Time to Log into LOTRO

Since the Standing Stone Games announcement Lord of the Rings Online has been in transition from one company to another, including tapping Daybreak to be their publisher. (Still wondering on that one.  A follow on from SOE publishing the Asheron’s Call 2 expansions?)

This month we get another change.  It seems that the billing system is moving over from Turbine.  In order to charge VIPs… subscribers… they have to log in and agree to new terms.

This is a dangerous time, financially.  There are always a group of players out there who just stay subscribed even when they are not playing.  SSG stands to lose subscribers unless they can get people to log in and click the button enabling the new terms.

So they are offering up a free horse.

Also, thank you for paying your bill!

To get this special mount you will need to log into LOTRO between today… once the maintenance period is over… and March 13th.  According to the small FAQ on the announcement page, you must log all the way in to a character in order to receive the mount.  All of your characters, and any future characters you create, will then have access to this mount.

Lifetime subscription VIPs also get the mount if they log in a character during the February 6 through March 13 time frame.   That lifetime subscription I bought back in 2007 might be the best MMO deal ever for me.

A great deal even discounting the fact that I bought the next three expansions (Mines of Moria, Siege of Mirkwood, and Rise of Isengard ) and have only really played my way into Mirkwood.  I left off over a year ago in Mirkwood which, true to the books, was a dank locale, if somewhat more densely populated that I recalled.

Sure, that must be it… delusional dwarves

Nothing like a bleak zone to kill your appetite for a game.

I still log in about once a month, if only to keep the clunky patcher from having to work forever should I decide I want to play and, of course, to make sure I get my 500 LOTRO points every month.  That stipend has collected over time, allowing me to purchase both the Riders of Rohan and Helm’s Deep expansions.

So I am as up to day on purchased content as I can be.  I am just stuck in motivation-sucking Mirkwood, so any hope of catching up to the tip of the story is vanishingly remote.

What I need is something like that boost that SWTOR gave players at one point where you could level up at the right rate just playing through the story line as opposed to having to do all of the side quests and grinding a bit on the side.

An epic-only path through the game being unlikely, I am considering the finally useful

Two blessings, depending on your need

A little over a year back the LOTRO team finally got on board with the insta-levels idea and upped the boost from level 50… which seemed comically low… to level 95.

The blessing comes in two flavors, one for a character under level 50 and an upgrade version for character over level 50, some of whom may have used the previous version that only got players to 50.  Fortunately, I have plenty of LOTRO points and a selection of characters over level 50, so I can go with the upgrade.  It offers:

Instantly become level 95! Includes many extra boosts and buffs.

Receive a blessing from the Valar that makes your character powerful enough to pass through the Paths of the Dead and beyond. After using the Blessing of the Valar, your character will instantly be raised to level 95! Delivers a package that contains the following: *Blessing of the Valar Item, *A set of level 95 gear, *3 Third Age LIs, *Instant access to Mounted Combat and Legendary Items, *1 Gold piece, 800 Silver pieces, *4 ranks of each virtue, *The Riding skill, *A Steed of the Citadel, *A 25-stack of food that scales with your level, *A 25-stack of Morale and Power potions that scale with your level, *5 +100% XP Boosts, *Three single-use maps, one each to Rivendell, Aldburg, and Snowbourn, *25 Mithril Coins. This offer is discounted and can only be used by characters that are already level 50 or higher.

That will at least get me the hell out of Mirkwood.  The question is, where will I end up?  As I have noted, not all insta-levels are equal.  If you get a level 100 boost in WoW, you are guided into the latest content and can start there without concern as to what came before.  However, if you get that level 100 (or 95) boost in EQII, the game pretty much laughs at you as you press your nose against the glass separating you from the new stuff.  Go back and do the prerequisites loser!

So I will be interested to see how LOTRO handles the level boost transition.  Will I be pointed in the right direction or left standing at a stable master… the Middle-earth equivalent of a bus station in the bad part of town… in some random settlement?  Either way, I might as well give it a go.  I am sitting on a pile of points and am unhappy where I am, and at least I’ll have a new horse to tool around on.

