Congratulations into turning a really fun zone into Karnor's Castle 2.0

[Mythal_EQ2]

<p>The Hole...</p><p>Great concept, good graphics, lots of named mobs, sucky itemization, but amazing questlines and most important: good exp.</p><p>No longer.</p><ul><li>Repeatable faction quests now give 0 exp -- or so close to 0 that it's not even funny trying to calculate.</li><li>Quest item drops severely decreased.</li><li>Gruengach illusion no longer allows you to pick up more quests (by lowering your faction) -- but STILL won't let you benefit from a lot of other quests since they auto-complete and their faction gain is lost.</li></ul><p>That's awesome.</p><p>Two weeks into the expansion and people start abandoning this place. In two months it will be as empty as Karnor's Castle was, with only soloers or bot groups in it.</p><p>/clap clap.</p><p>D.</p>

[Yimway]

<p>I agree, if this was an intended change, its a change that belongs on the failboat.</p>

[Xisi]

<p>What's wrong with Karnor Castle?  People still do it, my lowbie alt still go there.  It's a low end public dungeon.  What do you expect? Farming it like no tomorrow?</p><p>People abused the Hole repeatable quests by killing a couple mobs, eva, rinse and repeat.  The quest XP is too good when you compare it to other quests overland.   Overland quests require you to actually do something, but the Hole repeatable quest is too easy to be true.</p><p>I am mad that there are so many abusable holes in the game that they didn't fix in beta test.  within a week people are already 90 with 250 aa.   What a joke.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p>Well, admittedly using the illusion to pick up more seemed a bit wrong as I was doing it. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" /></p><p>But I'm right there in the /agree boat on the rest. I already thought it was better for soloing than grouping because of the rate of quest drops, but now that seems even more to be the case.</p><p>Still a good place for a quick MoM, I guess.</p><p>Still makes no sense to me that all 3 factions hate the gruengach's, yet somehow they can give you a quest that will raise your faction with them all. Wha? But that's another story.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Xisi@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>People abused the Hole repeatable quests by killing a couple mobs, eva, rinse and repeat.  The quest XP is too good when you compare it to other quests overland.   Overland quests require you to actually do something, but the Hole repeatable quest is too easy to be true.</p></blockquote><p>Total bull...</p><p>Most of the repeatable quests took 20 to 40 mins for a full group to complete.  Is 4% xp for a quest that takes that long for a group to complete out of ballance?  How many soloquests could that group complete in the same amount of time.</p><p>There was exactly one quest that I can think of that needed to drop rate tweaked as there were simply too many spawns available that dropped them,   But even with that being true, it still took 20 mins to get the quest and get to the spawns and get 6 people their updates.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well, admittedly using the illusion to pick up more seemed a bit wrong as I was doing it. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>Yes, that is an issue, however it is somewhat ballanced by being unable to earn faction on the auto-complete missions due to the illusion.</p><p>There are for sure some bugs with the illusion that needed fixing.  Removing the need to go to the zone entirely was not the way to fix the illusion.</p>

[Couching]

<p>Faction vendors in the hole need an upgrade especially with the latest change; no more exp for faction quests.</p><p>Gear on faction vendors in the hole is junk comparing to battleground gear and it's way easier to get enough BG token for BG gear.</p><p>With no exp from faction quests and worse gear on faction vendors in the hole, what's the purpose/motiviation for players to keep playing in the hole?</p>

[Mythal_EQ2]

<p><cite>Xisi@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>People abused the Hole repeatable quests by killing a couple mobs, eva, rinse and repeat.  The quest XP is too good when you compare it to other quests overland.   Overland quests require you to actually do something, but the Hole repeatable quest is too easy to be true.</blockquote><p>Overland quests are, for the most part, not repeatable. If they are repeatable (like the Disciples quests in the Highlands), they have also been nerfed xp-wise into oblivion.</p><p>And as others posted, for a full group to get all the body drop updates for quests is not a quick thing. And it's near impossible now.</p><p>What's wrong with Karnor's Castle? How about it's empty 90% of the time, with the exception of some poor slob who tries to put a group together for quest updates (and usually ends up spitting blood before he gets enough interest)?</p><p>D.</p>

[Dareena]

<p>It'll hack me off if the Hole becomes permanently mutilated.  While I started the expansion with the rest of the pack, I've been balancing my play time between various characters and limiting my time logged in while I enjoy the real world.  I've got no issue with the fact that all of the big dogs are 90th and only want 90th people for their instances.  There is no question that it's been my fault that I've been solo questing and crafting when I've been online instead of level grinding in the Hole.  My personal priorities were based on the understanding that the Hole would be there whenever I had the time for it (since people expect Hole grinders to commit to large spans of time).</p><p>Yet from what I'm hearing, the Hole has already changed.  I've got no problem with SOE sewing up a broken ring event or two down there.  But I do have a real issue with them conciously penalizing players who didn't level up to 90th via the Hole within the first week of SF launching.  Now I'm at a permanent penalty from trying to balance my characters and real life obligations.  In hindsight, it's like SOE saying that everyone should have been Hole grinding when SF came out because there's been some kind of secret expiration date on the zone.  What the heck!!??</p><p>When people want to run SF instances, there's already an expectation that you should be 90th before you're worthy to join their PUGs.  Yet with the Hole changing, all non-90th players are going to have to slowly limp up to the level cap.  Mean while, all of the current 90th characters are going to rack up all of the Marks that they need.  Once the new breed of people hit 90th, will the old breed of 90th players even want to run the SF instances any more?  Only time will tell.</p>

[timetravelling]

<p>Looking into these issues. Thanks for the feedback</p>

[Yimway]

<p>With no official comment on it, and the number of bugs in game from yesterday, I'm not ruling out that no xp reward is the result of some bug.</p>

[Krooner]

<p><cite>Daervon@Nektulos wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p> <span style="text-decoration: underline;">How about it's empty 90% of the time</span>,<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> with the exception of some poor slob</span> who tries to put a group together for quest updates (and usually ends up spitting blood before he gets enough interest)?</p><p>D.</p></blockquote><p>OR your occasional bruiser farming masters and gear for plat.</p>

[bks6721]

<p>spent 2 hours in the Hole with a group.. didn't get a single quest complete because everyone rolling Need on quest updates..  Fun?  not really.   I got more exp mentoring to 70 and rolling over to SoS.</p>

[Sedenten]

<p><cite>Xisi@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Overland quests require you to actually do something, but the Hole repeatable quest is too easy to be true.</p></blockquote><p>It was a breathe of fresh air seeing people actually forming GROUPS for an instanced dungeon for once.  Aside from epic updates, that wasn't happening back in tier 8.  I don't see an issue with making heroic contested zones be superior experience to grinding out overland quests.  Anything that promotes using these contested dungeons is not a bad thing...  If these changes were intentional, then it's going to be sad seeing overland questing being faster experience than the Hole.</p><p>And for the record, I leveled from 81-90 doing overland quests with about one level of that spent running around the Hole in a guild group.  I did this after the big experience exploits were fixed there, but really enjoyed seeing the dungeon packed with people the time I was able to spend in there.</p>

[Valdaglerion]

<p>This could be a fun longer term zone with a few changes:</p><p><ul><li>Quest items drop for everyone in the group. The solo drops are a bad thing for group questing.</li><li>Get rid of the looted items stacking in inventory, just ding them off the quest and make everything NPC turn in, no auto completes.</li><li>Take a look at itemization and loot tables in this zone. We find a ton of fighter and scout items with very very few mage and priest items.</li></ul></p>

[Gaige]

<p>Hole repeatables need to give xp to help the AA grind along or no one will ever go there, ever.  Much faster to do all 3 vastys and turn the mission in, then do the MOTD and turn that in, etc.</p>

[Brigh]

<p>I deliberately have refrained from playing my only 80 so that things would be fixed and my experience in the game not ruined with things being too easy or what ever.</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>Pauly@Befallen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>spent 2 hours in the Hole with a group.. didn't get a single quest complete because everyone rolling Need on quest updates..  Fun?  not really.   I got more exp mentoring to 70 and rolling over to SoS.</p></blockquote><p>Same here I haven't been able to complete a single quest in there because everyone rolls need, and there just aren't many updates. </p><p>Then again I am not rollin the place with a group of raiders.</p>

[Gungo]

<p><cite>Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This could be a fun longer term zone with a few changes:</p><ul><li>Quest items drop for everyone in the group. The solo drops are a bad thing for group questing.</li><li>Get rid of the looted items stacking in inventory, just ding them off the quest and make everything NPC turn in, no auto completes.</li><li>Take a look at itemization and loot tables in this zone. We find a ton of fighter and scout items with very very few mage and priest items.</li></ul></blockquote><p>QFE</p><p>The initial drop rate was to high and supported soloing more then grouping.Make the updates group wide at the current slower drop rate and it will promote grouping rather then soloing.</p>

[Illmarr]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xisi@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>People abused the Hole repeatable quests by killing a couple mobs, eva, rinse and repeat.  The quest XP is too good when you compare it to other quests overland.   Overland quests require you to actually do something, but the Hole repeatable quest is too easy to be true.</p></blockquote><p>Total bull...</p><p>Most of the repeatable quests took 20 to 40 mins for a full group to complete.  Is 4% xp for a quest that takes that long for a group to complete out of ballance?  How many soloquests could that group complete in the same amount of time.</p><p>There was exactly one quest that I can think of that needed to drop rate tweaked as there were simply too many spawns available that dropped them,   But even with that being true, it still took 20 mins to get the quest and get to the spawns and get 6 people their updates.</p></blockquote><p>I've only been in one Hole group, think it was last Sunday night or Monday. I was with an 82.75 Swashbuckler. Pick up quest, go kill 10 of some sort of rays in water and complete quest. Evac to a point 50M from the quest giver. Pick up quest again. Train past mobs you don't need to kill. Rinse and repeat. after an hour group breaks up and leave with eyes glazed over from boredom at 84.2. And at times needed the third evac because it was down on first 2 people things were so fast.</p>

