Update Notes: Thursday, November 20, 2014
From the EQ2 Forums:
GENERAL
- Fixed a bug that allowed agnostic dungeons to bypass level recommended code for XP reduction. Dungeon Maker dungeons now start reducing XP after 95.
EQUIPMENT SETS
- Resolved an issue where the Save option wasn’t available after equipping an item that first required attunement.
- There is now messaging when a specific instance of an item could not be found when equipping a set. This messaging differs if another copy of the item was found and equipped instead.
POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
General
- Two [Solo] zones were mistakenly spawning collection shinies, which have been removed. Collections are intended for zones of Advanced Solo difficulty and higher.
Temple of Ssraeshza: Echoes in Time [Raid]
- Diabo Kela’Set no longer roots players under 40% health.
Ossuary: Resonance of Malice
- Praetor Pheris will provide feedback as to why he is casting Bonewall faster.
- Praetor Pheris will no longer occasionally hit someone who should not be hit with Bonewall.
- Praetor Pheris now has a hard limit on how faster he can cast Bonewall.
- Valdimus V’Derun will now properly execute his script all the time.
- Basepop will now be slightly easier.
ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT
Defiler
- Crystallize Soul now summons the correct item when the spell is a Grandmaster.
ITEMS
- The Aerakyn Wing appearances now have the proper names.
- Inspired Malevolent Chain Legs now realize that they’re actually cloth.
- Maligant Blocker is no longer mastercrafted.
- Players using Pteranodon mounts below the level at which their stats are active will no longer receive ‘requires level at least 100’ messages when zoning.
- Corrected a bug that prevented spiritstones [Green Adornments] from gaining experience.
QUESTS
- Unsafe Harbor: Antonia and Vishra’s conversation should now trigger correctly and update the quest as intended.
- The Allu’thoa Menace: Dispatchers should now properly run away when attacked. They will no longer occasionally become untargetable and stuck in combat.
Commentary
After Holly’s mention of an adjustment to Dungeon Maker XP that didn’t materialize, I imagine most players assumed that the issue had been dropped. Now 8 days after the All Access launch of Altar of Malice, and after most raiders and hardcore players have already leveled their characters, it looks like the door is being closed to using Dungeon Maker for level 95+ XP grinding.
On one hand, I can understand the EQ2 design team’s sentiment that players should see and experience the game’s best new content, acquire new gear and level-appropriate spell upgrades, and become used to new game mechanics. And it’s undoubtedly healthier for the game if players are bumping into each other, forming groups, and otherwise interacting. Otherwise, a game with some 50,000 active players gets unfairly tagged as a “ghost town”.
On the other hand, for some players (specifically raiders), level cap raises bring no pleasure and serve only as a temporary roadblock to character progression. This may seem counterintuitive to a casual player who views leveling AS progression, but these days, between grinding tokens, finding extremely rare harvests for researched recipes, acquiring rare adornments, and the normal progression through gated raid mobs, a few hours of artificially slow leveling actually makes very little difference in the long run. Even if you feel that MMOs should still have some “uphill both ways in the snow” aspects, it’s odd to see this change going in after the damage has already been done.
Only time will tell if yesterday and today’s XP boosts to Altar of Malice contested heroic, advanced solo, and solo zones, as well as heroic mission quest XP will soften the blow.
A footnote to this change will be that it will likely mark the ignominious end of Dungeon Maker. Once hyped as outlet for player creativity and world-building skills, Dungeon Maker has been reduced over the years to an XP assembly line for adventurers, and a nearly-endless storage locker for decorators. Dedicated players have tried to breathe live into Dungeon Maker, but there’s only so much you can do to soup up a Dodge Dart.
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Comments (49)
Pantherfoot
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I really think that the DM nerf is not needed.
I am sure that a lot of veteran players like myself have accumulated a host of Alts and leveled them to 95 while waiting for the new expansion.
Forcing you to run 10 toons through content time and time again just so that you can use “hand me down” gear or so that you can swap in your Tank/Scout/Mage/Healer as and when the group needs it seems a waste of time. I would much rather be adventuring with my main than grinding my Alts.
