Gargamellow

[Tikker]

at the guild summit thing, smedley announced that Ykesha was the best selling expansion to date, at which point in almost perfect unison everyone yelled "EXTRA BANK SPACE" (this was 100ish EQ dorks)

that kinda took the wind out of his sails

that being said, they also said that Velious was by FAR the worst selling of all the expansions, which pretty much blew everyone away since most people consider it the best of the expansions (kunark being a close 2nd)

at one of the lunch things, he came over and sat with me, and I pushed hard for Gnomish Beastlords with the mechanical spiders for a pet, but it sadly never happened

[brinstar]

started here (October 1999)
1. The Ruins of Kunark (March 2000)
2. The Scars of Velious (December 2000)
3. The Shadows of Luclin (December 2001)
game started to suck (December 2001)
4. The Planes of Power (October 2002)
quit here (December 2002)
5. The Legacy of Ykesha (February 2003)
6. Lost Dungeons of Norrath (September 2003)
7. Gates of Discord (February 2004)
8. Omens of War (September 2004)
9. Dragons of Norrath (February 2005)
10. Depths of Darkhollow (September 2005)
11. Prophecy of Ro (February 2006)
12. The Serpent's Spine (September 2006)
13. The Buried Sea (February 2007)
14. Secrets of Faydwer (November 2007)

[Lyion]

started here (October 1999)
1. The Ruins of Kunark (March 2000)
2. The Scars of Velious (December 2000)
3. The Shadows of Luclin (December 2001)
game started to suck (December 2001)
4. The Planes of Power (October 2002)
quit here (December 2002)
5. The Legacy of Ykesha (February 2003)
6. Lost Dungeons of Norrath (September 2003)
7. Gates of Discord (February 2004)
8. Omens of War (September 2004)
9. Dragons of Norrath (February 2005)
10. Depths of Darkhollow (September 2005)
11. Prophecy of Ro (February 2006)
12. The Serpent's Spine (September 2006)
13. The Buried Sea (February 2007)
14. Secrets of Faydwer (November 2007)

Interestingly, that's pretty much everyone I played with.

I quit the day after Shadows of Luclin was released, personally. I heard so many craptastic stories from friends testing it, and I was already RVRing in DAOC, another game that sucked ass upon 2002 expansion.

[Tikker]

the frustrating part about luclin was that it was kinda close to being great, but missed hugely on a couple of things that made it completely gay and lame

instead of encounters like Vyemm, we got stuff like vulak

[10sun]

that being said, they also said that Velious was by FAR the worst selling of all the expansions, which pretty much blew everyone away since most people consider it the best of the expansions (kunark being a close 2nd)

Velious was not casual friendly. There were not many places a person could go and just exp or get gear with a single group.

-Adam

[Arlos]

Luclin was a huge steaming shitpile on release. Remember how buggy it was? Remember how they kept trying to do encounters based on spawn rings, yet the one guy who'd coded them to begin with had left the company, and no one else could figure out how to make them work right? Cost the lead producer his job things were so bad at release.

Then there was the debacle of stonewalling over the actual state of VT for 6 months, followed by giving 1 dev 1 week to do the entire zone, solo. POP had some good stuff to it, though the complete nitpickyness of the original zone flagging was crazy. Some of the raid encounters (see: Rathe Council) were really bad too, though nothing came close to VT-at-release.

I went from December of '99, got to L50 before Kunark, and then played steadily 'til just before Discord. Then I moved, lost internet access for 6-7 weeks, and came back to the early Discord events, which were mind-blowingly awful. By then I'd lost the habit of playing every night, was utterly frustrated with how badly SOE had fucked the Monk class, and just wasn't having any fun in the game at all any more. I think I made it through 2 or 3 nights of fingernails-on-blackboard levels of annoyance with the new events, then blew up on some new recruit jackass in the LOS monk channel out of frustration and anger, ported back to POK, logged, and cancelled the same night. Then a couple days later my invite to the WOW friends & family alpha came through, and EQ became a distant memory.