[Aull]

<p>The xp given off repeatables in the hole was in no way out of line. Overland xp is terrible. Run all over the sundered frontier for 20 mins turn in one quest and get 1%. That is insainity.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Ilmaaaaah@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I've only been in one Hole group, think it was last Sunday night or Monday. I was with an 82.75 Swashbuckler. Pick up quest, go kill 10 of some sort of rays in water and complete quest. Evac to a point 50M from the quest giver. Pick up quest again. Train past mobs you don't need to kill. Rinse and repeat. after an hour group breaks up and leave with eyes glazed over from boredom at 84.2. And at times needed the third evac because it was down on first 2 people things were so fast.</p></blockquote><p>You skipped alot of quests there.  You could have grabbed more, gone thru more areas and completed the same amount of quests/hour without all the grindy repetition.  Earned roughly the same xp, and not been nearly as glazed over.</p><p>But I understand, you found one thing that worked and ground on it.</p>

[ArivenGemini]

<p><cite>Ilmaaaaah@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xisi@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>People abused the Hole repeatable quests by killing a couple mobs, eva, rinse and repeat.  The quest XP is too good when you compare it to other quests overland.   Overland quests require you to actually do something, but the Hole repeatable quest is too easy to be true.</p></blockquote><p>Total bull...</p><p>Most of the repeatable quests took 20 to 40 mins for a full group to complete.  Is 4% xp for a quest that takes that long for a group to complete out of ballance?  How many soloquests could that group complete in the same amount of time.</p><p>There was exactly one quest that I can think of that needed to drop rate tweaked as there were simply too many spawns available that dropped them,   But even with that being true, it still took 20 mins to get the quest and get to the spawns and get 6 people their updates.</p></blockquote><p>I've only been in one Hole group, think it was last Sunday night or Monday. I was with an 82.75 Swashbuckler. Pick up quest, go kill 10 of some sort of rays in water and complete quest. Evac to a point 50M from the quest giver. Pick up quest again. Train past mobs you don't need to kill. Rinse and repeat. after an hour group breaks up and leave with eyes glazed over from boredom at 84.2. And at times needed the third evac because it was down on first 2 people things were so fast.</p></blockquote><p>Thats the main offender down there I think.  I know of a group that needed 4 evac'ers to keep them up due to the speed they were killing the 10 rays, thats a far cry from the "20 minutes" mentioned earlier.. without a time limit on regaining the quest, there was no reason to do anything but that one.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>ArivenGemini wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Thats the main offender down there I think.  I know of a group that needed 4 evac'ers to keep them up due to the speed they were killing the 10 rays, thats a far cry from the "20 minutes" mentioned earlier.. without a time limit on regaining the quest, there was no reason to do anything but that one.</p></blockquote><p>Aye, I mentioned earlier, there are 2 quests that really needed adjusting.</p><p>Rays should require a drop such that its 10 kills per party member.</p><p>Tails should drop about half as frequently.</p><p>Those are the only 2 I found that were too trivial for time spent and I've completed 2 factions and about halfway thru the 3rd.</p>

[Nolrog]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>With no official comment on it, and the number of bugs in game from yesterday, I'm not ruling out that no xp reward is the result of some bug.</p></blockquote><p>That's far more likely than they did it intentionally.</p>

[Xisi]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>ArivenGemini wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Thats the main offender down there I think.  I know of a group that needed 4 evac'ers to keep them up due to the speed they were killing the 10 rays, thats a far cry from the "20 minutes" mentioned earlier.. without a time limit on regaining the quest, there was no reason to do anything but that one.</p></blockquote><p>Aye, I mentioned earlier, there are 2 quests that really needed adjusting.</p><p>Rays should require a drop such that its 10 kills per party member.</p><p>Tails should drop about half as frequently.</p><p>Those are the only 2 I found that were too trivial for time spent and I've completed 2 factions and about halfway thru the 3rd.</p></blockquote><p>People all pay like totall innnocent when they actually were probably abusing the system.</p><p>I did it once but the XP gain was insane compared to overland quests.  No one wanna pointed out that, instead they protended those level 90 with 250 all leveled up legitimately spending 20-40 minutes per quest lol.  Have they ever slept for a week?</p>

[Xyzria]

<p>If these changes are seriously intended, I'm completely with Daervon.... Thats BS.</p><p>Yus, I indeed was one of the first people to 90 on the server due to a group of our guildies(me includeD) accidentally stumbling upon the fact that the repeatbale XP in there was INSANE... For little to no effort (When you have top end raid gear, that stuff happens). Am I at 250 AA yet? Nope.. I'm a slacker <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>TBH I think I've seen more and more groups for a contested zone than I EVER saw for KC/Seb, which to me is a good tihng, people are actually grouping and not being all "OH OH OH you don't have your myth you can't instance with us" Like they were at the end of last expansion.</p><p>All you people going "Oh good job Sony I like the changes!!!" I don't see what to like about them? I mean, the first 14 1/2 hours of the expansion I went through and did ALL the Sundered Frontier Quests. (And Yus I mean ALL of the timeline.) and I went from 81.8% - MAYBE 84.3....  Maybe.. To me... that was a very long gruelling 14 1/2 hours running all ovre sundered Frontier who knows how many times for less than three levels.... It was ridiculous... And painful (I tend to HATE questing >.&lt<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />..</p><p>Anyway! /rant off..</p><p>Hope to see this getting fixed soon! I need more guildies to do the zone with me so I can steal all the shinies..</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Nolrog wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>With no official comment on it, and the number of bugs in game from yesterday, I'm not ruling out that no xp reward is the result of some bug.</p></blockquote><p>That's far more likely than they did it intentionally.</p></blockquote><p>I would agree if there weren't 100 other things bugged from yesterday's patch.</p>

[Illmarr]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Ilmaaaaah@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I've only been in one Hole group, think it was last Sunday night or Monday. I was with an 82.75 Swashbuckler. Pick up quest, go kill 10 of some sort of rays in water and complete quest. Evac to a point 50M from the quest giver. Pick up quest again. Train past mobs you don't need to kill. Rinse and repeat. after an hour group breaks up and leave with eyes glazed over from boredom at 84.2. And at times needed the third evac because it was down on first 2 people things were so fast.</p></blockquote><p>You skipped alot of quests there.  You could have grabbed more, gone thru more areas and completed the same amount of quests/hour without all the grindy repetition.  Earned roughly the same xp, and not been nearly as glazed over.</p><p>But I understand, you found one thing that worked and ground on it.</p></blockquote><p>Actually, the already established PuG I joined found one thing and ground on it. It was the most mind-numbingly boring group I've ever been in content wise The people were actually very nice and at least explained the process rather than immediately /disbanding me for not knowing what was going on after I said I'd head out because I didn't have whatever quest they had been running since I didn't notice the feather over the head of the guy in that room down the ramp. I spent the rest of the week doing the solo overland quests and just hit 85 last night. Plan on going back with a group of friends once I actually read up and understand exactly how the factions and quests work in there. Seemed I didn't pick up anything negative to the main three. I did not send tells to join several other glider grind groups throughout the course of the week just because it was such a limited (though efficient) way to spend time</p>

[Odys]

<p>By big complains are  </p><p>the "click to confirm"  for the quest items.</p><p>the mess with amount of quest -- yes my journal is quite filled</p><p>The fact that clickable item update selfsihly, i totally hate that,  the first to click is rarely contributing fully to the group.</p><p>-->  Clickable should validate for the group</p><p>--> Confirmation for the quest items should unecessaty and the lottery automatic.</p><p>The zone is vary funny, it's nice to have back some old school monster bashing with no strat <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Jgok]

<p>Here's the problems I have with The Hole...</p><p><strong>No-Trade Quest Items</strong></p><p>I get why they're no-trade, that's not the problem. I have three issues with this item setup...</p><ol><li>Every time one of these quest items drops, you have to click need/greed, then click "yes, I'm sure," often while your group is still in combat, or you're running to the next mobs to kill.</li><li>The current setup makes people want to solo or box when they're looking for quest drops, as sharing them takes FAR too long, and you'll invariably get someone needing on everything because they can't be bothered to check what they actually DO need.</li><li>The drop rate was nerfed so badly that it took me more than 30 minutes last night to get TWO to drop to finish a quest. That was in a group of three where my 2-boxed swash/mystic were DECLINING so the third could get her quest finished.</li></ol><p>With the current drop rate, they need to drop for everyone in the group. This would actually fix all three problems, as group wouldn't have to share updates, and grouped kills are faster than solo kills.</p><p><strong>The Frickin' Illusion</strong></p><p>Autocomplete quests are practically worthless with the Gruengach Illusion in the state it is right now. Our only option is to turn off the illusion before killing the last mob, which in a high-dps group is pretty easy to miss, and if you DO get it off in time, well thats a minimum of -100 to one of the factions right there. Fix it so quest credit (and only quest credit) counts for your true faction even if the illusion is active.</p><p><strong>Nerfed Experience Gains</strong></p><p>I understand why the experience was nerfed, but it was nerfed WAY too much. I should be getting at least 1% AA  per quest at level 90 with 210 AAs. That's another thing, too... I started at level 80 with 196 AA, finished <strong>every</strong> solo quest in the expansion (except the bloody pokemon) plus a few heroic ones, and ended up at level 88 with 208 AA. That's more a comment on the overall expansion rather than just The Hole, but it stands on its own.</p><p>I'll be honest. I did grind from 88.5 to 90 off the glider quest. After completing several <strong>level 92 non-repeatable heroic quests</strong> in the SF instances and getting ~1% exp per quest at level 88, you bet I repeated a quest that gave me around 4% every time. That's what those heroic instance quests SHOULD have been giving me. That's what finishing Justice for JoJo at level 83 should have given me, instead of the 1% that I actually got.</p><p>Is it truly intended that we should have to grind 2 levels and 40 AAs off instance quests that give around 1% AA per completion even at 90? If that's the case, I'm looking at 4,000 more instance runs before I get 250 AA (and yes, I've done most of the lower-tier named content, and I shouldn't have to grind gray quests for 1% per 10 quests, either).</p>

