SoL was probably the expansion that did it for me.  I was already thinking about leaving the game (not enough time to play it) but adding the Nexus and the Bazaar took a lot away from the game.  The cat people on the moon bothered me as well.

Later my friend tried to get me to return and play with PoP.  That was the last straw.  Everything that I enjoyed from the original game was gone.  People used to trade with each other, travel by boat or by wizard and druid ports...they even changed the graphics of the game.  Now I read about what happened to the game and it's slowly being dismantled into a dumbed down MMO.

Aye, Shadows of Luclin is what spelled the beginning of the end for me.  Even now, the mobs from that expansion, up to the GoD expansion are ridiculously overpowered and just not fun to fight at all.

Partly agree.  SoL was also lacking graphical splendor. 

I quit EQ after playing LDoN for months. I got burnt out running the same dungeons over and over. Then my PC stopped working and I didn't really have a great income at the time (I was 17 or 18 at the time). Add into the mix of a highly active social life and you have a few of the reasons I left EQ. I can't really blame one expansion on it.

Wow not logging on for awhile really hurts your rank.

Originally posted by Binny45

Aye, Shadows of Luclin is what spelled the beginning of the end for me.  Even now, the mobs from that expansion, up to the GoD expansion are ridiculously overpowered and just not fun to fight at all.

hehe. :) thats when SMOKE was SMOKE......

Expansions didn't ruin the game for me it was actually High Levels that ruined it for me. When I got up to 50 the game really slows down and its just not as fun anymore like it was. Raids can be fun but they can also be boring to a point to where u just dont want to play. So i dwithered away due to the higher levels.

You know, I don't think any expansion ruined it for me. Maybe the Prophacy of Ro, with all of the old zone revamps! Bah I liked the old zones, North Ro, Freeport and the Eastern and Western Commonlands the way they were! But I did quit after Depths of Dark Hollows. I think I got sick and tired of buying expansions every 5 months.

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Originally posted by declaredemer

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Originally posted by UbahNecro

 
EverQuest has been a raid-focused game balanced around raid progression since Kunark.

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You are right and wrong.
 
You are right that EQ began to become a raid-focused game beginning with Kunark, but you were still able to progress effectively, and in a meaningful way, without having to raid.  Even epic Quests required raid elements to them, which forced people to either (1) give-up on the Quest or (2) join a raid guild.
 
The game became so raid focused, however, probably with Velious in which it became undesireable to even play without joining some sort of guild that at least raided, successfully, some of the time.  The game became so raid-focused with PoP and GoD that many people, INCLUDING THE RAIDERS, quit.

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It had nothing to do with the game being raid-focused, and more to do with the fact that even a full guild of hardcore raiders with top gears not being able to beat a zone that isn't even end-game. Uqua is a mid-GoD progression Zone. It was not supposed to be that damn difficult...

Vxed/Tipt -> Kod'Taz -> Ikkinz -> Yxxta -> Uqua (Sorry, Cannot Pass) -> Qvic -> Inktu'ta -> Txevu -> Tacvi

See... Uqua... Right in the middle. There was issue with other expansions and bosses being unbeatable in the past also. People just got fed up with SOE releasing expansions with unbeatable bosses until they could fix the encounters in them.

GoD was a hard expansion. I honestly think SOE underestimated how fast guilds would progress through GoD content. It was really challenging, and fun. But they dropped the ball @ Uqua. They should have put the roadblock in Tacvi at the first boss. That would have given them enough time to get the expansion out. They could have kept the difficulty up a bit high to slow down guild progression a bit, but unbeatable mid-progression content is not acceptable.

What killed EQ for me wasn't a particular expansion. It was the fact that I'd had to take a break due to school and work commitments only to come back a few weeks later to find my guild 20+ levels above me and doing nothing but raiding every night.

The thought of spending 20+ levels on my own trying to catch up while they were still advancing at the same time was the last straw. I quit and never went back.

Oddly enough, for all the hate that the PoP expansion gets, I loved it. My Druid was no longer swamped with tells demanding that I stopped what I was doing to port someone across the world. I could just play the game in peace. Also, the books made it much, much easier to play non-porting classes, and for my boyfriend and I to try different race/class combos rather than starting in the same area. It was great, and really opened up the game world, IMO.

