@Tych
I may be a bit wrong with some of this, but more or less it goes like this.
there was a progression server, and a group of some of the best players to ever play an mmo all went into one super guild
their first well known exploit came with beating gates of discord in era.
This expansion was a shit show, it was good, but it was also made with a level 70 cap in mind, but deadlines had them put it out with a level 65 cap, this made it among if not the hardest expansion to grace the game where at the time, no guild beat the expansion till after the next one, omens of war which had a 70 cap came out.
realm of insanity on their progression server beat the expansion in era
they then proceed to steamroll all the content from every expanton being first of among the first within hours, and their lead got so strong that it caused the collapse of many other guilds who raced for number 1
Now, this was a guild, that had people who were or are the best people who ever played the game among their ranks, having played with some of them, WELL deserved. they are able to do things that I can't even understand like its nothing, not sure how much the people I played with want locations on earth known so I can't go into the big things I have seen these people do that compounds how impressive it is.
So this guild more or less steamrolled everything when their server went current content, and stayed at the top
so this guild, compounded with how fast they plowed content, went into what was the easiest expansion everquest ever put out, seeds of destruction, it was more or less a gibme expansion, where any guild who wanted it could beat it, it was a long and involved expansion, but stupidly easy where maybe 10-20 guilds beat the expansion before the new one came out, this one had 93-120 guilds beat it, I forget the full number. so people wanted more engaging content, and the dev team put RoI as a target, one of the devs in irc if I remember correctly went on that they were making it to screw with RoI as a goal.
With the player base wanting some more challenging content, they went in and made underfoot.
to give some perspective, full group gear would get you around, 25-35000hp, give or take depending on class and augments.
the hardest hitting mobs from seeds were doing 3000dmg a max it and barely hitting it, raid mobs were I think 5000dmg for the trash and again not hitting it often.
the trash mobs in underfoot were hitting 5-6000 and hitting it constantly up to 4 times a round, and the name mobs were able to hit upwards 20000 and just kill you outright. the raids, I think this was either the first eq mob with 1 billion hp or the first with 100 billion hp, could be 100 million im a bit iffy due to it being a bit old, but RoI was a guild that stacked dps hard, because if you kill it fast, you don't need to rely on tanks going off skills and clerics having great rotations, but even a top tier tank in raid gear could get 1 hit this expansion from a non special attack.
and this was tier 1 encounters for the expansion, there were if I remember right 4 tiers, and some of the encounters, due to how they were gearing it, were impossible to beat when first encountered, not gear wise, but bugged mechanics.
the expansion was so hard and relied so much on dps, putting in trash mobs that had 2-5 times the hp as prior trash and hit harder then named, the devs had to put a mini game into the expansion for group players so they could get the equivalent of an end game raid weapon for the prior expansion, and also gave out some equipment to further help you along. it was one of the most fun expansions to play through once the content was properly balanced and fixed, but it was more or less a middle finger to RoI from the dev team. they have since made expansions that were hard/difficult that made people think GoD or Underfoot, but none of them really come close.
@HDMI1 If I remember right, and this wasn't on the kotaku story, players did get gm made loot as a reward, or at least some did, this was during a time where gms still put out gear like that that was stupidly op as one offs for events, one of them being the uzi bow (I forget its real name) that was stupidly fast and powerful, another bow that would proc a high end rain effect, I think there were a few items that would change weather/have the gm effect acid rain, and among my favorites they did, the ice comet clicky ring. I don't think anyone ever talked about what they got, just that they got it.