New Exp method flat out destroyed power leveling!

I don't see how removing the XP bonus nerfed power leveling. At worse all it has done has extended the amount of time you need to do such. I've never understood the rush to get to "End Game" content so quickly. I'm not questioning anyone's ability to play their characters, some can and some can not, that's just a simple fact.

I "BOX" (BOT is short for Robot which is having scripts do everything for you and lumping boxers and botters together is something that isn't fair in my opinion.) because I cannot find people who want to have fun at levels lower than 90 and enjoy the content for what it is. I've been playing since 2006 and I only have two characters (out of 40ish?) who have reached level 90 (and only 3 tradeskillers at 90, one which is 95 I admit). I'm not a gold farmer and I don't have phat loots of coin either.

Everyone who has been playing this game from launch knows that XP gains and decreases have contantly been adjusted and what were seeing now will change again eventually. However if it takes you 1 day or 1 week to get from 1 - 90 honestly whats the big deal with such, you're going to get there eventually and when you do what then? It'll be a year before the next xpac at the soonest.

There have ALWAYS been standards.
Whether is was requiring fabled gear, or a certain amount of HP, or Crit chance or Crit Mit.
There should be standards for varying levels of content, otherwise everyone could just kill everything first time round and it'd not be fun in any way.
The fact is now though, the standards required really are at an all time low. You need like maximum 300 Crit chance I think it is for heroic stuff (apart from the 3 HM nameds), which nearly any class can get with no effort at all.
The bigger issue is the standards people WANT, not what people NEED. Most people don't want to spend 3 hours doing 1 instance because an undergeared healer can't keep up or the undergeared dps make the zone take ages. They want to be able to clear stuff effectively.
If you are looking for something where you need help getting up and going new places, try joining a guild where lots of people are actively grouping.

Yeah, it won't matter either way what I say but you nailed it.... The BIGGER issue is.. "People WANT".... And just to comment on your previous post, We (myself and hubby) always make sure we do the quest lines to better gear. And most times the quest line gear isn't good.
Everyone will have there own "IMO" on any subject and that's all my comments are on this subject.
We never have asked for a hand out and we always work together, and work very hard to accomplish things for our toons and we always help others if we can.
But I will say, if my husband can not kill a mob a quest requires, he will ask for help and he has had a few helpful folks assist him.

Exactly, I don't want a hand out. I would like a hand up.

That's really not true. I remember doing Sanctum of Fear back in the day, and noticing that the tank (a guardian) was wearing chain armour (I only inspected him because I was on my berserker at the time - yes, a group with multiple plate tanks! - and wanted to see if he had anything cool that I could use). I asked him why, out of curiousity, and he said: "Because it was cheaper than plate."

We cleared that zone and we had a lot of fun. Nobody gave the tank's bad gear a second thought. He later went onto tank some of our raids - Prismatic drakotas, Spirits of the Lost, Drayek etc - whilst wearing mastercrafted plate (which at the time was pretty cool, I remember being really envious of characters decked out in ebon). You didn't NEED anything to clear heroic stuff back then, apart from a willingness to cooperate and a decent head on your shoulders (and a lot of people got by even without those things, so long as somebody in the group knew what they were doing).

So no, there weren't any standards back then, not with the people I grouped and raided with anyway. Well - maybe one standard - be a nice or fun person to play together with..

I have to agree with Zannah on this I haven't seen them set any true game mechanic for minimums except for the level barrier at 90/280.

And what, exactly, does one learn about how to play in the group and raid end-game by solo leveling through a 90 level tutorial?

Good.

Nope.

Group. Instead of everyone powerleveling to 90 and then trying to learn their class, you can actually group AT LEVEL and actually meet other people in Norrath that might be worth talking to, grouping with, and later raiding with. EQ2 being a SOLO game from 1-90 was KILLING this game. It's an MMO.

Mission accomplished!

