EQ2 has about 4 live servers left and one TLP. All their servers are Low with an occasional spike to Medium. EQ2, if you can even call it threat anymore, is dying. I can't see it being anywhere near as profitable.
It would be a nice change for sure to help returning players find groups more realistically. The idea that people will "miss" content is silly. The focus should be on getting players to end game where groups are more likely which will help with player retention. Someone can always go back and work on old progression which should go faster and be more realistic doing it solo if you have out leveled the content. We need to look past our own struggles with old content and our own sense of accomplishment as if others should share these same feelings. Some people would rather trade an emotional response for active game play. Let each person determine their own self worth in this never ending journey.
Can't compare EQ2 to EQ1 for much of anything. My understanding is EQ2 is a much redevelopment friendly code, thereby they can get some better things with less dev effort. As far as heroics go, kind of depends what you want to sell. We don't need to argue about how "hard" it is to level. It is not hard, but for many it is boring & lonely. If you don't enjoy doing really old content in depth by yourself there is no real reward for having to do it. If the Mayong server (And Quarm event 1) 51/50 character creation start was an option on any server past a certain progression point (defiant gear messes it up for progression, otherwise they could have them at PoP easy). This could be sold as part of the next expac or as an account-wide marketplace unlock. The 85 Heroics could be done the same as the 51/50 suggestion above. This would also allow for the retiring of all the current free 85 heroics that were given out. Individually sold new heroics are far more saleable if they are at least 95 if not 105. 105 is justified knowing it isn't going to get updated again for several level cap raises. Don't give away any of the new heroics. It's all $ and $ keeps the game going.
People think 105 is easy mode but its funny because there is no easy mode for 20-25k AAs and likely 30k for some classes after the next expansion. Give them 105 with TDS level gear so they can actually contribute to the group they're in. 85 can group with 110 but they're not contributing to anything in that group until they're atleast 105 with decent gear. We all want more people playing EQ we should all support making it easier for them to get into the end game because that is where most people are. Why block them at 85 with no one to group with ?
I disagree with changing Heroic Characters to anything beyond 20 levels from the top level. Many players work very hard to get to 100, and allowing Heroics at 100 would be just a quick fix for players who are racing their boxes to the top. There is a lot of game to be played at all levels. Why would be a good idea to bypass even more of it?
Many players also worked hard to get to level 85 but we have a heroic character creation at that level. Also I would ask is how many level 110 characters want to group with a level 100 let alone a level 85 (or 90 if you went with a 20 level difference)?
There is such a guild already. Made by DBG called Novices of <insert your server name here>. No officers. Access to a guild bank and guild portals. Able to auto join thru fast quest in POK. So it would not be hard for them to add other requirements like level 100 and autogrant so all those ebayed err I mean heroic characters can play with each other. Sorry forget they are now called heroic and only sold by DBG not other players anymore.
As someone who returned in March 2018 and, from then until now, has moloed 14 (!!) characters from 1 - 70 (filled the slots, killed off a few I didn't like, filled the slots again!).... I agree with this statement.
I've leveled every class to 105 except ranger, Really I think level 100 heroic should be an option, but there needs to be a tutorial like the shadow knight or whatever its called tutorial in wow because while I can play any class except ranger acceptably at level 100 its easy to be lost in the 30 or so buttons you need to learn. Even the level 85 Heroic doesn't have all their buttons out, some spells are ambiguous if you're new to the class and haven't really paid attention to what other classes do. I would like to see level 100 with appropriate gear and add some level 100 quests that give stats as a reward that ramp up in difficulty (give stats as rewards so existing players can go enjoy the quests too and receive the same rewards) If you give the 100 heroic all the quest rewards for the level 100 and lower expansions people will buy it for their main because people are lazy and haven't done ROF or COTF progression
A Heroic character costs $35 in SC. For $35 I want a usable character, and level 85 is as useless as level 1.
Yes 110 can technically group with an 85, but who does? Counting that as doable is ignoring the reality that it is not going to help anyone.
I don't have any personal issue with heroic characters starting at higher level than 85. I just think it would be better if we came up with an idea to make it more fun for people to actually level up from scratch.
To give everyone perspective, I've leveled every class to 110, I also have made heroics I then leveled to max. The following numbers are rough, but should be close enough to reality, to give you a decent idea of how much work it requires to get from 85 to 110. I've simply grouped a level 85 with my main who's a warrior, and counted how many AA my warrior made to make the heroic toon ding the next level. 85-110 85-90 90-95 95-100 100-105 105-110 110-max 85 to 86= 20 AA 20 86 to 87= 32 AA 52 87 to 88= 32 AA 84 88 to 89= 44 AA 128 89 to 90= 48 AA 176 90 to 91= 60 AA 236 236 91 to 92= 68 AA 304 92 to 93= 72 AA 376 93 to 94= 78 AA 454 94 to 95= 85 AA 539 303 95 to 96= 94 AA 633 96 to 97= 96 AA 729 97 to 98= 106 AA 835 98 to 99= 114 AA 949 410 99 to 100=115 AA 1064 100 to 101=118 AA 1182 101 to 102=130 AA 1312 102 to 103=156 AA 1468 104 to 105=160 AA 1628 670 105 to 106=186 AA 1814 106 to 107=190 AA 2004 107 to 108=211 AA 2215 108 to 109=347 AA 2562 109 to 110=533 AA 3095 1476 110 to max=800 AA 3895 800 As everyone can see, the progression gets pretty steeper as you get close to 110. I've also leveled countless toons from 1-85 and I prefer by much to get a heroic than doing it, as it's simply so much easier. I can level a toon from 1-85 in about a day, but it's so labor intensive, and you have to change zones, it takes 4ever to grind the skills if it's a caster, and other problems that are easily solved by going heroic. I think the heroic character could stand some improvements, but it's still a decent start off point for returning people, and people who want a new box to use.
Ok, just saw the numbers look good, but the spacing is wrong. The last row is how much AA from 85-90=236AA, then 90-95=303AA, 95-100=410AA, 100-105=670AA, 105-110=1476AA and to max level 110=800AA.
Agreed. It's easy for folks like me with a bunch of boxes / friends to carry a new / heroic char from 85 to 100 where they can start normally grouping, but anyone looking to start fresh will have a pretty boring and lonely time getting there.
Just tossing a few ideas out here as they came to me. 1. Next expansion should be bundled with a free Heroic character. 2. Create a new Courageous level 95 character that costs twice as much as a Heroic char. 3. Create a new Valiant level 105 character that costs 4 times as much as a Heroic char. 4. Have all newly minted 85, 95, 105 characters auto join a guild as mentioned previously. 5. Have all newly minted characters pre-configured with a UI and hotbars which allows them to take advantage of most of their unique abilities. Have this UI saved somewhere with easy instructions to re-load it at will so when these new players inevitably screw up their UI they can get back to this starting point. Also have spell sets pre-defined for DPS, Buff, etc. 6. <wishful thinking> Create new tutorials for Heroic characters that teach them how to be effective players of that level. 7. <more wishful thinking> Create new missions specifically designed to help these Heroic characters maximize their capabilities without having to spend hundreds of hours of web site crawling and/or combat dummy parsing. 8. Refund up to 90% of your purchase price if you want to sell your new character back and make a new one. (Make it easy to kick the tires so to speak!)
