EverQuest: Lost Dungeons of Norrath

Rating:
Summary: Power Leveling
Review: A very well spent $25. No need to camp for good drops or loot anymore. The "instancing" of dungeons in the game for your party only ensures that you and your party are the only ones in the dungeon. It automatically adjusts the difficulty to the level of your party (so have highest level enter first for best loot and experience). The dungeons are supposedly for between 4-6 persons, but don't try it with only 4 unless your party members are "super-twinked" and experienced with good communication. Add the weight-reducing bag you get for doing the easy quest, and it makes sense to buy this retail version..with the "digital download" you don't get a bag. Don't forget to upgrade it to the 10 slot Giant bag by doing a bit more quest work. - Susy Whorton

Rating:
Summary: Power Leveling
Review: A very well spent $25. No need to camp for good drops or loot anymore. The "instancing" of dungeons in the game for your party only ensures that you and your party are the only ones in the dungeon. It automatically adjusts the difficulty to the level of your party (so have highest level enter first for best loot and experience). The dungeons are supposedly for between 4-6 persons, but don't try it with only 4 unless your party members are "super-twinked" and experienced with good communication. Add the weight-reducing bag you get for doing the easy quest, and it makes sense to buy this retail version..with the "digital download" you don't get a bag. Don't forget to upgrade it to the 10 slot Giant bag by doing a bit more quest work. - Susy Whorton

Rating:
Summary: LDON rocks if you don't mind the wait
Review: been playing everquest for about 2 years now and this is a great expansion if you have friends you play with. You must find a minimum group of 4 just to get the adventure, as long as you haven't spent the majority of your time soloing this should not be too difficult. the experience is the lost dungeons are incredible and the monetary rewards aren't bad either. The down side I have found is getting viable groups together and the time it takes to go from logging in to finishing an adventure does take time...each adventure lasts 90 minutes and the time to put together groups can vary from 10 minutes to hours. Well all in all if you have the time and can find people you can depend on this is one of the best expansions for eq and a must have for any serious eq "addict".

Rating:
Summary: LDoN is great
Review: First of, if you are just starting EQ, this expansion has nothing to offer you until you get at least on of your characters up to level 20. This could take you between 1 week and a few weeks depending on how much you play and how much you focus on leveling up.

With that being said, this is a great expansion. Find or create a group of up to 6 people and ask for an adventure. You will get a dungeon created just for your group. You'll have 90 minutes to complete the adventure.

This is great because you know what your time commitment is. If you're a casual player you know you aren't expected to be there in the group for the next 6-8 hours to help everyone. And the time goes fast since the action really doesn't stop while you are in the dungeon, at least it doesn't stop if you want to finish in time.

The dungeons are well designed, and you would be surprised what the designers have been able to do with a graphics engine as old as EQ's. It's all very immersive!

I would strongly recommend this expansion to anyone. It puts a different kind of fun into the game.

Rating:
Summary: excellant
Review: I have been playing everquest since the trilogy came out. Some guys at work were obsessively talking about it. Finally decided to try it and have been playing ever since. It was getting a little old till the LDoN was released. Now there are once again new items, and the new dungeon system rocks. Only your group enters the dungeon once you recieve an adventure. No more camps, and once you kill a mob it stays dead for the rest of your time in the dungeon. When you succeed an adventure, you get favor points with which you can spend on items at the camps. Also, you can buy or receive in the dungeons augments. These add stats and other powers to weapons.

I gave this expansion 5 stars for the improvement and ingenuity it has brought to the Everquest world.

