Hey Kindred. Don't bring your "I read a book so this is the way things should be" mantra here. I've done the progression and frankly, I don't wanna go through the forest and "explore" my roots again. I just wanna steamroll through all the boring garbage and have a character that I can use right away when I'm paying for it. I know it's not all roses and flower petals, but neither is EQ. We have evil races. We do evil things. BTW, it is a good series though.
I agree that heroics can be a good thing but I would suggest they stay at a level that can group with highest current level (which is still doable, at least until next level raise expansion).
These characters make them money. Of course they will update them, eventually, to encourage people to buy them. The trade off, however, is in subscription time. They want people to buy them, but at the same time, not quit three months after because they've reached 110. The end game content in this game, in case you haven't been paying attention for the last few years, is poor. All expansions going from 100 to 110 were half expansions by the standard of the old days. The last full size expansion was RoF, and that stops at 100 exactly. So giving a player a 100 character puts them directly in the half size expansions and then the most obvious path takes them through like just three zones before they're done, since everyone and their brother goes to the same public zones. I still think they will update them soon. Probably with the release of the next expansion. But I can understand why they haven't been in a hurry to do so, with how short the road is from 100 to 110.
Question is, should it be 95 or 100? 105 is too high, imo, and not necessary: the real grind is AA and progression, levels go relatively fast. I think it should be 100. A heroic toon lvl 100 would be able to level up in say FM, and feel an achievement as very hard content becomes easier as AA accumulate. 100 would make FM the zone of choice for returnees, and could help group formation and community building. Smart returnees would grind 10k-20k and do progression before going all the way to 110, in what is one of the best expansions ever. At the same time would the level gap be so small that certain classes (clerics, bards) could group with 110s. Heroics should also have a default guild, lets call it The Returned, a DBG managed cross server guild. Some design should be done on how to avoid workload for DBG; probably it would be a guild with no officers, only available to heroics and other lvl 100+ toons with autogrant+ AA. They should also hae a cross server default chat channel like the newbie forum.
I agree with raising heroics to a more appealing level. Newbie characters can be autoguilded in PoK, copy-paste this coding into The Feerott where the heroic newbie questline is and <The Returned> could easily be done. An alternative to higher heroics would be to make the "heroic newbie" questline give insane XP as if it were Gloomingdeep the higher. Do the quests (and learn the stuff they are supposed to teach you) and you end up at level 95. Or just create a Hardcore Gloomingdeep that gives you 85-95, this higher tutorial could be accessed by any 85-95 character.
Creating any kind of new zones/gear/content would be time consuming and the small dev team would have to dedicate a not-insignificant amount of time to it. Just change the 85 to a 95 and autogrant up through VoA. That's really it. It doesn't give away too much, but it won't take too long to level to a relevant level and gear up. I'm going to be honest, I mostly use heroic characters for the augs. As a silver/f2p player I can't use the majority of the game's decent augs, so I rely on the heroic ones to fill in the gaps. I'd like to see them boosted along with a level boost, but that's me just being greedy and unreasonable. Just raise the level slightly.
I don't see any reason to make heroic past level 85 at this point as they can still group with the highest level of the game for exp. Making heroic even higher means less time for players to get a chance to experience the game prior to be max level.
Something I'd be curious about, and I have no idea how to find out the numbers, but people seem to be working under certain assumptions about who buys heroic characters. I'm assuming that most are players who have been playing for years and just don't want to slog through the lower levels and grind basic skills in order to function for the 14th time. Others seem to working under the assumption that heroic characters are less experienced players who just want to get to the end game quickly and without having to play the game as much. I have no idea which one is closer to the truth, but here's where I'm coming from: I originally quit back in 2004 with characters in the 55-62 range. I camped everything for the monk 1.0 epic, then went back and redid the sashes, headbands, and robes so I could have two click effects. I did all kinds of insane things like pointless faction grinds as an Iksar and other tedious stuff The Hard Way™. I came back around the time CotF was launching and moloed my way up to 100 on two characters. I had a lot of fun doing SoD progression and getting SoF augs and stuff! The 3rd time I tried to level a character from scratch, it was kind of tedious. Raising the level just removes some pointless grinding and makes the characters more relevant out of the box. Though I'm not super invested in the game anymore, heroic characters have kept me from getting bored and wandering off, never to spend money on this game again. Leveling a character up from scratch is very rewarding and I think everybody should do it! There's great stuff along the way that's much more satisfying to do at an appropriate level. I've just done it too many times for it to be any fun anymore.
Most heroic characters I've seen are people who want to avoid the headache of starting from scratch but are players who understand the game. Roll a new character, get them to level 10, look at their available buttons. Heroic them to 85, be overwhelmed. Very few new people would use this route without some serious friend support without quitting due to the complexity.
They would make tons of money by upgrading heroic to 100 but maybe they don't wanna make money who knows. someone said eq2 gotten a couple upgrades on heroic. Is eq2 the better money making game? I have no clue as I never played eq2 stayed with the original since 2000. Andarriel
I don't think it needs to be done, it's easy enough to level up from there (if you have friends or are socail). I don't see a problem with it though. At 85 the toon is already complicated knowledge/button wise. Raising it to 100 would not increase the knowledge check I think. Buttons have changed so guides may need updated but it's pretty close to the same, just with new and bigger buttons.
I agree with Gnomeland above. It depends on the content for the level. My Heroics are having a great time in HoT. I can imagine the same for RoF if they were born lvl 95. But any expansion beyond RoF will be no fun to start in. If they just upgrade by 10 levels, they'll need to upgrade again soon. Best should have been upgrade to 100 when max level is 115. But TDS is definitely not an ideal expansion to upgrade to. Well, unless the lvl 100 Heroics are expected to do RoF and CoTF content at max level. The reason I make Heroics is not because I want them to be max lvl asap. As a casual, I find max level content no fun anymore. So I want to play in fun content again. HoT fits the bill. If Heroics are born into TDS, then no, I won't make Heroics anymore.
This may be a bit trite and not to split the difference here but... If you had two classes of Heroic characters, one starting or upgrading to 85, same stats, gear and most importantly to DBG - price. The elevated heroic starting at 95 would add expansion appropriate starting gear and basic add-ons with the option to buy into the premium mount and zone transfer item to boot. Also comes with roughly the same upgrade price as buying the original premium expansion. You lamers that feel that 85-95 or even 100 is some sort of extreme accomplishment worthy of its own participation ribbon would be allow to jump to higher level content until you decide that buying a fully equipped 110 Heroic is the only way to go because "your bored" with the current content. Yes, it would be great if DBG would budget some marketing money and larger expansion(s) to EQ1's extremely loyal player base but that is a business decision I am not in charge. TGIF its Friday cause I must look like "grumpy cat" today. - Coa
Personally, I see Heroics at lvl 85 as a mid-level version of "Time Locked" play. Instead of "Time Locked" playing in Classic EQ, I am "Time Locked" playing in the fun expansions of HoT to RoF (can even go back to SoF and SoD to do some of the fun quests too).
I'd prefer them unlock lesson of the devoted as something everyone gets like Origin AA. Keeps people coming back daily to earn a decent chunk of AA daily. Yeah, moloing an 85 heroic can be a pain but a daily Lesson can help tremendously. Teek Hot zones currently really blow and can't reasonably be expected to knock out super quick like the older ones pre-change. Not opposed to improved heroic character options either, Live or TLP would bring DBG a decent bump is cash, but TDS expansion isn't an ideal landing spot and 105 is too close to cap.
