Our first poll!Follow

Admin Edit: This poll, unfortunately, seems to have been wiped. We will have a new "best expansion" poll in the future.

This may be a bit of a , but I wanted to use the new poll feature, so here it goes:



Woohoo for our first poll and thanks Illia!

Edited, Mon Sep 19 19:14:35 2005 by Railus

Gotta go with the Devil, maps and bank.



question is so l337 it blows...
me away



/edit OH, and where is the dead horse icon, huh, huh

Edited, Sun Jun 5 13:10:50 2005 by Kelti

Question: if someone votes without posting, does it still bump it to the top?

I voted for LDON.

I like the LOY, but the itemization in that expansion was terrible.

At least GoD is the big loser.

I voted Kunark - Big expansion. Lots to do and a few items are still usefull, still plenty of good XP zones pre-60 and all very interesting and fun to do.

Velious - very good but the lack of low level content was a mistake. A couple of key zones were made a little too out of the way like Western Wastes. The faction was great, actually forced you to make decisions about who you wanted to be.

Luclin - was wonderful but the high HP MoBs just slow everything down a little too much. Itemization also seems sparce at best except for the uber zones. Love the kitties!

PoP - Too much content behind artificial barriers. PoK destroyed a lot of the feel of the world. A lot was smoothed out later but still a dog when it came out.

LoY - another winner in my book. Plenty of solo content and good cash loot made up for a lot, lack of high and low level content cost points here though.

LDoN - interesting idea but there should have been more for the soloer. Rewards are too slow to come too.

GoD - Blehh, all the way around.

OoW - another near miss, lack of low level content and the increased system requirements hurts my enjoyment a little. A good honorable mention.

DoN - I like the ideas behind DoN but the new graphics make it hard for me to run it so I can't explore it as much as I like. possibly the second place winner once I get a better system.

I expect an expansion to offer something for everyone and good loot for a reasonable amount of work. Kunark still seems to be the best balance of that although SOE seems to be improving again.

I voted Kunark but LoY was a close second. I like all the fancy additions but for pure play-ability regardless of the size or level of your group, you can find a Kunark spot. Plus the epic 1.0s came with this which even though the rewards are not the standard any more, they did seem to epitomize the 'quest' part of Everquest.

LoY for the bank (I could use 8 MORE slots by the way...) and maps. Nice areas for xp and decent loot. I also like the level 44-ish spell quests for all the classes.

Surprised at all the folks saying LoY. Yeah the map and extended bank were nice features but I wouldn't vote for a "best" expansion simply because of added functionality.

Velious was my vote as well for basically the same reasons as above poster. Great lore and really nice feel/look to the whole expansion. Nice single group zones as well as raiding zones such as ToV.

You would if a huge proportion of your EQ time was spent getting lost, until the maps came out. I STILL can get lost, especially in dungeons, but it is much less often now. I will not even tell you how often it took me 10-15 minutes to find my way out of the FV tunnels to put me at my desired destination.

My favorite expansion was PoP for sure. I loved raiding Elemental Planes and Potime, as you did your flagging you had a long-term goal was alot of fun imo.

Ive a feeling if people were around for velious and kunark they would have a tendency to vote for these. Personally I voted kunark. It had tons of content, the first real high end raiding zones. Velious loses some marks for being soley high end and set a precedent imo of ignoring the lower level/casual spectrum of players a bit more at a time in the game when low level/casual was the majority of players.

Kunark was just the peak imo of the game. Most zones were well designed and many corrections were made from the old world. You could tell they put thought into every nook and cranny. Its hard to describe but it felt more like a real world rather than the zones now where it feels like they threw some variables into a machine and out pops a zone they said "lets name it wall of slaughter and give it some mobs that are basically all the same as the others in the expansion with some slight variation in level". In kunark there was a wide array of levels, you could usually get a group in a few minutes regardless of your level. Much unlike now where you are often forced to solo in the barren level ranges, which is hard as say, a warrior. Sure, mana regen was slow in kunark, downtime was bad, but at the time we were used to it, so this didnt bother me. Maybe because it was so long ago I only remember the good parts, but ever since kunark I keep finding myself comparing new expansions to it.

Velious? Luclin? Ive already been into the fact that velious aimed at too high of a level and ingored the lower players which I didnt care for, but luclin seemed to cover this worry. However luclin once again seemed shoddily done in my opinion. First of all the mobs had an extreme amount of hitpoints and it took all day to kill them. Boss mobs were no longer a test of surviving some difficult raid, it was more along the lines of "This mob has a bazillion hp, lets throw him into a corner, let the warrior get good aggro and everyone go afk for 30 minutes." Perhaps Im a bit biased against the whole expansion due to the new Luclin graphics for characters. How ridiculous is that. In original eq, kunark, velious they put all this work into trying to make the different sets of armor unique. Then along comes Luclin, and they made them all look the same again, what a giant leap in the wrong direction. Seems like it was more of a ploy to cut down on staff by giving a few people the axe in charge of armor design. It was little stuff like this that allowed you to immerse yourself in the game more. People actually dressed for fashion back then, maybe you are glad they dont anymore, but its the little things like this that gave the game depth.

