Feldon EverQuest 2 has announced a “Summer Kickoff” event! First up, all players will see 30% off Appearance items and Mounts on the Marketplace.
Now here’s where we split off into the Free-to-Play and All Access groups.
- All players will receive
DoubleBonus XP on Monday, May 26th - All Access subscribers enjoy
DoubleBonus XP the entire weekend (May 23-May 26).
From the EQ2 Forums:
![[IMG]](http://assets-cdn.soe.com/uploads/dcsclient/000/000/057/881.jpg)
To celebrate the start of summer, we’re having double experience and sale action!
All players will have double experience on Monday, May 26th, 2014 at 12:00 AM PDT to 11:59 PM PDT. All players will also have 30% off on appearance items and mounts, starting Friday, May 23rd, 2014 at 12:00 PM PDT to Monday, May 26th at 11:59 PM PDT.
All Access members will have the entire weekend of double experience and 30% off on appearance items and mounts, starting on Friday, May 23rd, 2014 at 12:00 PM PDT to Monday, May 26th at 11:59 PM PDT. Note: Yes, this stacks with your 10% off on all marketplace items for being an All Access member.
We hope that you all enjoy the double experience and sales. Have a fantastic weekend!
After the jump, some further comments on Double vs. Bonus…
When is Double Not Double?
So I’m sure I will catch some flack for this, but you’ll notice I’ve crossed out the Double XP, and put Bonus XP. Why?
Because over the last few years, the XP calculations have changed a number of times and with the more recent change, these XP weekends no longer significantly boost character XP or tradeskill XP. Here’s how the math now looks:
- You kill a mob – 1000XP
- Vitality bonus – 1000XP
- Veteran bonus – 1000XP (5 level 95 characters)
- XP Potion – 1100XP
- “Double XP Weekend” – 1000XP
Now, you may feel that a character running Vitality (which frankly doesn’t last long at low levels), Veteran characters (20% bonus per), and a 110% Potion is at such a huge advantage over others that they shouldn’t be allowed to double all that. But that’s not my point. My point is, it’s not Double XP. Not anymore.
But don’t worry, EQ2 team also felt that all that XP doubling and multiplying was overpowered and so they have systematically patched and modified these “loopholes” in the bonus calculations to prevent it. If you wish to read further enlightening discussions on this topic, you can find some here and especially here.
Hey at least it’s still Double Guild XP!
Ugh.. enough with this stupid “its not double xp” thing..
He is right though. If it isn’t double dont call it that
So not double, 25% XP bonus. (based on the example) and my guild is already maxed out.
So pretty ho hum really.
Can’t understand why the vitality bonus is only 1000 XP in your example… shouldn’t it be 2000 XP?
Other than that, I do agree that “Double Base XP” or “Bonus XP” would be better. The former is too specific to be argued with, and the latter too general. OK, it’s way naive to say anything can’t be argued with. Anyway, that’s 2 cents — 1 per paragraph 😉 — from my anal side.
The other side says, OK, I know what they mean, just like I know a 2TB hard drive has significantly less than 2 Terabytes of capacity.
I agree they should just call it bonus xp. People get disappointed when they see that it is really insignificant.
And while the 10% member bonus stacks with the 30% bonus you don’t get a 40% savings. Since the 10% is taken from the 30% reduction price not the whole value it ends up around 37% savings on the item.
That’s typical for just about every retail sale.
I propose they call it “Out of vitality and potions, non-veteran, double XP bonus.
I don’t understand all the complaining about “double” experience is. It is giving you a 100% increase on the base exp, which is double. If you want to argue that true double exp would be doubling the base plus all your bonuses, you can make that argument, but its an irrelevant argument about semantics.
You can already grind a toon from 1 to 95 with 350 aa’s in less than 5 hours, I have done it 3 times in the last month. How much quicker do you want it to be?
It’s certainly your opinion to have that XP goes fast enough, but expecting double XP to be double XP and not double base XP is not an “irrelevant argument about semantics”.
If you went to a car dealership because they have a $500 base rebate and a $1200 bonus rebate and then you brought an advertisement with you that said “Double Rebate!” with no further fine print, you wouldn’t have a problem if the dealer said your coupon only applies to the $500 rebate?
If I had been going to the same dealership for over nine years every time they had a “double rebate” day, and that special had only ever doubled the base rebate and not the extra’s that were not available to everyone all the time, I would not suddenly act surprised that it was not doubling all the rebates. It has consistently always been just the base, so I would not feel entitled to it doubling all of them.
Despite all the false analogies in the world, despite your waving your epeen in our faces “Double XP” used to mean one thing and now means something else.
That something else is much less than it used to be.
That’s the thing, despite all claims to the contrary, “double exp” weekends have NEVER doubled all the bonuses as well. Any claim otherwise is just plain false. Maybe the way bonuses were calculated has changed, to to try to say that it used to double the bonuses before and now it doesn’t is flat-out wrong.
All claims to the contrary??
Again Double XP used to mean one thing and now means something else, that something else is much less then it used to be. Fact not fiction.
Yeah.. it wasn’t double experience before and it is double experience now
Now that is an argument about semantics.
But in the end it used to give more and now it gives much less this leads to disappointment and disaffection. Particularly since the old calculation was in place for quite some time.
