Per test patch: Mercenaries have been simplified. There are no longer Tiers of mercenaries, only Apprentice and Journeyman ranks. - - The Apprentice mercenaries are the former Apprentice Tier-V while Journeyman mercenaries are the former Journeyman Tier-V. - - You must have an all-access account in order to use Journeyman mercenaries. This includes temporary all access gained through using Krono. Seems pretty plain. If you don't pay then you get the lame versions. And if you do pay you get the old J5
Wow, this would mean that All Access accounts get journeyman mercs from conception. Like in the tutorial at level 1. Woot!
So, I guess the "No Heroism Without Fear" task becomes totally irrelevant now? As do the quests in SoD? If you're a gold account, that is.
You still get those combinable augs as quest-rewards and paragon-gear as achievement-rewards I assume? So it is still relevant...
There will always be people who are upset when someone is given something that they had to work for rather than be happy people have things a bit easier. "I had to do x and I turned out just fine" Narrator: he wasn't fine
Well the quests in SOD are part of Rallosian Battle Figure and progression thru SOD itself so they are not wasted.
Well, I was talking strictly about the merc unlocking part, but yeah...people doing them in era will still get something out of them I suppose.
I mean that is a joke right lol.. between the well everything, EQ has been pay to win, basically since it went free to pay.
I wonder. Have FTP accounts ever been able to do the Journeyman quests? If so, will they still? I have always been All Access, and have never really paid attention.
No. All access has always been required to use a Journeyman merc. They can DO the quest, they just can't use the result unless they're all access.
Nope never have. F2P and Silver could only ever quest for and use Apprentice. It used to be that Free2Play accounts can only have Apprentice mercs, and then only up to Tier 2. All Access are the only ones that can use Journeyman But they don't really say if the new Apprentice will be A1 or A5 or whatever. And what will the Journeyman be? J5 right off the bat? Prob will just have them level with the player as they do now
From your first post with the quote of the changes it seems pretty clear that they are keeping the best tier for each of the mercs which is A5 and J5.
On the test server, the available mercs have either A5 or J5 stats, depending on what you chose when hiring it.
For people who had actual free accounts the jump from a1 to a5 won't be that bad actually. This otherwise cleans up the merc purchase ui a bunch.