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

Here's what some folks in my guild have said re: AA change

Player A "The only person this helps is the casual player like me and even I'm not happy about the change lol"

Player B (on this change helping casual players) "I'm not [helped] ...I spent most of my time getting my 3500 AAs now, [and that is made] pointless."

Player C (on being given free AAs) "AAs let us customize our play style. None of us should be equals in that way. Our play style should reflect the AAs we choose."

Player D (on the more recent ease of getting AAs, pre-change) "AAs used to be super slow. I mean I had 600 AAs when I parked my account way back, and that was after 6 months to a year."

Player E (in tells with me) "I actually like grinding out AA...that's a status symbol. Like when you hit 9000...I was genuinely happy for you."

Player A "What about ones people try to avoid like AAs that generate additional hate? What if you don't tank?"

--This is a GREAT POINT! As a necro I NEVER EVER plan to put any points into Spell Casting Subtlety, because I need to keep agro for kiting with my pet. Are you gonna make these changes and tell people how to play? For example, automatically giving a necro maxed spell subtlety even if they never wanted it? Stop taking away player choices. Stop screwing with us. Don't do the AA change.

Player F (upon learning of the changes) "That's still a bunch of BS. I just sat there grinding out 2300 AAs and now everyone is getting everything I've spent the last 3 weeks working on [for free]?"

This is a new forum account for me but started on Prexus in 99. I went to the Kunark Launch party and several of the old school fan fares. Stick to your guns on these changes. Its nice that you are not doing the old time "The Vision" attitude. The voices that will be the loudest are the ones that are not happy. You won't hear nearly as much from the 95% of the base that supports these changes or doesn't have a strong opinion.

I think these changes will be good for the long term playability of the game. There may need to be a few technical tweeks to things like the riposte life tap impacting class roles ect.

Great Job!!!

If we took your damage mitigation away, what would you do then. or reduced timers on much needed abilities. or made them less effective for you to sustain damage.

AFLAC! A big thumbs down on all these changes.

Making weaker/less progressed characters stronger, and higher experienced characters weaker is bad form. Who's calling the shots on this anyway?

just remove Rogues and berserkers beeing able to decap and assasinate on ripost and let that be the end of it, make beam hit 10-20 targets, let headshot be the way it is, and make riposts of SK epic only heal for half or something, still good but not useless...

if I upgrade my system to play over an over the years why shouldn't they ?

Wow 7500 AA's today... obviously a beam killer lol


(Yes, this was just to be funny)

This will go down with many angry people plus happy people. Is there plans to have expansions with more open zones? CoTF is boring! The xp is good but forcing groups in missions is wrong, most people don't want to group our do already if they want too. Keep that in mind. My box crew is a lot better then most groups and groups slow me down usually :\.

I don't understand the reason to roll out mass nerfs at this point in time.

Lets be realistic, EQ is an old game with a population that is inevitability dwindling. Why would you roll out nerfs?

How many customers do they expect to gain by doing these nerfs? To me it makes more sense to keep it the way it is, and just offer an increase EXP bonus to AA grinding. If anything they stand to lose players from doing something this drastic.

when you buy a console game, do you first look for the cheat codes?

If these proposed changes take place as planned, I will quit. I know no one cares, but I have spent way to much sub money and time for SoE to just give noobs free thousands of AA, RIDICULOUS. I dont know if they are reading the hundreds of comments that are negative to this STUPID free AA, but it will SINK the ship, just like the free level 85 SANK eq2, you will SEE. and IDK who comes up with these ideas, plain and simple NOT a good idea.

I agree!

pay to win! pay to win!! Give me the option to buy lvl 100 with max AA's!

I absolutely agree with everything that is said here. This is absolutely ridiculous. Why did we even bother playing this game if all of the effort we put in was for nothing.

You already tried this on the exact same thing of "Heroic Charachter's" and "Free AA" with the Mayong 51/50 server back in 2009.

Less than a year after it's creation Mayong was rolled into Tunare server due to a dramaticly low population.

Though it was very high in population in the first few months.....

The very definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

You keeping dumbing it down , making it easier and easier.

Please give us a Hardcore Veteran Server without your Mercenaries,Defiant gear, Heroic free level 85 Charachter's,Free AA, Vendors with all the Augs from previous expansion's ? WTH ?

Thank you for 14 wonderful years of Everquest.

But this "Heroic Level 85 for sale" and " Free AA" is not the the game environment I wish to participate in after earning all my Levels/AA.

The straw that broke this camels back , after so many straws over so many years.

Cancelling my 3 Gold subscriptions tonite , I dont see any reason to wait for the patch.

Going to go make a level one toon and play in the old world for a few day's as a way to say good bye to an old friend.

i dont know of any console games that you have to put in 1,000+hours to hit the bottom end of the game. if this was years ago i would agree... but there should not be a need to muck through 15 years of the past to play the present. By Peoples reasoning.. If you did play a console game that had multiple titles... You better have played every single prior one and beaten it or else you arent allowed to play the current.

Please don't give away AA's.

Could agree more!!!!! Everyone needs to see this!

The AA will drive the price of krono up even more than it's already been driven up.

I have 4 lvl 95 characters;
Gold Bard
Gold Wizard
Gold Magician
Silver Magician

If that change takes place you bet I'll try to get a krono for the magician for the auto aa plus a month worth of grinding the DPS/Pet AAs he's missing.

I agree with what most people have said about the negative impact of this in regards to the bonus AA xp. Considering I'm at about 2500 aa on my gold accounts, I'll be getting the majority of my important AA over th next 5 levels at a faster rate. If I'm suddenly granted AA I wouldn't normally get and I'm at 4500 or 5k AA, the remaining AA I want will come slower.

The reality is mob pathing is the single most expensive process in terms of server load that occurs. Raiding is far less intensive. This is not something that is EQ specific, I've worked on a lot of games and all have had this problem to greater or lesser extents.