Start selling boost tokens once a server gets to 70, or so?

This seems like it would potentially be simple to implement. Somewhere in the lvl 70 expansions unlock a token that you could buy in the shop that takes you to the max lvl of the server you're on or max - 5 lvl's. Good idea for catching up imo.

I know you won't see this, but I'm responding anyway:

This is illogical, and you already know why. There are no Heroic 100s on Live servers. People have been offering to ship crateloads of money to DPG, and it still isn't happening. I would personally buy a couple of Heroic 100s tomorrow, but no such luck. If we can't get the dev time for that, where do you think Heroic 55s and 70s will come from?

The only chance of making this happen is if players do the work (for free) to spec out exactly what each class/race combo should look like for each Heroic level, and then send that proposal in writing to DBG. If you are volunteering to lead that project, you have my full support.

Just rip off some high-end magelo from 2 expacs prior to the heroic entry point.

Or if its an oow heroic full pop class gear and pot or ep filler for the rest.

Bam.

None of the existing Heroic 85s come with raid-drop gear, it's all T1 group gear. You'd better be prepared for huge arguments over what, exactly, is BiS group gear for PoP. Devs won't even look at any proposed configuration set if it doesn't have an established player consensus. And I wouldn't expect them to consider any proposal that allows players to buy things that require progression steps to acquire in-game. If it turns into a P2W argument, there's absolutely no chance it will happen.

I think he did put his proposal in writing, and logically if they made 100 heroic toons live servers would also get them, he just tied it to a tlp expac for... Tlp servers!

Why do you need to go through and spec each race/class combo individually? Full set of level appropriate defiant gear and whatever AAs are auto granted for the expac. Done.

Of course there is. Sell a krono, and buy gear. Then work on AAs. Get cheap upgrades from guild raids, that have lower end gear for cheap dkp.

No, someone literally said it can take 20 kronos. Kronos are 15 a piece right? So, my math was wrong, he was suggestiing it could cost 300 dollars

I clearly said TLP servers when they get to 70, so thats at omens So, the amount of time, and price would be relatively the same since the economies of TLPs at 70 arent much different.

Guess I should have been more clear, but I think most would assume I was talking about me hiring a person who PLs people for krono, not that they would be in control of my character. I dont see many people allowing someone to have their account info for this reason.

Yes, I COULD ask guild members, but im not the kind of person that likes to ask for things from people, especially to spending multiple hours helping me.

Defiant gear is obsolete at 85, and useless at 100. The entire gear progression system works differently from 85 onwards, which is part of the reason they're balking at doing any new Heroics past 85. Plus top-end Defiant gear is actually significantly OP at 70. It really shouldn't be dropping in TSS yet, and that's 75. (It's interesting to note that devs have locked out most of the Hero's Journey achievements on TLPs until SoD, because the rewards are stat-equivalent to various levels of Defiant gear, which all drop routinely from the global loot table starting at TSS. D'oh!) Gearing needs to be class-specific, and in certain cases that also ends up being race-specific as well.

AA auto-grants are still bound to the four-expansions-back rule, which means your new Heroics will be crippled if they follow that same rule. Change it to two expansions back, and you'll have a riot on your hands from Live players all shouting P2W. If TLPs were to get an auto-grant two-expansions-back rule, those toons would be locked out forever from transfer to a live server, whether or not a player ever actually used an auto-grant. Big problem. Now I could see them adding such a special rule to another new TLP next year, so only that server would be locked out of Live transfer, but you have to configure any Heroics you sell on the marketplace to work on all servers. That means you have to go through the AA list class-by-class and determine what would be a "typical" AA selection by a player who grinds it out to that point.

I don't think you guys are looking at this from a financial aspect.

Daybreak can do the following:

1. Change nothing and people continue to buy krono to pay for plvls. This costs them no overhead and, assuming your numbers are right, DBG has 1-20 krono sales for per character that catches up. If we take half the max we have 10. Krono are roughly $18 USD. That means they make around $180 USD for someone to get krono to get a power level. All of this is with zero additional overhead.
2. They offer the upgrade options you suggested. They put in a lot of developer time and have to either add more people or put new expansions on hold. They now make significantly less on a power level (again using the suggested numbers). They also lose a lot of people who quit because you can literally buy your levels and/or gear on a TLP from the company that makes the game.

