Darkness Dawns comes early...with more!

We will have to wait and see what they mean by this, but when I read the announcement, I took it to mean it would be some of the expendables that you couldn't recover otherwise. Xp pots, perhaps. There is no use to anyone of the veteran rewards you would get as one per character (vitality refills, mistmoore crags house, etc.) so I hadn't considered those things might go up for sale. It would defeat the purpose of the yearly reward system if they gave you the ability to buy the unique things with tokens in advance of earning them, because when you finally hit 5, 6 or 7 years, you wouldn't be getting anything useful. I seriously doubt those unique items are what will be available....but, nothing with this team ever surprises me.

This entire discussion will look hilarious if the veteran rewards offered are simply various Potions of the Wise.

You are reading something into my words that isn't there. I came from eq1 and have had paid accounts and never left or stopped paying.
What I am saying is that you have something that took 8 years to get then someone else should be able to get it in 8 years too.
I was saying there should not be things that people cannot get ever because they werent here sooner.

In the back of my mind was mostly having to wait a year to make frostfell decorations

I thought the same thing last night. No one knows what will be on there yet but has a fierce negative opinion anyway. Maybe everyone should wait to actually see what this is before getting upset?

I've earned and enjoyed my vet rewards for years now, so I'm really ambivalent to whichever way it goes.

I am unsure how anyone could possibly take 9 hours to get to 25 anything.
Generously allowing 30 minutes, you are level 10 from doing the artisan questline that introduces you to crafting.
There is a crafting timeline to help with leveling: Tradeskill Timeline
At 15 you can start tradeskill writs which reimburse your fuel costs, give additional experience upon completion and a small amount of extra coin.

it only took me a week to get to 95 in alchemy when i put my mind to it- but that was because i only crafted a couple of hours a day and then on a couple days did about 5 hours each, I kept getting tired of crafting - even though it is my favorite thing to do- and running off to kill something

Hold on. Suggesting that people should save their ire until they see whether it is justified?

That's crazy talk!

Yeah because they have never released something while being fully committed to keeping it in before showing it the players......

If any of the 'popular' grievances brought up here still end up in the system they are being willfully ignorant or just stubborn. 'Lets just wait until they announce what it is. 'Lets just wait until it goes through test. 'Lets just wait until its on live for a while.' Oh look it here and finished and on live, unless there is a mass exodus because of it, it's staying. Even if there is a significant of portion of people who don't like it. No i'm not exaggerating or overreacting because this has happened countless times before.

Like I said giving them the benefit of the doubt and imagining best case scenario this vendor will only sell the most mundane of the veteran rewards. Thanks to people posting they now know pretty much anything more than that will draw anger and they will have no good excuse to why they still put them in if they do. Any response of 'whoops,' claims of ignorance or even thinking it would be a good idea is now FIRMLY knocked into the dirt.

And, of course, they've never changed anything that was found to be untenable once it actually arrived upon the Test server.

(Ooh, look! Somebody else got college credits for Sarcasm as a Second Language! )

This statement by Windstalker is unclear:

"Also, as I expect someone will ask, this new system is ultimately an addition to veteran’s rewards we give each year for account age. We will still continue to offer a commemorative veteran’s item each year in November for players."

The Veteran Rewards are awarded on account anniversary date.

Is the above statement saying that the existing Vet rewards will not be touched, but there will also be an additional award on each game anniversary date?

Or, is this a way to say that the existing way the existing veteran rewards are given is changing to a game anniversary date instead of account anniversary?

I am just under 90 days of getting the 7 year Vet reward and have been really looking forward to getting the Manor.

I do hope this change does not prevent me from getting the house after waiting so long.

Windstalker made it pretty clear there. There's no hidden meaning or subtle hint. Veteran rewards are not changing. You don't have to worry about missing out on anything. Loyalty rewards being an addition simply means you get more for continuing to play. As she said, "... That has become a Daily Objectives system that will reward you for doing the types of content most players do in every play session ..." Loyalty rewards have nothing to do with any kind of date.

