It's not yet too late to save the live servers ......

They haven't reduced mob-killing XP, it's that the amount of XP to level at end game is an exponential curve, and the only way to get enough XP is the quest lines, during which you will get plenty of XP. If you just want to slaughter, pick up the quests for the instances and slaughter an instance or three.

The Celestial Adornment of Health adds +20.7% Max Health. Here's the screenshot that I just took:


The recipe book is excruciatingly common: all you have to do is complete the Chaos Descending Crafting Timeline and then do the Mischief & Mayhem series in Cobalt Scar so you can do the four hourly Anchorage Missions. The recipe book is a fairly common Anchorage mission reward, but it's HEIRLOOM. It's also a possible reward for doing the daily harvesting/crafting quest from the gnome in Myrist.

Alternatively, you can hire a crafter to make it for you. Celestial white adorns take:

• 1 Celestial Mana
• 7 Celestial Fragments
• 5 Celestial Powder
• 2 Infusion of the Celestials
• 50 Celestial Coal

server is dead go to another one ?

That is just a different kind of grind. Instead of wasting time in Proving grounds they make me waste time in tradeskill instances. Getting access to anchorage is a pretty massive chore by itself. Not to mention how expensive that adorn will be to craft.

If it takes a Celestial mana then why isn't the adorn fabled?

It is still a massive brick wall to progression either way.

Probably not a brick wall, or massive. It is an obstacle, but a manageable one. You don't need the book to have the adornments made for you. If you do choose that path, it's nothing at all like the PG grind you were describing. Opening the anchorage is about 30-60 min of questing time, made slightly longer by the fact you have to wait 72 minutes on one step of the quest. Each quest is a few minutes of harvesting, and a single combine.

I understood your point on PGs. I hated them when I ground my way through them when they were current. But there is a much less painful path now to getting a foothold for people coming back. This is much more like speed bumps than brick walls.

grant it I have only done 700 anchorage turn-ins so far, but I have yet to get that recipe. *sighs*
In the mean time, one could always use health adorns from last expansion that have the same benefits, just few slots.

Thursday brings new weekly quests, and a prime-time packed house. Except it was mostly dead on the Maj'Dul platforms and open zones. How dead? Two open zones (one instance) had all the names up.

I wonder if players are on vacation all at once. And I didn't get the memo.

Or

Management needs to seriously examine the state of the live servers.

Discord

• Rumba They are all low xcept kaladim
• Litinit yeah this ^ hehe
  • I've seen a handful of people when I made a character that started in neriak but now I'm in timorous deep and I haven't seen anyone in days, / list just shows myself

Two days (from Thursday) earlier.

Kaith 5/14/2019
TIMELOCKED SERVERS: Kaladim

• Bloodline Chronicles and Sundered Splitpaw have been unlocked on the Kaladim server! The Bloodline Chronicles have been increased in level to 50, and re-itemized with level 40-50 rewards.
• Shattered Lands Hunters mission have been unlocked on Kaladim.

TIMELOCKED SERVERS: Nagafen

• Kingdom of Sky expansion has unlocked on the Nagafen server! Adventure and Tradeskill levels increase to 70. Alternate Advancement Subclass Window unlocked with a 50 AA cap.

Yes, yes. The "low" and "medium" are relative settings. But you get the concept, Maj'Dul is typically not "low."

28 Jul 2016
http://archive.is/DhadH

OR

Management already made the decision to put their primary and full focus on TLE and EverQuest. As noted by previous posters.

Also as noted elsewhere, the silence from Management speaks volumes.

One of my favorite songs how did you know

Creating an expansion where ppl raid and then do a weekly quest that takes 2 hours seems like incredible bad game desing to me. Because thats pretty much what everyone is doing until hopefully we get an ethereal event.

Take what this lurker says with a grain of salt, but...

I could easily get my friends to start playing if the following three stupid (personal opinion) bullet points were removed from the sub perks:

• Access to all spell tiers
• Full access to in-game broker
• Guild Functionality

I get it. Subscribers need something, but personal opinion (and by most against freemium models) is that game features should not be locked behind them. Give broker access and give access to the end game necessity that is spell tiers. Let people form their community/guild. There is no reason to lock progression behind anything other than an expansion. Subscribers still retain the real benefits: Extra slots, TLE, Double currency, DBC, etc.
Everquest 2 is an amazing game, but in it's current state and player numbers it is highly overshadowed by what is currently available on the market.

One change that would help is to loosen up the amount of items that are now listed as Heirloom and No Trade. Change the No Trade to Heirloom and turn a fair percentage of Heirloom into just plain old loot that can be traded, sold, auctioned or whatever.
The current economy is mega inflation anyway so not going to hurt to let folks have more access to loot.
With that change raiders will still get the good stuff but also increase their wealth. People wishing to move up to raiding will have better chance to get enough gear that they could get into raiding sooner. Solo and Group types that have less play time can will have a chance to get some gear to make playing more enjoyable.
As for newbies the best bet is to get started in TLE servers but should get one free server transfer per toon that becomes availble after a certain time or level. This allows people to learn the game and when ready to come to a live server.
None of these moves should have a negative impact on DGB cash flow. In fact if it keeps more people playing it would improve it.
Once somebody leaves they generate zero dollars.

