Solo Experience nerfed?Follow

Let me share some of my experience of my past 2 weeks of gameplay (since 1st day of release). I played in the Unrest seever as a High Elf Fighter. Took me two days to leave the IoR; I solo 95% of the time spent there except for the orc quest, but that's because it's designed for grouping. I moved to Qeynos after that; did some quests and gained a few levels in that 1st week. I completed the fighting training quest at lv 9 last weekend with the help of a group (actually I could've completed this part alone but met someone who had the same goal as me so decided to group) and became a Crusader. From then on I keep moving up a level everyday and today I just ding lv 16.

What I wanna say is I have only grouped 3~4 times after leaving IoR. I gained most of the xp from questing and a little bit grinding (usually those are mobs I must kill for quests). I found this is the fastest way to gain xp for soloing. I also earn money from these quests too. that's not a lot of money but at least enough for me to keep all my armors orange/yellow and still have almost 1gp in the bank. You may say people who started on the release day have gone further than I do but judging from how much time I play each day I feel I've already accomplished a lot. This feel of accomplishment is never possible when I was playing ffxi; I could not level that fast while soloing (well I couldn't level AT ALL while soloing), and I cannot earn that much money in such early stage of ffxi either.

I don't know anything about post-20 so I cannot comment on that but from what I've heard it'll be a lot slower if you solo. But to me that makes perfect sense because at the early stage you are still new to the game and community, so you may not be that comfortable about grouping. But by the time you hit lv 20 you should've met quite a few friends, if not a lot, and should start grouping because it's how the game meant to be played. No matter which MMORPG, even WoW which is known to be best for soloing, grouping always allows players to advance much faster. Given that if you still choose to solo then you shouldn't complain on how soloing doesn't give you enugh xp.

Edited, Mon Nov 22 07:08:12 2004 by kanonyuki

Except that FFXI has one class (Beastmaster) that can solo xp at a decent rate all the way to L75. So there is that option available for people who want it.

I've not played EQ2 yet and solo xp is one of the things I've been most interested in, the posts in this thread have been very informative so thanks for that. I hated the forced grouping for xp in FFXI (as opposed to grouping for quests/missions/etc which is a different thing) and playing BST changed the whole game for me. I very much doubt that I'd still be playing if not for that.

EQ2 is still developing and from the link posted above it looks like they at least intend to make solo play possible all the way. It is right that there should be an incentive to group, as long as they don't penalise solo too much. BST solo xp/hour in FFXI is typically half of what you could get in a good party, that is fair IMO given that (a) you don't spend time looking for a party in the first place and (b) you don't take the risk of ending up with a party that is more likely to get you killed than earn xp. =P

Hi,

Im a Druid and able to solo pretty well. Your right solo exp is not very good. But, the loot is all mine, I get to explore where ever I want, I need the hides I get for trade skills, all my combat skills go up when I solo(as opposed to healer in a group). And group exp is really really good. Quest exp is not bad either, all and all Id say it was pretty well balanced.