[bleap]

<p>It was great EXP just enough time for many uber guilds to manage level 90 so then can raid end game bosses before anyone else? Done intentionally? probably not...But nerfing the zone after 2 weeks and after many players took advantage of the great EXP is lame and a bit selfish..</p>

[Hecula]

<p>Besides a couple quests that were way too easy and were well known and discussed on Beta in the forums, I think the XP gain in The Hole was set intentionally as good as the rate of overland quests. Many people expressed the desire for a good contested grind zone like SoS where the XP was as good as doing soloquest.</p><p>The issue is that the rate of XP is just too high, period in SF. It was too high in beta and was feedbacked. Many people thought that the rate was jacked up so you could get through the content and test stuff. That was obviously not the case. Grinding in the hole vs soloquest - the comparable XP gain is fine (sans a couple repeatable quests) but overall, XP is too easily gotten.</p><p>I leveled from 80-84 on collections then went from 84-90 on soloquest. Took me about 15 hours played. People did it much quicker in The Hole. But if soloquest represents the longest time it should take to get that XP, it's still way too short. Again, this was feedbacked and wasn't listened to. For an expansion that is supposed to last 2 years, 15 hours to get to level cap is too short IMO.</p>

[Tanna]

<p>I think killing mobs should give more XP than quests anyways, that's how I got to 80 up through RoK, grouping with friends and doing instances, quests were just a way to get items/money. I never got to see how bad XP was for killing mobs in TSO, though I heard it was bad, but I must say, I felt like I was playing WoW up til 90 in this expansion.</p><p>My only complaint is that nerfing XP on group friendly quests kinda makes guilds helpless at getting their members up. I was 90 in 2 days and was more than happy running friends and guildees through the hole doing quests to get them up to playing level. Now I'm just wasting my time getting sodomized in Battle Grounds while they slowly inch themselves up to level. What's the point in scalable instances if you don't get XP from them, or contested instances if you don't get xp.</p>

[Kroonerr]

<p>Actually the really concerning part isn't the ability to grind to 90, it's the AA.  It's already known that if you do nothing but overland solo quests there is only enough exp to get you to around lvl 87-88.  For the other 2-3 levels and 50 AA you are relying mainly on group content doing instances and the Hole, and the rate at which exp comes from those is pretty slow.</p><p>If part of the eq2 model was to try and take the full year of an expansion to get one character to max lvl/aa, then it looks like it's tuned pretty well.  My observation, though, was that the game was designed in a way to encourage people to take multiple toons to max/lvl AA and enjoy the repeat.  Lots of slow grinds for small exp is not enjoyment for most people.</p><p>There were issues in the Hole allowing people to get 4-5 levels in day which have been fixed- that's good.  There should be a happy medium to it though vs the scorched earth plan that seems to have resulted.</p>

[Dareena]

<p>I saw Timetraveling's message on Friday about looking into the changes to the Hole.  As of today (Monday), is there any kind of quasi-official SOE answer?  Was the Hole gutted in error similar to how many things were broken on Thursday's Hot Fix?  Or is this new version of the Hole intentional?  Inquiring minds want to know.</p>

[Morgane]

<p>I don't know if this is related but my gf (level 80 Fury) turned in two or three  overland quests in Paineel when she was at 95% last night... thought those quests would level her to 81 but she didn't get any xp at all for turning them in. Plus we had all sorts of trouble zoning and logging into Everfrost last night. I'm thinking there are some server issues.</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>nm who cares at this point.</cite></p>

[bleap]

<p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>nm who cares at this point.</cite></p></blockquote><p>Way to add quality responses there knucklehead</p>

[Ebarel]

<p>i dont understand what overland xp you are talking about for comparison? there is absolutely zero overland xp except the only quesline. after that - nothing at all.</p><p>so why break the hole so everybody is forced to the few instances or do old content? Why cant you ever adjust things a bit but nerf to oblivion whatever you touch? not adjusting xp but removing it - and also reduce drops and so on and on....</p><p>same with classes, items, spells, mechanics everything. it is really annoying</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>bleap wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>nm who cares at this point.</cite></p></blockquote><p>Way to add quality responses there knucklehead</p></blockquote><p>It's not like anyone who reads this can do anything about it.  I just wanna know when the beta testing is gonna be over.</p>

[Macross_JR]

<p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>bleap wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>nm who cares at this point.</cite></p></blockquote><p>Way to add quality responses there knucklehead</p></blockquote><p>It's not like anyone who reads this can do anything about it.  I just wanna know when the beta testing is gonna be over.</p></blockquote><p>hahaha, oh the whole beta testing thing is always good for a laugh.  I told this to a guildmate a couple days ago, and I still think it to be true, this has been the most polished expansion release I have seen for eq2.  The whole BG's are a different story and I don't associate them with the expansion due to it was not released with it.  I leveled my main character from 80-90 with out touching any gliders.  I did it by running instances(SF instances not any TSO instances that had respawning mobs) and overland zones.  Do I think that the change to the gliders was neccessary, sure, but not to the extent to what it is now.  Also, I am in agreeance about the no-trade single update quest pieces, utter pain to try to actually do those quests.</p>

[urgthock]

<p><cite>Morghasi@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I don't know if this is related but my gf (level 80 Fury) turned in two or three  overland quests in Paineel when she was at 95% last night... thought those quests would level her to 81 but she didn't get any xp at all for turning them in. Plus we had all sorts of trouble zoning and logging into Everfrost last night. I'm thinking there are some server issues.</p></blockquote><p>Was her slider set to 100% AA conversion perhaps?</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>Githil@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>...</cite>  I told this to a guildmate a couple days ago, and I still think it to be true, this has been the most polished expansion release I have seen for eq2.  ...</p></blockquote><p>I would agree if I didn't think more than half of the expansion is missing.  There are only enough solo quests to get you to 87.  O.o</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Githil@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>...</cite>  I told this to a guildmate a couple days ago, and I still think it to be true, this has been the most polished expansion release I have seen for eq2.  ...</p></blockquote><p>I would agree if I didn't think more than half of the expansion is missing.  There are only enough solo quests to get you to 87.  O.o</p></blockquote><p>I definitely don't think this has been the most polished expansion to date. More polished than the original game, perhaps. Possibly than KoS launch. That's where it ends though. You could see that this was going to be the case on the beta; there was just too much still completely in-flux with a week to go. Things that still weren't working. Since launch we've had more unscheduled downtime than you can shake a stick at, quests broken/missing - some at launch, some after, procs broken, massive DB issues causing people to get kicked every time they zoned, complete mechanics changes that weren't even mentioned in passing in the update notes ... anything but polished.</p><p>That being said, there's more than enough solo content to get to 90. It might be tight now that repeatables have been broken and/or gone missing, but there's still enough. Sure, I'd love to see more added later so that alts could level up using different "paths", but there's enough solo content to get you from A to Z.</p><p>Moreso I'd like to see the Hole put back to some semblence of what it was, and that's what this thread is about.</p>

[Celestian_]

<p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>That being said, there's more than enough solo content to get to 90. It might be tight now that repeatables have been broken and/or gone missing, but there's still enough. Sure, I'd love to see more added later so that alts could level up using different "paths", but there's enough solo content to get you from A to Z.</blockquote><p>I'm curious how you come to that conclusion? I was level 86 when I hit SF and ran every single chain of quests that I could solo/duo and barely hit 90. I was lucky enough to have all of RoK and TSO to quest through before SF went live (I stopped playing around EoF). I quested all the way to 86 finishing up those zones (solo quests) for the AA/exp with my RAF buddy.</p><p>So it certainly seems to me there is most definitely not enough solo quests in SF to go from 80 to 90. Wasn't a huge deal for me as I don't mind dungeons/instances (infact I love them) but solo quests won't get ya to 90.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Moreso I'd like to see the Hole put back to some semblence of what it was, and that's what this thread is about.</p></blockquote><p>+1</p><p>I tried the hole again with some alts.  Went in at 80 just like I did with my main, and set to doing quest lines to level.  I didn't 'expoit' any quests, or overfarm, just the natural progression just like I did with my main.</p><p>We were netting 30% of the xp over the same time spent doing the same activities at launch.  In fact, it was so slow, it reminded me of KC at RoK launch.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Looking into these issues. Thanks for the feedback</p></blockquote><p>Curious if there's been any progress here. I know there are a lot of other issues right now, but The Hole went from being "the place to be" if you didn't want to solo quest grind to a place to spend 5 minutes doing the daily Mark mission and then get out as fast as you possibly can. I was sort of looking forward to gaining faction with the Caertaxians on my first alt having done the other two on my main, but I'm not going to go questing someplace that offers nothing at all but combat XP and transmute fodder.</p><p>Well ... unless I need transmute fodder I suppose.</p><p>Before the expansion it was announced that grouping and soloing would both be valid, practical means of leveling. It was something to look forward to, and it turned out to be true .... for a week.</p>

[Illmarr]

<p>I went back into the Hole this past Sunday with a group of friends. We did a lot of slaughtering, first we did some killing in the Erudite area  and finished a couple of quests (One a Mark daily I think)  for the rats, then we went and slaughtered rats for considerably longer, but only about 3 quests finished. In about 2 hours while running a 55% exp potion I gained an entire level, freshly ding'd 86 when we started, ding'd 87 with maybe 3 extra kills when we ended. 2 hours for an entire level is still a massive improvement over previous content as far as simple grind leveling is concerned</p>

[Gaige]

<p>I really wish they'd make The Hole repeatables award 6% to 8% xp per, at a minimum, since you can get 3% doing gray solo quests in LFay, not to mention the AA xp from the numerous SF dailies.</p>

[Gungo]

