What is your favorite expansion?

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Elskidorr, Aug 20, 2020.

  1. Tanto Done, finished, gone.

    It's interesting that almost everyone seems to prefer the expansions before stat standardisation and pay-to-win.

    I loved EoF. RoK too, but times were tougher for the guild I played in during RoK, so I got the most enjoyment from EoF.
    Avirodar likes this.
  2. Avirodar Well-Known Member

    If we're talking about expansions on a design level, and not considering launch/release, guilds, or friends, I equally enjoyed the 3 expansions of Kingdom of Sky, Echoes of Faydwer and Rise of Kunark. These expansions made EQ2 feel like it was moving forward, and was improving after DoF.

    In TSO/SF, the cannibalization of funds & staff to produce EQNext taken a clear and heavy toll on the quality of EQ2. Then the introduction of RMT/P2W caused irreparable damage. Things did not improve as time went on.

    Some believe that SOE being sold to Columbus Nova Jason Epstein was the turning point. I disagree with these people, and maintain my belief that John Smedley and Dave Georgeson (SmokeJumper) had already done the damage, then proceeded to walk away acting like their hands are clean.
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  3. Elskidorr Active Member

    Though I did not play all of them when they first came out, I enjoyed KoS- Velious the best. So many wonderful zones but I easily played the most EQ2 during SF/Velious era so I'm a wee bias there. Best overall would likely be KoS, EoF and RoK for the awesome direction the game was heading though.
  4. Herne Active Member

    Echoes of Faydwer, content for everyone at all levels.
  5. Geroblue Well-Known Member

    Any expac with solo/molo content i can take my time playing.
  6. Ghorast Active Member

    KoS, no other expansion improved the game as drastically as KoS did.
  7. Matik Member

    Yes! It seems like Smedley just sat around asking "what is wow doing?" and smokejumper just wanted to make the news with some feature that no one uses anymore. What a waste. I imagine it's hard to appreciate the damage EQnext did too.

    The Freeport server was a hit though, they did actually manage to get new people to play the game and stick around for a while. I played there and leveled slow with a paladin and I took a lot of people through some of the older content and it was fun. Good memories!
  8. Revanu Well-Known Member

    Rise of kunark hands down #1 followed by a split between shadow odyssey and sentinels fate. 4 rune there may go down as one of the best raid encounters of all time outside of contested avatars
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  9. Kotter Legendary Member

    i've always liked the theme of DoF.
  10. Miroh Well-Known Member


    DoF was 100% garbage. KoS was the game's saving grace after that dumpster fire of an expansion.
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  11. SgtPmpkn Well-Known Member

    Kingdom of Sky, and Sentinal's Fate
    Miroh likes this.
  12. Giara New Member

    For me:
    • Favorite expansion for general playing is Echoes of Faydwer
    • Favorite expansion for raiding is Sentinel's Fate. The final fight of the Palace of Roehn Theer is still one of my favorite fights ever. Difficult but yet not so insane that if you sneeze wrong, the raid wipes.
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  13. Xevran Well-Known Member

    My favorite in general is Rise of Kunark.

    S tier: RoK, TSO, EoF
    A tier: Base game, KoS, AoM, SF
    B tier: DoV, CoE, ToT, DoF
    F tier: KA

    Haven't played any of the others.
  14. Clintsat Well-Known Member

    I actually loved DoF along with KoS. DoF had amazing group content and some real challenging stuff after vanilla. DoF also had persistent world changing with the towers, etc. Everything felt like you were engaged.
  15. Fangrim Active Member

    There is a lot to do in DoF and the lore from the three factions is okay. I guarantee people on TLE that ***** about it just go to Clefts of Rujark and the instances to level, the raiders will probably just do the peacock line and FA else.I bet less than 1% on KalaDIM did the ring of fate quests.
    There are also loads of collections to do in DoF but at the end of the day I did all this when it was live and every single quest possible for me on Stormhold so I understand why people are tired of it. Just watch them all flock to the next TLE and then start complaining about itemisation haha
  16. Melt Actually plays the game

    TLE players will always find something to complain about as if the content is relevant
    Fangrim likes this.
  17. Arclite Well-Known Member

    Rise of Kunark was and is the best expansion to date (my opinion, don't care if anybody disagrees). The game never reached those heights again and has been in a downward spiral ever since development wise.

