=( Returning Player, New Xpak...pain and suffering.

I power leveled or boosted all of my characters, so I have nothing against boosted characters. Some people in this thread had the idea that just hitting level 100 was enough to be ready for kunark. My comments that you quoted are specifically directed at those people. This expansion is different in that it did not have a level increase to gate it. It does, however, have a gear increase as a gate if you want things to go more smoothly.

Sorry if it seemed I made an assumption about you. The only point I wanted to make to you was that other than perhaps having a bug that was causing people to do significantly less damage than they expected, daybreak did nothing differently here than in previous expansions in terms of how much effort is involved in getting ready to jump into content. You made it seem like they were drastically changing their game for the worse, and I disagree. They have done it exactly the same, but it is not as clear, since there is no level to look at as your benchmark to reach in order to do well.

Problem with this is that putting someone at 95 means you would have to do 2 expansions worth of questing in order to catch up. You know, if you wanted to actually do the sig lines.

Putting you at 100 means you just have to do ToT and then possibly zek and nizara. Again, it goes back to no level increase making it less clear.

As I said before, in my experience, the game has always required some gearing up process prior to getting into the most current content. But... I agree that it is somewhat misleading and there should be more direction to a brand new player in terms of what to shoot for in order to be ready.

It doesn't really apply to a boosted character though since the expectation is that the character is provided with at least the minimal amount of equipment to start the expansion it was packaged with. Otherwise, I agree with the person somewhere earlier who said that there should be breadcrumbs leading that character through whatever content they are supposed to be starting with. Since nothing like that is done, the most reasonable expectation for a person coming into the game, either new or returning, with the boosted character is that they will be starting the content packaged with that character.

It's misleading to package a 100 level boost character with a new expansion only to tell people they can't play but have to do all this other stuff first and buy all new equipment (often with platinum they don't have) from the broker.

Now I realize some people in this thread have an agenda against the concept of boosted characters and are arguing their point with that agenda in mind, and while I can sympathize with that concept (not having been a huge fan of heroic characters when they started, even though I've used them), the reality is that the boosted characters exist and that *both* new and returning players are going to use them and want to jump right into the content with all the other players.

Is it fair? Is it pay to win? Who knows and who cares since that cat is already out of the bag and that's a whole different discussion. What matters is what's happening right now, and even if a few people here on the forum are able to solve their problem by buying off the broker, a whole lot of other players who don't visit the forum are coming back to the game (or starting for the first time) with an apparently false expectation, getting frustrated, and then going right back to Rift, or WoW or whatever other MMO they came from because their 100 level Kunark Ascending character isn't working.

Maybe some of you are going "Good riddance! Let the crybabies go back to WoW." but I am personally not of that opinion and want to see people trying the game (or trying the game again) and having so much fun that they want to stay and perhaps then be putting more effort into their characters with more advanced levels of equipment and Ascension levels. It's not like the solo signature quest is the entirety of the game. So what if it's easy for most people to get through? They will have the rest of the game available with more challenging content in advanced solo, heroics, and raids should they decide to go those routes.

If we want more people playing and enjoying EQ2, why create unnecessary barriers for people?

The boosted gear is fine for starting out in Kunark.. I came back to the game at the start of Beta and used my pre-order boost to boost my paladin to 100 (from 90). I equipped all his free boost gear and copied him over to beta.. He was able to do the solo instances just fine, even advanced solo (before those zones got a slight boost). The boosted gear comes with high-proc gear. My paladin got a 2.5mil procing bow, and a 10mil procing shield. Got a 2.5mil procing sword in the ToT quest chain.

Take off all your gear, log out, log back in and re-equip everything. Seems to be working for a lot of people.

If you are killing mobs as normal, you are not effected by the bug which is taking others 5+ minutes to kill a trash mob. If you are effected you know it. Super Raid geared or not.

[Note: I am aware that there is a Beta Buff, but I always right-click canceled when doing solo instances.]

Your resolve should be at least 100. 100+ is even more ideal. My Defiler is 114 Resolve, my wife's tank is 134 resolve...just to give you kind of an idea.

I totally agree.

However, the 100 boost, while packaged with this expansion, was available prior to the expansion in the pre-order. It was meant to help people skip the leveling up process and be 100, so all they had to do was get ready in current 100 content, which would include ToT through everything else that is level 100 up until launch.

A person hitting 100 is a very different person from someone who has done all 100 content. Boost here was meant to get you to 100 and let you jump right into level 100 content with ease. That is all. It is the player's job to do the 100 content from easiest to most difficult in order to feel progression.

Boosting to level 100 and not being ready for Kunark is still a HUGE time saver and worth every penny if you want to be ready quickly. Just like a level 90 and a level 95 were previously massive time savers. That is the point of a level 100 boost in THIS game.

If the boost was ONLY available once launch hit, then your point would be 100% perfect, and I would agree that it should allow for people to jump right into KA. That wasn't the case, though. You are 100. Start at the easiest 100 place. Or even, if we look at 1 month ago, the most current place, which would be Zek and Nizara, and the boosted gear was perfect for starting out in that place and allowed for clear progression and a feeling of building up from the base that the boost provided as you made your way through that content.