I think there is enough incentive with quest rewards and the final mount reward to encourage people to run the quest line with their main and primary alts.
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BlacktopNL
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I still do that even after grinding all my toons in DM, i just dont understand why SOE is forcing you into this linear boring patch with all your toons,
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KerransareGods
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I have many toons and at the beginning of this expack I decided it was time to cut back in lvling them so I choose three out of 14. They took advantage of the dm and are lvl 100. I was considering a few other toons but after this update it sealed my faith in letting my other toons go to the grave yard.
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wtf
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So those of who are ftp are being penalized..typical
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gire
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As it should be. Only silver lining about this patch. No f2p leaches raiding any time soon.
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Gan
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I don’t know how that is a silver lining. Have you looked for a group in the new expansion? They are very hard to find, and I associate part of that problem to more of the population being F2P. More so than any thought or knew. Now with DM being nerfed, and not enough XP to get you to 100, it will take longer to easily get groups. So lets hope that the increase in instanced XP is so much better than when I ran them.
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Chunk
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A fine example of the raider elitism mentality and why DM xp is getting nerves.
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Ereon
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How does this impact FTP more than All Access?
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Feldon
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F2P aren’t able to level to 100 yet?
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ereon
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I think perhaps instead of FTP vs. All Access he should have said AA Hard Core vs. FTP Hard Core. I am All Access and my main is 98. So I will not be able to use dungeon maker either. And frankly if the cost is mindlessly repeating DM instances with no plot other than kill, rinse, repeat, I am just as happy.
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Eric T Lewis
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What ever happened to play the game your way. SOE messing with the xp in DM, after everybody was complaining that there was not enough xp to get to 100. Honestly somebody at soe hates their player base.
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DirtyMunchican
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This isn’t Burger King. SOE has consistently pulled the proverbial rug out from us every expac or major change. This is only a small change (I hope).
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Mathafern
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This change either should have been made before the expansion or not at all.
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Charn
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Now, I’m not arguing that this change should or shouldn’t have gone in, but to say the change should have been made before the expansion or not at all may be a bit heavy handed . . .
They’ve made a lot of changes after the fact, (example: How plat is awarded in The Protector’s Realm and the increased plat awarded in regular zones), often because there’s a new design team, the in-game world is changing and it’s not fitting in to their “Vision(tm)” of the world, or things happened in live that no one tested or tried while in beta, so they didn’t know (or think) would happen.
I know it sucks for those that didn’t get to run through DM, or didn’t get to do it with every character (I still have 5 of 8 characters that are 95), but it MAY revitalize grouping if exp is increased there . . . or kill it. We’ll need to wait and see, but I personally loved the plat changes (being one that never farmed PR for plat).
And heck, the only change may be it may now take two hours doing DM zones instead of one to hit level cap. I’ll have to wait to get home and see.
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Anaogi
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Something gives us more than intended? Nerf it!
Something gives us less than intended? We’ll get to it…eventually… (Scroll depots, pathetic tradeskill XP, etc.)
My level of “impressed” is fading rapidly.
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zzzz's
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Perhaps SOE will start selling players in instant 100 option…./rolls eyes…..how to make more money off players with SC sales seems to be their priority lately not how can they get their player base to enjoy the game….and I’m surprised they haven’t done the lv85 heroic crafter yet…they are missing out on a lot of SC sales by not offering an instant lv 85 crafter like they do adventurer.
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Loch
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There’s a lot of blaming the whiners going on on the official forums, but what I don’t understand is how people can forget that the devs can SEE what players are doing. They don’t need players to whine on the forums for that.
With the current trend they’ve got going in nerfing XP grinds, seems to me that it was inevitable. They’ve said before that they want players in the new content, so my guess is that the “whiners” had little to do with the ultimate decision made.
Now, I’d love to agree with their angle of pushing players into new content if they’d just up the XP for actually doing it. It seems simple enough. If you complete every quest in an expansion, it should award enough xp to get you to the new max. That’s a lot of time invested doing the quests and a lot of time devs invest in creating it. The quest timelines take you through everything in the expansion typically.