I honestly don't see any advantage for DBG in this suggestion. Also remember that TLPs don't usually have a long shelf life anyways. You are basically asking for gimme buttons on projects that realistically have a 1-2 year lifespan, or more precisely, additional gimme buttons that will take a lot of additional developer time for a small gain or even a loss.

Agreed with Gnothappening, there’s likely not enough financial incentive for them versus work required. Although, there’s already a template for a Level 50 of a class that they use for OMM, and then the 51/50 characters from that server I can’t remember the name.

51/50 template used for the Quarm Event Server already exists, tweak it a bit you have the 55 one

85 Heroic exists already had equivalent to Tier 1 group gear from House of Thule

100 Heroic is going to be made but no actual plan in place or schedule right now to make it but it is on the radar of the team to create one. It can use Tier 1 group gear in much the same way that 85 Heroic did.

Level 70 can just use defiant gear to start off with, that's plenty good enough to get a leg up into group progress at the point I suggested it gets introduced in SoF.

It really isn't all that difficult, all it needs is some time set aside and I know the team is small but this is a long term suggestion for what could be a long future for TLP servers bolstering the income of this game, it wont recoup the cost right away I know that, but over time I believe it will more than pay for itself.

Added to that I do think this will make retention of players better & increase the likeliehood of returning players not being put off quite so much by the prospect of catching up after having fallen behind some.

I think they will lose money long term because they already have krono and people use krono for the services you are listing. Adding in a way for people to not buy krono to do these things and it cost less doesn't seem to be like a winning plan.

You are also forgetting the backlash on TLPs for people being able to pay to win. With krono people pretend like this doesn't happen.

Choices are good though, some portion of the players won't ever use powerlevelling or object to it on principle, the Heroic Upgrade route negates the need to do that at level 85 already & arguably reduces load on the servers in the process, making it easier & cost effective to boost a character rather than feeding the Kronolords is something many players would opt for I feel,

Either Krono or a upgrade boost in both caes its Darkpaw getting the money from either and the possibility of reduced whining about PL groups lagging up the deep etc sounds like a net benefit to the players on TLP servers to me. The Majority of the Kronolords are gone by 70 at the least so only the level 55 heroic might put any real dent in the krono sales and even then those characters will still need gears as the template they will be in is just group level stuff, plenty of room for them to need better gear, it could very easily end up being a win win with both upgrade boosts being sold & krono sold to gear up those upgraded characters. I don't know for sure, neither could you, but I think it is very much worth exploring.

EQ is a MMO. That's how MMOs work. Make trades with other players. "You help me with X, and I'll help you with Y." If you're already in a guild, problem solved. If you're being a loner and not working with your guild, that's a separate issue.

I get what you are saying and it is possible it could make some money, but I think overall it loses money. By the time people are getting level 85 toons, TLPs are dead anyways, so that has zero impact. They would have to charge an arm and a leg for the boost to offset the lost krono and experience potion sales. I don't know about most servers but on Mangler people were drinking 75% potions like water. Those things are like $15 a pop. Also, they do lose the subs from the people doing the power levels. That in itself is probably 50 subs a month. I also think you are underestimating people's desire to pretend. I don't see ready made boosts as a good thing. Think about this, how many of the aradune crowd are karening it up whenever they see someone getting a power level? How many of these people do you think would quit once EQ allowed you to just buy your way to the end?

As for people crying about the deep being laggy. If you are a regular group and trying to exp in the deep, you already fail at EQ, so some lag isn't really that big of a loss. Deep is good for a few spells, a VT key fragment, and a shrink wand.

Mangler is the only TLP in it's 70s atm, Agnarr is at 65, Coirnav is at 75 and Ragefire is at 85 so somewhat close, but not really. I'd be highly surprised if the price of a PL across all 4 servers was even close.

Even comparing OoW Coirnav to Mangler Coirnav isn't a fair comparison since Mangler has easily double the population Coirnav did at that time.

