I joined FG about half way thru EOF and had no problems getting to 70. Even tho it was already old content for most people there was always groups in the 60-70 dungeons. Now im trying to level and alt to 80 and the 70-80 range is dead. No one is doing dungeons, its even hard to get a group for the daily. I know summer will slow down an MMO (Ive been playing different MMO`s and Muds long before UO came out). This isnt a slowdown tho, this is people fleeing the game. DBG you need to put exp bonus back in, without it no one is leveling alts, new people arent staying. Your killing the server. How many people need to stop paying before you can say that your wrong.
I think the issue is moreso that people don't want to do dailies/instances because the gear is mostly useless and the fact that most people got the daily item who cared to do it, did it when the tokens gave eight a day. It's also near the end of the expansion, this happens basically every expansion with the same results since T5.
I see FG people forming groups for dungeons and dailies CONSTANTLY. Are you playing at some odd times? 'Cause during noon to midnight Central time, I see lots of grouping. Meanwhile, I am puttering around on my now mid-40s toon solo and enjoying myself.
They are changing the XP gain on the 31st. No details, but they are doing something about it. And, yes, I've been playing from after 7 pm Central time and there are very, very few groups being advertised doing anything. It's been a drastic drop off in the last week. Guildmate was saying that he'd done the quest timelines for the Isle of refuge, The Graveyard, The Sprawl, Sunken City and had already done several in commonlands and The Ruins and was still level 9. If I recall, he said he'd done 57 quests already. It's extremely slow outside of RoK and very few people are running alts, because they've already ran the content many times and the grind just isn't worth it with xp being that outrageous. Hang in there, it's going to get worse, before it gets better. IF it gets better.
I might suggest getting to Mara to do Quo Augren's A Gathering Obsession questline. It pays pretty good, and while you are harvesting you will be picking up rares and shinies. Sell any you won't need. Rares sell well, and surprisingly, so do a number of regular raw common harvests... check the broker and see what the prices are like for malachite, lead, and roots (plain old roots). Ditto for higher levels. Now that you have a little cash, look for collections that are high in level and cheap in price. Buy the pieces, it's great XP if you are stuck. It varies daily on prices, so you have to sorta check to see what you might be able to afford. Another way I rack up XP is to go and explore zones, even high level zones, for POI discovery XP. Open your quest journal (press J), click the Achievements tab, then you want Exploration. That Exploration link gets you to the wiki page on Exploration Achievements. Click on an expansion, then click into any of the achievements. That gets you a list of places you have to visit, the same as your Journal Achievements tab, but if you click a place you can't find, you will get info on where it is, usually a loc. I like to go to Barren Sky and fly around the cloud pads. Sometimes you have to get off the cloud pad and walk inland a few steps to get the POI ding. But don't neglect the Shattered Lands zones. With a little caution (and a sense of humor about dying) you can actually get pretty much all the exploration dings.
Also, I forgot to mention, do Lore and Legends quests. There are a surprising number than can now be done at pretty low level, and you get your Masterstrike for that race upon completion: Elementals -- Darklight Woods (1-5), Forest Ruins (10-12) Goblins -- Isle of Refuge (1-6), Greater Faydark (2-4) Zombies -- Isle of Refuge (1-6, goblins are also zombies), Graveyard (12), -- Darklight Woods (6) Ghosts -- Darklight Woods (5) Fairies -- Peat Bog (6-12), Greater Faydark (10-15) Bixies -- Greater Faydark (6-14) Treants -- Darklight Woods, Greater Faydark (8-14) Skeletons -- Commonlands (10-19), Greater Faydark (10-12), Darklight Woods (10+) Gnolls -- Antonica (10-19) Orcs -- Commonlands (10-19) Drakota -- Darklight Woods (14-15) Vampires -- Darklight Woods (14-15) Kobolds -- Butcherblock Mountains (14-mid 20s) Aviaks -- Butcherblock Mountains (21-22)
Sigrdrifa, You are mid 40s. You've already done all the easy collections and master quests. What are you going to do for the rest of the 30 levels that have ridiculously low xp?
CHEAP collections, not easy. I am a confessed shiny addict, I have nearly 1200 completed on my current Live main. I can entertain myself for a long time just hunting shinies. What will I do? Harder collections, HQs, Sig lines, filling in Achievements, you name it. I remember how slow it was when the game started. This is actually faster. If I had shifted my AAs to 100% XP, I'd be a lot higher level, but I actually have it 25% XP to 75% AA. There's TONS of quests out there STILL that I haven't done on any of my many, many Live toons, and I'm enjoying them. I am not interested in rushing to max level. Nostalgia! I LOVE Nek Castle, and there are tons of odd little quests in there. I've been enjoying it immensely this go around. And I there are other zones I liked but levelled past too quickly on Live because guild leader tanking for guild groups. I actually wish we had a FG Chronomage already. I do no such thing. I play 30 minutes, then spend an hour web surfing, or having a meal, or lazing around in my bed reading a book. Or answering people's questions about Viking Age history. Or consulting on heraldry. Then I play some more. And when I am playing, I am just as likely to be crafting as I am to be adventuring. And the last couple of days, I have been doing interior decorating stuff with my Lion's Mane Inn room (up the stairs to the left, second door). I have some serious health issues, there's a limit to how much I do in a stretch. But I'm also retired, so I can do multiple short sessions throughout the day if I want.
As someone who's done probably over 5000 quests on various TLE servers (2500+ on RTT alone, for the coin!), I think I'm qualified to say quest exp is way too low, probably by a factor of 4-5 compared to group exp.
People are done with epics, theres hardly any upgrades in heroic zones. Raids takes little to no time to clear. Most have 1 or two of the daily items already. It takes like 2 hours to get from 70-80. XP is broken until the 31st so no one wants to level alts and most people in the raiding guilds already have several at 70 or 80. Only 2 guilds actively tries to kill avatars (which are the real raid fights on the server). There has been like 5 weeks of content in RoK even for the more casual players and most are down to achievement hunting or nothing to do at all. Of course the server is dying down until TSO.
Plus, some people are playing live servers for the Tinkerfest event... that's hurt population currently I think I like the idea of a TLE server. It gives me a chance to experience the expansions that I missed during various breaks, but experience them in somewhat "new" fashion. I would just like to see it with the xp curve smoothed out. Also, for me, the 12 weeks per expansion is too short, but I'm sure I'm in the minority in that.
Sadly I 'm only login my main for raids, i don t log my necro since she cannot even compete wih true dps classes since most encounters are non linked (ie open aoe), my third lvl 80 my shaman do not play since i cannot get her equiped : people don t run dungeons or if they do rush them and bypass all the named and on top 9/10 item totally suck.
You hit the nail on the head. Personally I think EQ2 in general really mucked up the AA system. In EQ1 it was designed to *slowly* reward you with slight permanent increases in power after you hit level cap. In EQ2, you sometimes cap out on AAs before hitting level cap. So within a day, people are capping levels and AA, which just leaves gear. Your only real gear upgrades are on raids, and alts are RIGHT out at the moment
The AA system in EQ2 used to be very different and better, at least in my opinion. Back in the day you had to kill named or loot prestiged items to earn your AA. And to respec you had to visit a mirror in your house and you had to earn it through gameplay.
I can't really think of an xpac that should be longer than 12 weeks except DoV, unless its super fast because of how inflated stats are.
