Today my semester is finally over now that I have finished my last final! It felt a bit sluggish here towards the end but overall I think I did very well in my classes (I believe A’s across the board). Winter break is here and that means I have about 7 weeks to relax – woot!  To top off the end of a great day, Mark Jacobs gave a quick update which includes a very welcomed surprise. The beginning of the message was the usual about fixing crashes and performance, so I’ll skip to the good stuff:
“And now for some more holiday cheer! Starting today we are going to be speeding up the leveling curve in WAR for a few weeks. We’re going to increase the rest experience multiplier bonus in a hotfix today as well as reducing the time that it takes you to earn rested xp while logged out of the game, especially in Tiers 3 and 4. This will result in players’ time to level being approximately 10% faster in Tier 2 and 20% faster in Tiers 3 and 4. We hope you enjoy the changes and have a great holiday season as you speed through the tiers faster than ever before!”
THANK YOU!
I’ve been really dying on my Shaman lately. He’s level 36.5 and I just can’t bring myself to level him to 40 given how tedious it feels to do, well, anything. Even if I spec damage on him he takes easily 3-4x longer to kill something than most classes. In RvR, which is without a doubt more fun, I spend easily 4x more time to level.  The Shaman crawl has pushed me towards a Squig Herder alt who just annihilates all he comes up against in PvE and does decent in RvR. My Squiggy is level 10 now but I’ve been really fretting over how long it will take to do the content that I have done a dozen times. I’m honestly not a fan of WAR PvE *shrug* I liked DAOC’s PvE more.  Since it will be easier to level him, I’m going to use this time wisely and push him into T4 asap and eventually make him my main.
After my beta experience I was left feeling like WAR never should have had levels at all. I think a skill-based system would have been more appealing.
I completely agree with you. I think a game that focuses solely on PvP should be skill-based or something other than levels. WAR went more towards a PvP game with some PvE, and in doing so forced themselves down a leveling path. Making the curve easier to level will be a very, very good thing for the game though. In my opinion, they’re testing the waters again to see if it’s something they should do permanently.
The leveling in WAR did seem slow to me, even though overall it didn’t take that long for me to get to 40. I thought that the WAR leveling was just tedious, compared to WoW where I thought that the leveling to 60 was more fun the being 60. If Mythic brought the leveling speed back to where it was in CE beta (I think it was twice as fast) it would be a very welcome change, I dread the thought of leveling my alts back through tier 2/3.
Sweet! This bodes well for both my main Marauder and my alt Chosen! (which both are in T3 atm) =D
I’m one happy camper!
@Keen: I like the banner 🙂
We seem to be in similar mmo circumstances man. I’ve got a Shaman stuck at 35 and a Death Knight at 77, playing both games. This xp boost will need to be investigated, I assume 20% should be a noticeable boost.
They’ve *got* to fix leveling in this game!
I got my DoK up to level 31 after two months, and then let my subscription lapse. I just couldn’t bear to slog through another 9 levels, and the new tankers (which I was interested in) were not yet available.
Now that the tanks are available, I went and reactivated to start one. I lasted all of 15 minutes on my KotBS before I logged out and canceled the subscription again; it didn’t help that a scenario never popped for me, either.
There’s something about starting over, seeing all the same NPCs with the same quests, having a lame, boring looking character with 2 crummy abilities… it’s just oppressive. If I could have even started even at T2, I might have been able to stick with it; but the notion of having to “level up” to even have any skills was too much for me.
Let me actually play the game, dammit! Let me PvP, let me start with interesting skills, let me be play with the people I want to play with, and don’t make me crawl through PvE to get there first!
I’ve found the XP to roll in now that I’m rank 35 in chapter 17/18 quest hubs. I am seeing 12-16k per quest plus the mob XP, which can be a nice bonus. Kill collectors are rewarding 650 per kill too, which can stack up quite nicely.
You basically need to let go of a the dream that you can keep your RR even with your R in T4 post 1.1 patch. The new oRvR influence rewards have really gotten people out of the scenarios (meaning they pop way less) and into open RvR, which is great… in theory. The trouble is, most of these people are doing one of two things:
1) keep/BO trading – they will actually avoid fighting at all costs, instead choosing to cap undefended keeps and battlefield objectives. This is a great way to rake in the renown and influence, but XP gains are terrible.