    The stats had meaning back then, min/maxing of stats depending on the level of content was an absolute blast, no reforging/infusion nonsense but a complete understanding of your class and experimentation of different AA setups where you would spend a lot of time on websites like eq2beetny to tweak your setup and find that extra point somewhere.

    Clear progression from solo to heroics to raids. The vast overland zones (contrary to what Kander said in his podcast) kept things fresh and prevented them from becoming boring as it has been the case since the dawn of 1 short overland zone (starting from ToT) without any real personality. Each overland map had a different vibe with varying levels of difficulty for the solo player.

    Because stats were relevant, the difficulty was just right. Even as a geared raider ending up in the Nuroga cave with all solo goblins spawning on you would most likely result in your death before you managed to run out of the cave. Karnos castle for early level grind was just amazing, really hard when you first set your foot in there with 72-73. Sebilis being a complete contested frenzy with groups trying to farm nameds deep within.

    There was never any need for solo zones as the overland were sufficient enough because of their design (that's how you do solo content).

    The contested overland zones like the x2 dragon dropped the best shield defensive shield for tanks until end game raids.

    Heroic zones were equally great with my favorite being the Maidens Chamber, still remember the very first fight against Sandstorm, it was epic.

    Raid zones were tuned to perfection. Protector's realm with it is t1 raid armor set building you for t2 zones with decent armor bonuses and as you got more gear you felt powerful. T2 zones like venril sathir unique power script and the temple with twin nameds were memorable before you hit Veeshan's peak, where to this day, people can remember specific nameds and their scripts because of how fun they were (compare that to BoL, i can hardly remember the name of most raid nameds).

    Trakanon being the level of excellence where timing to kill was the key outside of contested avatar fights.

    Epic 1.0 was the best designed quest that gave class specific items that even in its fabled form had unique effects and not like the atrocious nonsense we got in KA where they did not even bother with new skins/effects and worse yet, all having the same base stats. There was nothing unique about them at all. The pre-requisite for the fights were just perfect with fun backtracking of quests and old zones (no gating mechanisms, no forced levelling of tradeskill profession).

    Class specific armor was equally impressive with VP set giving unique class bonuses.

    The contested avatars were great and made it fun to log on at odd hours for those who could or wanted to play at that level.

    Then they went ahead and added the best raid zone this game has ever seen as an update, the original shard of hate.

    All in all, a thoroughly well-rounded expansion with content vs classes vs gear vs fun were all on display.

    Not sure what happened to the devs after that.
    Tkia likes this.
  18. Beyoncia Well-Known Member

    Rise of Kunark no doubt. Many people have enumerated the reasons; I'll add one more: it was the first time when we were given powerful abilities, which changed the way our classes worked, but these abilities were not super powerful, they did not trivialized the fights, but on the contrary made them more interresting.
  19. Mountbatten Well-Known Member

    I mean, it's cute that you think that, but the fact is, there really is just not that much to do in DoF. It's by far the smallest expansion. Most of the group instances are basically just a room with a bunch of trash and a named or two. The overland zones are pretty bland when compared to anything else. The contested dungeons are alright, I guess, but the whole having to climb everywhere mechanic gets old pretty quick. And having to do the ring events every darn time you do PP? Yeah, no thanks. The raid zones are bugged half the time. It's just not a fun expansion, any way you put it. It's basically a mercy that it was only out for 5 months before KoS came along. And yet for some reason they think it's OK to try to stretch it to 4 months on TLE, when there isn't even any mid-expansion content.

    Literally the only thing DoF did right was introduce the concept that raid encounters can be more than just tank and spank. The Djinn Master was actually pretty decent conceptually. Almost everything else was hot garbage. They redeemed themselves with KoS though.
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  20. MightyMeaghan Well-Known Member

    DoF needed a 3rd overland zone and a couple more contested dungeons. The storyline was good. The faction mechanics were interesting but I think they should have affected gameplay more. Those damn doors in Poet's Palace should have never been a thing and they repeated those damn mesa and cave instances too many times. They could have done a better job with the death match arena. The potential for a great expansion was there, but they rushed through it. They rushed through KoS too. The copy and paste graphics in that expansion were way overboard. The only unique dungeon was Deathtoll. The rest were variants of SoS, PoA, and HoF. Bonemire was just Lavastorm tinted purple. Thankfully they ditched the 6 month expansion cycle after that. If they'd combined the development time spent on DoF and KoS we could have gotten something huge.