Art and Environment - 8 A beautifully crafted expansion with vivid colors, other-worldly creatures, and beautiful sights. The artwork in this expansion continues to be a highlight in EQ2. Unfortunately, that is sometime tarnished by an overall small overland zone packed with multiple "biomes". Many of these biomes are quite jolting to see adjacent to each other, almost as if they needed more room to spread out. Instead, they are like tiny little areas of flavor that are nice, but seem too compact at times. The dungeons are varied and also have overall nice artwork and ambiance to them. Shout out to Torden. Quests - 5 Quickly into questing, players will be forced to do two repeatable quests about 6 times to gain enough faction to progress. This is unfortunate, as repeating quests over and over again is rarely viewed as "fun". Considering that this is required for progression, I couldn't help but wonder why they made this choice. Once enough faction is gained through repeatables, unique quests open up once again. Unfortunately, repeatables will be required a second time in order to reach max faction. This issue is then compounded by the fact that there are three factions in total. All three of these factions are essentially the same format. Once you do one, you'll know what the other three have in store. Pakiat felt like the worst of the three, due to the objectives needed and the amount of overall travel. What also made the whole process worse was that the buyables from each faction didn't add much incentive to do all three. All three factions award gear that is identical in appearance, and only minor variations in stats. So as players, we couldn't even look forward to new outfits or unique mounts/house items from each faction. In addition, by the second faction the gear rewards are essentially un-needed. Especially if you mix the overland questing with signature questing/dungeons. The signature quest felt short... very short. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything to write home about. I would have liked to see it more fleshed out, and a bit lengthier. Tradeskills - 3 Lack of a tradeskill timeline, design decisions inconsistent with past tradeskill content, tradeskill writs giving inadequate experience 100+ (and being the only way to level tradeskills at this time), and overall bugs with recipes/ingredients. It's hard to give any points in this category, but we do have new mats and new recipes to obtain. It's just unfortunate that the state of tradeskills is so poor with the launch of PoP. Polish - 6 Several bugs were present on launch, with some still remaining. Many issues were called out in Beta per testers but not fixed before go live. While this isn't the worst expansion launch in history, there is room for improvement. Dungeons & Mechanics - 6 Overall, the dungeons in PoP are varied, unique, and can be entertaining. We have some script heavy fights this time, which has drawn the ire of some players. I will say that not all scripts are easily understood and don't communicate enough to the player on what is happening. Scripts are fine as long as they are not obtuse. The original promise of skill consolidation with level 100+ skills was scrapped, and some wonky class balance issues are still present. Ascension class leveling changes were confusing, as I saw many people in chat asking for clarification on how to level Ascension classes beyond level 10. Overall - 6 PoP came out of the gate to make this expansion more alt-friendly and reduce pre-requisites. On that front, it succeeded. Overall though, PoP would have benefited greatly from more time in the oven, better thought out design choices, and increased influence from player feedback. As a player since December 2014, it's unfortunate that PoP didn't turn out better. I worry that our venerable game may suffer from this expansion. However, I continue to wish our beloved game the absolute best.
Can I give a negative score for the handling of White adorns, orange adorns, their recipes, and Ascensions?
Hello Great and big review of the PoP Addon. For the Point of altfriendlyness i must add its the biggest fail i ever saw, beause of the fact addon was anounced as alt friendly and we get served a addon which inst in anyway indeed. I normaly used to play 6 Toons 2 for raid and 4 for heroic content and having some fun beside the Raid. Atm noone of us is possible to play an alt or more because of the amount of Requierments for being on step to do anything especialy buying stuff to upgrade our equipment, the most disapointing point in this case are the Orange Addornment Systhem. This is hindering us on 100% to get an alt ready especialy if they must be looted to buy them this is a point i could react like a Nuclear Bomb. I doint know why the deves decided to screw us this way and i wont understand how items which are basic items / gear could be set under this conditions which are hindering us to play more than one toon. The Orange addonrs which replace the 4 Sets we got served in KA addon should be free for every toon which has done the Signature and the Grinding Journey throught the 3 Factions. For a normal player this is work enough to to do especilay if thier is some real life around and the time for playinmg is short. The Addorns wich replace the Effects from the Ascendent Ears and Charm should be free to because of the point we already had the procs so why waste some time again to replace them. As for last were is our Upgraded Charm ( Tome ) if alle 4 Ascendent Clases are being upgraded to level 15 ?? Should be Mhytical with DC / Pot may be 3k + / CB 200+ and som FMOD may be and as point of the letter I smart loot for Tanks because the old one has no Deff Stats on and without tanks are feeeling abit naked. Ah and it should be Non Relic and if you follow the opinion of many players Relics arent wanted any more like some other stuff which costs us brain power to play memory with some kind of stuff like the totaly wirred logic on the possible addornment slots for the orange addorns. For a logical replacement of them the Addorns from Charm and Ears should have same Slots as the replced procs. 1 Asecendent Ear Earing 2 Ascendent Tome Charm 3 The Panda Addorns ( Orange ) Should be able to be placed on Wirst / Ear or optional Belt and Weapons And pleace rethink the number of needed materials for Ascendent Spells and new Craftable Orange Addorns its a joke how many things are needed to craft them at this time this is quiet luxery and not a basic equipment which is actuially needed to be on the line to do Heroics or Raid. An other disapointing thing are the Rewards for PQs , 17 resolve or fabled prestige Merc gear not realy usefull. 17 Resolve is on the low end of the line and no one will use it, for me i salvage oir transmute it anbd that surly not whats planed for. I could write down some more issuses and things that we players are dont understand but time is out reallife needs me