Subscription Deals and Free Level Boosts and Bad Timing

Oh EverQuest II, you are forever off in your timing.

Daybreak is doing a big push this week to get players invested in the game.

The latest game update introduces a Fabled version of the Fallen Dynasty adventure pack from mid-2006.  There are some special, limited time public quests running.  Several zones have been added to the level agnostic list.  And the content of 2014’s Altar of Malice expansion has been been made available to all players, subscribed or not, leaving only last year’s Terrors of Thalumbra as content you must purchase. (I am not sure what happened to the Hunter S. Thompson inspired Rum Diary adventure pack that came out a while back, when they weren’t going to do expansions any more.)

More would be the Altar of Malice expansion I guess…

In addition to that, the insta-level program has been bumped up a notch, so when you buy a Heroic Character upgrade, it now boosts your character up to level 95.  To celebrate this, they are giving players a free Heroic Character upgrade, which you must collect before noon Pacific Time on Tuesday, September 6th. (Details at the link.)

Heroic dude is heroic… and sort of looks like Thor from the movie

And, just to top all that off like a sweet, glistening, unnaturally red maraschino cherry on top of a too large ice cream sundae, Daybreak is also offering a special deal on All Access subscriptions.

Good through August 29

$71.99 for a 12 month subscription is a decent deal.  That works out to, as the Daybreak copy reads, less than $6.00 a month, though only if you live in a world that allows transactions at 1/12th of a penny.  Still, minor quibble aside, that is less than half price over the month-by-month $15 rate, and $4.00 a month less that the usual discount for subscribing for 12 months at a stretch.

All of which would be awesome news… if it had come in August of 2015 when I was disaffected by World of Warcraft and garrisons in Draenor and there wasn’t even a war going on in New Eden and all that.

But now?  Daybreak is laying this offer down with just a few days left until the WoW Legion expansion hits?  I mean, I love you guys down in San Diego, but I’ve already sent a card to Gul’dan letting him know to expect us in the Broken Isles come August 30th.

You can’t always find hearts in fel green on cards

It does seem to be the fate of EverQuest II to forever be in the shadow of World of Warcraft.  They launched less than a month apart, leading to five years of “What if…” articles and posts wondering how Norrath would have fared had it not launched straight into the teeth of the Azerothian juggernaut.

So, while I don’t have a lot of WoW specific activities penciled in on my calendar for the weekend… my Tauren warrior is already level 58, so my goal to get him to 60 is nearly done… from Tuesday forward I look to be pretty well booked in Azeroth and the Broken Isles.

And by the time I want a little break from that content, Pokemon Sun & Moon will be out and I will be able to flop on the couch with my 3DS and play that as a break from Azeroth.

So Daybreak… maybe you could run this offer by me again in maybe 9-12 months?

Pondering That Legion Level 100 Boost

We just entered the second week of pre-Legion events.  I have been running through them just to make sure I do not miss anything.  Last week’s, the opening of the invasion, was pretty fun.  This weeks seems to mostly involve listening to Khadgar talk.

Have shovel, will… listen to some old guy talk and talk…

Okay, it wasn’t all talking.  I had to travel to Dalaran’s new location… though it is still in its old location as well, though I am sure somebody will tell me the lore says that there are not two Dalarans… and there was something about retrieving and overdue library book.  It was hard to tell, as Khadgar is not voiced, so his monologue is all in the chat window in a yellow/tan colored font that blended right into the background colors, rendering it illegible to me.  I could only really follow when people were shouting… and people did shout… though I felt like I missed something in between shouts.  However you just have to follow Khadgar around, click on whatever sparkles, kill whoever is red, and you are about set.

I assume next week we will have a new chapter in the pre-Legion events.

My daughter was doing the invasions with a low level character once she discovered that they scaled to your level.  She was out there with a level 32 paladin fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with level 100s and everything worked perfectly, plus the exp was huge, allowing her to level up.  So Blizzard nerfed that.  The cynic in me says that you can’t have people catching up too fast when you want to sell level 100 boosts.