Veteran rewards are, indeed, awarded on account anniversary date.. And the item for 10-year Veteran reward will be added in November of this year...which is when the game turns 9, and co-incidentally is also when some accounts will become eligible for the 10-year reward.

Edit: If you wonder why there's a 1-year difference, expansions also used to award account time. They don't any longer, but every brand new account still starts with an account age of about 1 year.

My guess is the health/mana potions and res scrolls that can be used while grouped

That's how I understood they were considering doing this last year, back when it was still in planning, but who knows. I bet we'll find out sometime between this coming Monday and the end of July-ish!

That really doesn't work even as a snarky reply.

That's what they are SUPPOSED to do, so yes I am glad it actually happens. What ISN'T supposed to happen EVER is shoving systems/features down players throats that have nothing to do with long term health of game mechanics when players object in large numbers, which they have done and at best rectified/rolled back or abandoned much too long after. "Well you don't know unless you try, right?" Nope. You can know most of the outcomes without implementing anything at all with some intellectually honesty and basic logic.

So basically your response to 'They do something they are never supposed to do' is 'Well they often do their jobs as well.' Which in no way justifies, invalidates or excuses what I outlined. That's like trying to excuse a robbery by pointing out the robber spent more money in the past than they have stolen so it works out.

I certainly hope not since that would EASILY qualify as required for min/max'ing. I don't want to be running dailies constantly so I have enough of these pots and scrolls for raiding/grouping each week. Even with my cynical attitude I seriously doubt that will be the case.

If any items like pre-orders, special events, or iconic vet rewards such as Mistmoore estate, titles, CoV, mystic moppet, display case, fireworks, veteran revival and maybe a few I am missing are made available people are gonna be.....upset. If its just exp pots, debt forgiveness, mediocre sized bags, appearance clothing, furniture, repair kits and cheap marketplace/DM items (or all of them lol) it will be fine.

No, my response to your implication of "they've done it to us before, so they might do it to us this time, too," was an implication of "but, then again, they might not".
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Regardless, these are the steps I'm asking people to take:
1. Check the date.
2. Compare the date to July 8, 3013. If the date is earlier than that, wait until the next day, then go back to step 1. Otherwise proceed to step 3.
3. Log on to Test Server.
4. Check to see if the rewards listed are really worth going apesh- ballistic over. If not, proceed to step 5. Otherwise proceed to step 6.
5. Determine if there are any minor changes that need to be suggested. Proceed to step 7.
6. Go ballistic. Write several scathing posts on the forums about the Loyalty Rewards program. Proceed to step 7.
7. Provide focused feedback in-game.

I don't know how to be any clearer than that.

It is possible that concern is warranted. It is also possible that it is not. Unless someone has a dev on speed dial or something similar, we will never know if something that didn't go in (that is a regular veteran's reward) was left out as a result of people preemptively jumping down the dev team's collective throats, or if it was originally planned that way.

I mean, sure, you can tell yourself that you made a difference. Actually proving it, though, is another story.

I could be mistaken, but that may be when they add the next one to the list (so if you were playing at launch, that is when you would get the new one, otherwise you would have to wait until your account had accumulated enough days for a given reward).

Yeah, because that would be so horrible if they made a "Call of the Loyal" power available as well as "Call of the Veteran" and you could get both.

I've seen other games duplicate veteran rewards with similar rewards available with other methods in-game but usually the veteran version was better and I have no problem with that. Something like CoV with a 1 hour refresh and CoL with a 3 hour refresh.

As long as they do something like this where I can get both the Veteran version and the Loyalty version and both are completely independent of each other, then I'm all for it!

I don't recall there being any specific difference between the vet reward potions and the ones from the SC store. Which unless something was changed recently, I don't believe either can be used in raids or groups, outside of being grouped with a merc anyways.

Also, this would directly compete with their SC shop. I'd have trouble seeing them add these to a merchant without making them cost an absurd amount of loyalty tokens.

The November date is when each new vet reward becomes available to be received, the actual anniversary date is when you actually receive the vet reward.