The good, the bad and the ugly on Everquest: The Planes of Power.
User Rating: 8.8 | EverQuest: The Planes of Power PC
The good: Value: Planes of Power introduced to Everquest the greatest raid experience on the market. Never before has there been such a vast number of raid level encounters all linking together demanding the most out of the uber guilds of Everquest. Planes of Power introduced the first real test of a guilds ability to seperate themselves from the rest of the players. Offering a heirarchy of zones to defeate and gods to kill Planes of Power provided hundreds of hours of game fun. The other expansions in EQ and the rest of the MMORPG community at the time didn't have a definitive "end" that the Planes of Power expansion offerred. Once gamers defeated the highest level of this expansion, The Plane of Time, they considered Everquest to have been beaten. SOE could have handled the implimentation of PoP better but they did an adequate job none-the-less. Gameplay: The gameplay in PoP changed in that the mobs and bosses demanded more in tactics and less in stats. Now it was a race to get the most hit points and mana as well as finding ways to defeate the gods you worship instead of farming resist gear to fight the AoE's in NToV and so on. Raids became as common as xp groups. Class roles became more defined. Guild oriented: The Planes of Power expansion was clearly aimed at pleasing and rewarding guilds. This seperated the power gaming guilds from the mom and pop guilds. For power gamers this expansion could not have been much better. The bad: Guild oriented: The Planes of Power expansion was clearly aimed at pleasing and rewarding guilds. Players unguilded had zero chance to experience the bulk of what this expansion offerred. This is a bad thing for gamers who were part-timers or had no affiliation with a guild. This also seperated the power gaming guilds from the mom and pop guilds. For individual gamer this expansion was not to hot. This is both a good and a bad aspect to PoP. The ugly: Unfinished zones: SOE released the PoP and it wasn't exactly finished. SOE didn't expect guilds to be able to fly through PoP at the speed some of them did and it caused some issues later on. Bugged boss encounters: Like every expansion SOE has released the encounters with many bosses were loaded with bugs and pathings issues. They were eventually fixed but getting your raid that spent the past 3 hours working towards a boss encounter wiped out because the boss fell under the ground and can't be hit is a bit frustraiting. Conslusion: The Planes of Power took MMORPG's to the next level by focusing on guilds over individual players. PoP seperated the power gaming guilds from the rest of the bunch and clearly defined who was the best of the best. To sport a tag like Triton, Afterlife, Fires of Heaven and so on meant you were among the elite of EQ. This didn't really occur in any MMORPG until this point. PoP is a must play for any MMORPG gamer.
