They're going to announce an upgraded heroic character available for sale with the upcoming anniversary. It would explain, why CoV is so thin on content. If you look at ToV and not having much content that was due to Overseer/mobile EQ app being in development. If, it's not announced the next expansion will maintain the level cap at 115.
At least you put the word speculation in the title. I will speculate now that a level increase will come with the next expansion and that the "thinness" in content will, in fact, be discovered by a team of forensic investigators to have been more the result of limited staff and limited funding. You speculation about the "Overseer/mobile EQ" may be right on. Absent a comment from a dev. we can only speculate. What I might hope for would be an expansion that would offer content for other than the top leveled players, even if only in a small way. Also, an increase in pally DPS vs. live MoBs would be very welcome. I am not holding my breath for either of my hopes.
New heroics shouldn't have any meaningful impact on any content. Heroic would be as simple as making it level 105 and using Cohort/scale armor, and making a balanced no-trade non-lore type 5 aug, auto grant and a disclaimer when purchasing that the 105 heroic is recommended for experience players and keep the 85 heroic available for new players.
Why? What more to there is there than adjusting the level and the items? I don't pretend to know anything about coding video games but I don't see how it could be that hard to change the level and the armor awarded. Autogrant already handles the AA.
Speculation.... usually devoid of facts full of opinion and emotion. The WAYS OF THE INTERNET ARE STRONG
The only reason for upgrading Heroic characters is because of a level increase. Level 85 can group with 115 and it'd be nice if they could continue allowing Heroic's to group with max levels going forward
Yeah I agree with you on this, having a heroic upgrade option that does not allow you to get xp grouping with max level players is not a good purchasing option. The problem with Heroic characters at 85 that I see over & over which will only be exacerbated by the availability of an even higher level heroic upgrade option is the "knowledge gap equation" - this is where any player who returns to the game after a large amount of time away is so completely overwhelmed by how much they need to learn to play at 85 that many simply give up rather than try & slowly acclimate, this problem will be much worse at 100 with even more available AA and combat abilities / spell lines. You could have been a level 65 raiding "god amongst mortals" player in the PoP era only to come back and find that the 85 Heroic is a massive information overload you cannot handle or if you manage it then it takes at least a few weeks to get used to it, 100+ that feeling is going to be a lot worse. One reason we see so many "the numbers are so big they are stupid" arguments is due to the sense of being overwhelmed & no longer knowledgeable about the class players used to think they knew inside out, that shock of feeling like a total noob again is simply too much for them, they can't accept the game carried on evolving while they were away or overcome their lack of knowledge & hence try to justify their discomfort by calling the game stupid, because it made them feel stupid. How do you convince them to accept that they will have a knowledge deficit to overcome and will need to adapt to the game as it is now and do so slowly over time, that their old "uberness" is lost & needs to be reacquired? If we need a "gloomingdeep mines for Heroic level characters" do the devs even have time to build one?
if the next expansion has a lvl increase (which im sure it will) im willing to bet the heroics will be updated to lvl 100 .. it makes sense to have people want to buy heroics so they can group with top lvl peeps whether to be PL'd or just to group with their guildies/friends .. I doubt they would only do a 5 lvl increase to heroics as that benefits no one .. I for one would not buy a lvl 90 heroic for more money if i can still get the 85 one and just lvl up 5 lvls myself to group with my buddies..Unless they just get rid of the 85 heroic altogether. Speculating that they will go up to 100 .. I could be wrong and I probably am
I don't think you realize this, but they already have what are essentially heroic character templates all the way up to the max level, and have for a long time. It's called /betabuff on beta, and automatically gives you a full set of appropriate gear and AAs for that level. I'd be surprised if it took more than 1 day of coding to just copy over those templates to Live.
Making the templates is the easy part, from my understanding of what the devs have said it was never about the character templates issue for them it was about how much help they could provide to a returning player picking up a heroic character and feeling utterly out of their depth.
Speak for yourself, I and quite a few hundred others don't play to finish each expansion the fastest, after all there is no end to EVERquest.
If DBG want to make it easy for themselves to make a new higher-level heroic char, they can make it level 100-105, and skip itemization completely. Just spawn him naked with enough remnants of tranquility in front of the vendor in PoHealth (with enough progression/faction done to unlock the gear). Make the player equip him!
The character creation is not the issue. Its creating content for that new heroic character to get used to his/her class and the game. That is the issue.
Anyone creating a Heroic Character already knows the implications. They are doing it to either catch up to friends, creating a new box or alt, or simply want to experience end-game content rapidly. I predict an anniversary announcement of something like this: Plane of Mischief/Nature has been rediscovered! These two zones offer gameplay experiences and quests for level 115 characters. Heroic Character level increase, with a free Empowered Heroic Character for all currently subscribed accounts and an additional character slot. Logging in an unsubscribed account during the anniversary grants your account Gold status for the duration of the anniversary celebration. Additionally every account receives one free EHC A new anniversary task and raid offering a way to further empower your character using a new luck Charm slot Augment granting up to 30 Luck!
