Luceus

Haha I remember that. I pointed out that it's too early to judge the expansion and people got in a huff about it.

I'm not pretending to be an expert on the expansion, i've only played it in beta, but I just couldn't see what was so great about it. As a well geared Brigand heading into TSO, this is what I saw...

Instances - Great, 20 or so of them, many with annoying stuns, knockbacks and other control effects that make playing a melee class miserable. Gear? Not worth it because I was already at 100% melee crit, double attack, etc. I saw that dumb 'crit mitigation' thing added to gear and knew I didn't want to run all those instances over and over just to make a parrallel swap with gear + crit mit.

Overland zones / Shared Dungeons - Overland zones were boring, and no shared dungeons.

AA's - For the brigand class at least, these were a joke. When the expansion was released, I re-spec'd to the TSO tree, was able to get all the useful KOS abilities, everything I wanted from the EOF tree, and still get all the useful abilities from the TSO tree up until I couldn't spec into the 'brigand' tree. This means I would have had to play and grind out 30 AA's until I started getting anything worth a damn again.

Raids - I have no experience with TSO raids, but I was waiting to hear how they were. If they were anything like ROK raids, I wasn't missing anything. Everything completely scripted, tons of control effects (stuns, knockbacks), and all the other stuff that made ROK mobs make we want to kill myself.

Sure enough, they were more like ROK and less like EOF raid mobs, so I was happy I never bothered. (for the record, EOF had the best raid mobs. Mobs that were pretty difficult, but weren't heavily scripted, and didn't have tons of annoying control effects)

__________________
Ocabs | Shortknight | Neely

Mezelline

I dunno, I still think that TSO is the best expansion. It has the highest quality single-group instances, raid progression, and although grinding out AAs sucks, it gives the expansion a good boost in longevity. Sure it isn't perfect; the crit mit mechanic could have been handled better, and the making of all loot no-trade was overzealous.

But look at the other expansions. RoK? Solo quest borefest plus raid content that can be blown through in just a couple weeks. EoF? Pretty much no challenging group content other than bugged-to-hell castle mistmoore. Introduction of EoF AAs also unbalanced many classes. KoS? Pretty good expansion overall, probably 2nd up, however itemization was terrible and the content was all boring compared to RoK and TSO instances. And DoF was a clusterfuck, as everyone has pointed out here.

__________________
Mezelardo - 80 Paladin 80 Shadowknight
Mezelast - Najena's first 80 Warlock
Mezelanka - 80 Troubador
Mezelina - 80 Berserker

Corto

Don't diss KoS, d00d!

How was itemization terrible in KoS compared to RoK or TSO?
Best items actually dropped off hardest mobs, in most cases.
GDOH and DON not, but most of the rest did.

Not to mention KoS Claymore, SoS, PoA, raids and Fallen Dynasty wipe the floor with RoK and TSO instances combined.

I mean... KoS had that certain something. Instances, contested dungeons, real contested Epics (not many, but enough, and more than since the introduction of Avatars), solo stuff, and you know what... The itemization wasn't all that bad.
Stats were fine on everything, no class was overpowered (except maybe brigs), summoners were useful, classes were in line with DPS and utility, it was all good man!

EoF was pretty good as well, with better raid zones and raid mobs IMO, and still good class balance.

Then came RoK; mythicals (and I love mine, but it destroyed the game on some lvl), DPS grew exponentially, Taunts grew linearly, some classes became needed too much in raids, some became useless.
Tell me a reason why you'd have an average necro or summoner over an average enchanter in the raid.
All these instances make the game too repetative, the gear in those instances ain't worth the pain (especially Ykesha's Outer Stronghold etc), I only ever really do Palace of Ferhzul.
Not to mention Claymore was both harder and more fun than the "mythical".
Raid mobs are either too scripted or too easy. Not to mention succeptible to lags and LD since EQ Stability is non-existent.

If you think KoS and EoF were boring, and RoK and TSO are fun you need your head examined IMO.

Luceus

I really like grinding AA's if i'm getting a good return on them. EQ AA's are weird though. In most RPG's, you grind towards the game and continue to improve the more you put into it. You would think they would put the same element to their AA's, but they don't. There are so many awful AA choices for each class, most classes seemed to peak, and then drop off.

What I mean is, in EOF, you found yourself peaked at around 85-90 AA's, and then randomly putting points in other spots to fill the rest. When ROK came out, it allowed us to go down another tree or two, so we spent up those points, filled up what we wanted, and around 120 AA's, many classes had what they really wanted.

Then TSO came out, and knowing players can probably peak around 150-160 AA's, they had two options:

1. Fix the AA's so that people can spend 200 AA's and enjoy spending the entire time. Give us tons of options so we actually have difficult choices to make with how we spec'd.

or

2. Put in AA restrictions so that you had to have x amount of AA's before you had access to a certain tree.

We all know what they chose.

__________________
Ocabs | Shortknight | Neely

Ealthina

Best:


EoF



Worst:

RoK
TSO




quit the game after those two turds and havn't looked back.

__________________