On the upside, there will likely be some kind of summer ethereal event coming up, where you can grind the same content over, and, over, for 5 months to obtain items that will be obsolete/irrelevant in November.

That will be fun.

More fun than you know. The grapevine says projected level 120 in 2020. And a possible November 2019 Level Cap 120.

Traditionally SOE EverQuest II matched/exceeded World of Warcraft levels. With the significant decrease in staff, Daybreak can't keep the same pace. But it does try.

Max Level
90 - EQII February 2010 - EQ October 2010 - WoW September 2012
95 - EQ November 2011 - EQII November 2012
100 - EQ October 2013 - EQII November 2014 - Wow November 2014
110 - WoW August 2016 - EQII November 2017 - EQ December 2017
120 - WoW August 2018 - EQII November 2020 ?? - EQ December 2020 ??
125/130 - WoW 2020 ??

"Every three years we do a level increase, and we have changed the way some things work. But really, the biggest, most fundamental change we've made is adding the progression servers." Holly "Windstalker" Longdale.

Although why bother with 120, and go straight to 130. It would solve the problem of 'keeping up with the Jones' and stat inflation. Call it level 130 but inflate to 120 levels.

OR:

"One of the solutions Ion ("Watcher" Hazzikostas, World of Warcraft Game Director) mentioned being discussed internally very seriously is the idea of a level squish. The concept is a fairly simple one -- just as we've seen item squishes over the years to keep the inflation of item power as we leveled in check, you would literally condense the 120 level of the game as it currently stands. Here's an example -- imagine if to level through all the content currently in the game took you to level 60, not 120." Is a Level squish inevitable? Matthew Rossi, March 22 2019

Which would make older content relevant once again.

"When Ion is flat out saying It's kind of an empty experience discussing level in the game, you know it's broken. This is the Game Director of World of Warcraft telling you that leveling to 120 currently, especially the leveling done in older content, dimply doesn't feel meaningful. This isn't someone like me whining about it in a column or an angry forum poster, this is the man in charge of the game and its direction. Is a Level squish inevitable? Matthew Rossi, March 22, 2019

Live Developer Q&A w/ Ion Hazzikostas- March 21

At the 34 minute mark.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The game seems to be overloaded with "Gotcha" mechanics that exist for no good reason. For example Planar Stones the little pouches that come from quests and unpack the stones to unlock armor patterns. If you have even just one unpacked Planar Stone lost in your bags any weekly quest you do won't give rewards.

The game just says "Gotcha, ha ha no rewards for you." Why?
Why is this a thing?
Why does this exist?
Is this a bug or intentional gating mechanic.
Do they not how this can drive players away. Players are promised a reward for doing a quest. And then when the quest completes there is no reward...

What is the deal with that? This game throws so many curve balls it makes my head spin.

Dude, own your mistake. Now you know, don't do that again.

How is it "my mistake" when this isn't explained anywhere in the game. It is a hidden mechanic that exists just to trip players up. Just like the barding slots which permanently damaged my character.

I keep wondering when is the next shoe going to drop. Where is the next hidden mechanic that is going to screw me over.

I agree. How is this his mistake? So he has a reward from previously doing the quest, why should he be punished for keeping that reward?

Oh, because we said it can't be in your bag. Well, that's just lazy coding.

There's a variety of ways of getting barding slots. I've gotten one from one of the holiday PQs, I've gotten them from achievements, and you can buy them (you get one in every Year of EverQuest pack, currently priced at $19.99).

$20 for 1 barding slot for one mount on 1 character is very pricey.. if the only thing somebody is interested is the barding slot.

Won't argue that it's expensive to do it that way, but the point is that the character is not "permanently crippled", there are ways to get more slots.

• Chaos Descending: Extra Barding Slot (from Chaos Descending Mount Gear Crate)
• Extra Barding Slot (from the Achievement "Elements of Chaos" and the Achievement "Triumph: Planar Punisher [Heroic]")
• Year of EverQuest Extra Barding Slot (from the Year of Everquest pack)

I also got an Extra Barding Slot from the Tinkerfest PQ, I think, and I have heard of people having one drop in instances (not sure if that was raid or heroics or what).
I'm more cranky that the Mischievous horse tack patterns aren't readily available. What good does it do me to have a zillion recipes for them but no pattern pieces? My guild did Castle Mischief a couple of times and then stopped because there wasn't much attractive loot. Maybe if the tack patterns dropped off of the trash in there frequently we might hunt there more.