Rank the Expansions

Was talking to some friends in game and had an interesting convo. Rank the EQ2 expansions. Rules: only expansions and not adventure packs. And in this case, Sentinel's Fate is considered an expansion.

1. Rise of Kunark
2. The Shadow Odyssey*
3. Kingdom of Sky
4. Echoes of Faydwer
5. Sentinel's Fate
6. Desert of Flames

* - TSO would have scored lower had it changed the level cap. However, because it was a lvl 80 xpac, it shared content with RoK making it a great addition with dungeons and raid content. The overland zone was... eh..
DoF is low because I just thought a lot of stuff in it was more tedious than fun. *shrug*
Sentinel's Fate ranks low because it just seems half done. Not a lot of content, IMO. I know they changed a LOT of gameplay mechanics, but to do so in an xpac seems... underhanded almost. Expansions should be huge amounts of content, which I'm just not feeling. Anyway, I've got more thoughts on this but I wanted to see what others think.

1. Echoes of Faydwer
2. Kingdom of Sky
3. Desert of Flames
4. Sentinel's Fate
5. Rise of Kunark
6. Base Game
7. The Shadow Odyssey


As you can tell, I hated TSO.

1. Echoes of Faydwer
2. Ruins of Kunark
3. The Shadow Odyssey
4. Kingdom of Sky
5. Sentinel's Fate
6. Desert of Flames



EoF was amazing, tons of content for all levels, fun raids and group zones.
RoK had the best overland zones ever. Heroic grouping was decent, there just wasn't much. Raids were interesting altho quite difficult in their day.
TSO had the WORST outside zone. Period. Still havent finished it. But the heroic zones were amazing. And I loved the raids, although they were tough and I hated the Void storyline.
KoS didnt have much for questing, and the group zones were just okay; but the Raids were phenomenal.
Sentinel's Fate has been a major letdown. Ever since they announced it I was let down it wasn't Velious, but I kept my head up about it. The outside zones haven't been much fun (although I love the pandas), the Raids are either horrible easy or the mobs cheat to win--or you just need straight up luck. I will say the art for the zones has been by far the best, not even close, and the group zones have been fun. I would rank it higher if the itemization didnt make me want to quit. People play this game to collect loot. Above all things I think that is why people play. And SoE dropped the ball so so so bad on this aspect.
DoF is when I started playing, and...meh. Outside zones were...sandy. And repetitive. MajDul still makes me angry to try and navigate. So does Living Tombs. Raids weren't very fun. Factions were uninteresting.
----IMO

1. Rise of Kunark
2. The Shadow Odyssey
3. Sentinel's Fate
4. Kingdom of Sky
5. Desert of Flames
[leaving space for the next few]
9. Echoes of Faydwer
Each one excelled in others and did worse - sometimes downright awful - at others. Do you include content that came DURING each expansion? If so, it's hard to rank SF now. If not, well, RoK didn't have epics then. I'm including content that came during each expansion, so there's still time for SF to move up.
It's also a tough exercise because expectations change over time; the norm for MMO content changes over time. In KoS there was jack squat for solo content ... but that was OK back then because that was the norm. There were no persistent instances back in the days of the first two ... and part of three ... expansions. Things are quite different.
RoK - Very good (too good, too much) solo content. Excellent raids. Not much heroic content at all. Lore was a bit lacking in direction but OK overall.
TSO - Excellent, unsurpassed heroic content. Average solo content, solid lore. Balance totally hosed by failure to fix exploits leading to ridiculously easy-to-obtain gear. Fantastic x2 raids. x4 raids stunk and there weren't enough of them. Raid progression was a disaster. I'd put this first if it didn't have such a small, poor raid line-up.
SF - Some solo content is OK (SH), some (SF) makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Buggiest launch ever, and it does seem to still be unfinished; they are still addressing gear issues pointed out in Beta, there are still broken mobs in the main contested dungeon, adornments weren't finished at launch, main questlines weren't fully functional at launch. Heroic content is very good and there's a nice quantity and progression to it, raids so far are decent.
KoS - Half hour of solo content, although what was there was OK. Good group quests, albeit still not very many. Decent overall quest line/plot. Some very good raids but a lot of tank and spank too. Didn't like that it arrived so soon after DoF.
DoF - All around grindy, and without much motivation to do so since they never did fix itemization during the expansion which they overcorrected after launch. Cobalt armor FTW. No reason to do any heroic content once you had a set of crafted armor/jewelry/weapons.
EoF - Ugh. People claim they loved it, but if they released this tiny amount of end-game content today and called it an expansion ... more people would leave than you can shake a stick at. SF has 2x the raid content and 5x the heroic content of this horrific "expansion". Raids were OK. Unrest was good when it was added, thereby doubling the amount of heroic content. Best thing about this one is that's when persistent instances were introduced.

