upcoming live event on 2/17-2/19Follow

Or maybe they are adding griffon towers to EL and Zek? Don't think EL really needs them since its a fairly small zone, but i am sure they would be used. Zek would be kinda handy for the run to the Deathfist citidel.

Either that or they are going to make players work to gain access to the next expansion? I am still not looking forward to this next expansion. They are increaseing levels way too quick. Im sure if I was lvl 60 I would have a different view on it. OF course the expansion will only have content for lvl 55 to 70, thanks SOE for ******** the little people agian.

Just like eq1 they are making the extra 10 levels per expansion hell levels though. I knew before eq2 ever came out they had high level expectations for eq2, but I would have thought leveling would have been abit faster. I mean 2 years from now how would a new player feel starting a game where you max out at lvl 100? Pretty intimidating if you ask me. That is actually part of the reason I quit SWG when I seen lvl 80 players running around. Well that and the fact the game was boreing and the players was all immature kids.

The leveling speed depends on how much experience hey mete out for MoB's and quests in the new tier. I'm not that far into the 50's as an adventurer, but it seems to be leveling at roughly the same pace as 40 - 50. I know tradeskilling was WAY faster 50 - 60 than from 40 - 50.

When you hear AA's in EQ2, don't think AA's ala EQ1. There was nothing alternate about them, and they imbalanced within classes for people who had them and those that did not. So now you have guilds in EQ1 requiring a minimum of hundreds of AA's for applicants. All that does is make for more exp. grinding.

In fact the AA's in EQ2 (they're called Achievements, right?) might not be based on experience, they could be based on things like how many zones you've completely explored, how many different MoB's you killed, how many languages you've learned. I hope they've learned from EQ1 in that the rewards you get for the accomplishments don’t enhance your base class abilities (e.g. healing power for priests, hate management for tanks). They should be things that are nice to have, but they can't make one gimped if one doesn't have them. For example maybe killing many different MoBs would give any class some limited tracking ability, but nothing to match an equal level Ranger. I hope they add tradeskill achievements as well; something like the ability to see harvesting nodes on your map would be awesome.

(BTW, this game NEEDS a mini-map.)

Edited for grammar - Because I know my 6th grade English teacher is watching...

Edited, Mon Feb 6 11:56:59 2006 by Lydiaele

I do hope they at least skip 1 expansion on the next level cap. I know alot of people are not happy about the speed they are raising the cap, so perhaps they might. It wouldn't hurt the game abit if they would release a expansion that would offer content from tier2 + either. Would encourage more alts to be made for starters since people would want to experience the new zones, and it would give the newer players/return players other places to hunt besides the same.

I just hope these aa like things don't turn into eq1 where people think you should have 200 of them before you max your level out. I probably would have never left eq1 if it hasn't went so hardcore, but really you have to be a hardcore raider to even stand up against most other players in eq1. I mean as a monk with mainly bazaar gear I was being out DPSed by raid geared warriors, and casters had more hitpoints then I Did. And because I didn't have 200+ AA's no guilds other then family guilds with nobody my level to group with would take me in.

I just finished listening to the podcast of an interview with Blackguard of SOE, (available HERE ), in which he discussed both of these points.

Regarding additional adventure packs he said that the original schedule of 4 per year is kind of out the window and that with the success and scope of Splitpaw, they didn't feel as much pressure to pump them out. But, he did not rule out more being released in the future.

Regarding AA's, he went into great detail and said that the system will be completely different from that found in EQ live. For starters, we will not have to choose between adventure XP and AA xp, but instead will get both - getting AA xp only from completing certain goals, (like discoveries), and killing certain mobs. (like named, bosses and epic mobs).

Each archtype will have a complete and unique tree of abilities with 5 branches (one for each basic stat - str, agi, sta, int & wis), and each branch having 5 options. Each of these options can be advanced up to a total of 8 points or ignored, but if chosen, must be trained to the rank of 4 before proceeding to the next skill.

There will be a total of 50 points available to each character so you will have to make some choices somewhere... you won't be able to learn everything!

He gave numerous examples using scouts/rogues and they all sounded pretty cool!