Rumors from the Fan Faire

[Sanna]

Krazick said:
"SOE WANTS you to take the time and explore the world... and see the content... the player base IGNORES it..."


Most do. It boggles me. As Quartic loooves to remind me, I'm paying $12/month x 2 accounts for this game... when I got out of Sullon, I told Phabos (and Kiz when he transferred) that "I want to SEE what I've been paying for for a year."

And I have. I've xp'd in Marus Seru. Sol-A. Overthere. Kaesora. Mistmoore and Unrest and Velks and Droga without fear of being trained (by someone other than myself *embarrased*). I've gone to Chardok. I zoned into PoInnovation at 47 and fought entrance mobs and had a total blast... because it's something I never did before.

I'm having hela-lota fun now. But then again, I am not normal and you are not to take my experiences as approaching standard. ^_^


It made me so very sad when LDoN first came out... I started getting tells for groups... but only for adventures. I check LFG tool... 'adv only'. 'bb/mm only plz'. 'ef!' Then the uber high lvls who say 'EP only', 'Time only'. /sigh. I'm friggin happy I'm Tactics flagged.


Oh, that. When Kiz was still on Stormhammer and let me on the drood, I made him take me to Tactics one day. And other days there were other new zones. I was all like, "WHAAAA omgosh lookie lookie PRITTIES!" and he was like, 'no more sugar for you.' There are still a dying breed of us who do want to see everything before it all goes green.




Krazick said:
"While caster would say I don't need increased STR/DEX/AGI on my Caster..."

er... high str is never a bad thing, technically ^_^ And high dex = melee skillups. Altho I suppose not every caster's goal is to be able to melee in Veksar (with mage/shm pets for dps : P : P !!!). Tink's 1hb and 2hb are maxxed, tho I fear her h2h will forever suck.... though I have a nice new piercing weapon now, so there will be calls of 'avatar!!!' soon. ^_^ /evilgrin.

Do you NEED? No. But they're there, they have a use, and if it's fun, do it.


re lvl 70...
Lilosh said:
"That is possibly the worst idea I've heard recently."
/agree.
/agree /agree /agree /agree /agree /agree /agree /agree /agree /agree /agree /agree /agree.

altho, Tunare please forbid they raid lvl cap, it should be friggin hard to get there, with little reward along the way until you get to the end.


And I'm afraid I failed my save roll, so yes I of course wonder how this will affect PVP on Sullon...
And yes, I'm just as tired of thinking about it as anyone else is of hearing about it...

-- Sanna

[Koru]

Oh it's a great idea for those who want to absolutely certainly know that the person joining their group is uber enough for their tastes. I mean really, quite a few people have asked for some way to tell the posers from the powers (all the people who mentioned PoP was horrible since 60th lvl used to really mean something and now any old shmuck could get to 65th lvl, which clearly is a horrible thing) and to do that it would be a great system. It guarantees that you'll never have to group with another "newbie" again because you didn't know he had fewer AAs, no reason to take that maybe new maybe not 65th lvl now when you can get a guarantee of someone with more AAs by going over that limit.

Now if this system had been in place in some form from the start I could agree it would be a nice idea, but as it is it would just widen the gap between classes. And here I mean player enforced classes like grinder, raider, casual, newbie, oldie and so on, not your character's class like warrior. So yeah, I hope it remains just that, a rumor and nothing more. Yet a part of me fears that it isn't. Maybe I'm just disillusioned, there's always more grind being added it seems to try to stretch out content for far longer than any sane human could possibly enjoy it.

And trust me, the people grinding away at AAs so they can level aren't going to be in all those unused zones, they'll crowd together in the same old zones for xp. The options for planar level xp aren't exactly overwhelming y'know. Don't give me that "try the other zones", they have lower ZEM and history has shown they would not get used as long as PoP zones give more xp per hour! While I personally enjoy visiting older areas on occasion after the newness wears off I realize why they were deserted in the first place. *coughkedgecough* The achiever mentality has won in that aspect of the game, adding steeper acheiver requirements will not break that mindset. If anything it will compound the problem even more as people set about on maximizing their xp per hour so they can level again. It would give them a clear and probably a very tempting goal to grind their AAs away other than "so I can get Exodus" or so on. The only thing that's ever made people stop to smell the roses has been when they've been forced to do so by the game and even then they NEVER spread equally throughout zones to enjoy all the different content in the past because surprise surprise, the zones weren't designed equal!

[sumamael]

Hmmm hmm 250 AA to be able to reach level 70. Hmm hmmmm.

Oh well, looks like I might not make level 70 with my cleric within a week of the expansion going live.

[Cantatus]

Keep in mind, it's just a rumor. That means it's possible it's not even true. Even if it is, nothing says SOE couldn't change their mind and go about it a different way. The expansion hasn't even been officially announced yet.

