Changes with the February Update: Alternate Ability Grants for Gold Members and Ability Changes

I am glad to see that swarming and power leveling in it's present state is being changed.

Let's go one step farther and eliminate the Defiant Gear that rendered 90 % of the game content irrelevant.

Granting AA for free is a horrible idea and utterly insulting to all the people who have spent years acquiring AA. Perhaps raise the bonus to a higher level say 5000 or add more daily quests that players can solo.

If you must give away AA and sell level 85 heroic charachters please confine these atrocities to a few server's like your oh so successful 51/50 server.

This is the same poor idea as the 51/50 that failed miserably.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/0...verquests-51-50-server-but-players-feel-fine/

Please leave at least one server where some of us can continue to play the game the game by progression rather than be surrounded by players with zero skills and no game knowledge who have not earned the levels and AA required to challenge content.

Thank you,

Tamagotchi 100 Paladin
Zergling 100 Berserker

Playing EQ since 1999

I havent heard one person happy about this change. People are SO MAD lol. and i am too. im rendered speechless because there is so much wrong with this.


This I think is a ploy too get us too quit EQ and go too EQ next and rebuild. HAS too be, because this is not disighned too make people happy/ enjoy eq more.

As a longtime EQ player I feel obliged to reply,

Swarm changes; Adjustments should be made without a doubt, and are long overdue. But I see changes to a few classes that don't swarm hundreds of mobs. Please don't diminish several other classes ability to play the game solo (with any sort of efficiency) at the same time.

AA's; I think adjusting the rate at which they are earned would be a much more acceptable solution, but giving away that many expansions worth of AA's is too much. I think you guys are discounting the core reason everyone always come back to EQ, by giving it away.

Thanks for reading!

Free AA ... RIDICULOUS. I hope Sony Actually reads this feedback. They have been talking about this in Firiona Vie all day, and NO ONE is happy.

- WHAT BENEFIT do WE get if we BUSTED our butts to get to 7k+ AA?!
- Now that you are giving away ALL this FREE AA, We will have to work 5 times harder to earn an AA point?!
- I understand the Nerf, but if you take away alot of the abilities provided to SK and Ranger, I already know ALOT of people that are going to quit.
- You leave this alone for years, you noticed the spikes, and decided now to make a change? Really?


You do this to benefit returning players, but for all of us who ALREADY busted our butts over 13 years to get to where we are, take a HUGE hit like this, Now it will be MUCH MORE DIFFICULT for me to earn AA's on my alts cause your giving them a BUNCH OF USELESS AA? I dont even WANT most of these AA, I EARNED all my other AA with Hard work and dedication! Are you guys trying to ruin the game? I have been so dedicated, and the free AA should be more of a choice, or we should be granted an amount of AA to spend.

Free AA.... AA is the reason I play this game, its so easy to get to endgame in EQ2 cause there is only...320 aa? But Everquest has Built a foundation Built on getting High end with thousands of AA, and now you grant it for FREE?! Why not just give us a lifetime subscription?! IS your plan to get people to quit....this is ridiculous. How long do you expect everquest to last this way?

My opinion doesnt matter though right, You will look at it, but all in all, its already done. Hundreds are people are outraged about this, ESPECIALLY us who have been working so hard to get to where we are. Think carefully is all I say, cause this will ruin everquest completely. And I LOVE everquest and dont want to see it hit the dirt. It would be extremely saddening to see these things happen. Please read the feedback on this, PLEASE read peoples opinions cause this change will not effect the Everquest econmy positively.

Personally I dont have a problem with most of the changes. Beamkiting should have been nerfed a long time ago. But the SK lifetap nerf bothers me as I use an SK to tank for my 3 boxxed group. If the changes are as I understand he's going to take a pretty good sized hit on how much he heals himself when tanking a single mob as lifetap riposte procs are a part of the equasion.

bahahha i love the salty tears... i have been in and out of eq since the first 400 in closed beta.. and these changes to stop the PL crap have me more excited then anything in the game in years... if they can figure anyway to promote real people grouping again that would be even better

A number of hit-charges on Lich Sting and Mortal Coil that wouldn't interfere with a normal number of mobs, but wouldn't hold up to the number of mobs used in swarming.