Rating:
Summary: Best of the Expansions
Review: I've been playing EverQuest(EQ) since the Ruins of Kunark release. I have all of the expansions available for EQ. Out of all the expansions this one takes the cake. Most players can only get to a handful of the zones offered in the other expansions without the aid of other players which makes them (other expansions) frustrating. In this expansion All the adventure zones are in the original released zones on EQ. People MUST group to do an adventure. The timer on each adventure adds to the excitement. Win or Lose Players are bound to have fun!
*please note that you must reach lvl 20 to enter an adventure. Oasis is a good place to work on your high teen lvls-High lvls are around to take down the giants and buff you up if you ask NICELY! (entrance to an adventure is in this zone)

Rating:
Summary: Still waiting for a group
Review: LDoN is a nice if not frustrating expansion for EQ. Whether or not it's for you depends on your game style and patience level. However, you must be level 20 or higher and you will need to be somewhat experienced with EQ to do well. A quick summary of Pros and Cons:

Pros:
The graphics and sound are terrific.
There are several dozen dungeons to group in.
Each dungeons is an "instance"; that is, your group is the only group in that dungeon.
No respawns. Once you kill something it's gone, so if you need to get out in a hurry, your way back to the zone will be empty.
It's impossible to lose your corpse. Corpses "pop" outside the dungeon entrance after adventure is over (if you don't get a rez of course)
Experience is currently good, but will likely get lowered (nerfed)

Cons:
Figuring out how to "get started" with LDoN is somewhat complicated. Fortunately, enough people know how to so all you have to do is ask
To start an adventure you MUST have at least 4 players and the number of levels between the highest and lowest must be 7 levels (some argue it's 8). More often than not, more than 4 players is required and it can take a very long time to get a group together. This is the biggest downfall of the game and why I became tired of the expansion so quickly.
Currently, most groups look for the same class of players, so some classes tend to take much longer to find groups (if at all). For example, warriors and enchanters generally have no trouble, while druids are usually picked just to fill the 6th spot.
New items are purchasable only with Adventure Points, which are gained through successful adventure completions. Even the higher-priced items don't seem that great for most classes.
You tend to find alot more bad attitudes in LDoN as adventures tend to go very well or very badly. When they go badly, I've encountered many people who tend to get personal and insulting.
Although there are different "themes" for the dungeons, the overall quest is the same: kill, loot, kill, loot,...
The quests have a maximum time of 90 mins plus an additional 30 to complete a failed mission. In addition to the time finding a group, running to dungeon entrance, and splitting loot, the amount of time required can be several hours for one adventure.

Rating:
Summary: Corporate policies
Review: Problem with EQ is that Sony has decided to consider paying customers as a secondary concern. Here are some of the problems you will face in purchasing this product.

Firstly, if you don't have every expansion, then Sony will attempt to get you to buy that expansion with a pop up window. Never mind that you are already paying them to play their game. Friend of mine got all but the latest expansion and got harassed immediately the day he signed up. Current expansion (Omens of War) doesn't come out until August. They started harassing us 2 or 3 weeks ago about it. This will continue on a daily basis and there is no way to play the game without dealing with it. You can't ignore it or escape out of it. There is no way to turn the solicitation off. Not Sonys policy. Glad my playstation doesn't do the same thing.

Secondly, bugs can take weeks or never to be fixed. Sony has been prioritizing releasing expansions and making changes to the game instead of fixing the bugs that have been present for some time. For example, boats were a long standing problem (years) that never worked properly. Boats are a method of travel through zones and sometimes the only way to get into a zone. With Gates of Discord what do they add? MORE BOATS. Yup, these didn't work either. Go fig.

Customer service. Well if your having issues in game, it will take anywhere from hours to weeks to get assistance. The only way to receive help is to stay logged into the game until you get a response (and hopefully you will be looking at your screen at that time). If you log out, your request will be deleted. They tend to have many loopholes as far as player assistance is concerned. Like not having 'exact' verbage for example. Also, if you need outside technical help, the employees working for Sony will either tell you to petition in game (see the beginning of this paragraph for how effective that is) or tell you to check the online help file. In game help is a strictly volunteer basis (ie they are not paid employees) so they have no obligation to log in frequently.

Now if all those problems don't detour you, here are the benefits. Other people I have met online can be a joy to work with. EQ is a game designed for grouping and it is strongly encouraged. Many zones to explore with various mobs to fight. Quests are fun for items or faction (exp is always negliable). There is tradeskilling, which can be tiresome but also a good way to bring in income. It is a hack and slash game though. Don't you think otherwise. Thats the only way to get any exp to level.

