EverQuest 2 leveling from 20 - 70 to become significantly faster

by Samuel Axon Sep 17th 2008 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest II, Game mechanics, Patches, News items

The designers of EverQuest II are planning to make radical alterations in Game Update 49 to the leveling curve for characters between levels 20 and 70. A post by Design Supervisor Noel Walling on the official forums details the changes. Whereas it currently takes on average around 164 hours for a player to advance from 20 to 70, it will soon only take around 100. To compensate for this change, Adept I spell drops will increase.

Walling says these changes are intended to "get new players into the game faster." They're also a response to a low number of people in those level ranges. 1 - 20 and 70 - 80 are unchanged, but experience gains in the mentoring system are getting a boost to encourage higher level players to help new folks and alts level up. The benefits scale based on level, but players who are mentoring will gain between 50% and 300% extra XP from combat.

This is an answer to a big problem in these types of games; they become top-heavy, and an insurmountable barrier to entry goes up. At this point, though, does it even make sense for it to take 100 hours to reach 70? Why not just 50? If it's not fun for 164 hours, it's probably not for 100 either, right?

Tags: cap, eq2, eq2-gu-49, eqii, everquest-2, everquest-ii, experience, forums, game-update-49, gu-49, hours, leveling, levels, mentor, mentoring, noel-walling, soe

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Bryan S. said on 11:42AM 9-17-2008

Insane. Levels 1-20 on any of the newer starting cities can be done in about 4-6 hours. EQ2 isn't horrible, but I've never felt paced in that game.

Bigfoot said on 1:25PM 9-17-2008

Faster? I always felt that EQ2's leveling time was just right.

rulez said on 2:19PM 9-17-2008

Compared to WoW before it's 1-60 level speed increase EQ2 actually felt faster already.

I hope they find the right balance. Back at EQ2 launch I was completely new to MMOs so my leveling speed was very slow and it took me about 3 months (real-time, not /played) to get to 50 as a very group active tank (Guardian).

I think the time to reach the cap as a new player should at least roughly stay the same over the lifetime of an MMO, no matter how often the cap is increased.

Sokkratez said on 5:42PM 9-17-2008

"If it's not fun for 164 hours, it's probably not for 100 either, right?"

Weird, I don't remember anybody saying this when WoW made their leveling faster. Multiple times.