<p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Before the expansion it was announced that grouping and soloing would both be valid, practical means of leveling. It was something to look forward to, and it turned out to be true .... for a week.</p></blockquote><p>Except mass slaughtering (grouping) ended up being WAY more xp then soloing and questing. Doing every quest in SF will take you to at most lvl 87 and it takes significantly longer then hole grinding.</p><p>Sucks that people power leveled to 90 in 1-2 days but it honeslty doesnt matter. The fact is grouping is pretty much balanced with the rest of the games leveling curve right now. A good group is significantly faster xp then anything else right now on live. Personally i would like to see at least 15 more named in the hole 5 more in each wing and I would like to see the faction items become a group update.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Before the expansion it was announced that grouping and soloing would both be valid, practical means of leveling. It was something to look forward to, and it turned out to be true .... for a week.</p></blockquote><p>Except mass slaughtering (grouping) ended up being WAY more xp then soloing and questing. Doing every quest in SF will take you to at most lvl 87 and it takes significantly longer then hole grinding.</p><p>Sucks that people power leveled to 90 in 1-2 days but it honeslty doesnt matter. The fact is grouping is pretty much balanced with the rest of the games leveling curve right now. A good group is significantly faster xp then anything else right now on live. Personally i would like to see at least 15 more named in the hole 5 more in each wing and I would like to see the faction items become a group update.</p></blockquote><p>No, only when combined with quick turn-ins of repeatable quests did it end up being more. And even with the quest turn ins it was still significantly less AA due to the nature of repeatables. </p><p>So doing every solo quest in SF will take longer but yield significantly more AA than mob grinding. There's no advantage. And since I can gain XP faster mentoring down to 65 and soloing mobs in SoS than killing as fast as possible in the Hole, there's really no motivation to group at all save for the daily mission.</p><p>It's just total BS that quest XP was totally removed. Day 1 of the expansion I would group with anyone anytime in the Hole. Day 15? Go pound sand, I'm going to solo or run an instance.</p>

[Notes]

<p>I beg to differ on the significat amount of aaxp, last night I spent about 3 to 4 hours finishing off the Quel'ule time line and then into most of the Ning Yun Retreat, each quest was taking about 15 mins and yielding anywhere from 1% to 2.5 % at the most.  This yielded me a net ~30percent xp and maybe half an aaxp.  </p><p>This is just stupid, with the hole nerfed to oblivion, unless you spend $OE bucks and buy potions. We who missed out on the first week of expansion are now being punished and are now falling farther and farther behind our guildmates who all got to 90 on that first week of awesome xp.  I play this game to raid and group, not soloquest my way to 90. </p><p>Please give us the hole back at least to allow a alternate path to level than soloquest.</p><p>Noets</p>

[timetravelling]

<p>We have some changes inc for the quests in The Hole</p><p><ul><li>The quests asking players to turn in Emaciated Tails, Elemental Cores, and Paineel Artifacts (items which drop whether or not players are on the quests) are being left as repeatable and will continue to give low xp amounts, but excellent faction bumps</li><li>All other quests are being raised in xp amounts and should begin giving much more than the unintentionally low repeatable amounts. To note: the non-repeatable quests (at least 10 for each of the 3 factions) have been, and will remain, the best xp of the quests in the zone</li><li>Each of the 3 factions also had a number of quests asking players to kill various #s of NPCs in the different wings. Previously these quests would auto-complete once that quota was reached. This was causing issues with the Gruengach illusion form, so each of these quests will soon have an additional step that simply requires players to return to the quest NPC and turn them in. This should help alleviate the issue where players occasionally failed to receive faction boosts while questing for the various wings.</li><li>A few of the quests have also had their drops/updates changed to be groupwide updates. Not all of the quests were changed in this way, and if y'all feel there are any left that should be please let us know!</li></ul><div>These changes should show up soon, depending upon internal testing and our hotfix schedule. Thank you for all of your patience and feedback! =)</div></p>

[Gungo]

<p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Before the expansion it was announced that grouping and soloing would both be valid, practical means of leveling. It was something to look forward to, and it turned out to be true .... for a week.</p></blockquote><p>Except mass slaughtering (grouping) ended up being WAY more xp then soloing and questing. Doing every quest in SF will take you to at most lvl 87 and it takes significantly longer then hole grinding.</p><p>Sucks that people power leveled to 90 in 1-2 days but it honeslty doesnt matter. The fact is grouping is pretty much balanced with the rest of the games leveling curve right now. A good group is significantly faster xp then anything else right now on live. Personally i would like to see at least 15 more named in the hole 5 more in each wing and I would like to see the faction items become a group update.</p></blockquote><p>No, only when combined with quick turn-ins of repeatable quests did it end up being more. And even with the quest turn ins it was still significantly less AA due to the nature of repeatables. </p><p>So doing every solo quest in SF will take longer but yield significantly more AA than mob grinding. There's no advantage. And since I can gain XP faster mentoring down to 65 and soloing mobs in SoS than killing as fast as possible in the Hole, there's really no motivation to group at all save for the daily mission.</p><p>It's just total BS that quest XP was totally removed. Day 1 of the expansion I would group with anyone anytime in the Hole. Day 15? Go pound sand, I'm going to solo or run an instance.</p></blockquote><p>Wrong again. With continously running 50% aaxp pots doign EVERYSINGLE solo quest in SF grants a total of ~20AA. Our guild sk who leveled to 90 in 6 hours in the hole had 25AA's by the end of that day.</p><p>Heck there is a large number of people who didnt touch the repeatables in the hole and leveled in Sebilis that can outrigth prove you wrong.</p>

[Akihime]

<p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Wrong again. With continously running 50% aaxp pots doign EVERYSINGLE solo quest in SF grants a total of ~20AA. Our guild sk who leveled to 90 in 6 hours in the hole had 25AA's by the end of that day.</blockquote><p>Heck there is a large number of people who didnt touch the repeatables in the hole and leveled in Sebilis that can outrigth prove you wrong.</p></blockquote><p>No. Running AA pots when grinding in the hole, and by grinding I mean grinding, gives at most 3-4 AA from the named kills and discoveries. There's nothing there that'd give 25AAs. Now, if your friend who lvled in 6hours was exploiting repeatables and kept exploiting after he hit cap, then yeah, 25AAs would have been easy. Each turn in of the repeatables were about 8%AA each, without a pot, and you could easily farm enough mats to do 20turnins in 30mins with a good group. You do the math, and bam, that's how your friend got 25AAs. But he surely did not get 25AAs in 6hours just grinding in the Hole considering I'm not even sure there's 25nameds in there(well there probably is but just drawing a parallel), and I doubt each named gives 1AA. Oh and slider? He didn't hit 90 in 6hours with his slider set at 50%, and if he says he did, he's just covering the fact he exploited, a soft exploit however, entirely SOE fault and not actually bending mpechanics, just exploiting an oversight in the quest design.</p><p>Currently the Hole is crap for leveling. That's even assuming you do find a good group, which if you pug is probably not a given. Instead you can self mentor and solo KoS and RoK zones for huge amounts of xp and decent AA. The only redeeming factor about the Hole are the faction rewards, and even those were nerfed since release(a few days after release all reqs went +10k faction, so jewelry went from 30 to 40 and armor from 40 to 50). Oh and there were a decent amount of masters dropping when we lvled in there, but that too might have been nerfed.</p>

[Macross_JR]

<p><cite>Akihime@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Wrong again. With continously running 50% aaxp pots doign EVERYSINGLE solo quest in SF grants a total of ~20AA. Our guild sk who leveled to 90 in 6 hours in the hole had 25AA's by the end of that day.</blockquote><p>Heck there is a large number of people who didnt touch the repeatables in the hole and leveled in Sebilis that can outrigth prove you wrong.</p></blockquote><p>No. Running AA pots when grinding in the hole, and by grinding I mean grinding, gives at most 3-4 AA from the named kills and discoveries. There's nothing there that'd give 25AAs. Now, if your friend who lvled in 6hours was exploiting repeatables and kept exploiting after he hit cap, then yeah, 25AAs would have been easy. Each turn in of the repeatables were about 8%AA each, without a pot, and you could easily farm enough mats to do 20turnins in 30mins with a good group. You do the math, and bam, that's how your friend got 25AAs. But he surely did not get 25AAs in 6hours just grinding in the Hole considering I'm not even sure there's 25nameds in there(well there probably is but just drawing a parallel), and I doubt each named gives 1AA. Oh and slider? He didn't hit 90 in 6hours with his slider set at 50%, and if he says he did, he's just covering the fact he exploited, a soft exploit however, entirely SOE fault and not actually bending mpechanics, just exploiting an oversight in the quest design.</p><p>Currently the Hole is crap for leveling. That's even assuming you do find a good group, which if you pug is probably not a given. Instead you can self mentor and solo KoS and RoK zones for huge amounts of xp and decent AA. The only redeeming factor about the Hole are the faction rewards, and even those were nerfed since release(a few days after release all reqs went +10k faction, so jewelry went from 30 to 40 and armor from 40 to 50). Oh and there were a decent amount of masters dropping when we lvled in there, but that too might have been nerfed.</p></blockquote><p>First of all, it wasn't an exploit.  Also, grinding can mean a lot of different things, be it grinding mobs, grinding quests, grinding your teeth.  Do I agree the Hole needs to be a valid place to go, yes.  Do I think the ONE repeatable quest people kept doing was a bit over powered, yes.  It was due to the fact that people could do that one at such a fast speed compared to the others.</p>

[Graymane-Dunedain]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xisi@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>People abused the Hole repeatable quests by killing a couple mobs, eva, rinse and repeat.  The quest XP is too good when you compare it to other quests overland.   Overland quests require you to actually do something, but the Hole repeatable quest is too easy to be true.</p></blockquote><p>Total bull...</p><p>Most of the repeatable quests took 20 to 40 mins for a full group to complete.  Is 4% xp for a quest that takes that long for a group to complete out of ballance?  How many soloquests could that group complete in the same amount of time.</p><p>There was exactly one quest that I can think of that needed to drop rate tweaked as there were simply too many spawns available that dropped them,   But even with that being true, it still took 20 mins to get the quest and get to the spawns and get 6 people their updates.</p></blockquote><p>Any time you can get 4% for 30 minutes work it's out of balance easy mode speed leveling that belongs in WOW!</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>Githil@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>First of all, it wasn't an exploit.  ...</p></blockquote><p>If it wasn't an exploit, why was it changed day 2?</p>