Why isn’t THAT used as the baseline for getting to max level and then adjust all XP gains in the expansion from there? They say they don’t want you to grind, but then how else do you get to max level? Just casually gain XP in heroic groups for the next 3 months after a 12 hour signature quest?
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Anaogi
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Word. I and everyone I play with saw this nerf coming from a mile off. It’s just the lack of alternatives and other badly needed positive changes that infuriate me right now.
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Eric T Lewis
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They have the numbers, they can see that not many groups are running the Broken Bay contested zone. In fact they made references stating they wanted folks running that zone.
I understand they are trying to force folks to run the new content. We seen this heavy handed approach before. It is why the nooby islands were taken out, they wanted folks rolling in frostfang so they removed the queens colony and overlords outpost. That is the truth of it.
The only problem with forcing folks to the current content is, I refuse to run broken bay, that zone I know is soe’s baby they love it, but I find it to be a waste of space, a maze that you got to run front to back 2 times and side to side in order to kill the mobs in the solo zone. I heard so much negative feedback about mages dying from one shots in this zone. I never see any groups asking to run it.
So this is just soe’s way of forcing folks to the current content. I think we all understand that, but you have to make that current content fun.
I just disagree with how heavy handed soe is being about this. This has nothing to do with raiders vs free to play. I not raided in 6 months. I got 15 toons I would like to get to 100 sooner or later, I am all access.
The facts are that the current quest content only gets you to 98.5 So somewhere somehow you got to grind out 1.5 levels, and now soe just put up another road block, on something we had for a long time and everybody was making use of it.
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Feldon
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Might have something to do with the Resists and quantity of trash being like a visit to genpop at the local prison.
Also the gear that drops in the zone is a huge step down from ToV mid-grade heroic gear.
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Anaogi
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The mitigation and resists are the only improvements. Everything else is a step backwards.
Someone didn’t think the itemization through. Again.
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Charn
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The HELL you say!
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Starseeker
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Not sure why folks are surprised about the DM nerf, they almost always have over the top xp in the first week of an expansion for something and then they nerf it. I remember quest xp nerfs in kunark and sentinels fate, etc after a week or two.
it rewards those who have the time to grind it out in the first week, I’ve been there in the past (although I’m more casual now), and I have come to look at xp nerfs as a way they normalize the population, some folks fly to 100 some stay back and do the content, everyone is more spread out that way, then they nerf the xp on the fast road so that everyone who follows has to do the content.
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Carnifex
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Keep in mind that, until the servers come up and we see what effect this has had on the dungeon maker experience, this is all just sheer speculation. They didn’t come out and say it would be equal to the Skyshrine nerf.
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Ezka
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I’ve been kind of tied up with RL, so I have not been able to do much in terms of leveling, but I recently decided I should try especially hard to get to 92, if not 95, on some of my alts. It’s real sad DM was nerfed, but it is also not a surprise – just a very unpleasant obstacle! Groups are really hard to come by growing up, and it takes a very long time to get through content (at least for me). I don’t know if people are still capping faster than I can blink now, but it’s really disappointing that I won’t be able to do this as I thought I was.
Ho-hum. I guess it won’t hurt to wait longer, huh?
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Kruzzen
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Meh, we knew it was coming. We were always taking about when, not if on the nerf. I really don’t care where I level a toon as long as the xp gain is appropriate. My issue is when the xp gain is so bad that it is not worth leveling a toon. Like many others I am cutting back on the toons I level and am letting some 12 toons slip into retirement oblivion. If the xp in groups and content is worth it, I might push them up, but at this point I have my main toons to 100 already and will go from there. I know this is about the health of the game, but I really think they need to review what that means as it has changed so much over the years I think SOE has lost track of what it really is.
