Is 95-100 experience agonizingly slow?

If it took you this long to get your room to 120k resists, I have to question what you've actually been doing during your play time. It takes all of 3 or 4 runs through Lost Caverns/Caldera to replace nearly all your jewelry, and those zones are a breeze in all ToV heroic gear.

Chelsith is not the best experience.

I'm going to spill the beans here. so spoiler alert.



Best exp in this game is chrono to 70 and do KC without a merc.

Mobs come in groups and in 95 crafted gear with adorns and the healing jewelry from loyalty merchant the mobs can't kill you stacked 5 and 6 at a time even as a mage and without a merc up. You can one shot AOE these mobs for 1400 to 1600 exp each (with full vit and experience potion running) and there is no lockout, Average exp per hour clearing this zone is 500K to 1.5M depending on how fast you run to round up the rooms and pop AOEs.

Nerf everything!

People keep yapping and the nerfs will keep coming.

That may be better exp if you're the only one in KC, but just one other person doing the same thing and it's going to plummet pretty fast. Still, good call!

I'm not entirely sure that is true, TC. IIRC, (and if I'm interpreting your post correctly) some time back they made it where two or more actual players in a group wouldn't split the xp, but have each get full xp. However, if you are referring instead to two players that aren't grouped together, then yeah (since they would be competing for mobs). Of course, in that latter case, the simple solution (provided that group members still get full xp) would be for them to group together. I think that there also used to be an additional bonus for a full group, but I don't remember if that got nixed when they changed it to where group members would get full xp for kills*.

* And it has been so long since I 2 boxed with a lower level toon that I don't even know if they retained the full xp for group kills.

Agreed completely. My Channeler has about two weeks of play in her at cap and she's sitting pretty at the 140k mark and is quite well geared for the time spent. I've only bought two pieces off of SLR, and my friend helped me with the Mythical. Everything else came from just playing the game (with other people!) and doing a little reading up on the forums.

Didn't even touch Adv. Solos, just started from HC gear with a mix of questing gear and off I went.

The experience rate in this game is insanely fast. All you people complaining about exp would have never lasted when this game first launched. Lemme put it in perspective: It took longer to go from 1-50 at launch than it does to go from 1-100 + 350AA now. You have it ridiculously easy and your type has already ruined a lot of what made this game special. If you stopped wasting your time qqing and instead went out xping you would be there in no time.

What everyone seems to be missing is

1. when the game launched it was slow
2. when each expac comes out, xp is slow
3. when each expac comes out, older content is intentionally speeded up by the designers who know you don't want to spend a slow time at level 1-30 anymore
4. if you've been questing, and have a "quester" play style or have adopted one like I have, you will notice you don't have enough time to complete a zone (not even darklight woods) before you out level it and have to move on because it has been speed-ed up

ie. the previous adventure levels are now shorter than they were "at launch" on every expac

People complaining of xp is just normal when the adventure levels are not static, and game play changes dramatically as time goes on. Example: How many of you remember grouping for Kaladim because it was the only way to do that zone at all? When I started playing, there would be 3 or 4 guild flags at the entrance there, and groups would go, later it was duo's, now you can pretty much solo it with a merc on-level. When gameplay experience changes this much over time, people will complain when you give them what seems like an artificially slow process for current content. And they know that if they just ignore the content for now, they will have an easy time after the next "launch."

If all you know about this game comes from your current experience of the game, and you haven't noticed any changes over time, then you've got a distorted view of what's happening.

Let me guess....it was uphill in a blizzard and high wind both ways?

Edit: They HAVE added adventure writs for AoM, so that should be a huge help for solo players who who look at HKC groups and wonder if a root canal would be less painful.

Let's not get confused from the point here. The complaining is about the heavyhanded nerf to specific areas like Skyshrine if you are over a certain level. It's not about anything "at launch" but about this new tactic of forcing people to do SOE's will and play the content they want you to play. Nobody likes being made to do something. Undo that one change and you won't hear any whining. Easy and fun groups are more conductive to pug-ing, that's just a basic fact. How many times did you join the "overgeared tank" group just starting out because you knew all you had to do was "boom boom" your heart out?

That said, the depth of 340 AA to 350 AA levels is way too deep. I went from getting an AA every Solo zone, to getting 1/10 AA every solo zone. I checked, my vitality is 99.9% and likely will stay there until 350 AA.