We've seen these rumors come and go. I can remember one rumor for just about every expansion: Kunark was rumored to have earthquakes. Velious was supposed to have weapons made of ice that would melt if you left the continent while wielding them. The Vah Shir in Luclin weren't supposed to be able to wear pants. PoP levels, spells and abilities were only supposed to work in PoP zones.

So, don't put too much stock into this rumor until you see it announced from SOE.

[Lickity]

I personally love that idea. I don't have all that many AA's, under 100 atm, however, it is a bit irritating when I do something like an LDoN. I try and create a group (/w all lfg 65) and I have to remember who is "good" and what not. I feel bad that all the 65's are not equal, however, I want to succeed at hard LDoNs and a 65 warrior with no AAs cannot tank as well as a ranger or even a BEASTLORD with 100 in the right place. It is sad, but true. The level restriction on AAs would help keep these in balance so that we can create groups without having to worry about getting a less experienced replacement.

Expansion "X" will also be creating new AAs. The slow leveling will make these AAs harder to get, as they will probably be level restricted. This will encourage existing players to get their valuable PoP AAs before the newer ones as they will not be able to access them. I don't know how many shaman out there are truely awful even though they have 150+ AAs, because they spent them on Spirit Call 5 and Hastended Rabid Bear form! I wish there had been more restrictions on your AA progression in PoP....

/hijack off I'll stop now, I don't even remember where I started with this in the first place...

[Verdandi]

What I think this would do is give folks a general idea of what level of player they are getting. ... Right now, there's a huge disparity in what a '65' means, and short of looking at someone's title (which is dependant not only on how many AA you have but also WHERE you spent your AA) or inspecting their gear, how do you tell?

You check for doodspeek in their LFG message. You check their guild tag to be sure they're not guilded with known jerks. Then you hunt with them. If they stink, you avoid them in the future.

I actually think this would make the general population of levels 66-70 even dumber than everyone says the general population of 65s are right now. Why? Well, if you have the time to accumulate several hundreds of AAs and a few more levels within a few months (or even a year plus some) then you're probably in the zones where there's a few flags between you and the unwashed masses, so you're not really part of the general population. For the rest of us, we're going to be faced with either becoming effectively newbies again (because who wants a 65 when you can have a 67, or a 67 when you can have a 70?) or turning to ebay or powerlevelling. You think there are a lot of dumb people out there now? Wait till you're in a group tuned for level 70s and both the cleric and chanter just bought their characters. Or just spent four solid months in BoT grinding to 70. Because when expansions offer little more than end game advancement then many, many people will do anything to get it to keep up. Others just want to see all the zones they paid for. Can't say I blame that group, really.

The gap between the power gamers and the casual players was widened like never before with the introduction of raids required to get to entire sets of zones. The kind of change rumored here would effectively put a brick wall in that gap, due to the sheer quantities of time it takes to get hundreds of AAs (plus levels). Not to mention that casual players will have a smaller set of zones to do it in, most if not all of which give slower exp than those that are only accessible via raided flags.

I may be only 65 with 49 AAs (and two leadership points ) but I am an excellent shaman. I've played Verdandi almost exclusively for almost five years straight now. I know Norrath inside out, at least the parts I'm able to reach. And I know how to play my character very well. The idea that the quality of a potential group member can be determined best by looking at level and AAs simply isn't true. You can gauge the raw strength of the character that way, but absolutely nothing about their ability to use that strength competently. And competence is what I think most people really feel is lacking when they say the general population is dumb nowadays.

If this rumor turns out to be true, level 70 would be a guarantee of time that someone, somewhere spent pumping exp into that character. Nothing more.

[Sanna]

Hear here, Verdandi ^_^

Who said that Norrath isn't a world anymore, but that EQ is a game?
The designers keep trying to offer content to 'keep the old people' by making the string longer, when really they're going to end up driving a lot of people away, those who know they'll never reach the end of the string. It's an odd paradox in a way... and they won't please everyone. They can't, anymore. So the burden on them is chosing the path that drives away the fewest people....

For once, I don't want to be in their shoes.

-- Sanna

[Lilosh]

Who said that Norrath isn't a world anymore, but that EQ is a game?

I was the one who was saying this for a while, based off of a quote I stole off of the Enchanter forums. Everquest has moved from being a world to a game. :-(


-Lilosh

[Lickity]

I agree Verdandi, my previous post was an oversight of the eBay aspect to the game. My experience is based off most of what you said, checking the guild tag and known associates of the members in my group. At this time, when I search for a group, I check the EP/Time guilds for members because they usually will have the AAs that make them more viable in the upper tiered zones. However, you are correct that no amount of in-game experience can account of actual gaming experience...I wish there was a way to prevent the eBay factor in the game =/

[sumamael]

Yep, checking guildtag is probably the best way to go.

It can be kinda funny when some dude asks every single member of my guild if they are LFG for some LDoN when we are raiding Rathe in PoEb tho I guess he had some good experiences with us and now he can't start a group without getting Landslide members into it