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Breanna
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Personally I don’t get why they are nerfing it now. I mean most all raiders have there 100 toons done, this just means a lot of alts now have to level the harder way, and although alts aren’t as important to raids, they are for grouping. Most alts aren’t nearly as geared as raiders so will have a much harder time to get to 100. So they hurt the over all gaming. Since you cant even go into the new instances until u reach level 98. And why do Ftp complain so much? I mean its free for you? If you don’t see it hurts people that pay to play too then your silly. lol
The game has turned into a time sink for everything. So if you don’t have 1million hours to play you will be stuck at low levels for a long time. I mean for spellshards it takes ages to get, crafting, leveling up. And although I do understand they are understaffed and want the content to last for awhile, if they make it more of a JOB than Fun, they are gonna lose even more player base.
The crafting XP this xpac is horrible to level so I can only imagine the pain to get a toon to 100 with the current xp from quest lines. Sad 🙁
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Dauvien
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Agree with Feldon’s points on DM.
IMO DM nerf makes sense, honestly that aspect of the game should just be sunset all together sine the dev team is shrinking no need to waste cycles on this anymore (3rd time i can recall DM have been adjusted for XP issues/Expoit issues). If people get up in arms about shutting down DM then just give them a SC amount equal to the value of the system (amount paid as a stand alone portion) but I’d assume at this point its just a dead feature.
But additionally, I’m not happy with the XP caps on the old contested content (ei: SS) and I’m glad to see they fixed HKC with the last patch (or so I hear). Additionally not everyone wants to run the Signature/solo line so making adjustments to exp within the AoM contested/solo/advsolo should help people play the way they want to in order to level.
Sure people will complain about alt leveling, but remember they are alts. Either decide to work with the toon(s) you have capped and miss out on group opportunities, or suck it up and level one of them. The game is far from the grind it once was, the idea of leveling a toon is no longer a matter of months/weeks but now days/hours. At one point you had enough drive to level that alt (or spend some SC for the heoric) so its time to just do it again if you want to change your game playing opportunities. Others will complain about sever populations and issues getting groups, well that just is an issue of an aging MMO. In the end you either level alts which takes cycles of time, move to AB (aka more populated server) and burn $$, or move on to another game (its going to happen eventually).
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Moose
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Typical SoE practices, every xpack after RoK IRC has had this crap pulled. Every time it has happened more and more people leave. I’d rather them of never introduced the DM but spent the money and time on cross server grouping and mobs that level with you instead of greying out, so we could level and level our adornments in a crap ton of zones instead of being pigeon holed into a single zone/area.
Quite honestly the amount of servers need to be merged as well. As far as names go for people and guild add the code that says from xx server and duplicate names are addressed.
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Tex
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Im sure SOE will lose more players with a DM nerf. I remember a while back when they were nerfed accidentally and that caused i disruption. Im im honest i think SOE think it’s their way or No Way
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Gurnil
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Anyone tested DM since servers came back?
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Omence
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Remove dungeon maker.
People are always looking for shortcuts and grinding levels is no exception.
Mad cause you have 10 alts to run through the content to level them? It was your choice to create those alts. Whether you have or want to take the time to level them is also your choice. Nothing is being forced.
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GriffonLady
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Remove DMs?
Even though DMs are useless for people who want to grind to max level now, there are still people who enjoy making a dungeon, decorating it well, trying to make what storyline they can with what meager tools they gave us.
Sure, there are extremely few who run those DMS (Think I’ve gotten 12 tokens out of my Jurassic PArk DM in the last month…) but I still enjoy it, and I know others do too.
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Taka
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I am almost certainly alone in this sentiment. I enjoyed DM for what it originally was… drops for avatars you could run through with various skill sets to complete the DM challenge for DM coins.
People bitched and whined about using their real toons and then it was implemented.
If DM exists as nothing more then a collection mini game… (collect avatars to play through it).. (collect creatures to put in it) then so be it…
I get why it works as a grind tool.. and reduced xp or not..its like the southpark episode of killing warthogs to max level. It’s technically easy to grind it.
Point is instead of killing it.. its less work to keep it as it for those who like to use it for collecting mobs and avatars.. although i wish they would add more avatars and “grimlings” and “akhevans” to the dungeon maker drop set. and more “avatars” like “Ergim the Holgresh channeller” for random example.