Oh and BTW whatever technique Badfae is using to get those amazing leveling speeds is I am sure it will be looked into and fixed by SOE anytime now.
This is totally and completely wrong. XP used to multiply almost exponentially as people piled on every bonus they could. The xp calculations have changed dramatically over the last few years. To say otherwise is beyond foolish as there has been extensive documentation.
Totally correct Feldon, they used to be multiplicative (if thats teh word) and have slowly but surely been changed 1 by 1 to become additative.
Being serious here…can you share some tips on leveling that quickly? Not exact secrets, but if it’s that easy…I’d really like to speed up the crawl on my alts. Especially with the AAs.
I suspect that you will get no response from Badfae, it was almost certainly rhetorical flourish rather than fact. Many such claims of reaching X level in ridiculously short time period Y have been made in the past. They generally are not explained and when explained turn out to be no where near as fast as claimed.
there was the player made dungeon exploit that allowed really quick leveling. But that was fixed awhile ago.
And perhaps starting with a level 85 toon?
The claim Badfae made was “You can already grind a toon from 1 to 95 with 350 aa’s in less than 5 hours, I have done it 3 times in the last month.”
Personally I find it unlikely you could make it from 85/280 to 95/450 in five hours, but the claim was much bigger than that.
typo I meant to say “from 85/280 to 95/350”
Jay, it’s doubtful that you’re missing some amazing non-exploit (i.e. legit) way to get from 1 to 95 with 350 AA in under 5 hours. Paying for a heroic toon would get you most of the way there but not all the way. I call bullshit on BlabFae until there’s some validated proof.
Make a new toon, play less than 5 hours and it can be confirmed via eq2u. If it is possible I’d expect to see thousands of shiny collections and very few discos outside a DM zone with all skills minimal.
If someone wants to make me a believer then post up or shut up. Note: I think you can even determine if they are heroic via eq2u.
I suspect Milli is on the money. There have been and likely still are leet exploits, but the people who know them aren’t usually dumb enough to draw “exploit smashing” attention to their honey pot. First rule of fight club is…
One of the super secret techniques I’d heard was to sneak into Bloodskull Valley: Maulik’s Stronghold and repeatedly kill the heroics in the middle of the walled-off area. They would respawn quickly and gave tons of XP. This was nerfed about a year ago. And no, I didn’t snitch. 😉
I guess I’m still confused over how this works. It sounds like Feldon is saying it used to be that Vitality, Vet XP and XP Potions were doubled, so the calculation would be:
Base xp 1000 (doubled is 2000).
Vitality is doubled, so instead of 100% of 2000 it adds 200% of 2000 = 6000
Veteran xp is doubled, so instead of 100% of 2000 it adds 200% of 2000 =6000
XP Potion is doubled, so instead of 110% of 2000 it adds 220% of 2000 = 6400
Total amount gained for a 1000xp mob: 2000+6000+6000+6400=20,400.
I always assumed bonuses were added after base was calculated, and since they were bonuses they were not doubled, so:
Base xp 1000 (doubled is 2000)
Vitality adds 100% and 100% of 2000 = 4000
Veteran xp adds 100% and 100% of 2000 = 4000
XP Potion adds 110% and 110% of 2000 = 4200
Total amount gained for a 1000xp mob: 2000+4000+4000+4200 = 14,200.
Or is Feldon saying the latter was how it used to work, and now it works like this:
Base STAYS 1000
Vitality adds 100%, so 100% of 1000 is 2000
Vet xp adds 100%, so 100% of 1000 is 2000
XP Potion adds 110%, so 110% of 1000 is 2100
Bonus of 1000 is added on top of that for “double xp”
Total amount gained for a 1000xp mob: 1000+2000+2000+2100+1000 = 8100
My first example (base amount is doubled and bonuses also add double to that increased base amount) seems really high. But if it used to work like my second example and now works like the last example, I can see why players would feel slighted.
I don’t know the exact order of operations, but XP used to be totally multiplicative, which is why even a 10% bonus was huge. When you stacked Vitality, Vet Bonus, an XP Pot, Refer-a-Friend, and Double XP, you were talking tens of thousands of XP per mob. Now, do I feel that was overpowered? Absolutely. So over the last 3-4 years, it’s been changed several times since then to change multiplication to addition of percentages. We reached a point that I thought was reasonable about 2 years ago. However the changes kept coming. Now, “Double XP weekend” is barely a 15% improvement for many characters. That is going too far IMO.
Even if you can’t do it in 5 hours without using some exploit, I’m pretty sure you could do it in a week . . . giving 3-5 hours a night. You could probably at LEAST get to 95/340 in 2 weeks playing casually for 1-2 hours a night doing Dungeon Makers, questing, collections, etc. IF you have friends (or 5 other accounts) they can all mentor you and those bonuses all add up as well.
Is a week (or even two) REALLY too long for some people? By the way it sounds, SOE might as well just sell “Super Heroic” characters for 5000 SC that are the current max level and max AA . . .(delayed after a level/AA cap like Channelers were delayed, of course). I’m sure some people would buy it.
I already find it a bit much to start at 85 with all the abilities each character has in EQ2 and I MUCH prefer just to work a character up from level 1 and be introduced to each ability gradually, and learn how they work on mobs. I can only imagine what it would be like if people were starting at max level . . .
Maybe I’m just old-school that way . . .