Producer Letter: About Heroic Characters...

Those that sell their crafts on the market, might find that a bit much to wish for.
Adventurers can already gather and transmute, that is NOT limited to crafters.
Secondary skills for crafters, such as adorning and tinkering are not required for crafters (truthfully they are more useful to adventurers that craft )

All I can say is rats (ratongas?). What a build up for such a let down.

Also note that there is no mention that the heroic chars come with the ability to speak any language either.

How do you determine a "household"? Personally I have a DSL connection. Every time I reboot my modem I get a new IP address. No, I don't plan on making more accounts, but I'm very curious how you plan to take into account your DSL customers in the "household" thing.

I have never made a negative post on these forums, but I feel the need to voice my opinion today:
If they gave the characters away that would be acceptable (still not my favorite idea). But the buying and selling of level 85 characters is shamefully pay to win.

I still want to know how they can tell one house from another from within a DSL dial up pool. Haven't taken the course in ethical hacking yet but it's on my list...might have to take it sooner rather than later.

looks like the difference is about 3500 sc

So pretty much Sony lets sum this up. You ban people for selling accounts and buying etc but you are going to make stuff buyable from your marketplace just so you can capitalize on it? Hmm seems pretty much like Sony to me....I can understand you are granting the 85 char etc for players coming back but why not put a limit on this? maybe 1 level 85 char etc not hey if u want a character just come buy it? Does not seem smart for the current player base that bust their *** to level characters, do the endless quests and grind AA's. You are taking away some of the experience and learning curve of eq2.

Those of us with alts and have leveled conventionally multiple times do. I know I do. The reason they aren't revamping 1-85 simply is because it's not worth the time to them to untangle that rats nest. 1-85 contains the work of probably 7 different dev teams totaled. All with different views of how Itemization and Difficulty/Mob Scaling are to be done.

I agree give them 260-270, so they feel accomplished when they hit 90 with 280, perhaps let them gain 5 levels before trying. One level is seriously little to get a feel for a character. As per Skyshrine, please do leave it. Meaningful contested zones weather for Gear, Group Experience or actual XP are needed in this game. Contested Zones have been dead for so long and I like seeing them back.

I've been running the Peacock Club timeline...items in that series have never been reitemized. Glad I can transmute.

Any word on when the fixes for Dungeon Finder will be out?

I like this idea. Not for the reason you might think though.

I will likely never use the feature myself, but I hope it will result in power levelers and other similar style players largely leaving the lower level zones alone so those of us that like to group and experience (re-live) the game in the lower levels and take our time can do so. This especially holds true for public instances (Stormhold, Kaladim, Tomb of Varsoon, Temple of Thule etc); nothing's more annoying than having a nice 'old-school' adventure in a public instance/zone largely ruined by a level 95 steam-rolling a group of afk lower level players back and forth through all the content there.

If the release of heroic characters significantly lessens the occurrence of the above happening, that alone will be a huge positive. Fingers crossed.

Any reply on whether an empty character slot is required for heroic characters and/or is included in their acquisition?

Its definitely 'pay to progress' but I would hardly call it 'pay to win.' If they start selling high end heroic gear and raid gear THEN we might have a problem.

As for the heroic characters, you are advertising to the wrong people. This would be the PERFECT opportunity to push out some sort of advertising campaign. Saying it at SoE Live and the forums and other EQ2 hangouts is preaching to the converted.

Yeah, I had thought I'd use a free one for a channeller.... Not gonna happen unless they offer free 85 tokens if you log in during the 2 week period and don't know what to roll to 85.

Keep in mind what we are doing here isn't as much advertising as it is informing you guys of how a new feature will work. Trust me, the former player audience and others hasn't escaped our attention.

The 280 bauble DID NOT come with AoD, they were in CoE. AoD raised the AA level cap from 300 - 320AA's so wanting to break up AoD into a la carte pieces in no shape way or form violates the no pay to win principle that the vast majority of players embrace. I keep hearing that "we asked for it" but when I search the forums I don't see it anywhere so imho this is just SOE BEGGING for more money for a feature players do no want

This part still is not clear, and I think it NEEDS to be clarified very specifically:

Does this in fact mean that Free-to-Play accounts will get a character for free that no longer is constrained by their account restrictions? As in, they will be able to equip all legendary+ gear, scribe masters, and have full broker functionality on these Heroic Characters until the character no longer exists because they delete it? Because it appears that many are taking your "with no restrictions" to mean account restrictions no longer apply. As a long-time subscriber, the thought of Free-to-Play players getting a free level 85 character that longer is restricted by their account level is more than a little annoying, and I sincerely hope that these players are way off on their interpretation of your original post.

Yeah, the 20 AA bauble would be from an AoD breakdown thing to raise your AA cap to 320 from 300. The instant 280 AA was a CoE thing (2 per purchase).

My main concern about this is the intention to allow new and returning players to get up to speed, yet after the promotion it will be for SC.

That's fine for the second plus character but if you REALLY want new and returning players to come to the game, I believe each account should get the ability to make one for free.

There's nothing more off putting when you think you're going to get something when you install the game and find out you've got to pay many dollars for the privilege, I mean look at the responses of many returning players about unlocking gear!