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Starseeker
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Or alternatively, make it like a real dungeon where you can’t build PL grind dungeons with 8 stacked mobs every 10 feet. Instead make the bosses actually act like bosses instead of weak mobs have the avatars actually do whatever their originator mob did, make the monsters actually do some damage like a real dungeon mob so that when players create these dungeons they have to do more than just hold down control and click every 10 feet.
Take out the XP all together or lower it so that there is no point in running them to grind. Instead do a loot based scale on difficulty. In the regular Dungeons now, everyone in the group gets a loot box off the final guy. Scale the rewards so that the truely ranked hard dungeons give everyone a loot box of heroic proportion, those that are not so hard give them a legendary, the easy ones maybe get coin and a random fluff item.
There are so many ways to make DM dungeons something cool, but unfortunately, the tokens they reward are useless to most, and so XP is the only thing they have going for them after the novelty wears off.
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GriffonLady
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I’ve been wishing for a looooonnnng time that they’d make portals for DMs like they have for prestige houses. I’d love to make a carnival with booths in a house that have portals to minigames I design in a DM. Or a video game arcade with the portals in the screen. Maybe a library with portals inside books with reenactments in the DMs.
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Gurnil
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FTP people can’t get into the expansion until Nov 25th. They are stuck at level 95 until then. I have no idea what percentage of the player base is FTP.
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Feldon
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Additional comments in case they get blown away from the EQ2 Forums…
EQ2 has far more breadth than being “over” at level cap, which is why it has stood the test of time. It will be many months before any raid guild kills the final mob in the final zone. People in EQ2 like acquiring interesting, powerful items which make it possible to attempt content that they normally would not be able to do.
EQ2 players are completionists. It’s a year after ToV and I still do not have all 7 pieces of gear with 4 Potent gems. I’m still missing jewelry upgrades. Admittedly I only group a few hours a week, but I feel way behind on doing the group content enough.
I’m interested in the storyline of the new expansion, but otherwise levels 96-98 are just a roadblock between me and starting to run group zones (which require level 98). Also apparently we will not be able to craft malice gems (gear upgrade gems) so that means I will have to grind even more heroic zones this expansion just to try to once again have the Tier 2 (or is it 3?) heroic gear fully gemmed out. And even when I get that gear loaded with gems, there is still content to do because they will be adding new zones in early spring of next year and I’d like to be ready for those. Then next summer we’ll be getting new Public Quests.
And that’s all on my main character. Rinse repeat on my Monk, my Dirge, my…
If someone thinks EQ2 is over when you hit max level, they may be playing a very different game than I am. Most of my adventure is waiting for me AT max level.
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Thait
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That’s the way it is for me and my friends as well. In fact we hadn’t even started on ToV heroic stuff yet, we were 95 but were still finishing up COE zones and just getting ready to hit ToV. so for us we’ll push to 100 doing the new quests in the new zones and then backtrack to do the other quests in ToV and the heroic content there before moving into the heroic in Alter. We’ve never been bored, far to much stuff to do.
And that’s not even counting all the crafting I still need to get caught up on.
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Filly67
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Love how they left this alone until most sales where completed by people committed to purchasing. Then they pull out the xp rug. My husband and I have about 40 toons between us. 80% at least are max level in adv and ts. I am very curious how us using DM to level affected other’s gameplay or why SOE would care. When these players are crying later for lack of max level groups at least I will get a chuckle. And here’s a newsflash SOE. We had only bought one expansion out of our four accounts. The others were going to get done next week while we were both on vacation. I have been trying to get my husband back on board with this expansion. I told him about this update and now there is no way we are purchasing three more expansions. I will continue to putter on my max level account. Probably just TS and ignore adventuring except for one or two signature lines. The rest is no longer an interest to us since we clearly don’t feel the need to play by silly rules.
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Taril
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Same story with my wife and I. We are not going to be buying the expansion on our other accounts.