1. Base game
2. Kingdom of Sky
3. Echoes of Faydwer
The rest is Meh

1. Kingdom of Sky
2. Echoes of Faydwer
3. Sentinel's Fate
4. Desert of Flames
5. Rise of Kunark
6. The Shadow Odyssey

Casr@Kithicor wrote:

1- Base Game - contains the vast majority of my favorite zones in the game.
2- Echoes of Faydwer - love the look and most fo the zones are really nice.
3- Desert of Flames - Pretty decent stuff here. An above average expansion.
4- Rise of Kunark - I like the zones here. A decent expansion
5- Ths Shadow Odyessy- Jut so-so
6- Kingdom of Sky - I despise this expansion for the simple reason i despise traveling from island to island trying to remember which place connects where. I avoi this area as much as possible.
Can't comment on Sebtinels Fate yet as I don't own it but from what I have seen from it it looks goo and would be a decent expansion.

Vortexelemental@The Bazaar wrote:

I'd be putting the list the same way..EoF waas the best xpac ffor any mmo i've played (and its a few of them) while TSO was utterly dire the xpac that made me take time off from this game

1.) Sentinel's Fate
It's great to see a game accessible to all audiences again. For the casual player, I log in and there is always "stuff to do", the dungeons are approachable by audiences who can't put together "That perfect group" or having "That perfect gear", and while the quests are a bit on the hum drum side due to them more or less being "kill the local wildlife", but it's a beautiful expansion with a lot to do. The lore is sound, the dungeons are fun, everything is at my fingertips to see, do, and experience. Here's hoping they continue down this path.
2.) Echoes of Faydwer
While there wasn't a lot to do for those who were level capped except a few instances, set gear, and a few choice raids, the expansion was a definitive step in the right direction and an obviously huge push for the game. Lots of content, quests from start to finish, new AA trees, a new race, a new city... talk about being chock full of content.
It was, however, weak on story and lore. Things were there.... seemingly just because. But this was a trend up until recently, to be honest.

3.) Desert of Flames

The reason that Desert of Flames was something nice was due to its art style and the availability to do many different things. The only thing that made it start to drop below some of the other expansions was the fact that there was this overall aire of being "unfinished." It had factions in place that didn't do anything, merchants that didn't sell anything, and a mechanic that while fun at first grew stale after a while within Maj'Dul. It was a fine attempt though, and the product itself was still a lot of fun.
4.) Kingdom of Sky

What saved this particular expansion from moving a bit lower was the amount of time that they had to release it. It had quite a bit of content, but we're moving away from quality product to something that was screaming somewhat "Lazy". While it had a good deal of quests and dungeons to explore, the dungeons themselves were all repeats of the others, a selling feature wouldn't be finished until near a year later. PVP was, however, a good move for EQ2, as the population of Nagafen should identify, and PVP being added to the game is still a lot of fun to play around with.



