Sentinel’s Fate Digital Download Arrives Fashionably Late

So today marks the release of the Digital Download in North America and Canada. For those unfortunate souls who couldn’t get their hands on a retail copy, your expansion begins today.

Do you really miss anything by being a week late? Well, there are those server discoveries (which EQ2Players isn’t tracking properly). And there’s the chance of making a lot of plat being first to sell shinies, tradeskilled materials, rare items, etc.

We have received player reports but have not yet empirically confirmed ourselves that there may have been some monkeying around with how combat XP is converted to AA XP. This may be a bug, an oversight, or it may in fact be an intended change. But for now, if these player observations are true, then players joining the expansion today will not be following in their fellow player’s footsteps of briskly earning AAs and picking up levels 2 at a time. Here’s what we know…

XP to AA XP Conversion

The worst kept secret in leveling strategies in EQ2 is how Vitality affects AA XP. Many a player has slid their AA XP slider to 100% shortly before reaching level 80, typically Level 79.9. Why? because when you are converting 100% of your combat XP to AA XP, any bonuses to combat XP are also bonuses to AA XP.

A codified example is running a Void Shard mission. At level 79.9 with the slider at 100%, I earned 21% AA. When I dinged level 80, that same mission netted just 14% AA.

And this is not limited to Vitality. While Vitality is a 100% bonus (double XP), Refer-a-Friend is a 200% bonus (triple XP). Combat XP potions clock in at 55%. Not to mention up to 50% from having max level characters.

When all of those bonuses stack, you can have a situation where ~500% combat XP is being awarded. That works out to about 225% AA XP bonus.

So what has changed?

Players have reported that NONE of these bonuses now apply to AA.

It has also been reported that the amount of XP rewarded for turning in missions has been reduced by approximately 60%.

The Result

We don’t want to rake SOE over hot coals on this. The cliche “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” comes to mind. And we admit we have been giving the EQ2 team a bit of a hard time on just how fast leveling has been and the possible detrimental effects it could have on the game. But this change is not what we were expecting at all.

Several expansions have had leveling and AA earning exploits that were reported in beta, went live anyway, and then nerfed 6-10 days after the expansion’s launch. So far, the lesson players have learned is: Grind as many levels and AAs as you can in the first 24-72 hours of the expansion to try to beat the inevitable nerfs. All this does is reward players who played hard and fast and take advantage of every means at their disposal to level quickly, and punish everyone else.

If a series of restrictions had been in place at the launch of Sentinel’s Fate, and then gradually removed if it seemed that leveling and AA earn rate were slow, then SOE would have had a lot better control over this situation.

We were surprised when Refer-a-Friend worked at level 81-90.  And we were similarly surprised when Vitality potions could be used in quick succession.

We will try to confirm the veracity of these claims and get back to you with more information as we have it.

An unintended consequence of this change, if it proves to be true, is that low level characters who wish to earn AA via Chronomage, Refer-a-Friend, and other means may also be affected.