DBG, people will buy exp potions no matter what the exp rate is

So why don't you set the exp rate to a reasonable amount so that you retain more month to month player base? Seems simple enough. You're shooting yourself in the foot.

I saw that xp buff icon on agnarr on all xp groups. The expensive 50% pot was causing some weird behavior in AE groups.... people would log out to conserve time on them if they didn't have mana to regen. But I'm not sure how effective that really was.

Bottom line, the pots sell. There's plenty of levels and AAs to get from classic to RoS. No matter how fast the xp rate is, more is better.

Its the same few people over and over in these forums complaining about xp. Here's what you can do.

- Play on Coirnav and deal with it
- Play on another server with faster xp
- Stop playing Everquest

The xp isn't THAT bad. The server has been out 2 days and some people are just about 50 already. Also, there is no way that you know how many xp pots Daybreak sells.

You're right I don't know the number of pots they sell. But I've played on all the prog servers and here's what I CAN tell you:

* No prog server has ever had exp this bad.
* In all the prog servers, in any given 6 man group, you'll see at least one dude with an exp pot.

Right now I am choosing not to play on Coirnav, because I don't like the exp rate. I'll still tell DBG how I feel, because I would have liked to play on Coirnav.

one of those groups is streaming and at the moment basically asking themselves why are we doing this to ourselves, lol.

So, yeah, like this cohort that is super hardcore expers will probably both burnout and not really enjoy all that eq is. The people complaining are the ones that want a sustainable game where their friends want to enjoy playing with them.

spot on... coirnav was going to be an aside for me... i knew it would be a temporary eq fix, but they literally did nothing to make it appealing to current players.

And with a 1 month heads up, 0$ advertising budget, you can be guaranteed this was a server geared to current players.

Phinny was worse to start, and then the same until GoD.

It was fine there and will be fine here. I complained on Phinny about how it would kill the server and I was wrong, the server was fine. Coirnav will be fine. It is smaller than Phinny/Agnarr, but I kind of like that, might be easier to key. It is still, and will likely stay, plenty big enough to be successful.

If it truly is an issue and people are abandoning the server left and right I"m sure DBG will make adjustments in the near future; but I don't see that happening. If the hardcore players can get max level in 2 days or so it should take a casual player 2-3 weeks to do it. That still gives you over 2 months to play the expansion at max level.

And just for the record I am only level 5 so I will be one of the ones that takes awhile.

I remember on the old forums, what an outrage there was that XP potions even existed. People quoted John Smedley saying he would never introdude microtransactions in Everquest, a few months later EQ had XP potions.


The issue with TLP for me all comes down to the same thing.

The more money you spend, the more you advance.

You can spend on XP potions, you can spend on Krono, you can spend on 6 box computers/set-ups.

And this wouldn't be such a big issue IF the advancement of people who were not willing to spend that kinda money, casual players, wasn't purposely made into a rather horrrendous experience.

Casuals are actively punished on TLP with slow XP. Little to no access to loot camps dominated by boxers. Little to no access to the economy on the servers since they don't spend money on krono. Little to no access to grouping itself a few weeks into launch since everyone using XP potions and boxed characters is well ahead, leaving them behind the curve. etc.

Just the mere solo experience on TLP is being actively punished. The XP punishement for not killing yellow / red cons and killing blue cons instead, is horrible. The incredible XP bias on Phinny and Cornaiv to yellow / red cons, gives boxers who can kill yellow/red cons, a massive advantage over casual players with smaller groups or solo who kill blue cons. Casuals aren't even aware of the insane XP bias TLP have towards yellow and red cons.

Killing a blue con a TLP gives you a fraction of the XP you get compared to killing a yellow / red con. TLP are a brutal punishment towards casual players.

Please reduce the exp rate. If you don't, people will get to max level too fast and burnout and cancel subs. See, I can do it too.

Candystore, your arguments are mostly fallacious. It seems like you are noticing some small issues in isolated circumstances and magnifying/extrapolating them. Your statement about loot camps being dominated by boxers holds little water. With very few exceptions (GEBs, ex), there are enough picks to go around. Twice yesterday, upper guk squire was camped but we found an open camp after /pick'ing, and once we just did scryer/warden instead. The horror... And these box teams actually bring item prices down and make the items *more* accessible to solo players, not less. Lastly, a lot of boxers play only 2 toons and will frequently party up with another boxer and/or grab a couple solo players to fill out the group. In a lot of circumstances, you are able to join up with a boxer to do things that you would be unable to if they were a solo player. I know it's easy to see 6 mages running around and think that is the norm, but it isn't.

I may be having a really dense day. This is satire... right? Please tell me yes.