People honestly need to stop whining about not being able to powerlevel their alts to max level. Too bad, boohoo. I have 13 toons on one acct all at 90 or higher and most soloed to where they are or with some slight grouping. Either get a grp and level it up that way or simply take the time to powerlevel without your god bonus. If neither of those work get a life outside of game and stop worrying about the not so serious changes to how much XP you get in a GAME.

I haven't pulled out the calculator and I'm going off memory (dangerous I know). But I think the bonus xp was around 80% of the total xp that you would earn. So when they "extend the amount of time PL'n" on the order of 5x, that qualifies as a big fat nerf.

Now having said that, you can still PL under the new system. It's a bit more of a chore to get up to 77 (or 80). But from there you can PL away. You just have to alter your methods. The days of parking a char at the entrance of Chelsith are now gone. It's just more of headache and a change that they didn't need to make.

I'll never understand why people believe that someone getting powerleveled to max level is going to have less understanding of how to play their character then if they played every level. No class in this game at level 95 plays anything remotely like it did at 20, or 50, or even 80. The balance of power of abilities, and the new things you get, especially prestige, can really change the way a class plays. I'd by far rather have someone who at 95 sat down and figured out how all their stuff works together then someone who thinks they know how it works because they solo'd to 95.

People who supposedly don't know how to play their class don't have nothing to do with the methodology of leveling. It's desire to know and ability to learn.

Power leveling is NOT dead - It has just been altered.
Oh yes auto following your own account around is horrable exp now.
If you are smart enough to follow someone who is smart enough to use their lowest damage hits, and the other person is smart enough to hit something to get on the threat meter.... It still only takes 1 day to get from 1-90. I watched 2 people in my guild testing this.

Personaly I could care less about how someone levels a character, older players rarely want to group with new players (90% of those new players have no idea how to play, and older ones have next to no patience). If someone dosen't want to carry a bunch of other people around through content they should not have to.

On the other side of the spectrum, they say power leveling makes it hard to get groups at low levels... Well guess what lowbies make it hard to find groups at low levels, on average I see maybe 3 people LFG between 10-89. How is it a power levelers fault that most people 10-89 are to lazy to even bother trying to form a group?

You want to see more grouping at low levels? FIX THE RANDOM DUNGEON FINDER SYSTEM SO IT DOESN'T SUUUUUCK (better level ranges (do not put a level 50 into a level 60 group), gear checks (someone in all handcrafted shouldn't be in a gorup of fully raid geared people), role selection boxes (some fighters make better DPS then tanks (fix scouts so they can actualy tank in the game again!!!)))!!! Most new players have no idea where to even go at their level range, and even less of an idea on how to get there. Forming a group using the chat channels can be extreemly stressful as well. The fact you can run ANON or Role in this game makes it that much harder to find people to group with for lowbies (using /who all [class type] and asking people my level range is how I would fill some spots) In all honesty sitting around spamming LFG for an hour till you can find people is a dated system anyways.

In the end you will NEVER get rid of people who want to solo, you will NEVER get rid of people who power level to get past the same content they have been doing for the past 8 years, and if they want people to group more they need to give us better tools to get these groups going!!!!

If someone is dedicated to learning the class, then of course anyone can learn starting at level 95. But sitting down at a level 95 that was just dragged around from 1-94 facing 4 hotbars worth of spells and 6 AA tabs seems pretty daunting to me.

We'll have to see how this pans out. Personally I don't think this change is going to improve the game like you're envisioning. "Learning your class" is an overused mantra. You can skate right through the pre-90 content without having learned much of anything. You don't need an optimal casting pattern or chained CAs. Healers don't have to worry about curing as much. etc etc. You can pretty much mash buttons.

It's pretty much L90 where a character starts to blossom. How you played that character pre-90 is likely entirely different than post-90. You've got a lot more class defining abilities than you had before. There's a certain gear standard that is expected. ...now I'm not saying that this is wrong or bad. I'm just saying I disagree with the notion that L90+ players are going to be good because they grouped for earlier content. There's a learning curve that every player must reconcile with. And it will always occur at end game, not in Lowbie Land.

