Level 80?

[Xislaben]

http://everquest.station.sony.com/

Rediscover Faydwer as you strive to thwart the plans of the evil gnomish necromancer, Meldrath the Malignant.
Meldrath takes his fortress Mechanotus to the skies on a mission of destruction exposing a network of mineshafts
and tunnels that lead across the Steamfont Mountains to the unexplored lands of Faydwer.

Prepare for adventures with new friends and foes as you do batlle against angry clockwork machines and come face to face with the great dragon, Kerafyrm, who plots to end the world.

FEATURES:

Heroic items: Push yourself beyond your limits with Heroic Items that take your abilities beyond their maximum potential.

Level cap increase to level 80.

New Zones, Non Player Characters, and Interactive Objects.

New Alternate Advancement Abilities, Spells and Items.

[Brahman]

seriously wtf is with a level cap increase already? :(

[neferakhen]

WTF? I dinged 75 like a month ago... let me enjoy it a lil bit more! I like that I can get new AA's but, i'm still so far behind them, I don't know if I should look forward to "expanding" my toons abilities or if I should just give up ><

[Meph]

$$ something to do finally.

Not like november is next week...

[neferakhen]

yea... at least it's only one expansion per year after that one....

[Brahman]

which is why they would do it "early" other wise the next level up with be a year an a half away, thats a bit much.

I bet the new AAs are super expensive so that only the most hardcore will remax their AAs very quickly...

[Meph]

Looks like the new plan is to increase lvl cap every year from now on on yearly basis with each expansion.

That seems a bit excessive to me tbh =P.

[Brahman]

2 years between level cap increases would suck though...

[Meph]

It was 2 years between lvl increases till now...

[Brahman]

was it?

i was thinking it was about 18 months, but ya your right.

I wonder why they desided to up it so much :(

[Xislaben]

was it?

i was thinking it was about 18 months, but ya your right.

I wonder why they desided to up it so much :(

I smell death!

[Sivas]

It's too soon. I much preferred the 2 year gap between level increases. Each time they increase levels it makes a ton of fun grouping places obsolete since it's either trivial or the exp isn't worthwhile anymore. It also means having to get a bunch of new focus effects that work up to level 80. It will make raiding easier for those guilds who are behind the curve, but I've been enjoying the challenge and would rather get further along before making it easier.

I don't mind an increase every 2 years or so to get a big infusion of new spells and so on, but what's the motivation behind the increase so soon?

Sivas

[Drazzminius]

I don't mind an increase every 2 years or so to get a big infusion of new spells and so on, but what's the motivation behind the increase so soon?

SivasNew/Younger Customers looking for "quick" games...
The kind of customers that played console games with level warps and cheat codes. The kind of customers that are more into getting gear than enjoying the content. Just my opinion, but I've been playing since 2000 and am only 68 (not that 4 trips to Iraq have helped me level any), but that's how I would see it.

[Jebasiz]

It's too soon. I much preferred the 2 year gap between level increases. Each time they increase levels it makes a ton of fun grouping places obsolete since it's either trivial or the exp isn't worthwhile anymore. It also means having to get a bunch of new focus effects that work up to level 80. It will make raiding easier for those guilds who are behind the curve, but I've been enjoying the challenge and would rather get further along before making it easier.

I don't mind an increase every 2 years or so to get a big infusion of new spells and so on, but what's the motivation behind the increase so soon?

Sivas

They're going to a yearly expansion cycle. If it wasn't this november..level 80 would of been November 2008..That's a bit of a ways off. I'm looking forward to it, tbh. I need something to do outside of raids, and typically, level increasing expansions are big, have tons of AAs, and give us something to farm(like the spectre illusion mask quest, and hand aug etc). The fact that it's in November, not September..means they'll have 2 more months to create content and gear, I hope that means for a better product. PoP 2.0, not OoW 2.0 plz.

[Sivas]

2 years between level increases has been the standard since PoP. So Nov 2008 would be about right. I'm really happy that our guild recently started raiding CoA recently and am looking forward to the focus effects there but many of those effects will be nearly worthless for spells up to level 80. I was finally close to having raid-level focus effects that were effective on the spells I most used and I was looking forward to using them for another year or more. I'm sure there are many other folks in similar positions. We're a really long way from being able to raid anything that will give us focus effects that are worthwhile at 75+. My TBS armor is fine since it does go to 75, but the raiding focus effects really lose their appeal come November.

I hope they change their minds and decide to make this a non-level-increasing expansion.

Sivas

[Ragginbane]

My guild raids COA and DON dragons (all but Vish) and have done 2 of the blood raids. I can tell you right now that focii degradation in the next expansion (if it happens) will cause many of our casters to leave (quit or app to a higher level guild).

Since our tanks need a , roughly, linear progression to be able to handle higher level raids (DK, demi, etc.), it's going to be a long while before my guild can handle those raids. (farming weapons and gear upgrades to be able to tank things) This means more and more time before our casters can get (raid) focii that work well (if at all) on 75+ spells.

Assuming focii continue to degrade in the next expansion, I hope the new expansion does something like:

1) provide group gear/weapons (higher than coa quality, not sure how muh higher) that would allow a coa-ish guild to quickly move to dk+ raiding
or
2) provide a new raiding path designed for COA-ish guilds that gives focii upgrades for casters and gear/weapon upgrades for melee

If something like that doesn't happen then I forsee my guild numbers decreasing and us being unable to even field a COA raid.

Ragg

p.s. yes, I know, if we raided more than 3 times a week we'd be significantly higher up the raid progression path. It would really be good for guilds like mine for SOE to realize there needs to be a bridge for coa-ish raiding guilds and the next expansion. All in my own opinion of course.

[Xislaben]

My guild raids COA and DON dragons (all but Vish) and have done 2 of the blood raids. I can tell you right now that focii degradation in the next expansion (if it happens) will cause many of our casters to leave (quit or app to a higher level guild).

Your concern is a very valid one imho. Your casters will either have to use old spells with old foci, or just get fed up and do something like quit or change guilds. The thing is, foci doesn't get any easier to get, and apping to a tbs/sof raiding guild might be too big of a step.

Hopefully soe will do something to ease the focus degradation, otherwise I'm afraid it'll have some bad consequences.

Maybe 5% instead of 10% decay, or maybe up the level of the foci etc...

[Aegrusnecrox]

A rescaling of foci would be the best solution, and I think this is something we should lobby for intensively.

Everyone should.

-Egg

[Xislaben]

A rescaling of foci would be the best solution, and I think this is something we should lobby for intensively.

Everyone should.

-Egg

There's a bunch of unstable melee players being quite irrational in their vociferous opposition to any change to foci degradation.

It's actually pretty amusing to poke them and see the strange nonsensical things they claim with absolute certainty, I recomend you pop on over to eqlive and check it out :)

[winchester20]

The reasoning behind expansions is raising the bar so that people have new things that they have to work towards for their characters. For casters, spells and foci that increase the effectivness of those spells are a big part of said expansion. If you reduce the work of getting those foci, or decrease the need for those foci upgrades, you reduce a large part of the reason to get that new expansion, and I just don't see Sony doing something like that. And frankly, I don't think that I'd want them to. I always want there to be things that I've got my eye on, upgrades that I'm looking forward to. Without that, EQ would cease to be fun.