another high level dungeon off of enchanted lands. Introduce Kithicor, Highkeep, and another region such as forgotten forest and attach them to Enchanted lands. This gives three highly broken continents (only small strips of land connecting some of the subparts).
This would require a vast graphical upheaval and would require a large amount of work, but it would make the world feel larger and more complete.

aye this sounds good to me I would love to see the old world back and the good old ant tunnel where the merchants were etc oh and LDON adv pack would be very very nice from SoE =)

Don't forget about the Rending. It wasn't the Shattering that destroyed Antonica so much as the Rending. According to the EQ2 RPG book, Rising waters and seismic disturbances cause huge portions of Subtunaria to collapse. These collapsed areas then filled with water. Subtunaria was a network of caves and tunnels that ran underneath Tunaria/Antonica. If this is the case in canon lore (and I think we can assume that it is until it's demonstrated otherwise), then the land areas connecting the subcontinents and islands of the Shattered Lands are now little more than rubble at the bottom of a new ocean. This also explains why Faydwer and Kunark survived relatively intact. The dwarves dug to mine--not to build tunnels. And, as I recall, Kunark was pretty much all above sea level.

I would like to see the doors removed from the zones. I would like to see Freeport and Qeynos become whole cities, rather than collections of quarters. But one of the things that I like about EQ2 is that the cities seem much larger than in any other game. And, to me, that seems more immersive than a small collection of buildings. Granted, the cities are still much smaller than their "real" populations would indicate, but they feel more like cities than any city in EQ1 did.

You have some really good points OP.

I think, to get us back into the old zones, they should just randomly teleport us there, somewhere around the middle, and force us to "explore" our way out. =P

Actually, I still kind of like the old zones, with little incentive to visit them it means I get all the mobs and harvests to myself. MUAHAHAHAHAHA.

I am all for revamping the old zones in the way of making the quests more streamlined and maybe taking out the mariners bells but to connect it?
Is there a particular reason why there *has* to be a connected continents? How far do you actually want the ocean level to drop? When things shatter...they're gone. Perhaps some underwater zones would make more sense but really..its a world we are talking about here.
Second the coding needed to make it so that an expansion erases and replaces old content is just asking for a nightmare as well as months of bugs. The time needed versus money gained...
Small fixes to make sure that the old content is in line with the new (upcoming increase in MC items, weakening TD questing gear, etc.) si perfectly fine.
New players won't care what got revamped, they just want a good game. If new players is what you are after, take that up with the advertising department.
Mixing heroic and solo content is a bad idea. Changing layout would also be bad, although climable mountains would be nice. While I am indifferent to merging city zones I do not want it to turn out like Neriak.
If there is an overarching "it needs to resemble the old world of EQ1 or it will die!" reason to connecting the zones then by all means...
But if there isn't, don't expect too much.

Vamp189 wrote:

That is NOT Halas, for one those are just Halasians, Two Halas was on the EXTREME opposite side of the zone from Permafrost. Halas was far to the East of both Permafrost and Miraguls

Zabjade wrote:

It very well could be Halas. The Rending and Shattering have drastically changed the way some parts of the world appear. The Halasians are in the correct area. Halas was in the NW of Everfrost in EQ1. It's quite possible and likely that the giants or goblins would have created a new exit from/entrance to Permafrost if the first one was collapsed from seismic activity.

Everforst EQ1 map: http://www.eqatlas.com/everfrostmap.html
Everfrost EQ2 map: http://eq2.gamepressure.com/maps.asp?ID=70

Pyra Shineflame wrote:

I agree in part of the re-streamlining the quests. I also agree that redoing the original Shattered Lands to include more land might will be hard to do. But ... I'm all for expanding by adding more zones into original like Neriak and Darklight Woods were. Also, there are parts of Shattered Lands that aren't accessed yet ... I think these new isles will be better options for larger 1- or 2-section zones over the original content.
I had looked over maps of both EQ and EQ2 plenty of times ... few islands did appeared to have rotated rather drastically. For example, if Permafrost entrance never moved, but the isle itself rotated ... then Halas may be actually further NE out of sight of map, not below Permafrost. (the Halasian ghosts that are underwater, in my opinion, is rather too close to Permafrost in first place for Halas to exist.)
Beside .... Vhalen mentioned that Halas isn't where we think it is (underwater) but is somewhere else as quoted:
"Halas has not been rediscovered yet. I cannot say if you will ever discover it. I hope so. It has seen some bad times. The defiant city in the Northlands has withstood a massive siege during the Age of War and the massive geographical devastation of the Age of Cataclysms. There is also a little secret something that went on that no one would know about unless you were in Halas when that epic battle took place. Unfortunately, the Halasians that did survive that mysterious battle won't be telling tales anytime soon. But clues remain that may reveal the secret war between ________ and the brave Halasians that stood against this force."

excellent post. kudos.


I would humbly add that Qeynos and Freeport housing needs to be updated as well.

I can get FAR MORE for my money in Neriak or in Gorowyn. Just a thought.

Jaranna wrote:

I'm thinking it is on a second island further to the east I thinnk Vhalen even commented on it once that the city has yet to be found.

Chris,
You sir have stated what I have been thinking for years. I whole heartedly agree with all of the comments you said. Having new content is nice don't get me wrong, but discarding the older material makes it falter and look shoddy.

You sir have my vote!

Choraz@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Not only no, but FRAKKING H-E DOUBLE-HOCKEY STICKS NO. I'd like them to get rid of the bugginess and lag in their shiny new megazone technology before inflicting it on the starting cities. Dear gods, you think the lag in Qeynos Harbor is bad now? You think people crash a lot in the new zones because of EQ2's abominable memory management? Screw that.

Are you kidding? The zone design in DLW/Neriak and TD is spectacularly /terrible/. I mean, just awful in the way things are laid out, even with a mount. As one example among many, whoever got the bright idea of putting the SS carpet for outside the city and in the middle of the T2 zone needs to be barred from ever working on zone design again.

About the only thing they have going for them is looking pretty, and well-designed newbie quest progression. If that's what you meant about zone design, then I'll get behind that completely.

Speak for yourself. I love fast travel and hate being forced to waste time on getting from point A to point B. It's great the first few times you go through an area and haven't seen it before. It's nice when you're questing and looking for new content. It's good when things are still new.

But once you've seen it a million times, there's no immersion left. There's no joy in taking in the sights. It's just a tedious time sink, a barrier in between where you are and where you're trying to get to. Some of us have limited hours in which we can play, and resent being forced to spent 15-20 minutes just getting to a group even after we've found one, just because someone else enjoys the immersion. You don't like fast travel? I've got a great idea: don't use it. Walk or ride to where you're going. You have fun taking the scenic route, just don't force me to take it.

Aside from the above issues, you've got some good points. I would really like to see the old world content revamped. Heck, they could improve it tenfold by simply deleting the worthless loot tables for most of these zones, upping the mob difficulty a little bit, and giving them new loot. Maybe tweak the quest progression a bit to make it flow better like the new zones do. They wouldn't even have to use dev resources on redoing the zone layout or graphics.