Which brings us to today’s pondering.  When the WoW Legion expansion finally arrives at our home, it will include a level 100 boost as part of the package.  As I wondered what to do with the Warlords of Draenor level 90 boost, now I wonder what the upcoming level 100 boost.

The choice ought to be easier this time around.  I already have five level 100s here at the eve of WoW Legion, compared to just three level 90s before Warlords of Draenor.  So I can drop the following from the list:

• Paladin
• Hunter
• Druid
• Deathknight
• Rogue

Add in the fact that I will also get to roll up an effectively level 100 Demon Hunter and that will be six characters ready for Legion covering half of the available classes.

Which leaves the following to choose from for the boost:

• Mage
• Monk
• Priest
• Shaman
• Warlock
• Warrior

At this point, with half the classes at level cap currently, I have to start wondering which class would even add anything to my play experience.  I have rolled up all of the classes and, aside from the warlock, played them up to at least level 40.

My gut is to go with the warrior, another plate wearing melee class, which is more my style for solo play.  I haven’t really enjoyed the cloth wearing caster classes in WoW over the life of the game.  That would leave Monk or Shaman as alternatives, though the Shaman has always been a strange bird as well.

On top of all of that, we just had the WoW 7.0 class revamp patch a few weeks back that made some people unhappy.  I am certainly unhappy with my Hunter, and doubly so because I was looking forward to having three viable Hunter specs.  Instead I feel like Blizzard just wants people to stop playing Hunters.

I am also a bit cranky still with my Paladin.  I have gotten somewhat used to the retribution spec at this point, but it still feels awkward.

On the other hand my Druid(s), at least in feral spec, seems to play just fine.  I like being able to cast moonfire… along with a bonus healing touch now and again… when in cat form.  Works for me!

So I might have to throw out what I know about some classes and ask which of them actually got better after the 7.0 patch.  I have noticed  of late that in any group, the top damage output always seems to be some arcane missile throwing Mage.  But I have also heard people bitching about the Warlock changes.

And then there is the wildcard in the equation for me.

When it came to the Warlords of Draenor boost, I eventually went with a Deathknight, mostly because he was over level 60 and so also got me trained up on a pair of primary professions with the boost.  However, given the state of crafting in Draenor, that was less of a bonus than I thought it might be.  I did play him through to level 100 and I did get him a level 3 garrison, but I didn’t do much else with him.  He hasn’t built a shipyard or been to Taanan Jungle or anything.

In hindsight, however, I feel as though I made an error.  And not just an error in choosing a Deathknight, but an error in choosing which faction.  After my third or fourth time through Draenor as an Alliance character, I began to wonder if perhaps I ought to have gone with a Horde character so I could at least play through their version of the story line and maybe play with their (pointy) version of a garrison.

In fact, one reason I did not boost a Horde character is that the ones I have are all still in their 60s and one of the things on my long term “To Do” list is to play the Horde side of the story in… basically all the expansions.  And I haven’t done that yet.

So I am thinking that this time around I will boost a Horde character… and get back to the previous expansions at some later date.

Of course, that just throws the gates wide open on class choices.  If the difference is going to be storyline, it doesn’t matter so much if I do it with another Druid of Paladin I suppose.

And then there is the question as to what server I should roll up my new character.  Again, without a guild or any Horde pals, I am not exactly tied to Eldre’Thalas.

So I have a couple weeks to figure that out.  What are you doing with your level 100 boost?  And what would you do in my position?

Turbine Finally Figures Out Insta Levels, Will Send You to Level 95 in LOTRO

About two years back we hit the era of the insta levels, at least in MMORPGs.  It was an attempt to fix the “levels” problem, where the distance between the core player base and any new players grows increasingly daunting over time.

SOE was out in front with level boosts, first in EverQuest II and later in EverQuest.

Blizzard first offered an insta level boost as part of the Warlords of Draenor expansion, then as a separate $60 options.