Even 999 hit charges would be fine, you're never going to hit that many times in a normal exp/raid situation in 2.5 minutes, but those charges will evaporate in seconds against 80-160 mobs.

Similar to how the SK discs last for full duration in normal circumstances, but are eaten through almost immediately while swarming.

My wife is a lvl 100 zerker in rof t2 raid gear maxed out aa with little over 101k hp unbuffed. she decaps in grounds. anymore then bout 5 or 6 mobs and she is in trouble. she like the ramp off of center facing zi. she keeps it clear in that area. how is that disrupting a zone?

I doubt thats their plan, because they have to know 90% of EQ players aren't touching EQNext with a 10 foot minecraft pole.

Again, that is not my stance, my highest leveled character only has about 1400 AA (and I don't even play that character anymore). If you would actually read the thread you'd know this, but I will restate it here for you. I am upset because I don't want to be max level with a bunch of AA. I wanted to work through the 13 years of content, that content is essentially being removed with this change. It has *nothing* to do with wanting other people to have to work for what I worked for, and everything to do with me wanting to experience this for myself. You're blinded by assumptions.

It's not. They can't nerf everyone else without infinite amounts of whining from mages and SKs.

Is the AA change going to affect the progression servers ?

I have 1 gold account , had it sence 20o1 , have a 100 ranger, 86wizzy 86 rog 85 sk and more to boot ! My ranger has 5750 + aa's and my Sk has 3.5k+ aa's that has taken alot of WORK to do , and now your just gonna pass them all out 4 free , FREAKING REALLY ???? SOE has finally stepped over the edge ! you will ruin this game so fast going down the road you are prepossing , all these changes , hoping for improvement is very scary , that said , Heck yes stop the beaming, that is wrong, messing up whole zones at a time is stupid n NEEDS to be delt with ! my 2 cents

You evidently didnt see the nerf to SK lifetaps off riposte which will make swarming impossible. Sadly it will also affect single mob tanking with their kneejerk nerf.

i will Say again that all this nerfing is easy
limit beams to the point they cant lag the zone 20 mobs on beams no more zone lag and too hard to kite them also add cast time if needed in .5 second amounts till fixed. to riposted melee affects that you want to control make it so the affect can only be activated if the mob is on the extended target window so a max of 10 mobs problems fixed all around and dont get me started on how dumb the granted AAs are.

Wow, I came back to EQ after 8 years off and had to change servers from Zek because nobody plays there. I created an SK and made it to 100 and ground 9k AA's. Now you're telling me I wasted my time grinding and you are going to take away my ability to swarm the usual 15-20 mobs or so that I can swarm every 15 minutes?

Why isn't there a cap on the amount of mobs that you can riposte at 12 like the cap on the mage and the Wizard? This move pretty much kills the SK. One mob at a time grinding with a merc from now on? No thank you. If I would have known this was coming, I would have saved my hundreds I spent over the past year. If this nerf goes into effect, it's goodbye for good EQ for me. I don't have the time and energy to level another toon to 100 and grind another 6k AA's to make them useful.

This.

i agree......... change the effect of the sk's 2.0 and mortal coil....... anything else kills the class

Oh and another thing.

Since you now granting people XP without doing ANYTHING, are you then going to UNNerf the change to tasks/missions ?

I recall when you nerfed missions, you wanted people to put Work into them to get the XP, and not get them free.
This seems to go the complete opposite direction, where you grant people xp for doing nothing.

IMO; if you still wanna autogrant people XP, then you ALSO have to unnerf the missions/tasks, and remove the
range where you need to stand, so example, I can do a mission in HoF, and have an alt standing in POK, and getting the xp there.

So unnerf range where you stand, unnerf xp in HoT too.

I've just come back from a break and levelled a bard up to 100 with 4k aa, i don't feel I have wasted my time getting those AA. It was fun, I enjoyed playing, meeting up with old friends and making new ones. i certainly don't want those AA refunded.

I will still have many AA to get, and plenty of content to see and do, who knows, I might even have more people wanting to group now they can't kill a whole zone in a few minutes.