Then compare the size of Kunark to LoY, or LDoN(the two biggest ripoff expansions imo) and youll find its immensely larger than both. LDON adventures were a lot of fun for me, but I couldnt get over the fact they were shaking us out of money for 5 dungeons with a few variations. Then theres LoY, all i got out of LoY was a few groups in Dulak and a bigger bank(i love this part of course), oh and the ability to dye my armor which was getting very ugly at this point. Do I really need to even go into GoD? All three seemed rushed out and served to question if I wished to keep playing a game where they make me buy 3 expansions in roughly one year. I took a very long break from the game at this point. Expansions were mostly attractive due to their new gimmick bonus. Like LoY needed the bank slots, maps and armor dye for the high levels to buy it.

I hate to mention it in fear of jinxing myself, but the most recent expansions have shaped up to be pretty nice from what ive experienced so far in comparison with the ones just before it. It seems more of a return to the Kunark type expansion with real fun and excitement for all groups be they casual or raiders rather than some pile of half thought junk aimed at one or the other with some vital new gadget the other group grudgingly was forced to buy it for. Im slightly bitter they nerfed LDON xp bonus to practically nothing in order to push you to buy the new expansions, but oh well, ive grown to expect it. Ask me 2 expansions down the road about oow and don for a more fair assessment. Always hard to really judge one until you compare it to the ones that follow.

Edited, Tue Jun 7 00:46:17 2005 by EtherMagix

velious is hardly a highend only expansion. it only had two raid-only zones. most raid content was dispersed throughout the zones. it certainly offered lower people some nice places to hunt, I remember farming the crud out of the RSide oracle in the weeks before it was nerfed. it offered better experience, loot, and more variety to anyone over 25.

Well also consider at the time "high end" meant high level. Now you can be max level and viewed as extremely casual of a player so the perception has changed. The enjoyable part of the expansion was imo high end. Apparently I am not alone in this belief because where was everyone before luclin came out at the lower levels? They were in kunark, they were in FM, they were in OT, they were in DL. The low end player wouldnt dare set foot into the majority of velious zones. Yeah, a group of level 60s could go many places, but for the majority of players, they werent 60 at the release of velious. People alted constantly because the lower levels were so enjoyable rather than viewed as an obstical as currently the are. These non level 60 people would consider much more than two of the velious zones as "raid" zones.

From your definition of high end being just pure raiders, then you are by all means correct. However at the time velious was released (imo) the game wasnt so much divided into casual/raider as it was low level/high level. Great expansion, just aimed too high for most at the time.

Personally going to go with Kunark, best introduction of a new race, great new zones with good raid zones as well, excellent exp spots at all levels and an ability to scare the hell out of you just running to different zones. I personally loved the fact that with Kunark you could kill giants at 20+, running from one zone to another was scary if you weren't uber, and you could always find groups and they would be willing to adventure rather than grind. First real introduction of dragons as well with some good old raiding, even now the Bp's from Trak are useful to most classes and obviously the introduction of Epics.

Velious never really played in it other than to do ring quest, shawl, AoW and Vulak'Aer** ring. Loved exping in ToFS but hated the 30min run to get anywhere, although that was the game all round.

SoL was good only because it introduced Beastlords which I love playing although wish they'd learnt they're lesson and neutered cats so the gits couldn't breed. Some really nice raid zones and personally thought it a great achievement when I first completed my VT key and got to raid, although actually raiding VT was a huge disappointment compared to Ssra and Seru.

PoP was excellent, loved working flags to get to time and slowly ticking them off untill eventually we got time access. Excellent exp spots for every level range and the zones meant that you wouldn't often have low level toons training the highbies and likewise. Very good itemisation for all classes as well and I really enjoyed lots of the raid events as well apart from AoDust in PoAir.

LoY great fun, good exp, great maps, damn lizard mounts. Good quest, glad they introduced charms for lower level players here as well.

LDoN was good fun as well, liked the challenge of hard's when wearing only basic equipment, aug slots was the best idea sony had for absolutely ages.

GoD some extremely fun raid events and really challenging ones here like Inuk'ta but aimed too much at the high level raiders with not enough content for mid level players.

OoW super fun raid events like the MPG trials, BMR in RCoD. Great high level group exp here with the introduction of MPG trials for groups as well helped everyone get very good gear, get lots of AA's and renew the EQ platform. Although personally the AA's they gave many classes with this expansion were just a way to fix bugs they were too damn lazy to fix themselves.

DoN judgement still out although personally do like the guild hall just for easy summons.