-Arlos

[Tikker]

GoD wasn't that bad actually

some of it sucked, but a lot of the harder GoD stuff was better than WoW's Molten Core (which I thought was pretty well done, even if it was just a copy of NToV)

Luclin had problems for sure

SSra was a great raiding zone tho, but that was it for the expansion

VT could have been cool, but was so poorly done it wasn't even funny

ae stun + blind + gating mobs was beyond dumb

[Arlos]

Ssra was OK, though some of the mobs were severely borked at first. Remember the guy in the basement who would DT every 10 seconds? Completely unkillable until they fixed him. The Emperor was pretty retarded too, especially when they changed him mid-stream and actually made him harder.

VT was, as you said, just hell. Doubly so for us pullers, as there were so many casters, and so many triggered mobs that feigning anything off was about impossible. Eventually we literally had to learn the place down to the individual floor tile level, so we could know we could stand at spot X OK, but the very next step we took would spawn 4 mobs, etc.

Then you add in the fact the place looked all alike wherever you went, to the point everyone was singing happy songs about Cubbies every time we got into a different one.... Plus the moronic aoe stun/blind + gate you mentioned, and yeah, you have a complete fuckup of a zone.

As for WOW, MC was insanely simplistic compared to what's followed. Hell, especially given the new 5-man upcoming in the next patch, there are single group dungeons with bosses with more elaborate scripting and planning needed than you found in almost all of MC. BWL added quite a bit more imagination, but they really hit a homerun with the C'Thun encounter, once they got it tuned right. Go read how it works and you'll see what I mean. Since then, raid encounters have only gotten more and more involved and elaborate, and are so completely unlike the tank&spank of MC or most EQ fights it's crazy. (Vyemm wasn't completely tank & spank, but goddamn Vulak sure as hell was. Only fun part of Vulak was figuring out how to pull him while most of the other dragons were up.)

-Arlos

[Jay]

Luclin was a huge steaming shitpile on release. Remember how buggy it was? Remember how they kept trying to do encounters based on spawn rings, yet the one guy who'd coded them to begin with had left the company, and no one else could figure out how to make them work right? Cost the lead producer his job things were so bad at release.

Then there was the debacle of stonewalling over the actual state of VT for 6 months, followed by giving 1 dev 1 week to do the entire zone, solo. POP had some good stuff to it, though the complete nitpickyness of the original zone flagging was crazy. Some of the raid encounters (see: Rathe Council) were really bad too, though nothing came close to VT-at-release.

I went from December of '99, got to L50 before Kunark, and then played steadily 'til just before Discord. Then I moved, lost internet access for 6-7 weeks, and came back to the early Discord events, which were mind-blowingly awful. By then I'd lost the habit of playing every night, was utterly frustrated with how badly SOE had fucked the Monk class, and just wasn't having any fun in the game at all any more. I think I made it through 2 or 3 nights of fingernails-on-blackboard levels of annoyance with the new events, then blew up on some new recruit jackass in the LOS monk channel out of frustration and anger, ported back to POK, logged, and cancelled the same night. Then a couple days later my invite to the WOW friends & family alpha came through, and EQ became a distant memory.

-Arlos

I thought the Rallos Zek encounter was awesome.

[Arlos]

Yeah, that was POP, and was one of the good things about it.

-Arlos

[brinstar]

the frustrating part about luclin was that it was kinda close to being great, but missed hugely on a couple of things that made it completely gay and lame

like the luclin character models, JFC those were total shit

[Tikker]

the models were bad, yes

the AA implementation was bad (but the idea behind it was good) blizzards talents was a better example in a lot of ways (except that once you reached max lvl, there was no reason to continue to play that char. PoP's AA's were almost perfect. lots to get, but you felt like you made progress all the time

[Gypsiyee]

I thought the Rallos Zek encounter was awesome.

Me too, that was my special time!

[Harrison]

I thought it was boring as a cleric/enchanter.

It was the first fight that wasn't totally homogay since Luclin though.

[Tikker]

some of the encounters in ssra were not bad (once they were working)

PoP encounters on the whole were pretty good
I think I liked the Zeks the best