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Author Topic: What were your favorite zone(s) from live, and why?  (Read 1739 times)

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Reaver

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What were your favorite zone(s) from live, and why?
« on: January 24, 2019, 11:27:21 am »
Which zones do you miss playing in? Where were your fondest raiding memories? Grouping? What era was it from? What was it you liked and didn't like?

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Elizuth

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Re: What were your favorite zone(s) from live, and why?
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2019, 12:41:59 pm »
I loved, still love, and will always love Lower Guk. I mained a Pally as my first character on live, and Guk was the only zone I ever felt truly powerful in. I mastered its layout, and in an era where grouping was basically required I carved out my own little corner of the world to solo in. I learned the value of Pacify there, and when Instrument of Nife came out it was always a good time spanking frenzy for some spare cash here and there. I will always love this zone, but i will always hate those bats.

Dolmir

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Re: What were your favorite zone(s) from live, and why?
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2019, 07:04:09 pm »
Crystal Caverns is my favorite. There's a lot going on in the zone and the lore behind it is really nice. The Geonid camp was a bit boring but I enjoyed everything else. It is a bit odd that there was no quest to inform the Dwarves about the existence of the Coldain city on the outside.

Peete

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Re: What were your favorite zone(s) from live, and why?
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2019, 09:00:58 am »
TSS raids for me.

Dev-Mirage

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Re: What were your favorite zone(s) from live, and why?
« Reply #4 on: February 16, 2019, 02:22:14 pm »
(bump)

Although, it's probably not horribly insightful, I'd say that my favorite zone has always been Greater Faydark (specifically near Kelethin) because of Jay Barbeau's masterpiece. The song in this area is awesome. Me and a friend of mine once spent a few days transcribing the song for the guitar, because we loved it so much. I remember logging into a new character on dial up internet and a Windows 98 HP desktop (which took a long time to do, by the way (I'd hear the EQ theme song in the loading screen loop at least 3 times)). Often, the first thing that I'd hear would be the Kelethin theme song because I'd make a point of camping a character near the lifts, when I could. The song has a great "airy" yet upbeat "fantasy" element to it that is hard to put into words. What I can say was that it always put me in the right "mood" to do whatever it was and "immersed" me into the game much more than I would have been, otherwise. The Aviakian city in South Karana has my second favorite theme, and I'd exp there while leveling, just to hear that song, as well.

With that said, probably my favorite zone for exping/exploring was Veksar. I loved the way that the map was setup. It gets progressively harder (and has more named with increasingly useful loot) as one delves more deeply into its depths. Upon reaching the final section, there's a shortcut to get back to the entrance, which is great for melee classes. Before the origin AA was added to the game, and there were readily available clickable options to get to a safe spot, melees often had it rough in dungeons. Where casters always had an easy way out, all it took was an LD party member to make a fun dungeon crawl into a frightening experience for a melee. With that said, Veksar (with it's numerous shortcuts between the "sections" like the board that goes into the top floor of a building or the various ramps to backtrack) make that experience casual enough to take the stress out of the situation, while still having fair difficulty (I remember it being fairly balanced, when I went through it) as one traversed through it.

As for raiding, I never raided on classic live. I didn't start doing that until I began playing on EqEmulator servers such as Scorpius2k, SoD, PEQ, p2002,  ...etc. It's hard for me to pinpoint what raid zone is best without specifying a given server and explaining how the custom mechanics of the server and custom class/item abilities played a role in them. I can talk about the layout of zones that I like, and mechanics that I like for boss fights, but I'd have to give such excruciating detail for it to make sense, given the custom nature of some of the best raiding experiences that I've had, that it might merit another thread (which I might make). It'd be great to know what kinds of mechanics people like to see in fights and what sorts of keying/flagging systems have worked in the past or failed miserably. I'll just say that every great raid experience that I've had has been in a raid situation where everything from the trash clearing to the boss fights themselves took effort from every member of the raid. The worst experiences have been ones where most of the raid is sitting waiting for a puller throughout the entire clear to the boss(es), only to be met with a fight where one guy in a VoIP server calls out generic orders for the raid to re-position itself when the scripts for the fights demand it (rather than having people watch for the mechanics themselves). Essentially, I've always loved fights that have individual responsibility and "actually" require a great deal of teamwork. I love when every player matters, regardless of the strength of their character. Everyone should have a chance to shine or to lose the fight for everyone, and I can think of so many great encounters across the servers that I've played that exemplify that. Finally, since I want to give an actual answer, I'll say that I love Solusek Ro's Tower, for aesthetic reasons. It'd be hard to make that zone boring, when customizing it.

TL;DR: Greater Faydark is my favorite zone because of music; South Karana is my second favorite for the same reason;
the best group experience is Veksar, and best raid zone is arbitrary in my mind because the trash/boss fights matter more to me and my favorite raid situations have all be custom.

Honorable mentions:
Plane of Water (I love water zones; I'm sorry.)
Kedge (The most three-dimensionally complex zone in the game, in my opinion.)
While the game is in 3D, usually moving straight up or down isn't an option.
One usually moves forwards, backwards, left, or right to traverse through a zone.
Any deltas in height are typically due to a circular movement up a ramp or ladder of some sort and back to the original location with a floor (previously the ceiling) below you. Kedge opens up immense geographical complexity and makes for a maze-like experience for one who has never been there. It confused me and caused me to get lost for the first few trips, and I loved every second of it.

Barindu ->Vxed, the Crumbling Caverns I absolutely loved that this was a 6 man zone that had mini named that could be repeatedly spawned to farm, even after flagging for raiding here, in Tipt, and in Ferubi. The zone had great replay-ability, since it "felt" different depending on the class composition of one's group. Bringing an enchanter vs. a monk would give an entirely different pace to the group, and learning the pathing of the mobs in various routes through the zone was a must.
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Oogluck

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I have to agree with LGuk for me.  It was always full of life, people and trains on LIVE.  Never a dull moment and full of mobs with good drops.  But people tend to forget Blackburrow as well.  In Live, that zone was crazy.  Like Crushbone.  Trains, hilarity and high-level excitement.  I always wished there had been a zone inside of Crushbone or Blackburrow, like Lguk in UGuk.

Jozsef

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I have to agree with LGuk for me.  It was always full of life, people and trains on LIVE.  Never a dull moment and full of mobs with good drops.  But people tend to forget Blackburrow as well.  In Live, that zone was crazy.  Like Crushbone.  Trains, hilarity and high-level excitement.  I always wished there had been a zone inside of Crushbone or Blackburrow, like Lguk in UGuk.

I think this could be an amazing dev idea. Zone at bottom of Blackburrow. IMO we are kind of lacking a zone for 51s to grind for exp and gear in that contains blue and yellow con mobs. Somewhere new to explore that can be duo'd. I know Plitpaw exists but I haven't been there on here yet but from what I've seem outside of it it looks like you're running Infected Paw. Which if I remember correctly is very very tough.

Nedush

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Temple of veeshan is what i have my best memories with. Starting with velious armor, every single mob had the thrill of potentially dropping quest armor. Everyone could hope for something good to happen at any mob. Then later progressing into NToV with the great zone layout and so many named dragons.

Hateplane was also great. Very hard but each time it got better and good things for many classes.

Old sebilis, such a large zone with quite different areas and so many interesting camps. Also the random loot factor on some frogs, always giving a chance for something good.

Some outdoor zones like frontier mountains and lake of ill omen were nice too. Also the revamped nurga, full of named mobs with rare and common drops.

Tavai

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i Have to say my top favorite zones are veksar the bloodfields wall of slaughter and nobles causeway

 

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