Star Wars: The Old Republic came up with their own twist on the whole thing later on.

And then there was Turbine and their Gift of the Valar plan.

The Valar aren’t what they used to be…

In the face of their core population being distant from the newbies and seeing their competitors offer options to grant direct access to their latest expansions, Turbine chose to offer a boost that would bring people to level 50 and their first expansion, The Mines of Moria.

For 4,995 Turbine points, or somewhere between $38 and $75, depending on discounts and bonus points, you could jump past the 2007 content and straight to the then five year old 2008 expansion.  Specifically, you would get:

• Character boosted to level 50
• A set of level 50 gear
• 1 Gold piece
• An LIXP rune, worth enough XP to bring one LI to level 10
• 4 ranks of each virtue
• The Riding skill
• A Dusky Nimblefoot Goat
• A 25-stack of food that scales with your level
• A 25-stack of Morale and Power potions that scale with your level
• 5 +100% XP Boosts
• A single-use map to Rivendell
• 25 Mithril Coins

Some nice stuff in that.  And sure, it would get people past those first 50 levels.  But, in my opinion, it really did little to solve the “levels” problem in a game where the level cap was at 95. (The cap is 100 now, isn’t it?)  Turbine’s major innovation seemed to be to make the Gift of the Valar only available at special times as opposed to being a regular item in the LOTRO store.

The only real excuse I could see for this was that Turbine’s business model involves selling content, so boosting somebody close to the level cap would leave them without all the content and expansions between the starter zones and where they landed.  Of course, they were not exactly slick on that front either, as boosting people to 50 means that they immediately need to buy the Mines of Moria expansion.

Life with Turbine.

I have no idea if the Gift of the Valar was a big success or not, it was just an option I would never consider, feeling very much like a half measure as it did.

Well, apparently something… slow sales, customer complaints, a need to boost revenue… changed Turbine’s collective mind on the insta levels front.  In their current patch notes for update 17.1, the following two line items sit:

• Blessing of the Valar – Level your character to 95, catch up to your friends, and jump into the Epic Quests to help defend Gondor!
• Blessing of the Valar Upgrade – Already over level 51? Level your character to 95 with this option.

There is no elaboration in the post, just those two items, but they seem like a step in the right direction.  And since Turbine has gotten out of the expansion (and presumably the level cap boosting) business, this will be a solid offer to get people into the latest content additions without much effort.  Turbine’s plan this year has been focused on consolidating their population after all.

We shall see what they end up offering with this new Blessing of the Valar when it goes live.  There is a video up (hat tip: Massively OP) that shows the price (5,995 Turbine Points) and what is currently offered on the test server, but that may not be final.

Of course, here is the point in the post where I generally poo-poo whatever Turbine is up to lately.  I personally disliked the Gift of the Valar in part because I thought that at least to 1-40 experience in LOTRO was both smooth and swift as well as being something of a necessary introduction to how to play your classes.   Maybe there was a bit of shaking my fist at kids these days skipping past content I quite enjoyed on multiple passes, but not much.  It was more that the whole thing was, as I said, a half measure.  It didn’t jump you far enough ahead to be worthwhile.

With the level 95 boost, this seems like a much better plan.  I’m not sure I would buy it, but I wouldn’t completely rule it out as I did with the level 50 boost.  And I would sort of like to see the new stuff in LOTRO.

That said, I still think they have the wrong plan.  Here is what I would do.

First, I would go back and make sure that all of the book quests were really doable solo, and add in a solo option where there is none. (There were still a couple of those the last time I passed through.)  And not just a half-assed checkup, but a real deep look to tune the whole thing so that an average player can do it solo.

Then I would steal the SWTOR twist… I don’t know if a 12x experience boost would do it, or maybe just auto-level you up to the same level of the book quest you are on… and put a package in the LOTRO Store that would allow you to level up a character by running just the story line book quests.

