Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

I think the difference in our thinking has nothing to do with your old TV or my dead battery. It seems you would rather argue that no one deserves reimbursement of AA. Which in reality doesn't concern you because until they add new ones your AA chase has been completed. And good for you. You did way more work than I plan to. From where you're sitting, I'm surprised you even have the desire to post, other than to argue. None of this really matters to your class or AA count.

As I said before, this isn't going to make me quit the game. I'll get an hurt for a bit and then get over. I'll still have a gold account. I'll still play my ranger. And I will always think that when SOE tells me my game is no longer working (swarming, walls, blah) before it's end of life, I will trade it in and buy their new one, but I better get my core refund.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

I hear ya. I wasn't getting responses from the devs so I went to test. I received all AA up through HoT. Something like 7347AA from the grant and after spending my reclaimed AA I had ~7988. I had no more AA to purchase beyond glyphs. I still had 2990AA to banked. I would venture to guess the difference between underfoot and hot is prob more than 1000AA. Which means at 91, I would still have too many banked and nothing to spend them on until I level. I don't know what the right number for reimbursement is, but it is not zero. And if you received those AA back you already earned to reinvest, you could further progress your character as you see fit.

I think one problem here is people are confusing AA with Character progression. people who havent had to earn level 85's in quite awhile are just seeing the quantity and not the actual power increase. level 85;s with aa to underfoot gives the character the base amount of aa to properly advance in content tuned for players to have those aa. the aa autogrant enables progression not takes it away as some are implying. This is an extension of an overall theme and some legitimate concerns impacting players who lose the bonus for aa's they already have ... has been addressed. sorry but the only viable progression at 85 is too level. you have 4 expansion that have yet to be played all requiring their own flagging and achiveements. establishing goals for your character to do as opposed to grinding aa;s you most likely would of accumulated had you been a main is not unreasonable. multiple times i have come back to play this game but had no desire to swarm kite enough aa to do the content at an acceptable level to make it viable to level. this autogrant changes that for players lin my situation and also ensures toons ar ebalnces at a certain point when they start prioritizing their aa advancement. This isn't done with little thought.. back flagging and making other timesinks void at 4 expansion back has been successful and is structured under a similar model. I dont mind SOE imposing their own minimum wage for players.. you still gotta go out and get your levels and you still have alot of aa to earn.. and people who already bought their aa got use out of them when it was relevant.

Well, you know - after being gone for sometime; I just came back to EQ two days ago.

And I just now read about this - and well, it totally derailed me from playing tonight. I was thinking about the implications for me - as my character just hit 51.. I have other higher levels chars, but I wanted to play this one.. so..

I guess I'm glad I just came back - had I been playing for a couple months now - and probably primarily AA grinding at 51; that would have been a total waste of time.

But I think there are a few more implications that I didn't see anyone mention. (Of course, TL;DR on 175+ pages.. )

One is - now from level 1 until level 85 (is it for the 'granted AA's'?) - it will be completely tedious. Straight up level XP only. No reason to AA grind, actually - no option? Well, I read something about 'opt-out' - but what would be the point? If I opt-out and earn AA's at lower levels - if I later take the 'grant' - then all that time's totally wasted anyway - so the option to 'opt-out' - well, isn't really an option, lol. I dunno - it just felt like a 'break' from tedium if you could AA some instead of just pure XP at 51...

I kinda of looked forward to the AA 'grind' as it were.. why? Because I can head to any zone in my level range - even if it's not a hotspot; and AA grind - and see progression for my character. So while it does in fact "give AA's" - it takes away options from 51-85 of doing anything other than pure XP grinding. I suppose you get them anyway; but my goal wasn't an "easy MMO" when I came back to EQ. Sure, it's still harder than the others - but less so now...

Honestly; the best 'answer' I could think of for the AA issue - might be to up how many you 'earn' per ding. So that when you 'ding' a "single" AA - instead of just giving a single AA - why not have it give 5/10/20 AA's along with a hefty XP bonus on AA: if they are older than 4 x-pacs old? Then I can still 'earn' them.

Overcast, you can opt in and opt out as you level, so if you want to grind some AA each level you can do so and then opt in and get the rest. Opt out for next level, grind some AA etc.

Yes, but then later - if I take the grant - what would have been the point? Maybe I'm missing something here too... I'm re-learning most of this game as it were..

To add: I guess... since every single player gets them - in a way it feels more like they are being 'factored out' of existence - really. I mean they *could* just wipe them away, give us the 'bonus' stats at the tiered levels and not even worry about AA's unless they are 4 x-pacs, or less, old. Functionally; that's what's taking place I suppose - so it would make zero sense to earn any AA, unless it's one that falls within the last 4 x-pacs.

So opt out and grind AA. The choice is all yours. Sometimes in life and play one has to make some decisions. It's a game, after all.

