Test Update 11/12/2014

Great looking patch, looking forward to the different improvements.

Thanks again for all you do, devs!

Well, the goal is to slow down xp gain, and by making it that the 90% xp gain is at completion, together with 3 hours log out, will ensure people need a full year to get to 105 with max AA.

Oh cool, I can make some plat by selling adds to missions that I solo.

I actually had a ton of fun doing HoT missions. I ran them 2 boxed, duo'd with a friend, and with full groups. Extra slots were given to friends, tossed into guild and sold. Running them as time trials against my other best runs was enough of a metric'd challenge to keep myself entertained and working on better strategies. And the fact that I could make (4*10,000pp)*5 a night was pretty sweet.

I believe each step completion in HA adds to the total doesn't it, after you complete it it mentions giving exp to the final reward, did they take this out on Test?

I was going to ask that, was the exp shifted from the mobs to the intermediate stages, or to the end.

Does it matter? Since you only receive the xp at completion, even they give you xp credit at the intermediate stages, if you do not do the final hail, you will not get any xp.

Making a myriad of excuses for the production of mediocrity then praising those who produce it while cavalierly dismissing valid criticisms seems to be the "party line". From such comments one might actually come to believe that the current team is comprised of two people who are each paid minimum wage and forced to work 20hr days. You will, of course, forgive the many of us who aren't buying into the spin. What I find of particular note is the number of times a developer has used the phrase "it was an oversight" to excuse this, that or the other major flaw in their creation.

Perhaps I am mistaken but I was under the distinct impression that a game developer actually has some game developing experience, in particular those doing the development of EverQuest. Now if the team is actually comprised of interns and novices one might expect a certain amount of flawed development and, therefore, one might make excuses for their creation. But...how one can continually make excuses for such blatantly poor production is beyond imagining.

It matters if you do the HA, then taskadd people, and they zone in for the exp. If they get the full exp, vs. if they only get the exp they were there for, is the difference.

Well, if you task add someone for the final Hail, in its current form like it is on live you wouldn't get much if any EXP as people above were talking about doing, unless it was changed.

Hey Dev's can shaman get this AA added as well !

I do like the christmas themed character select. Sucks to have skipped turkey day though

So the AFK people need to zone in and stay at zi while the person soloing/2-boxing the HA does it.

I appreciate you letting us know. I guess this is the final nail in the coffin. At least I don't have to keeping coming to these forums anymore.

Gnuff 100 Wizard
Sharma 100 Beastlord
Hummbert 100 Enchanter
Viesturs 100 Magician
Hito 100 Rogue
Fanaticus 100 Berzerker
Quilty 100 Enchanter
Oldcastle 100 Paladin
Travlite 100 Druid
Tenzing 100 Monk

These changes will surely cause a decline in XP potion sales. An ... interesting(?) move...

I said the same thing. However, I still come to these boards out of curiosity. MMO communities emulate real life communities, only in a condensed timeframe.

It's kind of the same as watching a time lapse, or better yet: Homer Simpson going through the 5 stages of grief in less than a minute after eating Fugu

1.) Denial ---- these changes aren't as intended, right? You guys can't seriously be doing this.
2.) Anger ---- cancelling my subs!! My cat cancelled his too!
3.) Fear ---- What will we do!!?
4.) Bargaining ---- How about you only take [this] away, but then give us [that]?
5.) Acceptance ---- Oh well. We didn't expect this game to go on forever, now did we?

Doubtful. Currently you only get the full completion experience if you're present for the all of the step completions. Also, the amount of the completion experience you generate seems to scale with how many Marks of Valor you get. So a step that only adds 3 Marks to your completion reward, such as hailing steps, adds much less experience to your pool than a kill step that might add 100 marks. I expect this to remain unchanged.

Sure. But that's not much different than today. The only difference is that currently, an AFK person would need to autofollow someone present to make sure they're in range of the kill to get the experience. After the nerf, they could remain at the ZI and get almost the same amount of experience.

Facing your fear from a fear brother in heart of fear the threshold. It gives the message you are not the right level for this task if you are over level 101. It's not even obtainable.

First, I welcome the npc that will give bonuses for doing certain HAs. This should encourage people to do various HAs as long as he rotates often enough which HAs he wants you to do. I do realize there are some mobs that need to have their experience reduced, such as the moles in Working Overtime. But just because some characters/groups are able to mass kill in other HAs to accelerate their exp gains doesn't mean all characters/groups need to be slowed down even further than they already were. Wouldn't it have been enough to add the bonus npc and take care of the few mobs who needed their experience changed?

I admit that when I first saw the intentions of these second changes, I was hopeful that the EQ team would take into consideration the individual npcs in each HA and adjust their experience accordingly. Some would get a boost, and some would get a decline. Unlike a claim I read by one developer, there are mobs in some of the HAs that are more difficult than trash in static zones. They hit harder and have more hps. Consequently, they should give more experience than the trash in the static zones.

I worry that experience is a somewhat complicated mathematical routine that even having someone internal run the HAs to calculate their experience will not be equitable to all groups. Did this person run the HAs solo? Was there a full group? Either of those will result in vastly different amounts of experience per person for a set number of kills.

When the experience is moved to completion of the task, everyone will get the same amount of experience, no matter how large their group or how long it takes them to complete the adventure. Solo and small groups were already penalized in that it would take them longer (on average) to complete the HA. At least they were partially compensated by gaining more experience, though probably not more experience/hour. Now they will penalized ever further. I don't think that's the right thing to do.

Finally, and I think others have asked, did the person going through these HAs kill only the bare minimum of mobs? Or did they act like most real groups and clear extra mobs so that they could move around? I hope they accounted for the extra mobs most/many groups will have to kill. Otherwise it will again throw off their experience numbers.

The changes to the way HAs works bothers me not at all, but I may be a odd duck.

One of the coolest dudes in Everquest... Nobody I know of has been more friendly and helpful to new and returning players on Bertox, than this man. It'd be a real loss to the community.