I am looking forward to the progression server. These more recent games are boring. EQ is the only game that mixes grouping/solo/raiding at an acceptable level for me. I won't quit my other game, but I'll definitely cut my time dedications to it dramatically to play on the progression - hopefully in a guild that is willing to do ALL the content and not skip stuff.

Originally posted by Lidane

What killed EQ for me wasn't a particular expansion. It was the fact that I'd had to take a break due to school and work commitments only to come back a few weeks later to find my guild 20+ levels above me and doing nothing but raiding every night.

The thought of spending 20+ levels on my own trying to catch up while they were still advancing at the same time was the last straw. I quit and never went back.

Oddly enough, for all the hate that the PoP expansion gets, I loved it. My Druid was no longer swamped with tells demanding that I stopped what I was doing to port someone across the world. I could just play the game in peace. Also, the books made it much, much easier to play non-porting classes, and for my boyfriend and I to try different race/class combos rather than starting in the same area. It was great, and really opened up the game world, IMO.

Yes it did make things more convenient but I don't play games just for convenience sake. PoK, books, Luclin Spires, Nexus, Bazaar, Cats on a Moon, etc etc .. all poor design descisions and poor lore decisions. These things killed the wonderful feel of EQ. For you it appears if they add something that makes the game more convenient no matter what it is then it is welcomed. For me it is how does it fit in the world and does it enhance the lore or make it absurd.

Say they decided to make travel easier by adding big slingshots you get into to shoot you across to world or expanded the world by making planet stinky with aliens that fling poo. Yes this stuff would add to the game but would it fit in, I don't think so. My question is if they wanted some instant travel that didn't hurt the world, and wasn't obtrusive in the wonderful fantasy landscape EQ had, why not add some wizards to each city to transport you instead of the horrid books? Why add PoK at all to kill the wonderful cities the game started with and faction system?

That is my thoughts. I think they could have added some instant travel but they should have been more careful on implementing it.

Velious was the killer for me...The fun was just gone...All my hard work with getting the nice gear in Kunark and the original EQ was nothing special anymore.

The game isn't really ruined for me. It's just different. It's not even the same animal as the original game, back when it was, "Here's your guild tunic and a dagger-- good luck, kid!" Even with all the changes, I still find it a far more interesting game than EQ2 or WoW. I liked the original experience, and I like the game now, but they aren't the same game by any stretch of the imagination.  If you only like the original game, I can totally see where an easy plat, no corpse run, quick-to-level EQ is a ruined EQ. 

As stated earlier: I was not a fan of the PoK books. I did not liek the world shrunk to such a degree. The wizard spires and teleporting spells were enough.

As far as expansions go...Shadows of Luclin. I hated the theme, the look, the class/race introduced, the layout. Despite this I played until Omens of War and then quit. I could not stand the constant release of expansions instead of fixing and/or improving current content. I came back when Secrets of Faydwer was released. I even tried starting over since I was returning with an EQ virgin. Man...what a waste of $50+.

I guess I was just trying to recapture those long lost memories from way back when...I still hum the theme song every once in awhile. I should have left it buried...back when Verant was calling the shots. Back when 3D environment MMORPGs were new and fresh.

Planes of Power ruined it , the most fun in EQ1 was running, teleportation just ruined it for me

Gates of Discord. 

That is the expansion where Sony made all raid bosses virtually immune to cold and fire damage.  My druid was an evocation druid (cold and fire nukes), so this change wrote my toon out of the game.  I liked the role of damage dealer/backup healer,   Switching to full on healer build was not the type of class I wanted to play and a druid healer is  a second rate healer.

WIth about 900 AA's, that is a lot of leveling that went down the drain.

LDON, took the vibrant world questing and grouping in open zones and hid them away in 6 person instances, made the world seem dead.  I couldnt find a soul out in KC or DL or anywhere I was running with alts and some of them (esp my cleric) were not solo friendly.

Although POP zones were not that much fun the nexus and POK pulled poeple together so at least once you were high enough to get to POK the game was more alive with people (KEI at bank!) etc

I think that kunark was my fav expansion. - was sooo disapointed how EQ2 did it, making all those zones crapy quest chains for solo play /meh

Shadow of Luclin was the expansion that ruined it for me... 

come'on, going to the moon was retarded.

GoD ruined it for me.

All of a sudden my main (shaman) wasn't wanted in EXP groups but my alt (enchanter) was since slow really was useless on the mobs anyway.