Regarding this expansion, this is by far one of the best expansions they have come out with. If I had to recommend expansions it would be Planes of Power, Shadows of Luclin and this one. Everyone is doing adventures the problem is finding people to do adventures with that are within 7 levels of your characters level. Great expansion... too bad the customer service is sub par.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: Pros:
- Added adventure camps and dungeons. A user has the option to do one of four adventure types requiring groups of 4-6 people. They are collection, rescue, assassinate and slaughter. There are also two levels of difficulty, normal and hard. All must be completed in 90 minutes. Collection involves looting a set number of items to reach the objective. Rescue involves, yes, finding the NPC (Non Player Character) and rescuing them from the dungeon. The only problem with this is one must clear the path or the NPC stops and won't continue until the mobs are dead. There is no respawn in the dungeons, so just be sure to clear the path fairly well on the way there. Assassinate involves clearing 60% of the zone and the boss mob, one must assassinate, spawns. Then, find him, and kill him. In my opinion, slaughter is by far the easiest. The objective is to simply kill a preset number of mobs. Each successful adventure earns the user points that can be used to purchase gear, weapons, spells, etc. for their character. Even if one fails an adventure, there is still an opportunity to gain some points. Raid adventures allow for up to 36 players to participate at one time. In comparison to the 4-6 person adventures, the number of adventure points gained on success is much lower, but the loot is much, much better. Naturally, the higher the character level, the greater the number of points earned.
- Augments. These randomly drop in the dungeons on the adventures. They allow the user to augment gear/weapons. For example, a +6 dex augment, will allow a person to add 6 more pts to their dexterity. One must pre-plan and decide what piece to modify because there is a limit how many augments one can use on each of the equipped items. There are type 1-8 augments. The higher the level of the augment, the more effective it is on the selected stat.
- Dynamic zones. All of the dungeons have mobs that dynamically adjust to the average character level of the group taking part in the adventure. For example, a group of 6 people ranging in levels 59-65 will have level 62 mobs to fight. No more changing zones or hoping for open spots to exp on yard garbage. There's room for everyone on the server and the exp is incredible. The best part? There is no one training mobs on your group, no one shouting in zone and no unwanted behavior from outsiders to be subjected to. Your group is the only group in the dungeon at all times and no one else can enter to disrupt progress or get you killed.
- Dungeon selection. There are over 48 different dungeons in 5 different environments. Each time an adventure is selected, the group gets a random dungeon. While attempting to meet the objective, one is in a different zone everyday. Even once the zone becomes familiar from playing the adventures, the spawns always change and the locations of the mobs vary.
- Almost all character levels are welcome. Many complain about the limitations of EQ unless one is a high level character. Well, no more. The dungeon adventures are available for levels 20 and up.
- Game time. Each adventure provides up to 30 minutes for a player to arrive +90 minutes to complete it. Whether you are a casual gamer or a not, one can actually play for 2 hours and log off in a timely manner.

Cons:
- Dishing out more money for yet another expansion.

Overall:
- For any of you that are holding out for EQ 2 because you don't want to go through the pain of starting over with a new character, it's gonna be a while. It seems Sony was a bit premature with the release of all the demos and pictures we saw several months ago. The release of EQ 2 has been pushed off to mid-to-late 2004 (they already scrapped the spring release) and it's rumored they are "hoping" the new 3-D engine will be fully functional soon. At any rate, the latest expansion has enough to keep most folks happy for a LONG time, and is, in my opinion, the best expansion yet. Many agree, as I have never seen so many players come out of retirement to play LDoN!!

Amazon.com ratings scale: 5 stars = Outstanding
(EverQuest: Lost Dungeons of Norrath)

Rating:
Summary: Solid Everquest expansion
Review: Solid expansion to the MMORPG EQ - Basically you get a group of 3 or more and enter a Dungeon (5 themes, 8 random dungeons each) and a "quest" to do while in it. You get 90 minutes for a normal risk and i think 2 hours for a hard. You and your group go in, complete the mission, go back out and you get Adventure points which you can eventually use to buy NICE items from the merchants.

I suggest buying this only if youre over level 20