GU 100: Experience Vial System

They were meaningless leveling wise, however a whole lot of us spent 70 levels or more (counting alts) running through those zones and they represented the only TRUE nostalgia that was added to the TLE server. And as you said, lets be honest, nostalgia is what sold these servers.

I actually disagree with you about spirit shards.Not because the mechanic itself was bad, but because of how people reacted to it. All they did was continue the boring 'stand on the wall and grind for fear of dying' from EQ1. While some groups & guilds did push their limits, there was an awful lot of people who refused to do anything they couldn't be reasonably sure of succeeding at because they didn't want to chance not being able to get to their shards (even though it didn't make THAT huge of a difference & the penalty faded pretty quickly). The death penalty now is completely negligible and it wouldn't be horrible if it was actually had a little more sting, but the last thing any game needs is more things that reward those who take the least chances.

There isn't really much more challenge that I have seen on TLE than standard servers. Time sinks yes, challenge, not so much. The challenge isn't in all the time you waste getting from one place to another. The challenge is in figuring out new things, which we aren't likely ever going to actually see on TLE.

What for one is "Quality of Life", is for the other one a disaster.

Let me make some example.
Crafting:
At release, crafting was actually a playstyle.
You had to make subcombines and get other subcombines from other crafters.
So there was planing, interaction with friends to get subcombines from other crafting professions.
It took also a lot of ressources to level.
Also the crafting process was dangerous (forge) and mana management was needed.
For rare crafting I have seen people with a healer/regen beside the crafter so that they would not loose
the rare (get a item with lesser quality) if they missed some events.
Because it really took time to procduce stuff and level a crafter, not everyone could level a crafter in a couple hours to max.
The result was, that crafted stuff had a value, because market was not flooded.

What had happen:
No dependency: the death of crafting guilds. You did not need anymore the help of another crafter to produce
your stuff.
Reduce damage of forge, mana used: you could craft while watching tv. I mean it was not that hard to craft before, but it needed attention and with bad luck of events you could actually run out of mana, without regen.
Exp increased: Everyone could level a crafter in no time.
Mass Production: Value of stuff like Boxes etc. was destroyed. People could craft 100 strong boxes in 10 seconds, market flooded.
Therefore the playstyle of a crafter was actually gone, since everyone could make the stuff and it took no time to do it.

For some people all of this was "quality of life", since they actually did not want to craft, they just wanted the endproduct
as fast as possible with no investment of time and ressources.


Transportation:
Travel through Nek was once dangerous and you had to pay attention, especially when you had been low level.
But it created a special atmosphere and was like a little adventure.

What had happen:
Less Aggro mobs for saver travel: cool very easy now to travel through Nek.
Griffin: peace of cake now, just fly it
Bells: no need for the griffin anymore

All quality of life for the people who want just fast travel form A to B.
So, why stop there, lets make it so you just travel with clicking to the point you wanna go on the map? Would that not be even more "Quality of Life"?
At the end people don't have to travel anymore they just port to every point in the world, why waste time to go to bells or ride a mount? Quality of life or just boring?


Group Debt:
Of course debt is annoying, but was it not so that the group did pay more attention for each other?
And if a dps-class did go several times full dps at the beginning and died, they would not stay long in groups.
Maybe quality of life, maybe just playing with less attention. Watching tv while playing etc. if they die they get rezzed, no biggi.

Ok you could say all was just a time sink. So why lets not make all the solo mobs one shotable, since its also just a timesink because they are not hard to kill?
What should daybreak do? Put all the "quality of life" stuff also into the TLE server, where will be the limit of "quality of life"? What would be then the difference? We have actually 6 server with all these quality of life stuff, but only one TLE server. Let at least this server be like it is, for the people who like it this way, you have 6 other servers with all the "quality of life" you can have. You can also level look at 70 on these servers ;-)

I'm just going to say I agree almost entirely with Kekox.

The one area on which I moderately disagree is spirit shards & group debt, & even THERE I don't wholly disagree; IMO, the mechanic itself was not the problem, but like almost *every other problem* with MMOs, the "problem" was caused by lazy &/or jerk-wad players. I'm not going to fault a *mechanic* for something that PLAYERS can't, or won't, wrap their heads around because they're too lazy or jerk-ish to do so.

This game has been consistently dumbed down. It *used* to be that we EQ2 players prided ourselves on playing a REAL MMO that made you think & put forth effort, but now, with all the Candyland amenities added, we might as well just go play WoW, where at least we'd have sufficient players to form a group for a low-level dungeon that hasn't yet been neutered into agnosticism. I mean heck, we'd be playing a vastly inferior game, but at least Blizzard appears to know how to use a marketing department.

I love EQ2. I generally refuse to pay for it, because I consider it's administration to be, at best, mediocre. IMO, this "XP vial" concept is just more of the same. DBG devs & other employees, I am terribly sorry to have to put it this bluntly, & I don't say this happily or with the intent to offend anyone, but, you guys need to SERIOUSLY step your game up

Anyone on Test able to see the prices and capacities of these things yet?

Check out the Chronicles of Elyria website - take the time to read the dev journals, if you're looking for something new, you will be impressed.

HALLELUJAH BROTHER(SISTER?)!!!

Clearly you did not play a provisioner at release.

It really took HOURS just to make a stack of food. Remember way back in the day you only made one at a time and no one wanted just the standard food, they wanted the best. Which of course took the most subcombines.
Did provisioners get paid for the amount of time they put into a stack? I didn't feel it to be so, so eventually I would only make food for guild mates and friends because I was the guild provisioner. The prices people would pay on the broker were no where near enough for the time I devoted to making the items, especially since I was a 50 provisioner before I was 50 adventuring. There were times things were up for coppers over the price to produce them.

