I had unsubbed because my duoing partner quit. I have a few days left, so it gives me a chance to try the new zones before my sub expires.
I had a decent enough time playing it last night. I will probably log in again tonight. Possibly again on the weekend, but I’m pretty busy and it’s not good enough that I’m going to be making time to play it.
The fetch quest to get into the castle was fine. It’s not far off the kind of thing you see in later expansions. The writing was very poor, but EverQuest was never known for good writing. I ran around the lake zone a bit, but within 15 minutes or so I had seen everything. There was nothing particularly interesting about it.
Once I got into the castle, it was good enough to kill a little time. The keys and quests aren’t hard to figure out. I didn’t care too much about the bugs. I expect stuff like that will be ironed out quickly.
The library encounter was neat. The concentration of rares was good. The loot wasn’t overtuned, but I also found myself auto selling it without much thought. Overall, I wasn’t bored with the content, but I wasn’t all that engaged either.
One of the biggest issues I had was that the level design was very shallow. It felt like a C-tier Skyrim mod. Hallway, boxy room, hallway, boxy room, etc. A couple pieces of furniture thrown in.
The problem is that all this makes the extended wait for Kunark seem not worth it. If I had access to other expansions, Nektropos would literally be at the bottom of the list of zones I would be spending time in.
I don’t need new content if it’s just going to be mediocre and forgettable. I was max level when Kunark first dropped, and every time it’s dropped in a TLP. Veksar would be new to me. Droga would be new to me. VP, Crystal Caverns, Acrylia, a lot of PoP, these would all be new to me. Or at least, being able to slow crawl it rather than rushing through with a guild would be new.
I get that they have a small development team, but if they don’t have the resources to make custom content, then they shouldn’t be trying to force it. It’s okay to pivot to releasing expansions as they are and treating custom content as a side project. A product roadmap is not a bible, it‘s supposed to adapt over time.
If I could be leveling in Nurga for the first time, working on those epics that used to gated to me, or dungeon crawling Kaesora, and this add-on dropped, I’d be on here praising the dev team. As a side passion project it’s commendable. But as an indication of what they’re withholding existing content for, it’s disappointing.