So grinding AA's isn't tedious but just grinding levels is? That makes no sense at all

tbh im on the fence a bit here with this.

I tried the changes on test just earlier after they fixed it auto granting HoT AAs also and for someone like me who had just over 2.6k AAs it gave me 5.7k AAs.

My problem mostly is that i spent a lot of my time carefully spending my AAs on what i need first. This grant merely filled in all the stuff i really didnt use (innate strength and all those kind of things) - im a necromancer

im level 98, and its my main character and im a returning player - its kinda cool theyre helping us catch up but i feel that now without the AA bonus , when i hit 100 im now having a longer time to get myself the actual class AAs i need to be more effective

On the flipside though, i've been boxing and levelling up a couple of other characters - an 80 shaman with 50 AAs and a 74 mage with about 80 AAs - what an amazing difference its going to make for me getting my box team setup a lot easier

Two sides to the coin i guess.

Im surprised at this much hate though, alts and newer/returning players will be able to get high level faster meaning more grouping, more people to recruit for raids, more active community.

How can that be a bad thing? You'll still know and spot bad players regardless of their AA count

Actually I think you illustrated quite well why accepting the auto-grant should be done with some forethought. I will be exhausting my 4K AA bonus before I accept the auto-grant and that will only be to back-fill the ones I didn't feel like wasting my AA bonus on.

I do think thats probably the way i'll do it on my 98 necro (and maybe my 95 zerker),

Atm on my necro i could do the 2x dailys in about 10 mins each - and that'd be about 70+ AAs. Probably gonna work hard on getting to 100 asap, AAing then autogranting

However on my shaman and mage, i'll be taking them AAs hah

Do not like these changes at all, nor the abuse of power! standing by our opinion of what is being done to everquest, and best of luck to all who continue to play!

Druid

• Increased the amount of targets affected by TBAE to 12 (up from 5) would be great =x lets work on that lol

Maybe it would be a better system if players got to choose which abilities are autogranted and which aren't?

Pros: I got to level 100 with a ton of AAs.

Cons: Now I have no clue what to do.. I can farm HAs for Latent Ether.. then what? I havent been max level since Planes of Power, and that was a bit more end-game friendly.

I am in the same boat. Level 100, maxxed aa's, 70 banked. Essentially, this is the "you've won the game" situation. There really is no point in doing anything with him now.

Achievements? Why bother? For points? What do points do for me? Nothing. Unless you are into the epeen nonsense. No thanks.

And this is why I shake my head at the people racing to the end game with being pl'ed or beam kiting or whatever. Why? You want to race to the end of the game and be bored until the next expansion with a raised level cap, and more aa's? Silly.

So now, I have the alts. I play them outside of raiding because getting XP on my main makes no sense at this point.

My main and my primary alt are both 100 with tons of aa's. I've been in this situation before, but in those days the latest expansion still held my interest. So far this expansion part 1 and part 2 do not. I don't expect 3 or 4 to excite me either. Doing the daily's was mildly interesting for an hour a day to fill out the aa's I really had no interest in, but now sony's gonna give those to me for free. I no longer do the daily's. EQ is now a fancy chat room where I can talk to friends.Too bad EQIM was never revived. It would save logging in to the game.

I'm torn on what I am going to do,

Mage is 100 with 8K AA will only gin 1308 all of which I could do without, but doing that doesn't give me many to work on and keep me interested n playing the game - therefore leaning to not bothering on this one or leaving it until more AA I want is released.

Monk not made yet (will be a new class for me) I'm considering using the auto grant, I guess it will be down to how much I understand the class or where I am playing when I hit 51.....and if the old grey cells remember about the auto grant.

The majority of aa's are passive. meaning they dont impact the way you play but how effective you are. as far as the activatbles its really no different than gaining spells, tomes, clickies.

If anything autogrant aa's will give you a much better feel of how to play your toon since you have all the abilities designed for the class every ding. there's very few classes that perform solo as they do in the group. lower levels outside of box crews and even to some point in box crews are barely scratching the surface of learning all aspect of their character.

on a side note. im not sure how high aa toons at max level who already have all their post underfoot are really impacted by this change. consider any aa lines filled are ones they have bypassed filling over and over.

You can still earn AAs and gain something from the opt in. I have a character who had over 6k AAs at level 100 and was able to buy lots of AAs. Now if you decide to opt in at say level 85 then you are going to have few AAs to earn, but each level brings you more levels of AAs. They only grant all the AAs up to and including Underfoot so you have all the AAs after that as well.

So in the case of my level 100 (who just got to level 100 after being left at around level 92 for a while) she had not purchased a whole lot of the AAs that were granted and a lot that were. Even with an AA count higher than what would be granted, she still gained a lot of AAs she had not purchased on her way up.