I don't buy XP pots, and usually buy 1 krono somewhere at the start of my first character, just for some spending cash. It really doesn't make much of a difference on Agnarr, since level cap is 65. You can easily get to max level, playing casual, in a month or two mostly. Since the server content stops after ldon/loy - I am in no rush to get there. To me, Agnarr, is an alt-o-holics dream. I hope to see it last for quite some time, since I have no desire to play most of the content after those expansions (maybe some OOW or Depths-ish would be fun as well)

Nothing satirical about saying yellow and red cons yield a disproportionate amount of XP on TLP. This negatively impacts solo players or players in small groups, casual players who tend to fight blue cons.

Blue cons give a disproportionately low amount of XP on Phinny and Cornaiv.

This is one of the explanations why some people end up being level 40 by now and others level 10. The con of the mobs affects XP way too much.

Everyone with some experience with phinny is well aware of this phenomenon, so don't play dumb.

It's normal that yellow and red cons provide more XP than blue cons, it is not normal how much more they provide compared to blue con mobs. This is specific to phinny and cornaiv.

How you get satire out of that I have no idea.

I think it's satire, even if you insist it isn't, because I played in beta, then RZ at launch, the SZ when it launched, then later on Tunare, then even later on Fippy, Ragefire, and now Phinny. I have not played EQ nonstop since day 1, but I have a modest amount of experience playing EQ from almost angle, whether that's casual or raiding, whether it's life or progression, whether its role-playing or PvP.

Blue con mobs have always given garbage XP when compared to yellow or red mobs. This is not a new phenomenon. I do think DBG could make better decisions about XP on TLP servers, but I think you have some really odd arguments.

Personally I'm curious what the actual XP percentage is vs Live. Unless it would really warp things, I think a logical formula would be:

(Number of Unlocked Expansions) / (Number of Total Expansions) * Current Live XP Rate

This would let the XP at launch be very slow, and then proportionally ramp up as a server approaches Live and would also mean not having to adjust or rebalance XP periodically over the lifetime of a TLP, nor trying to fine-tune launch rates. Maybe it wouldn't but I'd like to see those numbers compared to what's actually going on.

But saying that blue cons give less XP than yellow or red cons, so the XP rate needs to be increased, doesn't make much sense.

There are also pickzones at every level now which I can speak from personal experience helped tremendously on Phinny (I know they have been nerfed somewhat since, though). Sleeper/Combine did not have these, Fippy/Vulak did not have these, and Ragefire/Lockjaw didn't have them at all levels until after the initial rush had ended. I really do think that counts for something.

The XP rates if you fight yellow / red cons is fine on TLP imo, even on Phinny and Cornaiv.

The XP rate of blue con mobs on Phinny and Cornaiv is not fine, it's horrendous.

This disproportionally hurts people who are already at a disadvantage:
-solo players
-players who don't multibox or don't easily find groups
-players who use smalller groups that can't handle yellow / red cons

Someone might argue that you are 'supposed to group with 6 people', that's a great idea for the first few days on a TLP, after the first week the server population at the low-end crashes. Every casual player that is a bit behind, or every new player on a TLP, gets disproportionally affected by having low blue con XP.

I've found that dark blue cons give you roughly 1% per kill solo, while yellow/red cons are 3-4% per kill solo. Light blue, or teal, cons give you .33% roughly. It has been this way since early days that I can remember, are those numbers not roughly the same on those servers? (I play only Agnarr)

In all honesty... go play black desert online for a month. Try and grind to 61 and then come play eq. You will have a new appreciation for how fast the xp is here lol

Legit on bdo good xp is like .5-1% per hour at 60 and significantly less past that. It’s terrible so eq rly isn’t that bad

A lot of these complaining posts are by people claiming they won't play on Coirnav and are going back to Phinny and Agnarr.

DBG has your money already. If you play on Coirnav you're subbed. If you play on another server you're subbed. They don't care.

Man are we spoiled these days. Phinny had the worst xp rate of any progression server to start, and it was still significantly faster than the original game.

Do people not remember hell levels?
Do people not remember class/race xp penalties like 40% for wood elf bards or troll sks?

In the original game, it was expected the average player would take a full YEAR to reach level 50.

When Kunark launched, a really good xp grind evening would net my rogue 3 blues in the high 50s. That's about 12% of a level. My goal (playing a ton) was one level a week.

On Phinny I've easily maxxed out 5+ characters every time an expansion launches.

Not to mention how much more powerful characters are now. In the original game, a full group did best pulling a steady stream of blues. Higher cons slowed killing down so much they weren't worth it. On Phinny I 3 box yellow/reds with ease.

The original game didn't have xp holidays, or xp pots. Then factor in naked corpse runs etc. etc. etc.

We have it VERY good now, and it should be this way for a nearly 20 year old game but it doesn't need to be any easier. EQ now is super EZ mode already with regard to the design of the game. This isn't WoW.