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Mortam
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I have seen this situation in many,many MMOs. Dungeon XP > Overland XP = nobody plays outside. Overland XP > Dungeon XP = nobody plays inside. Players constantly go the path of least resistance to cap, and then bitch when Devs react to it. Things are nerfed because they need to be. Yeah it might take you a bit longer to level, but isn’t it better for the game when players are doing more than one type of content? Play the damn game, have fun with friends, stop worrying about XP.
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Striinger
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I’m letting my alt account rot with no expac. Seeing so many others I wonder what the net loss like for Daves bottom line.
It may only be perception, but it feels like SJ is completely disconnected from anything not Landmark or EQ Disney. Others have suggested a plan to “consolidate” the player base once Next goes live. Maybe it’s not silly. The tactic feels a lot like how F2P and marketplace were introduced.
Let me get my tin foil hat back on now so the aliens can’t read my mind.
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Eric T Lewis
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I got the basic xpac for me and the wife. I could not pay the crazy amount for the ce edition for what little came with it. I made the decision that my daughters account will not be upgraded, her toons are not high enough for tov, so I was expecting to get this xpac for her once she got to 90, but I have made the decision that is not going to happen. Bottom line don’t price gouge me.
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Filly67
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Add to this debacle that they made sure the “uber” players got in, power leveled up in DM and were ready to raid before they shut this off. How unusual and certainly not the continued standard in this game.
I don’t even think I would care so much but this stuff is just so blatant. Add to that this game is riddled with issues that never get fixed and sit there for years.
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Moose
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Word is several devs play on AB and got tired of the DM PL sellers and that was part of the issue.
Soe plain and simple fucked up and caused more and more division between players.
It’s back to the solo/ slow levelers versus groupers/raiders bitchfest.
They went with the pigeon hole scheme and the players are doing the exact opposite.
I will as many others here are doing, let my current account with expansion rot and my alt accounts rot with no expansion.
Smokethepolebuttpuffer is killing eq2 because it’s not his Minecraft wannabe love child. He needs to quit taking the monies eq2 makes, and funneling it to his love child.
Give us our “Play your way” play style back. Not the play Soe’s way or else we will nerf all other play styles.
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Dominanc
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Well I was happy to find the “Unsafe Harbor” quest working again. It’s completed and I’m now working on completing the quest line.
…
About the Dungeon Maker adjustments on over level 95 earned xp, well the damage was done, folks who want to grind will always want to grind and well if they left it as it was they may have attracted more AoM sales since a possible selling point would’ve been insta-level yourself to 100 {slight bit of sarcasm there – but seriously}. And if the snobbish elite folks continue to only accept level 100 players in groups they play in then you either become a ‘leet’ fanboy or just try to enjoy the game; I’m working the enjoying the game aspect, for what it’s worth.
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bhagpuss
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I’ve been playing since mid-beta and I have very little interest in what happens after max level. I like to get my characters to max level when the cap changes so I can go and do and see stuff from previous expansions that I haven’t been able explore before. I don’t believe I’ve ever touched current expansion max-level content in the ten years I’ve been playing. I’m very content to see it two or three years down the line.
I also really like Dungeon Maker for making dungeons that I play through with my own characters for my own amusement. Its another aspect of housing. It could do with a lot more features being added for that but it has still been a lot of fun. I have visited some great story dungeons too.
EQ2 has always been about the world, the lore and the pottering around doing nothing in particular to me. It’s one of the best, maybe the best, MMO for that playstyle. The heroic/raid stuff and the associated grind might as well be happening in another game as far as I’m concerned.
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Striinger
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I’m not sure the division in grouping between the folks who hit 100 and geared fast and those still sitting at 98 in quest/last expac gear is about ‘elitism’ so much as how the game is designed. Resists and mitigation are hugely important this time. I know when we group we ask for resists and hp mins. The harsh truth is that the zones we do aren’t designed for leveling toons. Stick with the easiest instances and first contested zone after chuckling on some crafted resist jewelry. If no one is asking you to join them start building your own groups.
When you get 100k resists and 500k self buffed HP then follow the zone progression. You’ll probably be 100 of you throw in the signature quest.
Most people are willing to help less equipped players but these days too many expect to be carried… and that only sound elitist if you’re the one looking for a free ride.
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