[Dareena]

<p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>These changes should show up soon, depending upon internal testing and our hotfix schedule. Thank you for all of your patience and feedback! =)</p></blockquote><p>Thanks for the head's up Timetravelling.  Once these go in, this zone will actually be a viable leveling tool again.  Maybe I can actually use it this time and finally hit 90th.</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>We have some changes inc for the quests in The Hole</p><p><ul><li>The quests asking players to turn in Emaciated Tails, Elemental Cores, and Paineel Artifacts (items which drop whether or not players are on the quests) are being left as repeatable and will continue to give low xp amounts, but excellent faction bumps</li><li>All other quests are being raised in xp amounts and should begin giving much more than the unintentionally low repeatable amounts. To note: the non-repeatable quests (at least 10 for each of the 3 factions) have been, and will remain, the best xp of the quests in the zone</li><li>Each of the 3 factions also had a number of quests asking players to kill various #s of NPCs in the different wings. Previously these quests would auto-complete once that quota was reached. This was causing issues with the Gruengach illusion form, so each of these quests will soon have an additional step that simply requires players to return to the quest NPC and turn them in. This should help alleviate the issue where players occasionally failed to receive faction boosts while questing for the various wings.</li><li>A few of the quests have also had their drops/updates changed to be groupwide updates. Not all of the quests were changed in this way, and if y'all feel there are any left that should be please let us know!</li></ul><div>These changes should show up soon, depending upon internal testing and our hotfix schedule. Thank you for all of your patience and feedback! =)</div></p></blockquote><p>Any chance of turning the XP back up so that the rest of us can get the same leveling experience as the raiders did on launch day, if we so choose?</p>

[Excalibur1]

<p>Sad to see the Hole completely destroyed.  With the instances all being locked due to a bug, my group went to the contested hole....  We were the only people in there for over an hour.  Sure it was during the day, but you would think that there would have been someone else there leveling to 90.</p>

[Dareena]

<p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>We have some changes inc for the quests in The Hole</p><p><ul><li>The quests asking players to turn in Emaciated Tails, Elemental Cores, and Paineel Artifacts (items which drop whether or not players are on the quests) are being left as repeatable and will continue to give low xp amounts, but excellent faction bumps</li><li><strong>All other quests are being raised in xp amounts and should begin giving much more than the unintentionally low repeatable amounts. To note: the non-repeatable quests (at least 10 for each of the 3 factions) have been, and will remain, the best xp of the quests in the zone</strong></li><li>Each of the 3 factions also had a number of quests asking players to kill various #s of NPCs in the different wings. Previously these quests would auto-complete once that quota was reached. <strong>This was causing issues with the Gruengach illusion form, so each of these quests will soon have an additional step that simply requires players to return to the quest NPC and turn them in.</strong> This should help alleviate the issue where players occasionally failed to receive faction boosts while questing for the various wings.</li><li><strong>A few of the quests have also had their drops/updates changed to be groupwide updates.</strong> Not all of the quests were changed in this way, and if y'all feel there are any left that should be please let us know!</li></ul><div>These changes should show up soon, depending upon internal testing and our hotfix schedule. Thank you for all of your patience and feedback! =)</div></p></blockquote><p>Any chance of turning the XP back up so that the rest of us can get the same leveling experience as the raiders did on launch day, if we so choose?</p></blockquote><p>Look Cold Metal, I was also kind of hacked off that the Hole got so dramatically messed with.  Whether or not it was intentional depends on your point of view.  But regardless of the original situation, things are being fixed (as per the bolded comments) and being improved in some cases.</p><p>You're being petty at this point.  We the customers have pointed out the problem, SOE has acknowledged the problem, and has proposed a solution.  Save your "raiders are the devil" themed rants for another thread.  I'm actually quite happy Time Travelling took the time to respond in this thread and is taking care of business.</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>Dareena@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Look Cold Metal, I was also kind of hacked off that the Hole got so dramatically messed with.  Whether or not it was intentional depends on your point of view.  But regardless of the original situation, things are being fixed (as per the bolded comments) and being improved in some cases.</p><p>You're being petty at this point.  We the customers have pointed out the problem, SOE has acknowledged the problem, and has proposed a solution.  Save your "raiders are the devil" themed rants for another thread.  I'm actually quite happy Time Travelling took the time to respond in this thread and is taking care of business.</p></blockquote><p>Not really.  I want the same ability to level as those elite got day one.  Especially since $OE didn't take it back.  It is simply not right to allow some people to level quickly and then turn off the mechanic so others cannot go that route if they so desire.  I logged on day one and started solo-questing, only to see 5 hours later 'ding i hit 90' from the [Removed for Content] broken ring events etc that some people knew about ahead of time.</p><p>All I am asking for is a fair playing field.  $OE says 'we didn't mean for it to be like that', fine don't release it that way, do some freaking testing.  But don't pee down my back and try and tell me its raining.</p>

[Geothe]

<p>Ah Cold Metal back with his anti-raiding, and SoE conspiracy theories.  Its been a whole day without and nearly thought something happened to you.Glad to see the same irrational person is still around.</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>Geothe wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ah Cold Metal back with his anti-raiding, and SoE conspiracy theories.  Its been a whole day without and nearly thought something happened to you.Glad to see the same irrational person is still around.</p></blockquote><p>glad to oblige ya'.</p>

[Ter]

<p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>...</p></blockquote><p>Any chance of turning the XP back up so that the rest of us can get the same leveling experience as the raiders did on launch day, if we so choose?</p></blockquote><p>And while we're at it, can we have the servers reverted to pre-LU13 while I level my latest alt up to 50? It's clearly unfair that people got to level their chars under different rules a few years ago.</p>

[Kendricke]

<p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>All I am asking for is a fair playing field.  $OE says 'we didn't mean for it to be like that', fine don't release it that way, do some freaking testing.  But don't pee down my back and try and tell me its raining.</p></blockquote><p>People have hit 90 with level 80s since the first week preview ended.  Any rants at this point about "OMG, I DID NOT GET TO LEVEL UP IN 6 HOURS!~!!??!1" are essentially pointless.  There's no reason a motivated, focused player who had even a moderate level of time available for play could not have levelled from 80 to 90 by now. </p><p>Please note the words "motivated" and "focused".  I know dozens of level 90 players who did not need to utilize ring events or grind events to get there.  I know players who have less than 10 hours a week to play who have made 90 without using any of the encounters you continually reference.</p><p>The problem isn't that you want a "fair playing field".  The problem is you want rewards handed to you just because someone else got there first.  You seem willing to latch on to any perceived exploit or conspiracy to back your tenuous, spurious, poorly backed arguments. </p><p>Sometimes, the problem doesn't lie elsewhere.  In this case, your problem isn't external.  It isn't raiders.  It isn't broken encounters.  It isn't SOE developers.  It isn't battlegrounds.  It isn't itemization. The bottom line: at this point, your main obstacle to success is you. </p>

[Gisallo]

<p>Well here is the issue.  Is the change lame?  Yes.  Did SOE however get HUGE amounts of people crying about people (for some reason they always cried "raiders" but thats another argument since I saw members of instance and RP guilds doing the same thing) doing the Wave quest over and over again getting to 90 in a day's worth of play?  Yes to that as well.  So what does SOE do, keep that dynamic in play and have people whining and crying everyday while people hit the lvl cap in 24 hours or do they nerf it?  Either way they were going to have people [Removed for Content] at them and since whiners are always louder than those who are happy and content...well there u have it. </p><p>Now of course those who did not do this when it was "doable" are going to cry about it because they couldn't do the "exploit."  What I find funny is that I know more than a few on my server complaining about this now...when they were complaining about "raiders" doing it on launch day. </p><p>As others have said you can lvl to 90 doing the "regular" quest lines.  I think I got 1 lvl from doing the same repeatable over and over again because at 89 I finally said screw it.  Prio to that it was do Sunderd Frontier, then Stonebrunt with a full rotation of ALL of the repeatable quests, and you do get exp for the first time you do the quests.  </p><p>I've personally always found it hypocritical that people cry "thats an exploit they shouldn't be lvl 90 in 1 day" and then when they do stop it say "I can't do that for xp anymore its not fair" when they do fix it.  Pick one or the other u can't have it both ways, sorry. </p><p>My belief on it is this though.  I think it was tested and that SOE was fully aware of this.  My guess, while they won't admit it publically, that access to more xp was an early release reward because lets be honest, the rewards from the box (mount, armor set, SC dollars etc) were all pretty anemic and the fact the fix was put in the day of "general" release I think is pretty good evidence because they could have fixed it on any day. </p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p>I'm level 88 (12th illy on my server to hit 88 certainly not stellar but oh well) on my main, and have done all solo-quests in the new expansion that I can find, about 250 quests.  Spent a little time in the hole.  Tried one instance but after 4 hours we called it.  Instances are still over the top with scripting with no clues as to what to do.   The hole does not really explain 'in game' what needs to be done, I still do not understand having the grugenarch illusion.  The quests in the hole don't update, i need emaciated tails 10 of them, i have 14 in my bag now but no updates.</p><p>And no I am asking for a level field because now if you aren't 90 no one will let you in there group.  Before long if i don't have the new shard armor i won't get a group, and since i am already behind the curve due to exploits others took but i do not have access to i will be further out from getting into groups.  My server is low population, guilds r imploding all over.  And my class (illy) was nerfed to hell.</p><p>Yes, I am frustrated dby $OE just changing stuff that makes my hobby harder, less fun, etc.  And with the insanely LOW quest XP.</p><p>Will I hit 90 sure, but level is worthless since the playerbase uses all kinds of other things for determining if u r worthy to participate in their little club.  I am motivated and focused to do any solo quests available, none remain.  Every release to date that I have been through, certain members have had something that allowed fast leveling which was changed day 2-3 because of it.  I am gonna hit 90 and get shard armor, but i would sure like to have the same ability as the raiders did day 1, a fair game is all I am asking .</p>