This was talked about on EQ2Talk. They will have to totally revamp and relaunch Dungeon Finder before people will try it. I think if they went back to statistics logs of the week the feature launched, people were hitting it left and right. Then they saw it put people in groups they were not geared for, mixed and matched level ranges, etc. and so people quit. They can't just do incremental changes. It will have to be a total relaunch to get everyone to try it again.

Who says the game starts at 90+? I ... don't remember reading that anywhere. I mean there is quests and zones all over for levels 1-89. Granted, getting through 1-20 is a breeze now a days .. but still.

People seriously need to enjoy the ride. ANd yes, I have 9 characters. 3 of them are 90+ and the rest are gaining. I don't power level, I know where to go and what to do. I quest as well as kill. I don't spend all the time in dungeons. There is more out there.

*shrugs* Sorry you dislike it. But I am sure there are much more people who like it the way it is.

I disagree. While it takes a little time to read the descriptions and organize what you want to put where, you don't have to play from 1 to 95 to learn what is what.

I have to disagree with this. When playing a class you have to learn what, when and how to execute what you're doing in game. To start out at 95 will only teach you how to play your class at 95. They'll get comfortable with what their doing then mentor down one day and try an instance that scales from 50 + and totally wipe in group because they're now trained to play only high end content. Anyone who plays their class from 1 to 95 and pays attention will know you can't flip your keyboard upside down and "mash on it" or "just press buttons" to become an effective player.

Shameless plug on your website, atta boy. The website has some good things but what's talked about on there isn't always 100% correct and those of us with half a brain know to take what's discussed on a fan site should be taken for what it, an opinion by one or more players. A total revamp isn't necessary to get "everyone to try it again". In fact not everyone will try it again and the incremental changes they're doing show that when those changes are made we do see an increase in players on our server (even if temporary) do try Dungeon Finder again to see if said changes have made progress to using it as a viable solution. However it's that ONE person you get stuck with in Dungeon Finder who for whatever reason wants to make it difficult for others in the group and you find people wanting to use the /kick function. Putting people in groups they're not geared for, mixing and matching levels within a range has been there from day 1 and that's not going to change. Trying to develop code that specs players gear to decide where to put them will increase times before you're placed in a group and wastes server CPU time that could be used for something better.

Again, I completely disagree.

It's like shooting a gun. Any instructor will tell you they'd rather have someone who has never shot a gun before then someone who has been shooting all their life. Why? Because they don't have a bunch of bad habits they need to forget and move on from. It's the same thing here. People need to sit down and look at everything at 95 no matter what to play the class right.

Some of the people who have done the worst as apps in my guild are people who had been playing and then hit a level cap raise. Why? The balance changes. They are trying to do what worked before, but it just isn't the same now. People who leveled there character solo and played to 95 and didn't sit down at 95 and figure everything out are absolutely 100% going to be doing everything wrong and be absolutely awful. I'll take the person who powerleveled to 95 and took a few hours to figure it all out over that person every single time. Not only do they know what they don't know and are more willing to change it, they don't have habit so pushing buttons that are now terrible.

This game takes, on average, about 10 days playtime to level with capped AA and doing your mythical quest at a casual pace. Are we not playing video games to "waste" our time anyway? I'm still lost on this "rush" idea to get to cap level these days in MMOs. 10 days playtime at a casual pace, if you rush it I'm sure it can easily be half that. And yet here we are still complaining when you are asked to participate in your leveling instead of just autofollowing/afk. Really? Are you gamers getting that bad with instant gratification? Don't worry though if they lessened it and made it overall faster to level you'd then get to cap and complain of boredom and nothing to do and that it was too easy. Regardless of what is done you gamers will complain lol. Sad really for the human race overall that this is our primary focus and concern of this game.