Look at the difference in AoM of someone starting out in tranquil sea at exactly level 95 compared to someone at level 100. That difference was gigantic. And it's exactly what we have here. Except the starting number is the same. Gear progression from easiest content available at that level to the end at that level is very similar, except now it is even more of a leap in stats.

I want more people playing this game, and I will help new players get ready to succeed. But we have to look at the facts of how things were provided to us in order to then make judgments about how well that was handled or how poorly it was done. In this case, level 100 boost never guaranteed access to Kunark. It guaranteed easy access to level 100 content that was available at the time it was offered, which was over a month ago.

And if we forget all about the level 100 boost and pretend someone just started eq2 today, well, if that person wanted to get into Kunark as quickly as possible, they would have to progress through all content, finding ways to earn plat or making friends while leveling up slowly in order to reach 100, where anyone would tell them to start with ToT as a new level 100 character.

And if they wanted to skip that level 100 content and get right to Kunark... well, they would get handcrafted gear or ride along on some solo dungeons while someone else did the work and gave them handouts, which would then get them ready to dive into the sig line on their own.

That's how I've always started a new expansion. I didn't use my ToV gear to start AoM when I reached 95. I got AoM gear that a a friend made for me. In ToT, it was the same thing. Even for my decent AoM gear, my guildmates/friends saw that ToT handcrafted was quite a bit stronger, so we all just made some for ourselves and dove in with ease.

I don't know what game everyone else has been playing, but that's how it has worked for me since I started in 2015. Do I wish it was easier to jump in, like I think it may be in other games? Yup. But saying that this expansion has messed up and changed things, to me rings false, especially if people are using the 100 boost as their argument, since that was not given out at launch, but a little over a month prior to launch, with gear that was appropriate starter gear for all current level 100 content at that time.

A few points I want point out there were kinda missed in this thread:

1) You are not FORCED to BUY the new crafted gear. Make some friends or guilds that have people doing tradeskill and ask them nicely if they could take some time to make you a set of gear/jewelry/weapons (whatever their specialty is for equipping toons). Also, selling Kronos isnt the ONLY way to make money in this game. That is just the easiest excuse to turn to when you can't afford something because you are too lazy to do the work to make the profits to afford something.

2) Most people are most likely forgetting that the ToT sig WAS REQUIRED from the start. So with the boosted characters and having to start that content, it would have been simple and the gear from the advanced solos you run through could of helped increase making things way easier in KA. However, since people complained, ToT sig was removed from the requirements, so we only have those to blame who wanted the ToT sig line gone.

3) If you have currency from ToT still and need to spend it, spend it on toons that need resolve, there is a lot of 5-7 resolve jewelry/cloak/belt items on the mushroom guy merchant. I wouldn't recommend decking out in all of it though. There are still some valuable pieces like the potency charm and the potency wrist from Nizara that have a huge amount of potency.

I viewed the 100 boost as a marketing tactic in the sense of, "Hey, we'll give you a free ready-to-play 100 level character if you pre-order the expansion" so that more people would feel pressured to buy it ahead of time rather than waiting. Seems that it would just sell more copies that way. I haven't even used my 100 boost yet because I can't decide what character I want to use it on, but I'm feeling tempted to just pick someone and do the boost just to see how the boosted 100 compares to the character I'm using now, who did go through a bunch of the earlier content, though not the subscriber-only stuff. Ran out of time for that but will still eventually go back and do it because..quests.

It does seem like there's some sort of bug happening though due to people being able to solve the problem simply by removing equipment, relogging, and putting it back on.

I'm also beginning to wonder if there's a bug with the KA handcrafted equipment as I've started seeing some comments that it's better than the mastercrafted version. I'm wondering if the two were accidentally switched at some point and perhaps a reason why players wearing it are able to get through content so much easier than many coming in with equipment from earlier content or the 100 boosted equipment.

The 100 boost gear is fine for starting Kunark, at least for DPS classes, as I posted earlier in the thread. No idea on healers/tanks.

Agreed and players have to remember that scouts and mages are always going to kill quicker than tanks and healers.

What server are you on? Can I peek at your setup / etc on Eq2U ? Your DPS seems out of line with where I'd expect a necro's to be. My necro (geared with a couple relics / fabled TOT stuff /etc) simply mauls stuff down overland and in solo zones; Unda basically 1 shotting the boss mobs in solo zones, so I /can/ attest to gear being a big difference. I'm also fully adorned with all 5 purple war runes / white adorns and all major spells and buffs either mastered or grandmastered.

I'd also like to make the observation that in this xpac, I can "feel" a difference at the rate in which I progress; meaning - everything takes longer to do. Moving around to the different zone ins, actually having to read the questline boxes so I don't accidentally cancel it out... the pace in which I'm consuming the content is now slower. Versus TOT - wherein I had my toon pretty geared / sig line done / etc in maybe 2 hours-ish?

So yes - using Twark gear - or even better, Bloody Tooth gear - will keep you alive and progressing. Combat Mitigation and resolve will do its best to keep your progression slower than other expacs, that's for sure. Again, without looking at your character's AA, adorns, etc its anyone's guess as to why your necro dps is 1/10th.