5.) Rise of Kunark
Now we are starting to move in the wrong direction. Being the Iksar fanatic that I am, this was probably one of the biggest disappointments that i've had in an EQ2 expansion, and one of the first times that i've taken a break from EQ2 to try out another product (Vanguard). Story is now an aside, and greatly hidden from the public. The pieces that are there don't make any sense. The only way to level up is by doing a long and tedious solo grind, and the dungeons are minimal to none. If you didn't raid, you were kind of out of luck this go around. Larger zones were more lagfests than anything else. Kunark had so much potential; in the amount of content they really could have put out if done right. It was, however, a huge disaster for me. The only reason that it got above TSO was the fact that it was at least somewhat accessible.
6.) The Shadow Odyssey
Why is this at the bottom of the heap? The systems that were put into it were sound, but for someone like myself who participated in a casual guild, there was a whole lot of nothing you could do with it. The highlight was the dungeons; and only four of them, if that, were accessible by any casual audiences. If you were a tank, you couldn't even tank these dungeons unless you had at least tier 2 gear, and the instances themselves were far too difficult to consider wanting to run more than once. There was a reason that people did grey shard runs for the shadow odyssey: And it was due to the fact that there really was no other way to get to the point that they could actually experience the content they wanted to experience. There was only one set of gear that you wanted to get, also, which was more than a little silly. While the amount of story was awesome, it fell just short due to the accessibility. Why don't I like it? Because I really couldn't experience it. To this day, there are still more than half of the dungeons in this expansion that I haven't seen.

1. Echoes of Faydwer
2. Sentinel's Fate
3. Rise of Kunark
4.TSO
5. Kingdom of Sky
EOF was the expansion that got me to return to EQ2 & start playing again so I always tend to be nostalgic of that time in EQ2. So far I am really enjoying SF, I love the new raid content & heroic instances. I enjoyed ROK but there was a serious lack of group content I got bored of it & stopped playing until around when TSO came out. I put TSO as #4 I enjoyed the heroic content, there was a ton of different instances to run & that never really got old to me but the raid content was terrible imo they put way to many fail conditions into the encounters that should be something that is only used on major boss encounters.

1. Rise of Kunark - great overall expac
2. The Shadow Odyssey - nice addition to RoK
3. Desert of Flames - Loved the questlines, Ring of Fate + Peacock. Raids also were cool. With the exception of Djinn master.
4. Kingdom of Sky - Liked the Raiding pretty much, it was horribly weak on solo quests or instance content. SoS is one heck of a good dungeon heh.
5. Sentinel's Fate - So far, I like it for the most part, but it does seem.....kind of lacking for how long they postponed launch.
6. Echoes of Faydwer - This one I am just not crazy about. I don't hate it, just not my favorite.

I like all the expansions fairly well, TSO in particular. It was unusual in how high it raised the bar as to how complicated encounters were, in both heroic and raid content. I find that, at least in my guild, it made people better players. One could even say for some it forced them to be heh. Or else they didn't go on raids or get groups. I don't like doing stuff with mediocre or poor players anyway so I liked that aspect. Raid progression was the worst I've seen, but I dealt with it. They went a bit nuts on the fail conditions. And there is a part of me that does miss the days when people died, it didn't heal the raid mob. It had a pitiful amount of solo content, but for the sheer amount of heroic instances it added etc I loved it. I like questing, grouping, and raiding. I like all of it. Seems to me the biggest issue folks had with TSO was if you didn't raid much previous to it, or during to get gear as well as experience, it was a big ol pain in the butt.

1. original release amazing overall, had that true everquest feel before it was dumbed down
2. EOF lots of fun, great group content, some solo content but not enough to WoWify the game yet
3. ROK dunno, I'm a big fan of this xpac. The raiding was very cool, and the first time you stepped off the boat you got your butt kicked and had to really readjust and think.
4. KOS lots of fun and very cool original theme.
5. DOF liked this xpac as well, nice content and pretty cool theme. The factions thing was kind of dumb and battlegrounds 0.5, err I mean the Arena didn't pan out well.
skip down to:
31. TSO, crappy overall, overland zones were horrible, some of the instances were cool though, but this xpac is where we really see the rift between casual and hardcore exponentially widen. Carebear mode has been started.
55. SF. Generally junk derived from laziness and a shifting budget/lowered staff. Released late, buggy, and with the battlegrounds junk. Artificially limiting AA gain and quest xp, increasing importance of station cash, more of a reliance on solo type quests to level up, and just a massive general dumbing down of the game. Some cool zone artwork though, some decent bosses. Equipment is a nightmare though. And don't get me started on battlegrounds, what the devs sold their (and our) souls for.

