When did EQ2 start going downhill?

[scaramoosh]

I'm trying to find major patch notes to pin point exactly what era of EQ2 I'd love to play again.

For me it was when there were Soul Shards? You had to go back to your corpse and there was high XP debt, I remember some nights I would just go backwards and I loved that. When the mobs were all grouped together and hard, you could only solo a few mobs here and there and doing that would be boring and take you months, you were FORCED to group and it was a lot of fun. There used to be access quests to gain entry to new islands, the run speed in the game used to be a lot slower than it is now, to me that felt way better, the animations looked better too. Crafting used to take time and effort, where now it is a dumbed down WoW wannabe as far as I'm concerned....

When did all these changes happen? All I can think of was the last version I played a lot was Kingdom of Sky and since then I've barely touched the game, so the dumbing down of the game musta been building up over various patches.

[Jave]

I only played EQ2 for a short while at launch, then quit, and a couple years later got married and introduced my wife to VG and EQ2. She fell in love with VG right off the bat, and after they screwed us at level 50, we ported to EQ2. I believe we came in at Rise of Kunark and it was absolutely brilliant. The quest line was outstanding, the zones were a blast, just an excellent expansion all around. Kylong Plains, Fens of Nathsar, Jarsath Wastes, Kunzar Jungle.....just well thought out zones with challenging mobs and a quest line that kept you smoothly advancing from area to area. I would say that was the pinnacle of the game right there.

Now its unfair to say The Shadow Odyssey and Sentinel's Fate were not as good, they were actually great expansions, but it started a slow decline until we reach DOV, which wasn't a bad expansion, but it really put a "Grand Canyons" distance between raiders and non-raiders which was a disappointment.

[Jabantiz]

I believe we came in at Rise of Kunark and it was absolutely brilliant. The quest line was outstanding, the zones were a blast, just an excellent expansion all around.

This seems to be what the majority of the people who pass through here think and I tend to agree. I know at this time travel wasn't instant like it is now, you had to wait for boats to and from kunark, bells only went to there pre determined zone, I think wizards still had to find the wiz spire before they could port you there and you had to find the druid rings before you could be ported there. I miss that, game now seems shallow to me now as you can go anywhere in the world now no matter where you are by just grabbing a usable globe from /claim or the marketplace.

Good news is most of this is content stuff so it can be changed on emu servers.

[Jave]

I believe we came in at Rise of Kunark and it was absolutely brilliant. The quest line was outstanding, the zones were a blast, just an excellent expansion all around.

This seems to be what the majority of the people who pass through here think and I tend to agree. I know at this time travel wasn't instant like it is now, you had to wait for boats to and from kunark, bells only went to there pre determined zone, I think wizards still had to find the wiz spire before they could port you there and you had to find the druid rings before you could be ported there. I miss that, game now seems shallow to me now as you can go anywhere in the world now no matter where you are by just grabbing a usable globe from /claim or the marketplace.

Good news is most of this is content stuff so it can be changed on emu servers.

Funny I was reading your post and it sounded like the EXACT SAME problem we had with POP. Now, as a 14 hour a day Raider (no joke), I LOVED the raid line in POP (Everquest). But that was the point where the instant click travel really turned people off. Also I will admit, the casual players had NO SHOT at the raids in POP. If we could develop a lifeline between the two helping non-raiders and raiders stay in the same galaxy, it would be the perfect medium.

[scaramoosh]

The one weird thing I found was after DoF they didn't bother with voice overs and they took it all out years later :\ EQ2 back when it launched is still my favorite implementation of voice over work in an MMO, it didn't put you into a lame cutscene. I say cutscene, with Bioware games it is always two cameras switching between characters, nothing happens that couldn't while you were in control of your character.

[Jabantiz]

I miss the voice overs too. The good news is they are still in the client, the bad news is we need special "keys" in order to play them, we have some of them but many may very well be lost to us and as of yet we have not figured out how to get the keys from game files.