XP Changes Post-Patch

It's been a couple weeks since I did one of my standard responses for this subject, so here it goes. "We want a community, that levels together and socializes. NO BOXES, IT RUINS THE GAME." Any reasonable person, which DBGs is, would take from that you want to spend MORE time leveling. Quit the , play the server and have fun. I really don't want to reroll yet again.

And i'll go ahead and provide a standard response from the "actual" reasonable people:

Please increase the exp rate to be equal with other TLP servers. Why does this server have the fastest unlock time yet the slowest exp rate? Why have you never given an official reason for this having to be this way with the dragons long since dead? It doesn't make sense and we'd like an answer as to why it MUST be like this. Your original "we don't want the dragons to be killed in the first two days" no longer applies.

Now prepare for the shills to come running in "But i'm a reasonable person and I don't want faster exp! I like killing 1000 skeletons to reach level 2! Its so much fun to be a contrarian and always push back against the grain! There must be something wrong with all of YOU! Oh I love feeling so unique!"

kinda funny a nobox server yet all the folks I saw leveling extremely fast had 1 or 2 accounts or more outside helping them destroy stuff , nobox my every person I spoke to seemed to be running two or 3 boxe,s its just silly turn off the nobox code for 1 machine but keep the no 3rd party code so folks don't need to run 3 computers to be competitive. btw rage and lockjaw need novote timetable because folks I spoke to as well are all logging back over to vote no to try to mess servers up even further ...

Didn't even know there was an unlock vote atm lol guess can go to lj to vote no.

Until everyone stops rerolling, buying a ton of exp pots and "proving" that a new server is what the people want. That is what we'll get. The reason phinny is popular is because people want to play on the highest population server. If they opened a new server with boxes next week, it would be the new most popular server. If they opened one 2 years from now, only with ragefire's server rules, guess what the most popular server would be....

If they open a new server with box permitted next week there would be more popular but with how many different persons instead of accounts i'm not sure.All the big boxers would go but not sure those that got only 1 or 2 accounts would follow.Would be interesting to see.

Took my group of Warrior, Enc, Necro, Wizard, Cleric, and Shaman at Undead tower 9 hours to go from 51-52...

Dunno if this is even worth it anymore...I foresee a ton of people quitting this server over the next month...

Nah, the people still playing are addicts. You could make it be 40 hours a level and they'd still do it.

you can do 4 hour levels easy with a good group post 50, at least through 55

Ah deja vu. I remember when there were "a ton of people weren't going to renew their subscriptions after the first month" due to xp rates on release. Yet here we are, top populated EQ server. Now it's the same for Kunark release. What's gonna be the excuse with Velious release when the level cap doesn't increase?

if it took you 9 hours you were killing abysmally slow or doing something wrong... just did 51-52 in sebilis in like 4.5 hours with a sub optimal group

that may be true for some, but not all... the majority of my guild quit/switched from ragefire because of the mega-boxing/botting/asshattery. the true box and raid instancing drew us to this server, and with the exception of the slow xp, most of us are happy without a desire to go for the next shiney.

I left Ragefire to play on Phinny when it started for two reasons:

1. True box
2. Raid instances

It has been great. I wouldn't go back to Ragefire for anything.

I do believe that the experience rate could upped a little more though. The 50 to 60 grind is real. It was real on Ragefire, and its going to be pretty bad with the Phinny exp rate.

The one thing we had going for us on Ragefire was the exp rate in Burning Woods that helped get you a starting boost in to that 50-60 grind. I ground out 42 to 43 in Burning Woods today in a group at the Giant Fort and it was horribly slow.

I won't be going back to BW because the exp nerf bat beat the crap out of that zone. Sad because it was an awesome camp to level at on Ragefire.

Several people have answered the question you ask (why so slow) I doubt you will ever get a true answer from DBG but the answer is so they can sell a ton of exp pots. I mean who does not know this?

I can confirm this in my case at least. Unless you are in a good group or optimized guild group then it is going to take you a LOT longer than 4 hours per level. Most of us are stuck in PUGs and lets be honest those are not normally the greatest. 6-10 hours from 51-52 sounds a lot more normal.

