I had spawned that on the Dev server to check it after creating it. I then summon Elrontaur to check it out. lol It won't be up on takp. Not until Ring of Vulak is in.
i think it's cool destiny killed CT & Inny 2.0 in Kunark era, wouldn't it be cool to kill Vulak Ring in velious era too?
I think there is. It came with the wave of Luclin raid paradigm shifts. The death add mechanic now punishes sloppy play, or simply overwhelming things by zerging. Having tons of dead weight in your raid was detrimental for the first time in EQ. The scripted nature of the adds meant you actually had to handle off-tanking mobs. Prior to this, never during an actual raid target would you be Offtanking mobs as a means to CC. You would split out single pulls and clear in that way. You never really had to deal with adds during any named boss unless you messed up. Double and Triple flurry drakes meant you needed to run multiple CH rotations simultaneously. Not really used again until XtC and Magmaton due to their frequency of rampaging. Endurance encounter tested your ability to use discs and long recharges at proper points and manage mana to some extent inbetween the mana refreshes. Different varieties of addlings from baby drakes to flurry drakes made you change up your playstyle. Shei Vinitras and Vulak Ring were some very awesome raid encounters for their day due to all the different things they threw at you. It wasn't as simple as Cursed or VT mobs you just cornered and healed.
PoP > Luclin >>>>> Velious by far! GoD, OoW, DoN, DoDH, PoR, TSS and TBS all rank ahead of Velious IMO. The faction scheme was poorly thought out, porting in to 1 of 4 portals next to a static KoS raid mob. Completely unfixable faction (PoG). A unique zone locked behind the hardest raid zone content, making sure very few ever get to experience it in era. Raid content totally marginalized Enchanter's/CC in general by making all ToV and Kael mobs immune to mez. Raid content barely challenges beyond "can you slow and run a CH chain", slightly better than Kunarks due to actually forcing tank swaps due to longer fights. NToV kills your dragon faction after you worked hard to raise it for HoT/Doze Quests for no reason. I will give the Coldain Ring and Shawl their dues... But Velious of the 4 expansions on Al'Kabor was my least favorite.
/boggle at how Luclin is behind Velious! From a raiding point of view Luclin had much more in depth content. From a groupers point of view you now actually have a reason to continue playing your main once max XP. From a tradeskillers point of view Luclin finally made TSes matter with Shawl 8 release and Earring of Solstice and cultural armor. Before that it was a waste of time and money. Honestly... I liked the VT Key quest. I know I'm probably a minority.
I loved Luclin. Ssra is one of my all-time favorite zones for group and raid content. VT is high up there for me too. Part of me actually disliked once we had CoH bots all over VT, but after we'd farmed it so long I wasn't mad anymore, heh. PoP is probably slightly higher for me, just because there is so much more to do, and finally some new spells. BoT is also, IMHO one of the best zones ever created.
Because Velious has some of the best zones of all time, filled with the funnest monsters to fight of all time. Dragons and giants are a staple of the genre. It's not so much about class balance to me as it is the content. Luclin is when EQ stopped feeling like a high fantasy game, thank you aliens.
Even after the Destiny Night Crew on AK was PoP geared, we would continue to do Velious content on off raid nights. Just because it was so much fun! We did that content with a tiny commando force of toons, making it even more challenging. Ahhh good times...
I guess I can understand that. Kael is fun, and Velk's has its moments, once you figured out the ice skating. DN is pretty fun too, but there are a lot of places where you just don't want to be if you don't have SoW. #zonesaresobig