PLANES OF POWER
(PoP)
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Planes of Power was the fourth (4th) expansion of Everquest, released October 29, 2002.
Planes of Power introduced the "planar zones," a series of "otherworldly" zones that were not planetarily connected to Norrath or Luclin. These zones served as "homes' to the various dieties that players had long followed... and could now meet... and kill!
With these zones, Sony fully established "progression" (to become known as "flagging" and also "keying") as part of the game.
It also fully cemented portals into the game, which were first introduced with the previous expansion. The last expansion established Nexus as the new player hub, taking it away from the Commonlands.... only to now render Nexus generally obsolete and establish the Plane of Knowledge as the new player hub.
This expansion also increased particle effects to more than just epic weapons and increased the character levels to 65 (from 60).
Another feature introduced, was the formal raid (72 player limit).
Once again, Sony had some good ideas, but fumbled the ball in the long run. Despite the set-up for progression, they later managed to mess up the whole thing by adding in by-pass quests, will-ins (85% rule... which I am actually okay with), back-flags (loot a key and get instantly flagged wothout having earned the flagging) and later, they even allowed access simply by merit of level.
This was a major mistake, in my opinion. All of this "entitlement" actually worked against raiding, made a load of game content pretty much forever irrelevant, took away the "challenge" and actually worked against retaining the player base (remove the challenge, remove the interest and/or short-cut the content... players loose interest, despite the complaints of the malcontents).
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TOPICAL LINKS
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This Page Last updated July 18, 2011