280 AA Boost Bauble?

Hiya,
Before going crazy with the no-sleep routine this weekend, with the x2 exp and all, can anyone confirm please. Are the rumored 280 AA baubles coming with both standard, and CE editions of the expac? And are they rumor or fact?
Many thanks!

Cratoh wrote:

if you bothered to check to see if there was already a thread on this topic you would have found this post from a dev located here http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=523503
Dexella


Community Relations

Joined: Jun 27, 2012
Messages: 396
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Hi,
The AA boost is a feature of the expansion, so both versions will receive it.
A character must be level 90+ in order to use it.
Also, the token increases your character's AA to 280; it doesn't automatically add 280.
So, for example, if you're level 90 with 100 AA, it will add 180 and bring you to 280. If you're level 90 with 275 AA, it will add 5 and bring you to 280.
Hope that helps!
~Dexella

I need 23 of them please

Cloudrat wrote:

*sends santa a letter asking for more* (after all if someone can get it for you it's santa, if he cant no-one can)

So we can be top level on all toons we have and have even less in the game to do? Sounds just wonderful...

salty21db wrote:

There are only two boosts in the expansion, so you can use it on two of your level 90+ characters. It does not apply to every character on your account (unless, of course, you only have two...).
~Dexella

salty21db wrote:

Sweetie, you seem to be missing out on a lot the game has to offer if you believe that. If I had all of my toons given level 95 and 320 aa I would still have more to do that I will ever be able to do in a lifetime. If they never added anymore content I would still have plenty to do.
Look around you see what others are doing, take a day or two and just visit houses on the leaderboards and try to figure out how some of the fantastic architecture was built just using bits and pieces. Your fellow players have parties visit each other plan events and much much more.

does seem like a rather unusual solution. Why not just let people level past 90 without the required aa's?
I dont think i will use it, feels a bit cheap.

It's very simple why they don't let people level past 90 without the AAs. The game 91+ is developed and balanced around the power of a player having 280+ AA and gear that is equal or better than the very easy to get WL timeline armor. Just step into skyshrine with less and see how incredibly underpowered a character is and you'll see. If they just let you level to 95 with 100AA then you would find all relevant content to be much harder and you would be a hindrance in any group. The bauble is there to give everyone the opportunity to have a taste of 91+ without them being a hindrance if they want to join a group.

not having good enough gear or aas is a quality of most mmos i have played though, its just a case of learning through playing what you need. being told you need 280 of them to keep leveling does kind of remove the 'alternate' from alternate advancement.
It's a quirk in the leveling that is going to grow in relevance if/when new expansions require you to be higher level.

salty21db wrote:

or you can, ya know, not use it.

Alternative does not mean optional. In the past it may have been true, but if it was truly optional it would be called Optional Advancement. It is an alternative way of improving your character, and just like you need to have 89 hard levels before you can ding level 90, so too do you need 280 alternative levels to get 91.

Regolas wrote:

This. A thousand times this!

At level 80, a raid guild was lucky to put out 80-100k DPS. Now at level 92, DPS classes are expected to put out 500k DPS each with overall raid DPS often hitting 3 million. That's a 3000% power increase in 12 levels. Solo players have seen a similar power boost in their gear.
The 280 AA limit is unfortunate, but necessary. Without it, it's impossible to create level 92 quests or dungeons and balance them for one character with 130 AAs and another with 320 AAs.

feldon30 wrote:

Umm you don't have to balance for the toon with 130 aa any more then you have to balance raid zones for the guy wearing grey handcrafted gear. They don't get to go lol .
The level is what keeps you from being one shotted by red mobs in an area.

Cloudrat wrote:

But what stops a toon with 130aa trying to go along with a group (or raid) and letting everyone down? Until they start putting hard aa reqs to zone into areas (like how they have level restricted zones now) they're going to keep trying to get in.

I guess they could theoretically have set the dungeons to require X amount of AAs. But even just balancing solo quest content is tricky with such a wide range of gear and AAs, let alone player skill.

Guilds should be happy to have this. Now if you can find another unfortunate victim to roll up a dirge or illusionist you can get them raid ready even faster than before.

Not a fan of the bauble myself, since it cheapens the whole process and is potentially a slippery slope to more "shortcut items" like this making it into the game. It seems somewhat unsatisfying to just have things handed out, but I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised, given how much the "instant-gratification" part of the playerbase complains on these forums. It probably wouldn't surprise me if we had some people complaining that it wasn't "1 bauble per character" ...

At level 92, people are just expected to have ~300 AAs. Also, it's pretty clear that AAs are not the future of the game but Prestige AAs and those are automagically earned by leveling. It made sense for AAs to be a big accomplishment in KoS and EoF. It makes less sense now.