The slow leveling is just SOE's way of covering for the fact that they have no good content to give us besides group zones. Anyone can make a dungeon. To write a story, you need thought and time and people better suited to making movies than the grueling schedule of the typical game developer (or so I've heard). Creativity takes respecting your crew and treating them more like artists than coders. I try not to discuss the developers, because it's not my place, though. I am sympathetic however to the need for artistry in a game design. This particular expac seems very thin on story, and it seems to me it's being covered by artificial hurdles like the slowest leveling I've seen yet.

There are some very clever innovations this time, like the "you can't see the mobs" overlay. I appreciate them from a mechanical standpoint. But I shouldn't even be noticing them. I should be too wrapped up in a good story.

Example: some polish would have been good on Grim Shales, because if you go back to the quest hub and you didn't finish the side quest, this guy is just standing there alone, waiting for you. That questgiver has a life, probably should've made himself a house and claimed he was going to "move in and study the iksar" after you're done with the quest. Nobody thought of that or if they did, it was considered a "side issue" and they let it slide. I'm not saying they were "sloppy" I'm saying they didn't have standards like making all the questgivers be real enough, and if someone thought of it, they didn't get their way maybe due to time or whatever. It might have made a decent village after the questline, with a local mender and merchant. It would've been a good place to put a "surprise quest" later on.. some traveler appears and needs your help...

Even better would've been... he makes himself a house and a dock with a boat that will take you to North Dshinn. Oh gasp! That would be travel! Can't have that!

I'm not so absorbed by trying to get all my toons to 350 that I don't notice the rough edges. It makes me wonder what's happening at SOE. Any developer would've noticed that, or had an idea about it themselves, given time, trust and enough sleep. They're much smarter than I am, and have way more experience at designing a game. So I assume they were stressed.

Compared to the beach weather they have now, yeah it was something like that. If you don't want to play in a group maybe you shouldn't play a franchise that is known for encouraging it. Personally, I think the XP rate from 95-100 is far too easy.

Oh, please, don't pull out the old "If you don't like PUGs find a different game" card. That one is so worn out it's almost transparent.

I don't think any game in this franchise still encourages grouping. I even play EQ1 100% solo thanks to mercenaries. They are pretty much going the route of: play how you want (in terms of soloing, duoing, grouping).

And yes, 95-100 is way to easy. I really hope 100+ will be harder, but I won't hold my breath.

Lets cut right to the chase and point out the obvious reasons for the complaints:

1. SoE wants us to purchase content, it creates revenue. If you want to be level 100, then you need the expansion (call me Mr. Obvious). I get that, I bought the expansion, even played a couple of characters through the new content signature line. It gets old fast and there's a big game out there, but changes were made to insure that without jumping through hoops, that old content will be far less rewarding in terms of experience.
2. SoE wants us to have alternates. Alternates extend the life of the game for many players and tend to open our wallets up further when we visit the store to add some variety or convenience. Oddly, they now want them all to follow the same path from 96-100. The story line that was fresh and interesting is now "More bones, more tar, back to the main isle, boring flights...etc". When a new expansion is released and three characters later all I want to do for a few weeks is grind away at maxing craft levels for a break in the tedium, something is wrong.
3. Dungeon maker was a mistake and had to be removed? Why? I did not use it to PL characters, however it's obvious that those doing so were doing so for what reason? To get to level 100 and do the content in the new expansion that interested them. Again, buying the expansion AND using the content in it! To be perfectly honest, as a casual player that avoids Heroic and Raid content, I will most likely spend less time in the expansion than they will.
4. You can't *force* players into a set path in a game without eliminating all loopholes which is too time consuming and expansive to accomplish. Skyshrine was crippled past level 96, even though the mobs there range from 96-100+. If you can't find someone to mentor to bring back the experience you self mentor to level 70 and visit KC again...and again...and again or some other zone. That of course takes away content from the level of players that belong there and still does not force the player into the new expansion until they feel ready or a desire to do so.
5. Players like feeling all powerful and mighty, that's why we have self mentoring for the most part. They also enjoy stepping into a zone when it's on level with great trepidation and then returning when a little more seasoned to take revenge on those mobs and reap rewards and experience. Reducing that experience to "If you go there, instead of here, we will punish you for that choice" is not necessarily a good thing.

For 95 levels they stressed that the world was our to explore in the way we have been exploring it for 95 levels. For some players, self included, that encompasses quite a few years from launch to present. Now their telling us "This is the path we set for you, follow it or find your own loophole". It's "New Coke" verses "Classic Coke" all over again. It might indeed be better, but many of us enjoy the "Coke, The Real Thing" better so the attempted change failed.

