Our article on how XP Bonuses are calculated and stacked has stirred up a hornet’s next on both sides of the table. So I’m going to link to EQ2 ZAM’s own writeup which includes more developer quotes (including excellent comments from Rich Waters, EQ2 Lead Designer) to try to sort out the mess.

Experience Bonus Changes and XP Bug Explained @ EQ2 ZAM

Short Version

If you absolutely must have the reader’s digest edition, most XP will be restored to how it was before Game Update 57. That means increases to bonuses for Vitality, Mentoring, Bonus XP weekends, and Potions. They are doing whatever is necessary to keep the current XP rate — except Recruit-a-Friend. EQ2 Team consider it a ‘known issue’ that AA earn rate is slow and understand why people were using RAF to gain XP.

Players have been noticing a substantial reduction in XP since Game Update 57 went live.

Rich Waters, Lead Designer of EQ2, has stepped up and posted a report:

We’re checking into this now – if players are getting less experience than they were before the update, it is a bug and we’ll get it fixed promptly.

There are not different experience formulas for EQII live and EQII Extended.  Both games have the same leveling rate, and barring any bugs, it should be exactly what it was before today’s game update.

When we finish investigating, we’ll post more information.

Rothgar followed up with these notes:

I just wanted to also chime in to say that a change was made to fix an exploit situation in the XP gain when certain bonuses were stacked and this may be at the root of the problem.  Our intent was definitely not to modify the leveling curve that you experience in a normal situation.

Since the intended change did affect the stacking of bonuses such as the xp potions you bought from the marketplace, we decided to increase that percentage to make up for the difference in the change.

We are continuing to look for the source of the problem and will post more asap.

More information as we have it.

EQ2Wire is currently trying to get to the bottom of a rumor regarding possible changes to Adventure (Combat), Alternate Advancement (AA), and Tradeskill XP.

In the mean time, we’ve got some hard facts. An unexpected feature of today’s Game Update 57 seems to be the doubling of all Combat, AA, and Tradeskill potions. 27.5% potions became 55% potions. 55% potions became 110% potions.

Left: the 55% XP potions “Draft of the Wise” and “Draft of the Skilled” provided as veteran rewards for every year of subscription.

Right: the 1000SC ($10) 110% “Flask of Advancement III” which boosts XP for all three XP types.

We do not know what, if any, other changes this may signify, but we will keep you informed.