[Jhanos]

<p>It's always been this way, some people will know the fastest/easiest way to lvl, then they tell enough people for it to become noticeable and it gets patched.  Back in EQ1 days, when Sullon Zek opened, the cutthroat nature of the server resulted in many exploits being spotted via data mining and then fixed (off the top of my head the bread turn in quest in the karanas and the get more out then you put in production of fishrolls in cooking). </p><p>It sucks when you see someone profiting from it, but SOE has to dance a fine line and avoid labeling people as exploiters when they might have wandered into it accidentaly.</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>Jhanos wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It's always been this way, some people will know the fastest/easiest way to lvl, then they tell enough people for it to become noticeable and it gets patched.  Back in EQ1 days, when Sullon Zek opened, the cutthroat nature of the server resulted in many exploits being spotted via data mining and then fixed (off the top of my head the bread turn in quest in the karanas and the get more out then you put in production of fishrolls in cooking). </p><p>It sucks when you see someone profiting from it, but SOE has to dance a fine line and avoid labeling people as exploiters when they might have wandered into it accidentaly.</p></blockquote><p>Yeah, to summarize it feels like if this were monopoly some people get 2 dice, and I get 1 because $OE changes things 'after' 2 dice people get the goods.</p>

[Kizee]

<p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I'm level 88 (12th illy on my server to hit 88 certainly not stellar but oh well) on my main, and have done all solo-quests in the new expansion that I can find, about 250 quests.  Spent a little time in the hole.  Tried one instance but after 4 hours we called it.  Instances are still over the top with scripting with no clues as to what to do.   The hole does not really explain 'in game' what needs to be done, I still do not understand having the grugenarch illusion.  The quests in the hole don't update, i need emaciated tails 10 of them, i have 14 in my bag now but no updates.</p><p>And no I am asking for a level field because now if you aren't 90 no one will let you in there group.  Before long if i don't have the new shard armor i won't get a group, and since i am already behind the curve due to exploits others took but i do not have access to i will be further out from getting into groups.  My server is low population, guilds r imploding all over.  And my class (illy) was nerfed to hell.</p><p>Yes, I am frustrated dby $OE just changing stuff that makes my hobby harder, less fun, etc.  And with the insanely LOW quest XP.</p><p>Will I hit 90 sure, but level is worthless since the playerbase uses all kinds of other things for determining if u r worthy to participate in their little club.  I am motivated and focused to do any solo quests available, none remain.  Every release to date that I have been through, certain members have had something that allowed fast leveling which was changed day 2-3 because of it.  I am gonna hit 90 and get shard armor, but i would sure like to have the same ability as the raiders did day 1, a fair game is all I am asking .</p></blockquote><p>1.) Your anti raider rants are getting old.</p><p>2.) Evil raiders wern't the only ones taking advantage of the crazy exp.</p><p>3.) You are always complaining about not getting any groups across all your characters...from what you post on these boards it seems to be more of a reputation/L2P thing and not a gear thing.</p><p>4.) Nobody is going to care about your gear because 90% of it isn't an upgrade from last expansion.</p>

[Gisallo]

<ul><li><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></li></ul><blockquote><p>I'm level 88 (12th illy on my server to hit 88 certainly not stellar but oh well) on my main, and have done all solo-quests in the new expansion that I can find, about 250 quests.  Spent a little time in the hole.  Tried one instance but after 4 hours we called it.  Instances are still over the top with scripting with no clues as to what to do.   The hole does not really explain 'in game' what needs to be done, I still do not understand having the grugenarch illusion.  The quests in the hole don't update, i need emaciated tails 10 of them, i have 14 in my bag now but no updates.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">Overly scripted instances are you kidding me?  With the possible exception of like 3 of them they are almost all univerally tank and spank.  There is MAYBE one sorta scripted mob in each encounter but the point of non-contested instances has ALWAYS been to figure them out, heck even the last named in Karnor's Castle is a scripted encounter by your definition.  This just smacks of laziness.</span></p><p>And no I am asking for a level field because now if you aren't 90 no one will let you in there group.  Before long if i don't have the new shard armor i won't get a group, and since i am already behind the curve due to exploits others took but i do not have access to i will be further out from getting into groups.  My server is low population, guilds r imploding all over.  And my class (illy) was nerfed to hell.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">Guilds imploding at a level cap is not new, some people just don't want to level all over again.  Classes getting nerfed is not new, its just finally a utility class getting the boot instead of something else and even then they are still a must have in many people's minds.  yes for some instances you have to be 90, same as you had to be 80 for some RoK and TSO zones.  How is this new?  Again as for explot...its only an exploit apparently if you did not benefit from it and feel butt hurt over it apparently.  The playing field was indeed level for the first week, everyone could have done what the guys getting to 90 in 5 hours did.  The playing field is again level.  If you did what you did, and what I did, you could still be 90 by now (I'm 90 and as I said I did the repeatable for only 1 lvl).  It appears the difference is I had people willing to help me do all of the hole repeatables at least once, I had people willing to take me into the instances that were appropriate for my level and I had no problem still doing TSO stuff to level.  Seems to me your problem may be a low pop server where people and guilds don't want to help each other out.  </span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">The exp is out there even without the exploit to be 90 in about 4 days of game time, taking time out to go to work, spend time with the wife and visit a dying relative in hospice care so please stop complaining about no level playing field.</span></p><p>Yes, I am frustrated dby $OE just changing stuff that makes my hobby harder, less fun, etc.  And with the insanely LOW quest XP.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">This was the case in RoK.  I remember soloing a Ranger and a Zerker both to 80.  The last 3 levels made me want to /wrists.  again nothing new so I fail to see how its applicable.</span></p><p>Will I hit 90 sure, but level is worthless since the playerbase uses all kinds of other things for determining if u r worthy to participate in their little club. </p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">This confuses me.  What club are you referring to?  Again I think your frustration with the mythical "raider" gets the better of you.  I was going into Cella at level 85 on my mystic.  couldn't kill the last mob but I was going in there.  Why.  because I went in with friends.  So many of the issues you raise again seem to have as much to do with the social dynamics of your server as they do with anything truly tangible.</span></p><p>I am motivated and focused to do any solo quests available, none remain.  Every release to date that I have been through, certain members have had something that allowed fast leveling which was changed day 2-3 because of it.  I am gonna hit 90 and get shard armor, but i would sure like to have the same ability as the raiders did day 1, a fair game is all I am asking .</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">What the "raiders" had on day one (and again I will point out more non-raiders were seen doing this stuff on my server) was a few things that have NOTHING to do with exploits.  </span></p><ul><li><span style="color: #ff0000;">First organization...they had friends going out with them, mutual support so to speak.  No need to PUG they just said "get groups together go out and kill", if you don't have that kind of support exploit or no you are at a disadvantage.  </span></li><li><span style="color: #ff0000;">Second gear.  They had gear from the prior expansion to make doing stuff easier.  That has and always will be part of the game and unless you put everyone in master crafted that is never going to change.</span></li><li><span style="color: #ff0000;">Third a different drive.  Your drive is to quest experience all of the content.  Their drive is to get into the raid zones and kill the toughest mobs in the game.  So they only care about the destination not the journey.  this will change how you do things dramatically.  As long as there are raid zones this will be the case.</span></li><li><span style="color: #ff0000;">Fourth early release.  They pretty much had a rule...get early release, be ready to raid no later than "general" launch.  See number 3.</span></li></ul><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">BTW the first one was done by NON RAID GUILDS and I even saw PUGS looking for members in level chat to do it, so again it seems like the problem is either your server or personal social network.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">Only after this we enter the land of what you call an exploit.  An exploit you acknowledge that you knew about on day one when someone hit level 90 in 5 hours.  An exploit you are almost saying you wish was not removed because NOW you want a level playing field.  It really seems like you simply want a reason to complain.  if not you would have done one of 2 things.  A week ago you would have gotten 5 friends together and done it, or all along you would have been yealling "exploit" and demanding a roll back.  Instead you say "</span><span style="color: #444444;"> i would sure like to have the same ability as the raiders did day 1, a fair game is all I am asking <span style="color: #ff0000;">."  </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="color: #ff0000;">First I will repeat I SAW MORE NON RAIDERS doing it.  Second this is NOT a matter of SOE screwing you, you are complaining about the results of your choice at the time.  One little change...doing it while it was present, would have fixed the problem, but again seeing as how I hit 90 in a week without pounding the repeatable for 10 levels pretty much shows you don't need to do it, as long as you have friends and a guild that wants to help you.  Heck we are leveling a Ranger that just betrayed to a 'sin.  yesterday just doing TSO shard zones we got him 3 levels.</span>  </span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"> </span></p>

[Gisallo]

<p><cite>Jhanos wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It's always been this way, some people will know the fastest/easiest way to lvl, then they tell enough people for it to become noticeable and it gets patched.  Back in EQ1 days, when Sullon Zek opened, the cutthroat nature of the server resulted in many exploits being spotted via data mining and then fixed (off the top of my head the bread turn in quest in the karanas and the get more out then you put in production of fishrolls in cooking). </p><p>It sucks when you see someone profiting from it, but SOE has to dance a fine line and avoid labeling people as exploiters when they might have wandered into it accidentaly.</p></blockquote><p>I think this is giving SOE too little credit.  SOE knew [Removed for Content] well it was going to happen.  They knew how to stop it as well.  They chose not too for a number of reasons.  So its not a matter of not wanting to accuse people of exploiting because as far as SOE was concerned it wasn't and exploit, it was working as intented, they just changed, as they ALWAYS do, the intent.</p>

[Kendricke]