The reason that exp in old zones had to be eliminated at 96+ is mostly due to the "prestige levels" paradigm and exponential mudflation caused by cramming 5 full expansions into one tier. In previous expansions, we really never had more than 2 expansions with the same level cap, but even then, the gear from the second expansion tended to obsolete or trivialize the first. However, the following expansion would then raise the cap another tier, greying out the older content, incentivizing moving into newer content.

Now, however, we've essentially packed 3 tiers worth of advancement into single 10-level range, so even though the challenges from 4 expansions ago are trivial, they're still almost as rewarding as when it was current. That had to be fixed, from a game health standpoint. If they didn't need those zones, nobody would have even set foot inside BSBC to discover that it sucks. ;-)

I just want to say something on what I quoted here, if I fully understand what you mean. What you say ends up pointing out 1 issue that I have seen with this expansion. The issue is NOT the leveling speed, the issue is lack of content. If the leveling speed met with how much content is in the new expansion, people would hit it within a day or 2. Easily.

Do I still think leveling speed should stay the way it is? Yes. But they need to kick it in gear and get more content out. More quests, maybe some HQs or a new island that resurfaces or something I dunno.

I am seeing that my alts that were not past ToV yet, will be past 95 by time I hit AoM. 1 of my 95s hasn't even hit ToV yet, she is still in Cobalt Scar and 1 quest on her from there was worth 2% xp. At that rate, and still having ToV to do, she will probably be 96 if not a bit further by time she hits AoM. With that in mind, she was also long been 95 before I started playing her again after the level cap increased. With that said, new players and others with characters that were not 95 before expansion, probably won't have a hard time reaching 100 by just doing the solo quest lines.

That's all good and stuff, works great for my alts cause none of them were 95 but her. But its not good for existing players that were already 95 heading into AoM. But again, leveling speed needs to not increase, the amount of content needs to increase. I know SOE don't have much manpower, but maybe a yearly expansion won't cut it anymore. I would much rather spend $40 on a full on expansion with enough content to fill in the leveling, over this.

Plus, they could still do free content upgrades throughout the year like they have been. Just saying, wouldn't you guys rather have a more feature/content rich expansion actually worth $40?

TBH, there has not an been an expansion that has lasted an entire year without becoming pointless tedium since...since...since...I wanna say RoK? But that may still be one expansion off.

The problem with expansions is definitely content, not leveling rate, as Shaggy mentioned. Sig questlines plus all very similar no-difference side lines are completable quickly. No overworld events, exploration, or side adventures to distract you really. Dungeons pretty much require "at max" to play in not only because of player's mindsets, but because of Devs going the easier direction for balancing (I do not blame them per se, if anything I have a feeling some of the Devs would agree).

There's reasons for all of this, but sometimes it legitimately frustrating lol.

Exactly this! Instead of making an expansion that the majority of players would flock too because the content compelled them to; they lowered the incentive to do other content in lieu of the expansion content. Early on in the game it was like making a choice between going to the water park or the amusement park while you lamented not having enough time to do both. You can still go to the water park now, but they drained the water giving you the option to go to the amusement park with not so amusing rides.

I enjoy playing my alternates because it allows me to see how the different classes hold up in the content that I've experienced with other classes. You could move around the expansion and even capitalize on the sort of challenges that a specific class was more adept at. There were enough side quests around and missions to keep you occupied for a good amount of time.

This expansion is so predictable it's not even a challenge to complete the signature quest. Get to 96 1st, new handcrafted gear, work on resists a bit, be sure to be level 98 for Phantom Sea so you can don master crafted 98 gear, up the resists, rinse and repeat. Start the next alternate with the same strategy and "The one signature line that shall rule them all" and you pretty much get the same results no matter what.

If you happen to be a casual player by means of not really enjoying raids and heroic instances, it's game over at the end of the signature quest line.

More like they installed a big red button with the word "DING" written on it. Every time you push the button you level up and get free AA's. Then you wave your epeen and brag about the levels you never put any time or effort into earning.

For most, it seems EQ has gone from being about enjoying playing to just numbers, the bigger the numbers the more fun you must be having. SOE has responded by making the numbers stupidly, ludicrously large.

The true tragedy of AoM. SOE no longer feels a need to expend the resources necessary to develop an open world with diverse new content. It is now a single quest line on rails. Why bother building a living, breathing world when the hardcore and very vocal minority on the forums is just going to blow through it in a week in their rush to end game raiding.