I know all the guild's alchemists had a much larger bankroll than I ever did. Not only did nearly everyone need what they made, people deemed the stuff they made worth paying a good amount for. They didn't even have to make the end item to make money. My sage (was level 11 adventurer for more than a year, just crafted and harvested on her really) and had earned enough to get a horse before my main, actual played provisioner character and the combines were so much faster.

Maybe it was the server we were on maybe it was because I was so low in adventure level I couldn't effectively harvest fast enough to actually make money (I sure couldn't afford to buy raws off the broker, then my food would sell for less than I paid to make it). I don't know but there was no money to be made as a provisioner as far as I could see unless you bot crafted and it certainly wasn't fun to have people asking you to devote at least a hour to make something for them and then offer you pittance in return.

Which by the way was absolutely rampant during the subcombine/dependency era of the game. Botting crafters and botting harvesters everywhere.

I really do wish they would have put crafting back to how it used to be on the TLE servers so the people who loved it that way so much would have somewhere to do it and there would be a very clear compare and contrast between the two systems.

Second picture...

"When filled it will allow you to CLIAM the listed items".

First thing I see after months away from this game... *Cries*

This is something that has always bugged me, because it is caused entirely by pi**-poor game design, and unfortunately it has become the norm. The problem is the leveling curve. Do two easy quests and level up to level 2. Do three easy quests and you are now level 3. Three or four easy quests later and you are level 4. Yet, at level 90+ you may do a long, intricate quest with 3-4 steps and see your experience go up by a whopping 1% of a level. Killing a ^^^ boss mob will not move your exp bar enough to even be visible to your eye. It seems ridiculous that this fatally-flawed system has become the norm for most games.

A flat leveling "curve" makes far more sense, and it would give all levels more meaning--more significance--as well as keep good low-level content from becoming outdated. An easy level 1 quest completed at level 1 would give 1% exp, while an easy level 90 quest completed at level 90 would also give 1% experience. Hard quests done on-level might give 2-3% regardless of what level you are at. The amount of experience I give is just an example, but it would remain constant through the levels, based on a percentage of a level, regardless of what the level happens to be.

What this would do is make it where a player would spend just as much time leveling from 10-11 as they would leveling from 90-91, and it would mean you would actually see people playing lower-level content, as they would be spending some real, honest-to-God time there. Why the gaming industry continues to use this stupid, flawed system is beyond me to explain. Flatten out the exp curve if you want to see people in starting areas and actually playing in lower-level content.

Hey, I wrote that from New Orleans, you are lucky it didn't say clam!

Oh goodness, no. I like being able to fly past the lower levels. I've spent time there in the past. Once you (I and others I know, collective you/we) get 10 or 15 or more alts, you don't really wanna be there anymore. I'd rather spend more time at the end game new stuff than grinding to get there.

Besides, if you want to play this way, you can. You simply disable some of your exp, grind out your content to your heart's content, and turn it on again when you're ready to move on. You CAN play your way.

Forget my god damn pledge, I have to step in to say a few things:

First off, there are new blood, every day with only a handful that remains. I was a new blood at least two years ago and I meet younger generation of players all the time.

While I agree that Everquest really needs to step up their advertising, your forgetting that it's not the game that's dying: it's the guilds and empty servers. That's why DB is trying to merge servers to keep the game populous. Plus there as so many guilds out there vs the ratio of solo players that the only way guilds could get in new blood is either by merging with another guild, convince someone in a dead guild to leave it for their guild, or convince a solo artist that they can't survive without a guild. I don't think we need new blood, we need stronger guilds and less solo players.

The purpose of these vials is to eliminate the need to PL someone the HARD way (Dragging them through Skyshrine or some high level dungeon), save up experience to PL Alts, and new products to put in the broker. I glad they invented this because I can never forget the assassin who would beg players on Everfrost to help him PL to max because he didn't want to spend money on a heroic character and he thinks all the best part of the game is reserved for the strongest players. That is crap; might as well let those morons who think we high levels get the best stuff learn the hard way.

what pledge? i'm more interested in that than the xp vial system lol

This pledge, happy?
Still how long it takes to mentioned about the last major thing they are adding in the game. I was disappointed when they talked about their treasure chests (Like we didn't know how they work already).

How many hours to go to see GU100?

Any announcement of the down time yet? I heard it would be all day.

The vials are running pack of 3 for 500DBC, pack of 5 for 800DBC & pack of 8 for 1200DBC. A bit too expensive for what they are IMHO.

With the 10% discount it ends up being 450DB for 3...720DB for 5 or 1080DB for 8. That's about $1.50, $1.44, and a $1.35 respectively per vial. It's not too bad really seeing as a member you get basically 3 free every month.

yep one time use vials Daybreak does your marketing department understand micro transactions or not. it has been shown so far they you don't' understand micro transactions.

I bought a 3-pack yesterday and used one of them. I received messages at first that experience was going into the vial, but forgot to watch for the message as I progressed through the new zone. By the end of the day all three vials were gone from my bags. I have no way of knowing if they auto-consumed.
There is supposed to be an bubble icon on the Experience Bar for the vials, but I don't have it, so I have no way to claim filled vials.There needs to be more than one way to access the vial window - from the character window, or from the EQ2 menu would be good places, devs.