Defiant only up until Intricate starts dropping in TSS

Hardly OP at anywhere close to max level, this is group level gear from PoRish era.

But even if the Elaborate defiant was dropping which has a rec level of 70 (so cap minus -5 levels which is a decent place for a Heroic to start, they need to be able to join up and help, not be fully BiS)

Thats not even as good as the T2 Raid armor from Omens of War

If you're raiding TSS with armor thats not even as good as OoW armor you aren't going to be the MT and you'll likely die, alot. Not even close to OP.
Even the Elegant Defiant which has a rec lvl of 80 (and remember that in TSS the cap is 75) isn't amazing for that era

Compared to the raid chest from TSS

So really starting a toon at lvl 70 in full Elaborate Defiant gear would allow them to participate w/o dying multiple times per encounter, but every piece of gear that dropped, even in last expac's raids would likely be an upgrade. Which is the point, its starter gear, it gets you going but gets replaced immediately.

As far as AA, 4 expac back auto grant is more than enough to get going and be useful. By TSS that gets you the bulk of the first few ranks of what you're gonna need and gives you enough room to grow that you aren't instantly buying your way to max bank AA.

TLDR: A lvl 70 boost with full Elaborate Defiant Gear and only auto granted AA avail in TSS would not be game breaking and would be a great way to "catch up"

Now will it happen? Probably not, Gnothappening (I see what you did there) brings up a great point that it would probably cannibalize krono sales from people who use professional PLers and the amount of effort required is probably not justified.

You're only looking at one slot. A complete set of Defiant at any particular level is >17< slots not counting weapon(s). Only five of those armor slots are simple rare drops, the others are either ultra-rare loots or must be vendor-purchased. And those stats add up. Which is why devs cut off the drops in TSS at Intricate, even though TSS is a level 75 expansion. I am already on record as saying there shouldn't be any Defiant drops at all in TSS, because the lower-level drops trivialize the new player content (one of the best parts of the expansion), but that's a separate issue.

Say we go with Elaborate. It has three separate wrist pieces with different focus. So you've just made your "standard" Heroic template class-specific right there, not to mention it could be a matter of strong player preference. I'm sure I could come up with other examples if I thought about it more.

Also, I think it's a mistake to look at any standard templates from a raid perspective. The players who want to raid will be the least likely to buy a Heroic upgrade, because theoretically they would already have a guild option to PL a new main or an alt. The 85 Heroics primarily get sold to returning players who are only interested in more casual play following group content progression. Make your Heroics so strong they can go directly to raid progression, and you're taking away half the fun from those more casual players.

AAs: If we follow the current rules on Live servers, a new level 70 would only get auto-grant up to PoP (four expansions back from OoW). If you count backwards from TSS, you're giving these players current level 70 AAs (from OoW), and that's where you'll get a P2W argument. If this were to happen at all, which I seriously doubt, it would be better not to auto-grant anything, and instead give the template a specific amount of AA points to spend at the player's preference. The 85 Heroics don't work like that, so there would be additional programming involved.

I'm seriously not trying to be a wet blanket here, but the pivotal argument is the same as what I've tried to present to all those people who want to add dozens of new AoC's: The developer time simply isn't there right now. I'm not holding my breath to see any 100 Heroics within the next 12 months, and those would be the first the devs work on, because there is overwhelming demand for them.

This thread. LOL.

What defiant pieces are vendor bought? And of course you'd fill slots, I only compared the chest pieces because I wasn't really planning to do a complete breakdown of every single slot and the chest is typically the bigger/ more sought after part.

Defiant gear was made by the devs as a catchup mechanic, which is the real reason why they capped it at Intricate for TSS, because they want people doing the end game content for gear not grinding for random defiant drops. So they let the low level stuff drop..to catchup.

Why would live servers care at all if a lvl 70 heroic had OoW AA?

I'd be surprised if the number of people who would join a mature TLP, pay for a boost and then have 0 intentions of raiding and only being interested in group content was greater than 1. People for the most part play TLPs to raid and to kill the dragons/gods they never got to 20 years ago.

The entire point of your post was the devs don't have time to make heroics. Fine. They probably don't, if they did though the rest of your arguments don't really stand up.