I am not complaining just saying if you did 51-52 in 4 hours more power to you! I was getting about 10-15% per hour in OS jail with semi decent chain pulling with LB->even con mobs mixed in. With xp pot burning the entire time.

A level in a day? And people are complaining, maybe you should go to live you can be 85 with a click of a button.

Confirmed, the only reason ever for slower XP is to sell XP pots. I found this secret report that confirms this conspiracy.

Ok here's the thing: the average player won't be playing 9-10 hours daily. That's 2-3 days if you have a life. In addition, that's 9-10 hrs of xping. Finding a group or starting one is half the battle.

What would definitely help would be increasing solo XP to what it's supposed to be. Having 0 benefit from killing mobs solo doesn't make sense. If I can't find a group I should be able to kill solo mobs (whites/dbs) at 1% a pop. In addition, yellows and reds should be giving me 2% because I know I'll have to med afterward.

Currently it's the same exact XP as a full grp: it's 2 mobs per % for DB/white and 1 mob per % for anything yellow and higher.

If you're a quading class you would use your entire mana bar to gain 4%... Talk about not making sense.

Since DBG wont flat out come out and say it, I will.

1. To sell xp pots.
2. So people don't blow through instanced content in a month and unsub
3. To keep people in the xp camps as long as possible, increasing the gear and making it easier for krono spending crowd to get gear. If the heavy play time people are only raiding and selling the 10+ krono gear, Joe Onekrono will now be able to gear out his level 24 inkie necro in a month. They had to do something, because the magebot armies aren't going through 24-30 krono a month like before. The average "hard core" is more than set in krono to keep is one or 2 or 3 accounts open for the life of EQ.
4. The constant whining on the forums before included many many many many many many many many many many many posts complaining the game was too easy, and it's not like "back in the day.". Some the very same people that made these posts are now it takes 6 hours to gain a level. Back in the day it was 12 or more. And that was if you could find a camp. I guess, like so many of the 6 month voters and stuff, they don't really know what the hell they want until they actually play the game. They took these people at their word. Now that the server still has an unbelievably healthy population, they aren't going to change it wholesale.

The worst xp grind in EQ has ALWAYS been 51 to 60. After you get to 60, you don't need to level again until PoP, and don't need ANY xp for an entire expansion. Let's say it takes you 8 hours a level, times 9 is 72 hours to reach 60. That leaves you 12 days to raid, in era, if you level 1 hour a day AND wait until you are 60 to start raiding. ZOMG HARD MODE. Most guilds would be hard pressed to drop Trak and Gore with 72 level 55s, but there are plenty of targets out there for the level 55 crowd, and that increases exponentially with Velious. You don't have to be 60 to enjoy either expac's raid scene, plus CT and Inny and Naggy and Vox are still worth killing, as are sky mobs if you don't have all your quest pieces.

I personally hate the xp rate, and I hate the no box code. I am here only because Ragefire can't put 200 people in auction channel prime time hours in Kunark. When Velious launches, I will go back to Rage and see what it going on, since I only saw a magebot army a hand full of times, and have seen way more about training, KSing and ninja looting on Phinny than I ever saw on Rage. If they aren't fielding a healthy population, there is little chance the server will be healthy come PoP. That and a 6 month time line, regardless of the xp rate, is stupid, so I am hedging my bets and playing on Phinny for now. The main reason I don't like the xp rate is because I usually have to wait up to 15 minutes to find a group and then run another 10 to it. On rage, I just port my group where I want to go and start killing. As I am only level 32, I am going to have spend that free 500 station cash on the three rank 2 xp pots every month to get to 60 for velious, when the raid game really starts.

I know. It's not like this server was *specifically* marketed toward grouping and socializing.

Oh, that's right, it was.

This is *literally* taken right from the Phinny announcement. Literally:

Clearly they were NOT joking!!! It's right there in black and white: "You'll Need Them"!!!

XP on this server is not only slow, it is HEAVILY slanted toward grouping. By design. It isn't that there is an overly large group bonus (there has always been a small group bonus), it's that the solo experience is HEAVILY penalized / capped. Absolutely.

One could argue that this, combined with the fact that it is a true-boxx server, is a one of serveral significant factors behind the success of Phinny.