Producer's Letter: May/June News!

I was hoping there would be something for high up people
I don't have any other toons to level so the xp bonus is useless (unless I make another alt)
already have ToV
the only thing I currently do with etyma's is buy the green gem recipe to sell it for a few k plat.
really almost nothing benefits someone raiding ToV wings1+,
but oh well

No one's influencing SOE on the decision. The halls were designed to be run by large groups of people, not individuals. They've been gracious enough to allow things to persist as they have, with it being easier to gain status and have solo guilds. It's still an MMO and social activity is greatly encouraged. I have a guild I started in 2010 and just hit 60 last month. I have no expectations about achieving anything grand in the way of halls anytime soon, if ever.

It really isn't that hard to get a guild to level 30 so you can get a regular hall even if you are doing it solo. It takes more individual time and effort than it does for a larger guild, but that is to be expected since you aren't dividing the work between others.

I foresee pretty much solo grinding my main guild from 95 to 100 when the next expansion releases (if they increase guild levels). My personal guild on a different server is slowly coming right on up without me spending any real time actually working on it. It's leveling up just fine imo as I'm playing the game, no actual focus on leveling the guild. I'm also in the boat of being highly unlikely I'll ever have the High Keep guild hall on either server. I can't group anymore for any real amount of time and spend most of my time at other pursuits in game now. I do think it would have been nice for SOE to have made some concessions for guilds that are crafting or decorating based rather than adventure based, but it's possible in the future they will add other halls gained by different means, hopefully some of which will be available to the non-high end adventuring folks (and not by SC).

When does this start, please?

In our livestream in early May, we announced that this year’s expansion will increase the level cap to 100. In light of the announcement, we wanted to do something to help you gear up and level up your characters! The team came up with some bonuses for the month of June (at least). Here’s how the “Gear Up, Level Up” bonuses are looking right now:
All Access members will receive the following bonuses and discounts:

• Double-Double Etyma in Tears of Veeshan (4x the rewards)!
• 25% XP Bonus
• Expansion discount (still working on the details for this)
• 25% Off Heroic Characters

Devs, the month of June means the month of June, not some random time in June. Today is June 1st and non of this is happening. If you didn't mean for it to start on the 1st then you should have put something more along the lines of "at some point in June."

I can't begin to tell you how annoying it is that the simplest things cannot be handled correctly. Please stop listing stuff that you may do at some point as definite. It is frustrating to your players and just continues to make us take you less seriously every time you fail.

So, it's June now. When is this supposed to start?

Probably in the realms of TBD currently. Usually we are given a month and in the past it's been sometime mid-month but hopefully we can be surprised and have it in the next week.

I'm thinking we might have it as soon as they can switch it on, like this Tuesday with the patch.

Anyone else wait up last night for the bonus?

Windstalker tweeted that it would be turned on on Tuesday.

I never dreamed it would go live on June 1st - I was expecting it to go live with the first patch day.

I don't know if this was mentioned, but for the people out there that really love the aspect of PvP in this game. It took forever for us to get the gear, and we still aren't fully geared. It took me 6 months on my Main, way longer than any other expansion. Is there a plan to make another PvP gearset that is going to take as long/longer to get?

They didn't state June 1st either, so quit complaining. If you know anything about patches, you would know their usual patch days are Tuesdays (which the first one coming in June is on Tuesday, the 3rd), not Sundays. Also just fair warning, from 12am-6:59am Pacific Time on Tuesday the 3rd, you will not see this implemented yet. At 7am Pacific Time most likely is when they will have the patch for this in and the servers will probably be down for 1 hour (60 minutes) roughly. At around 8am Pacific Time, once the servers come back up, then your update FOR JUNE will start.

...you know they don't actually have to patch, or even bring the servers down, to activate XP bonus', marketplace sales, or expansion prices. Double-double etyma is iffy, but I'm willing to bet they could've patched it in prior and enabled that at a later date too.

They would of gave us a direct time for switches like they have most times for those things though (like they did last time) and in advance. There is no direct time stated anywhere before the tweet was posted. So logical thinking would of probably told you it would be patched in otherwise.

Logic (and experience, mostly experience) tells me they just weren't ready

Relax Nelie, the devs don't give out free play time or goodies for defending their moves. Stating the for the Month of June means the month of June. Your reasoning allows for this to start on the last Tuesday of June as well as any other time. And as others have stated they do not need to bring servers down to make these types of changes. You don't need to know anything about patches to see that in the past events like double xp went on at a specific time and not following down time. Did they probably mean Tuesday? Sure, did they state that, no.

I am reading in other posts that Holly posted more detailed info on Twitter which I have looked for but didn't see. Another topic might be that the Devs may want to post on their main forums to hit their player base. This is the where most people would come to check issues, news or concerns.

Don't they always start things on patch days usually? Just seems like that's always been the case. Wouldn't surprise me if it lasted until the 3rd of July to make it an even 30 days too. That's a thursday. They end things on thursdays a lot too.

No tweed regarding this matter from Holly.
Please link it, if you can see any. Thx.

https://twitter.com/osgz11/status/473071643276103680

As others said, stuff like this almost always activates on a patch day. I really do not understand getting so bent out of shape over something like this.