You might as well lock this again, because some people never learn that not to stop attacking others.
Funnily enough I did not whine in my post on page 7. Merely made an observation which however you like it is true. Don't hijack my post by using 'whine etc'. If your going to make a point, then make it as I did.
I mainly molo. As of today, I'm over 50% into 115. I've completed the majority of Partisan and Mercenary on my own. Now that I'm over 50% into 115, my AA's will be maxed out quickly. While the xp is pretty bad per kill, there's a lot of things you can do to gain it fairly fast. Get the task and go kill spiders in Velks for example. Burning a lesson, you get 4 or 5 AA's per kill. XP is OK considering the state of the new expansion, with lesson burn of course. Check out your collection history. Each one you complete, it's an automatic 2%. Look in the Bazaar for the missing pieces if you must. As you get more AA's and better gear, the mobs die fairly quickly, especially in the tier 1 zones. All hope isn't lost. XP will come as long as you work for it. Stuffing yourself in a corner and killing 10 mobs for the day will not cut it.
Reaching much ? If people wish to place arbitrary limitations upon themselves in game .. then cry about how no one wants to play with them because they refuse to actually play with other people.. Thats not a content issue.. That is a them issue ..
I never said to make xp worse. What I said holds true no matter how badly the xp gains per kill are. Faster you kill (translates into more kills in a given time frame) which mean's faster XP gains (in said given time frame) Faster kills means faster xp .. no matter how badly the xp per kill is..
I've literally read where people said they got 0.5% xp in 30 minutes of grinding. At lvl 112, the xp gains per kill (least in Tofs) was 0.067, which means in order for them to gain only 0.5% in 30 minutes of game play .. that roughly translates into 7.462 kills in 30 minutes. The xp gains you obtain in ToV (or any expansion) is a direct correlation to what you put into it. Meaning every 24 hours , we get a free double xp gains earned per 30 minutes. If people are not using this (and I can name TONS .. who "forget" to use it) thats xp left on the table.. For myself I use every option available to me at a given time. Lesson, the potion's we get (free I might add) with the purchase of the expansions.. DB station cash store potions (of all kinds) which I tend to purchase to help increase xp gain productivity .. Way I personally see it is simple. If you do not help yourself .. why should anyone else ? I've personally used no less then 3 shared potions for grp's I've been in where we would sit (on the weekend because of jobs) and just grinded in places like ToFS or Kael or Velks .. GREAT places to grind I might add. And in those time frames we were able to literally gain upwards of 65% of a level per grind.
I must admit that I am intensely jealous that you were able to molo through ToV Partisan and Mercenary. Were you able to do that at level 110? With which character and merc? AAs at the time? Was your gear better than Faded Snowbound? No idea how you were able to do that. As I said though, intensely jealous.
Tomorrows patch does an across the board change on ToV name spawn frequency. So you think they will make them more common? Glass half full guy then. Bravo! Again no deterrence against botters. They are fine with taking weeks bots never sleep. The only people this expansions grind exp works for are those who can put inordinate amounts of time in grinding...... oh what that is what afk botters do!
I am not sure if it is so much a "sizeable departure from prior expansions" than it is a return to the original expansions (Ruins of Kunark to Omens of War). I frequently relate ToV's xp rate to grinding in Lake of Ill Omen from Level 18-30. The playerbase has indeed been spoiled by faster xp by more contemporary expansions - at least from The Serpent's Spine on.
While they are adjusting spawns (Margidor being most egregious), I suspect named will still be common in comparison to TBL and other expacs. We will see how it turns out. The funny thing is you leveled your original argument without a definitive understanding of the upcoming patch. How are weeks (as opposed to days) to churn out Level 115 characters not a deterrent? Botters will get spooked for getting caught (higher chance of observation) and/or feel like the threshold is too unproductive for them.
For perspective, .05% to .067% XP per mob is close to Coirnav XP. Coirnav is the worst XP server in existence at the moment for those who don't know. All the TLPers know that such a slow rate of XP is not desired by the masses. Just saying...
So let's look at your argument, that this is a return to earlier expansion XP rates versus my point about Expectations due to prior expansions, below I have highlighted the expansions you mentioned in blue & the ones that followed it in pink: 1.1The Ruins of Kunark (2000) 1.2The Scars of Velious 1.3The Shadows of Luclin 1.4The Planes of Power 1.5The Legacy of Ykesha 1.6Lost Dungeons of Norrath 1.7Gates of Discord 1.8Omens of War (2004) 1.9Dragons of Norrath (2005) 1.10Depths of Darkhollow 1.11Prophecy of Ro 1.12The Serpent's Spine (2006) 1.13The Buried Sea 1.14Secrets of Faydwer 1.15Seeds of Destruction 1.16Underfoot 1.17House of Thule 1.18Veil of Alaris 1.19Rain of Fear 1.20Call of the Forsaken 1.21The Darkened Sea 1.22The Broken Mirror 1.23Empires of Kunark 1.24Ring of Scale 1.25The Burning Lands (2019) 1.26Torment of Velious the "original" expansion experience model you allude to lasted for five years, after that there were fourteen years of the "spoiled" XP model. Given that the "spoiled" xp was active almost three times the amount of real world time than the "old" xp model I would say that the "spolied" xp model is the most dominant one & therefore the one most players would consider the norm, the "old" xp model that you feel ToV returns to is about a quarter of the time EverQuest expansions have been around for prior to ToV. Therefore I do feel that it is a sizeable departure from prior expansions & that I have a well reasoned argument as to why that is the case due to the relative amounts of time involved. Addendum: Even taking from your example as TSS, the "original" xp model you could argue lasted 7 years & the "spoiled" xp one still lasted almost twice as long at 13 years.
Admittedly the one thing about this expansion is that it doesn't really have hard to get to spots behind tons of see invis except for maybe the tower getting keyes. That will discourage some from afk botting because they can't remain hidden away. The slow grind exp rate is more likely to increase the chance folks will try afk botting if they hate doing missions though. They are being pushed into it. *shrugs* Short of grinding giving no exp I don't see it helping against afk bot groups. And if they ever went that route I would be gone from EQ. And they don't really even lose money from me I have 5 lifetime accounts. So wouldn't be a rage quite just one from having the game change too much from what I played for 20 years. And it wasn't a gradual change it was pretty abrupt.
My comments were rough estimates. One can weigh it from a quantitative (number of expansions) or qualitative (expansion model) perspective. Your statement "sizable departure from prior expansions" was not qualified. It, therefore, implied that ToV was entirely unprecedented (which it is not based on the experience of the original expansions). I am suggesting that the devs may have decided to go back to the old model (which has precedence) and that is wholly within their discretion. Edit: Devs may have weighed the "nostalgia" or "hardcore classic xp" arguments for this development cycle especially after receiving feedback from both Live and TLP.
Players with a tendency to break the rules - and know-how - are already doing so. It is a matter of getting caught. We can agree to disagree. It is my opinion that the slower grind rates helps to expose and/or discourage botters.