<p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>...if you aren't 90 no one will let you in there group. </p></blockquote><p>Henry Ford said it best, "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're probably right."</p><p>I have YET to join or form a level 90 only group.  Of course, I belong to a guild where those of us who are 90 are spending time helping those who are not. </p><p>Again, the problems you're complaining about aren't external.  Stop looking for scapegoats here.  Start looking at ways to improve your own personal situation.  The problems you're talking about right now have little to do with the complaints you raised about experience in groups in the Hole. </p><p><em></em></p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>Gisallo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">Only after this we enter the land of what you call an exploit.  An exploit you acknowledge that you knew about on day one when someone hit level 90 in 5 hours.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p>I did not find out about the exploit until after it was removed.  And yes it has been verified that there was an actual one and possibly more.</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>Kendricke wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>...I have YET to join or form a level 90 only group....</p></blockquote><p>DO NOT try and tell me what my experience is.  You are not on my server.</p><p>And for the record, Ford did say "Probably".</p>

[Crismorn]

<p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kendricke wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>...I have YET to join or form a level 90 only group....</p></blockquote><p>DO NOT try and tell me what my experience is.  You are not on my server.</p><p>And for the record, Ford did say "Probably".</p></blockquote><p>Lets see what your options are here..</p><p>Form a group</p><p>make some friends</p><p>Join a guild</p><p>help others</p><p>go lfg</p><p>Yep pretty much the same exact choices every single other player in this game has.</p><p>calm down</p>

[Gisallo]

<p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gisallo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">Only after this we enter the land of what you call an exploit.  An exploit you acknowledge that you knew about on day one when someone hit level 90 in 5 hours.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p>I did not find out about the exploit until after it was removed.  And yes it has been verified that there was an actual one and possibly more.</p></blockquote><p>First I find it funny how you ignore all of the logic in my post and only point onut the one fact you can dispute.  That being the case I'll play, how do you define exploit?  If SOE makes it so the same quest over and over gives the same exp and people do it how is it an exploit?  Its not like someone hopped up on a portion of zone geometry that you should not be able to access to kill mobs with impunity, or the same named mob chain spawning so you can keep looting masters (they had this issue in Labs and shut those nameds down as soon as they found out), instead it worked this way with EVERY SINGLE REPEATABLE QUEST in the hole.  Sorry but if every [Removed for Content] quest in a zone is doing the same thing I fail to see how this is an exploit.  Just using logic and all.</p><p>because of this, on my server at least, everyone that ran a hole run figured it out in about 10 seconds and the word spread so fast you couldn't dodge the "so and so lf hole faction grind group" or "faction grind group lf class X" in level chat and the shouts in the hole.  I can't remember the last time I saw people in /shout looking for groups.  So even if you didn't know AGAIN the problem is either you or your server.  Its no like LdL is the most populated high speed server out there tbh yet everyone knew about it and was forming opinions of the issue on day one.</p><p>Also as I said, I did one level of that stuff because the tedium of doing the same quest over and over again kills me, yet I am lvl 90.  I got to level 90 because by some miracle (since u claim it impossible) I was asked to heal Vasty Deep, Erudian and Hole persistent instances in the 80-85 lvl range.  I did it by just grinding solo quests.  If I can do all of this then as much as you love to blame raiders, again the problem seems to roll back to your server and/or you and/or your guild.   These are three things you can change yourself if you so choose.  If you choose not to change any of these things, the fault does not lie with others. </p>

[Kendricke]

<p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gisallo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">Only after this we enter the land of what you call an exploit.  An exploit you acknowledge that you knew about on day one when someone hit level 90 in 5 hours.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p>I did not find out about the exploit until after it was removed.  And yes it has been verified that there was an actual one and possibly more.</p></blockquote><p>I get it.  You're upset that some people levelled quickly on the first day due to one of the various encounters or quests that allowed for faster kills or experience gain.  No, really.  I get it.  We all get it.  There isn't anyone here reading this post right now that doesn't get this.  We get it.  I get it.  Now, mabye it's time to get over it. </p><p>It happened.  It was fixed.  Some people knew about these spawn points ahead of time and utilized them.  Others did not know in advance and stumbled into them.  Some people didn't know about them and just levelled up in other ways.  Some people levelled to 90 in 6 hours with the encounters.  Some people levelled to 90 in 6 hours without these encounters.    Some people levelled to 90 in 6 days. </p><p>Do you get that?  You should, because it means that the encounters you keep referencing weren't the only way that people used to level.  Players like Gaige levelled through mass slaughter.  He formed up groups of friends and guildmates and went on an old fashioned MMO killing spree.  He didn't sit in one location.  He went around and pulled rooms and killed everything  Yes, he raids.  He might even consider himself a "raider".  He didn't raid for that experience.  He grouped.  He soloed.  Everything he did, you can do.  Do you get that?  I get that. </p><p>Forget the Hole.  There are people who had 50+ completed quests ready to turn in on the first day of the new expansion.  There were people who saved up 100+ collections ready to turn in on the first day of the new expansion.  There were people who built up their vitality before the new expansion by changing their sliders around a week in advance.  There were people who used Sebillis to level up.  They used refer-a-friend accounts.  They used vitality potions.  They used experience potions and rings.   These people did not touch any of the encounters you're complaining about.</p><p>Some people soloed to 90.  They ran quests.  They found collectibles.  They figured out that they could solo heroics in this new expansion.  They ran quests from Kunark or Ykesha that they'd never completed previously.  They never touched ANY of the encounters you're complaining about.   </p><p>There are plenty of level 90s right now.  This weekend, you'll see a lot more.  By sheer force of probability, hardly any of the 90s you're going to run into touched any of the encounters you're continually complaining about. </p><p>There are issues with the Hole right now.  Timetravelling has addressed many of these concerns.  This is good.  Passive aggressively asking for broken mechanics to be patched in to drive home a point you've already driven home is not good.  But hey...you're upset that some people levelled quickly on the first day due to one of the various encounters or quests that allowed for faster kills or experience gain. </p><p>I get it. </p>

[hellfire]

<p><cite>Kendricke wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Some people soloed to 90.  They ran quests.  They found collectibles.  They figured out that they could solo heroics in this new expansion.  They ran quests from Kunark or Ykesha that they'd never completed previously.  They never touched ANY of the encounters you're complaining about.   </p></blockquote><p>Preety much my path to 90 was that.....last 70 pct was in seblis green heroric steamroll group was my only grouping xp.</p><p>You dont need to exploit to level in a half a day.</p>

[Gisallo]

<p><cite>Kendricke wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gisallo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">Only after this we enter the land of what you call an exploit.  An exploit you acknowledge that you knew about on day one when someone hit level 90 in 5 hours.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p>I did not find out about the exploit until after it was removed.  And yes it has been verified that there was an actual one and possibly more.</p></blockquote><p>I get it.  You're upset that some people levelled quickly on the first day due to one of the various encounters or quests that allowed for faster kills or experience gain.  No, really.  I get it.  We all get it.  There isn't anyone here reading this post right now that doesn't get this.  We get it.  I get it.  Now, mabye it's time to get over it. </p><p>It happened.  It was fixed.  Some people knew about these spawn points ahead of time and utilized them.  Others did not know in advance and stumbled into them.  Some people didn't know about them and just levelled up in other ways.  Some people levelled to 90 in 6 hours with the encounters.  Some people levelled to 90 in 6 hours without these encounters.    Some people levelled to 90 in 6 days. </p><p>Do you get that?  You should, because it means that the encounters you keep referencing weren't the only way that people used to level.  Players like Gaige levelled through mass slaughter.  He formed up groups of friends and guildmates and went on an old fashioned MMO killing spree.  He didn't sit in one location.  He went around and pulled rooms and killed everything  Yes, he raids.  He might even consider himself a "raider".  He didn't raid for that experience.  He grouped.  He soloed.  Everything he did, you can do.  Do you get that?  I get that. </p><p>Forget the Hole.  There are people who had 50+ completed quests ready to turn in on the first day of the new expansion.  There were people who saved up 100+ collections ready to turn in on the first day of the new expansion.  There were people who built up their vitality before the new expansion by changing their sliders around a week in advance.  There were people who used Sebillis to level up.  They used refer-a-friend accounts.  They used vitality potions.  They used experience potions and rings.   These people did not touch any of the encounters you're complaining about.</p><p>Some people soloed to 90.  They ran quests.  They found collectibles.  They figured out that they could solo heroics in this new expansion.  They ran quests from Kunark or Ykesha that they'd never completed previously.  They never touched ANY of the encounters you're complaining about.   </p><p>There are plenty of level 90s right now.  This weekend, you'll see a lot more.  By sheer force of probability, hardly any of the 90s you're going to run into touched any of the encounters you're continually complaining about. </p><p>There are issues with the Hole right now.  Timetravelling has addressed many of these concerns.  This is good.  Passive aggressively asking for broken mechanics to be patched in to drive home a point you've already driven home is not good.  But hey...you're upset that some people levelled quickly on the first day due to one of the various encounters or quests that allowed for faster kills or experience gain. </p><p>I get it. </p></blockquote><p>Pretty much.  I just helped a guildie get 1 level killing trash in the hole without a single quest turn in.  He then got a level doing the quest turn ins.  Lvl 90's mentored down and just blow stuff up.</p><p>Then again this requires having friends to help.  Nothing to do with raiders</p><p>I saw a guildies gain entire levels without ever having to leave the guild hall on launch day.  They planned a head and turned in unclaimed collection quests.</p><p>I saw guildies gain entire levels simply by turning in quests they didn't "waste" by turning them in when they were at 80.</p><p>these two options require thinking ahead.  Nothing to do with raiders.</p><p>As was said we all get what you are saying.  You didn't take advantage of something that others did.  That said there are PLENTY of other ways to level just about as quickly.  When u look closely at your argument it appears to have more to dow ith your ire towards raiders than anything that actually has a real in game effect.</p>

[Captain Apple Darkberry]