KoS
EoF
RoK
DoF <if itemization was a bit better it would be above RoK>
SF
TSO

Dreyco wrote:

Amen. TSO really was an awful product that established the incredible gear differences between the "players with a lot of time" and the "regular player" this made those of us who really had no chance of seeing the expansion play less (as I did) or take a long break. And now we get SF that is aimed at getting back the "casuals" again.

1. SF - They've scaled down a lot of the annoying parts of TSO mobs while retaining the level of scripting. I think they're a lot closer to a balance between the difficulty of TSO and previous expansions. I'm enjoying the heck out of BGs too. It's tentative in the sense that it really depends on if they finish fixing itemization and how the first new raid zone they release goes, but I like it so far.
2. TSO - It was the first time EQ2 really had interesting raid mobs and heroic zones in my opinion, previous to that was largely pull tricks and tank and spank. They went overboard on reactives and detrimentals, and the zones were on too short a reset timer for their length but outside of that I found it very enjoyable. Its main problem was that the game had been incredibly forgiving to awful players thus far so it was a huge leap in difficulty that the playerbase wasn't ready for.
3. RoK - The contested dungeons weren't worth running until the next expansion was about released, the instances were boring, most of the raid gear was beat by solo gear and a good amount of the raid mobs weren't functioning close to properly at launch. Venril Sathir remains my least favorite raid ever and VP as the one endgame zone for most of the expansion was terrible. People said they like the solo questing a lot but honestly it felt like the same boring crap as all the other expansions -- a high quantity of it, but you still spent most of your time running across barren fields of mobs milling about gathering pelts for hunters. SoH, RE2 and Veksar did elevate this expansion a lot though towards the end.
4-5. DoF and KoS - DoF is actually my favorite expansion thematically by far, I loved the atmosphere and the two "signature" questlines. The instances were boring as all hell though. KoS had more fun instances but it was the absolute laziest expansion in terms of art assets and it was just pretty mundane for me outside of Labs, Deathtoll and HoF.
6. EoF - Unrest was good, that was about it. Lots of overland zones but the content was a sleepwalk except for CMM.

1. Rise of Kunark
2. Kingdom of Sky
3. Echoes of Faydwer
4. The Shadow Odyssey
5. Sentinel's Fate
6. Desert of Flames

1) TSO
Brutally hard, loved it. Although using avatars as contested for the 3rd expansion in a row == fail
2) KOS
3) ROK
Would be #2 if VP hadn't been such a let-down (well until it was re-vamped)
4) SF
Still the young contender let down by dire itemization (and I do mean really DIRE) and easy mode raids (sans RT). Easy mode raids as a whole being so easy you expect Big Bird to come out and give a hand!
5) DOF
6) EOF
Having to complete a good aligned deity quest for each time you want to get a decent pull on a raid mob == fail

Slayan wrote:

1) kos
2) dof -- just liked the desert theme and the pvp in the various zones
3) eof
4) rok
5) tso
6) sf -- last for its complete destruction of pvp and lack of any decent lasting repetable content.

Casr@Kithicor wrote:

1. EoF - Lots of new zones, new starting city, new race. Interesting raids, involved quests, compelling dungeons.
2. DoF - New city, new housing. Interesting idea with competing factions within Maj'Dul, but it should have been expanded on. Quests were quite long, some were "meh", others were interesting.
3. SF - It's obvious that they've brought new art talent. Some of the instances are simply amazing. Tox buzzing Paineel, and environs whenever Someone triggers the easy mode raid, and kills the last named is pretty cool, (and Tox is a really good looking dragon).
4. KoS - The islands in the sky were a neat idea. Content was sub par though.
5. RoK - It was at least big. Quest progression was ok, and leveling to the new cap was easy. I did'nt dislike it, I just liked the others I listed above better.
6. TSO - The raid zones were good. I never understood the void business, and could have lived without it.

I averaged all the replies so far, (where possible, some people had to be left out for incomplete answers, etc).

1. EoF with an average score of 2.82.
2. KoS with an average score of 3.17.
3. RoK with an average score of 3.17.
4. SF with an average score of 3.88.
5. Dof with an average score of 4.11.
6. TSO with an averate score of 4.17.

Note: KoS came in very slightly ahead of RoK, numbers have been truncated for the sake of neatness. There is no tie for second place.