Feldon Here are your Hotfix notes for today, February 19th, after the jump…
GENERAL
- All players have been given a free AA respec.
- Guards will now help you find an NPC as long as they don’t want to kill you.
- Adornments should now correctly apply to lower level cloth and chain armor.
- Due to the recent changes to Oberon, it will no longer gain benefits from the Bane Warding effect.
- Scaleable The Shadow Odyssey zones that scale to 90 should now drop loot at all levels in between 80 and 90! The zones will drop from the level 80 tables until level 87 at which time they will start dropping from the level 90 tables! You may set the zone level to 80 first, if you desire the level 80 gear.
- Concussive Shock, Massive Concussive Shock and Greater Concussive Shock have had their potency reduced in PVP combat.
QUESTS
- Players should once again be able to complete the quest, “Ro’s Flame”.
- Indis Surion and Navarius Orvalis now count the new Sentinel’s Fate heritage quests when considering whether to give you a title. They no longer require multiple hails if you’ve earned multiple titles, and they now provide a message detailing how many heritage items you have recovered in case this number differs from your quest count.
TRADESKILLS
- There is no longer any upper level limit on the tradeskill faction writ quests from writ givers in Bathezid, Riliss, and Danak.
One more thing…
Not included in these notes, but.. The encounter of ~40 mobs in The Hole which would endlessly respawn if killed in a certain way has been fixed.
This notorious encounter, along with Refer-a-Friend (+200% XP bonus), XP Potions (+55%), Vitality Potions (station cash), and Vitality clicky (veteran reward) have allowed hundreds of players to reach level 90 within hours of the launch of Sentinel’s Fate. Just 3 days after the release of the expansion, entire guilds are now level 90.
While I have been having a lot of fun in The Hole (my favorite EQ2 gameplay has been raiding or open dungeon crawls in Sanctum of Scaleborn, Fallen Gate, etc.), I think it’s rather absurd just how fast it is to level.
I don’t want to see a return to the solo quest grind of Kunark and TSO, but there some steps that can be taken to at least temporarily cancel out all the bonuses people are using to level at breakneck speed. It did not go unnoticed that Vitality was not reset to 100% at the launch of Sentinel’s Fate, but with all these other bonuses, potions, and clickies usable at level 80+, it has the potential to hurt the success of this expansion.
Why is it a problem if someone else levels up faster than you. If the pace is to fast for yourself push the EXP to AA or turn off EXP gain entirely.
How this will hurt the “success of this expansion” is beyond me. If people want to go out and buy vit and EXP pots and RAF themselves to level faster, why stop them. They want to get to end game, you don’t have to follow them as fast if you don’t want to. The option is yours.
Bob, it’s called economics. More players in end-game areas means less players elsewhere.
What’s the required level to play group content in EQ2 right now? Answer: Level 80.
By having it so fast to level, before the month is even over, the required level to play group content in EQ2 will be level 90. Who is going to be willing to group up from 80-89? And once again, players who are leveling alts or even leveling their first toons will be forced to solo from 1-89, ill-preparing them for grouping at level 90.
That is why this is bad for the game.
A healthy game has a spread of players across at least 10 levels, preferably 20 levels.
Not everyone is 90. Just those that wanted worked for it. You guys see a problem that doesn’t exist for whatever reason. My guess is you want to be 90? Even if they are 90 life isn’t ended. They still will be working on AAs.
The hardcore will zip past us slow pokes, get used to it. The fault isn’t with the game or the players. They play how they want, why is it a problem with your play style.
If you think there are more people that are 90 than aren’t well you would be mistaken.
Bob,
I’m not butthurt about not being 90. I could have done the same things everyone else did to reach level 90.
I actually want to play the level 82-89 content at that level. I will have 11 months to play that content at level 90. What’s the rush?
Who cares if a bunch of people got 90 the first day, I don’t. It doesn’t impact my gameplay experience in any meaningful way. If thats who they have fun more power to them.
What’s the rush? One word: Raiding. Raiding guilds, especially the high-end, hardcore guilds that want to enjoy the raid content will want everyone in the guild(and for some it’s a requirment, in a week or less) to be level 90 if you want to continue raiding. It’s what they want, it’s how they want to play. There will still be PLENTY of people that want to sit back and enjoy the ride to 90. But for others, level 90 is just the beginning, and the interim levels are just a necessary evil to get to that new “beginning.”
That’s the benefit of a game like this. There truly IS something for everyone. And, if there are those raiders that really DO want to “play the level 82 to 89 content at that level” (and I’m sure many of them do) . . . That’s why we all have alts.
And besides, there are a lot of things that open up to you once you hit 90, even for the casual player. Sony seems to be getting smarter and realizing that they need to give us things to do after we hit 90, because that’s where most of us will be for quite a while. It seems to me: so far, so good. Let’s just hope they can continue to pique all our interests: raiders, casual groupers (no, not the fish), and soloers alike. . . . There’s always Battlegrounds (-;
I cannot believe people are defending 4 hours as an appropriate or acceptable rate to level from 80 to 90.
If you really do not see how this will hurt the game, then I guess there is nothing I can say to convince you.
I was off the week expansion came out (I’m a teacher, I don’t get to choose my vacations, this was just a lucky coincidence) and played about 8 to 12 hours each of three days . . . so In about 24 to 36 hours of played time, doing all of the solo quests in both overland zones, several of the instance zones (including the quests for each of these zones) as well as gaining one level for collection quests and various other quests I saved up until after the expansion, I hit level 90. Now, granted, had I been working (I usually only play 3 hours a day when working) it would have taken me 8 to 12 days to level (given the same 24 to 36 hours) . . . Is THAT not enough time? How long do YOU want it to take to reach level 90?
Now, I’m not defending 4 hours . . . but no matter how many hours it SHOULD take, some people are going to be on the high end of the curve. Especially when some people have the time to compact all those hours all at once like I did instead of spreading it out over several days or more.
Now that I AM 90, to quote you, “Who’s going to be willing to group from 80-89?” Answer: me. Being 90 will in NO way STOP me from grouping with people under 90. The ONLY thing that would stop me would be if I wanted to do a zone with a level requirement that someone in the group doesn’t meet. And, more than likely, we’d just go do a zone the lowest level person CAN do. Because, I know that not everyone is going to have the time, the patience/(obsessiveness), nor foreknowledge (I was in Beta early, having gone to Fan Faire) I had to GET to 90. I know that, if I want to do a pick up group at this stage of the game, OF COURSE it’s going to be with a group of mixed-level people. I’m perfectly fine with that.
Also, at least on my server, a lot of the people that got to 90 in 4 hours were from guilds that killed ALL of the raid content in TSO (I’ve yet to kill Anashti, Zarrakon, or even get past the 2nd named in Munzok’s) and a LOT of those same people are partly, mostly, or fully “avatar geared” toons, where I have not one piece of avatar loot. Now that I am level 90 . . . they’re still probably not going to want to group with me anyway. And I’m perfectly fine with that.
I just don’t see this as being as game breaking as you’re making it out to be. I still have 2 level 80 toons that have yet to max out their AAs, even with 2 full years of being level 80. And, unlike with my raiding toon, they are going to take their sweet time this expansion as well, reading every last bit of lore and quest info from every NPC, taking in all of the content at a leisurely pace (as I did with every other expansion) and just enjoy the content. I look forward to grouping with you with WHATEVER one of my toons you need, no matter what level, ’cause that’s how I roll.