<p><cite>Jhanos wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It's always been this way, some people will know the fastest/easiest way to lvl, then they tell enough people for it to become noticeable and it gets patched.  Back in EQ1 days, when Sullon Zek opened, the cutthroat nature of the server resulted in many exploits being spotted via data mining and then fixed (off the top of my head the bread turn in quest in the karanas and the get more out then you put in production of fishrolls in cooking). </p><p>It sucks when you see someone profiting from it, but SOE has to dance a fine line and avoid labeling people as exploiters when they might have wandered into it accidentaly.</p></blockquote><p>There was no "wandering".  SOE was made aware of the ring event exploit, repeatable quest exploit, as well as the large amount of XP in general from grinding The Hole.  They were informed of it many times by many people.  They LEFT IN IN THE GAME FOR RELEASE.  Now...they change it?  Seriously?</p><p>It was left in intentionally.   ...and removed intentionally.</p>

[Gaige]

<p>Ya I was 83 before I left the guildhall with the other 3 in my group being 84 and 85.  We didn't even stumble onto the rays until two in our foursome was 90, with the other 89 and me 88.</p><p>We were some of the first ones in The Hole and we just kept buying SC vitality potions/using 55% xp potion so we were all gaining 255% xp off every mob kill and we did the quests as we found them.</p><p>No ring event exploits, no manta rays.</p>

[Gisallo]

<p><cite>Cricket@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jhanos wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It's always been this way, some people will know the fastest/easiest way to lvl, then they tell enough people for it to become noticeable and it gets patched.  Back in EQ1 days, when Sullon Zek opened, the cutthroat nature of the server resulted in many exploits being spotted via data mining and then fixed (off the top of my head the bread turn in quest in the karanas and the get more out then you put in production of fishrolls in cooking). </p><p>It sucks when you see someone profiting from it, but SOE has to dance a fine line and avoid labeling people as exploiters when they might have wandered into it accidentaly.</p></blockquote><p>There was no "wandering".  SOE was made aware of the ring event exploit, repeatable quest exploit, as well as the large amount of XP in general from grinding The Hole.  They were informed of it many times by many people.  They LEFT IN IN THE GAME FOR RELEASE.  Now...they change it?  Seriously?</p><p>It was left in intentionally.   ...and removed intentionally.</p></blockquote><p>This is why I think it was a "reward" for early release.  They knew all about it from Beta, were told about it numerous times and fixed it ONLY when they did the patch of "general" release.  The fact they are upping the experience (though not back to the original levels) I think lends evidence to this as well.  They want to reward those who did early release BUT also want to mitigate the ire of those who did not purchase a box.</p>

[Notes]

<p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>We have some changes inc for the quests in The Hole</p><ul><li>The quests asking players to turn in Emaciated Tails, Elemental Cores, and Paineel Artifacts (items which drop whether or not players are on the quests) are being left as repeatable and will continue to give low xp amounts, but excellent faction bumps</li><li>All other quests are being raised in xp amounts and should begin giving much more than the unintentionally low repeatable amounts. To note: the non-repeatable quests (at least 10 for each of the 3 factions) have been, and will remain, the best xp of the quests in the zone</li><li>Each of the 3 factions also had a number of quests asking players to kill various #s of NPCs in the different wings. Previously these quests would auto-complete once that quota was reached. This was causing issues with the Gruengach illusion form, so each of these quests will soon have an additional step that simply requires players to return to the quest NPC and turn them in. This should help alleviate the issue where players occasionally failed to receive faction boosts while questing for the various wings.</li><li>A few of the quests have also had their drops/updates changed to be groupwide updates. Not all of the quests were changed in this way, and if y'all feel there are any left that should be please let us know!</li></ul><div>These changes should show up soon, depending upon internal testing and our hotfix schedule. Thank you for all of your patience and feedback! =)</div></blockquote><p>A little feedback, went back to the Hole last night and popped the Marketplace 1000 SC XP potion and went from and got about 40 percent xp in the 2+  hours of the potion.  I really would like the soloquest xp looked at to give about the same.  As it is right now questing gives about the same xp in 4 hours. </p><p>Right now the soloquests seem to be completely disjointed, some that take 15 mins to complete give 1% and some that take running from one NPC to another give 2.5% what ever happened to risk vs reward?  If I have to go kill 10 rats and do that in an area where agro mobs are all around I should get more xp for that quest than running from one NPC to another and getting 2%.  Btw this was all done doing the stonebrunt quests.</p><p>Thanks</p><p>Noets</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Notes wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>timetravelling wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>We have some changes inc for the quests in The Hole</p><ul><li>The quests asking players to turn in Emaciated Tails, Elemental Cores, and Paineel Artifacts (items which drop whether or not players are on the quests) are being left as repeatable and will continue to give low xp amounts, but excellent faction bumps</li><li>All other quests are being raised in xp amounts and should begin giving much more than the unintentionally low repeatable amounts. To note: the non-repeatable quests (at least 10 for each of the 3 factions) have been, and will remain, the best xp of the quests in the zone</li><li>Each of the 3 factions also had a number of quests asking players to kill various #s of NPCs in the different wings. Previously these quests would auto-complete once that quota was reached. This was causing issues with the Gruengach illusion form, so each of these quests will soon have an additional step that simply requires players to return to the quest NPC and turn them in. This should help alleviate the issue where players occasionally failed to receive faction boosts while questing for the various wings.</li><li>A few of the quests have also had their drops/updates changed to be groupwide updates. Not all of the quests were changed in this way, and if y'all feel there are any left that should be please let us know!</li></ul><div>These changes should show up soon, depending upon internal testing and our hotfix schedule. Thank you for all of your patience and feedback! =)</div></blockquote><p>A little feedback, went back to the Hole last night and popped the Marketplace 1000 SC XP potion and went from and got about 40 percent xp in the 2+  hours of the potion.  I really would like the soloquest xp looked at to give about the same.  As it is right now questing gives about the same xp in 4 hours. </p><p>Right now the soloquests seem to be completely disjointed, some that take 15 mins to complete give 1% and some that take running from one NPC to another give 2.5% what ever happened to risk vs reward?  If I have to go kill 10 rats and do that in an area where agro mobs are all around I should get more xp for that quest than running from one NPC to another and getting 2%.  Btw this was all done doing the stonebrunt quests.</p></blockquote><p>Well ... have the Hole changes described gone in? I am avoiding turning anything in in The Hole until I know it's fixed. Since there were no patch notes yesterday ... who knows? There's still one of the repeatables that gives a +10 faction reward, which seems a bit borked.</p><p>But I did get 60% XP in ~30 minutes just killing rats with a level 84 (now 85) Defiler.</p><p>I had noticed the opposite with solo quests, but admittedly I haven't done them all yet even on my 90 toon. Done very little of Stonebrunt, but I probably will have to on my Troub because I don't see him soloing in The Hole. What I've seen in the Frontier though is, quests that are "Go talk to Bob" give sometimes as low as 0.6% to 1%, but quests that make you DO something give around 2. Sounds like some may be flip-flopped in SH.</p>

[Dareena]

<p>(Bump)</p><p>Has anyone tests out the Hole over the weekend?  Have the changes as described by Timetraveling gone into effect yet?  A lot of us are holding off on the Hole until we know that it's functional again.  I'd love to know if anyone has tried to find out things the hard way since there weren't any notes for the Friday changes.</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>Dareena@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>(Bump)</p><p>Has anyone tests out the Hole over the weekend?  Have the changes as described by Timetraveling gone into effect yet?  A lot of us are holding off on the Hole until we know that it's functional again.  I'd love to know if anyone has tried to find out things the hard way since there weren't any notes for the Friday changes.</p></blockquote><p>Was in there this weekend with the other 14 players  in the zone and it does not appear that things work the way timtraveling said they would, yet.  Of course the group i was with didn't survive a lot of the things in there and we had to revive a number of times so debt etc.</p><p>The quest for gliders was still auto complete specifically and you still get more xp from killing the mobs than from quest completion.</p>

[Armironhead]

<p><cite>Jjay@Befallen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>spent 2 hours in the Hole with a group.. didn't get a single quest complete because everyone rolling Need on quest updates..  Fun?  not really.   I got more exp mentoring to 70 and rolling over to SoS.</p></blockquote><p>alot of folk maxed out in poa because it was more rewarding - boy was this a fun xpack-not.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Dareena@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>(Bump)</p><p>Has anyone tests out the Hole over the weekend?  Have the changes as described by Timetraveling gone into effect yet?  A lot of us are holding off on the Hole until we know that it's functional again.  I'd love to know if anyone has tried to find out things the hard way since there weren't any notes for the Friday changes.</p></blockquote><p>Not in yet.</p><p>I couldn't wait for patch notes that aren't coming. I was there quite a bit. While I still went from 85 the rest of the way to 90 mostly in The Hole over the weekend, it was pretty much all combat XP.</p><p>Kill quests still autocomplete and are worth ~1% XP. Quests for items like Emaciated Tails are still <0.5% XP (which as I understand it they will remain) and small faction bumps (500) which I thought was changing. Caertaxian Legion still has a quest for emaciated tails that gives +10 faction.</p><p>All other repeatable quests are still worth ~1% XP even the first time you complete them.</p><p>It's still good XP, but best with a solo/duo config. I finished the climb from 84 to 90 mostly in the same spot in The Hole killing groups of 6 rats. 0.5% XP adds up when you turn in the quest 18 consecutive times in one visit to the NPC, which you can do if you're the only one killing/looting. The big payoff in XP comes when you get enough faction to do the one-time quests, which are ~6% each, pay a Mark of Manaar, and most of them are soloable. The Guardians & Defender quests were about 50% of a level.</p><p>It's "functional", but I still only go there to solo or to do the daily MoM. I joined a group briefly - making it a full group of 6 - and the XP rate was absolutely dismal. In no way did it compensate for the faster rate of killing.</p><p>Since they don't publish patch notes anymore we'll have to keep testing it repeatedly.</p>

[DemureAB]

<p>Use to be a popular zone on AB now we rarely see 2 versions....</p><p>We use to have like 4+ Hole zones.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p>Changes are in. Yay for middle ground. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Mythal_EQ2]

<p>Anyone else getting vastly increased resists on the mobs in the Hole since Tuesday's patch?</p><p>I swear, 6 out of 10 spells are getting resisted now. Maybe just a fluke but hell...</p><p>D.</p>