2) large warband “zerging” – the definition of a zerg is different for all people but I call anything larger than 1 full WB a zerg, especially when they run around in a giant mob. Theses groups are more apt to get into a tussle with the enemy, but the XP splitting is pretty bad in WBs, so it isn’t very rewarding…
To be honest, if getting to rank 40 is your goal, I suggest focusing solely on PvE in T4. Your RR will suffer but as long as you can get it to 31, you’ll be able to wear a couple decent pieces of Annihilator gear. RR33 will allow you to wear even more. Bloodlord gear has now RR requirement, so that’s an alternative to Annihilator gear as well.
BTW – Did you actually say you prefer DAOC PvE to WAR PvE? I’d love to hear your reasoning on that… 😛 I think you are merely using that comparison as hyperbole to show how much you dislike WAR PvE, because let’s face it, DAOC PvE was HORRIBLE!
The only positive it had was that you could AoE grind a new character from ranks 1-50 in less than a day’s playtime! 😉
grats Keen 🙂 wait a minute.. 7 weeks?!?!?! Now I’m jealous 😛
News from War!
Sure our game sucks and to make our lack luster & tedious quests easier for you to choke down we are going to speed up your leveling so you can burn through our game and reach max level where you can then just sit there and whomp on each other. Because we know what makes life great is getting to the end, not the experience of traveling the road.
Merry Christmas
Makers of Warhammer
😛
@Snafzg: I liked DAOC leveling more… and I’m not sure why. I really liked Darkness Falls and I didn’t mind group dungeon crawling/grinding because it never really felt tedious. I guess I’m not a fan of the quest formula when it is in its most vanilla form. WotLK spices it up just slightly and I’m able to stomach (sometimes) questing for a bit. In WAR it’s rarely fun for me to just quest quest quest. Same thing for LOTRO – I only liked the Story quests.
*edit* I guess it feels like PvE in WAR is an afterthought. It’s opposite of many games where PvP feels like an afterthought. That’s not a terrible thing, really, since PvP is what WAR is all about. It’s just a pita when PvE becomes almost mandatory to level in a PvP game. It may not have been designed as an afterthought, but it feels like it.
Random question for you guys…
The Warhammer Online Newsletter that arrived in my email inbox today has info on Recruit-A-Friend, stating that “When you become a paying subscriber to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, you’ll receive 3 recruitment notices to share with friends or family. For each month you continue to subscribe, you’ll receive another recruitment notice (for a maximum of 6 at any time).”
I currently am a paying subscriber, yet I have no referrals available. Anyone else have any luck with this?
Perfect. I just took two weeks off. Ill be on the next couple weeks up until January 6th grinding away on my way to lvl 40.
Keen, which mastery path are you going? I’m going quick shooting for RVR, but I’m thinking big shootin might be pretty good too since you get 1 sec off plink and thats a main tool all the time.
I’ll level as Big shootin until higher up in T4. Then I’ll respec to quick shootin for its utility and playstyle. No matter what I’ll keep the 1s plink.
I don’t even get the point of comparing WAR’s PVE, it’s just outdated to the point of being stinky bad. I question the sanity of anyone that defends it.
Thank goodness the PvP is still fun, although it’s wearing thin for me. I was hoping to ride it out until 40, but the imbalance between 30-39 and 40 itself is making the last 10 levels a pain. The top level should have had its own Tier for endgame, especially for RvR & Scenarios.
As for Shaman versus Squig Herder– I dunno, I love my Squiggy, but it’s not as uber as you’re making it out to be. Give it a couple tiers and I think a few of the bigger oversights with the class may drive you nuts. Or maybe it’ll be all of the small annoyances that add up. As far as classes go, it isn’t all roses, certainly.
Oh and 1s Plink rocks, don’t leave home without it. I know it’s been said, but add my $0.02 to the pile.
Grats Keen on vaca time.
I feel ur pain as well on WAR in regard to the grind after 30. The last patch really brought the people out of the woodwork. Unfor on that server it dies down when I get home from work hehe.
Been enjoying the t1-t3 open rvr/scens on a few different servers.
Enjoy ur time off and Happy Holidays. Be safe.