That’s it.  You start at level 1, buy the option, start in on Volume I, Book I – Stirrings in the Darkness at one end and finish up where ever they are in Volume III (Book XIV?) or wherever, after which they are at or near the level cap and free to carry on from there.  No side quests, nothing blocking your way, all travel between areas worked into the package, and no need to buy the additional content.

The standard arguments against any insta level scheme apply to this as well.  But, as with other such offers, the most likely buyers are people who have already done the grind, or a good portion of it, already.  The core player base is much more likely to buy this sort of thing for an alt than a new player trying the game for the first time is.

Anyway, that is my thought.  If nothing else, I am glad to see Turbine coming to grips with the reality of their current insta level situation.

Others opining on this:

• Level Up Haffle
• Contains Moderate Peril

(I will add more, if I see any, as they appear)

SWTOR and a New Twist on Insta Levels

Star Wars: The Old Republic continues trucking along, successful by all reasonable measures save comparisons to the Azerothian behemoth.  It is arguably more successful than Star Wars Galaxies ever was.   Somebody likes EA’s fourth pillar.

Yes, SWTOR has to walk the free to play path, the reality of the current market, while trying to coax people back into subscribing lest they have to purchase their hot bars a la carte.  But it is still moving along some of the more traditional paths, to the point of some still counting it as a subscription MMO.  It has had expansions and increases to the level cap and what not.

And so it is just part of the normal MMO cycle that they have a new expansion (or new DLC according to some… what is the border between the two?), Shadow of Revan, coming out December 9th.

Revan, sans shadow…

I suppose we should be thankful that they decided not to drop in November like all those other MMOs.

But 2014 is shaping up to be the year of insta levels.  The growing trend is to give your players a way to vault past a lot of early and middle content in your game in order to line them up to be able to experience the new hotness that is your latest expansion.  As Tom Chilton said:

By building expansions, you are effectively building up barriers to people coming back. But by including the level 90 character with this expansion, it gives people the opportunity to jump right into the new content.

Of course, Blizzard wasn’t the first to market with that idea.  SOE was out there ahead of them with a level 85 boost in EverQuest II before the Warlords of Draenor announcement.  But the World of Warcraft insta-90 boost made the bigger splash, and sells for the bigger bucks, weighing in with a $60 toll to get to 90.

The reality in Azeroth

Anyway, insta levels have become a thing and you can get them by one means or another in EverQuest, EverQuest II, World of Warcraft, Rift, and Lord of the Rings Online if the moon is in the right house and you think getting to level 50 in a 100 level game is a worthwhile purchase.  And EA needs to live in the ecosystem.

Which brings us to the Shadow of Revan expansion.  People more knowledgeable than I are talking about the expansion in general and features like dumping talent trees.  You can find some of that at:

• Blessing of Kings
• Going Commando
• House of Witches
• Werit

While I played a bit of SWTOR this year, it wasn’t enough for me to feel that I know squat about the game or how important a new expansion and five more levels might be.  But I am interested in one pre-order aspect of the whole expansion.

In case you cannot read the fine print, EA is offering subscribers who pre-order a 12x boost to experience earned by class story quests. (Some details on what that means.)  While that isn’t handing out levels, it is making them much less difficult to obtain, though that might not be enough for some.

The interesting/awkward bit is that this is a limited time offer, and the boost expires on December 1st.  That is definitely pushing people to subscribe and buy the expansion sooner rather than later in order to take advantage of the boost.  And if you do roll with this you will no doubt know more about your character and class and the storyline of the game, even having played through at high speed, than you would have if they had just given you a level 55 boost.  The problem comes on December 2nd, when the talent tree system you just spent all those quick levels getting acquainted with goes away, to be replaced by the new discipline system.  That seems like kind of a misstep, but maybe most people don’t have as much problem re-learning how to play a character as I do.

Now, up to this point, you can make a strong argument that this 12x boost doesn’t belong in the same bucket as the other insta level schemes I mentioned.  While there is the whole “but you have to play those levels, even if they are fast” aspect, I think that is much weaker than the limited time nature of the boost.

But if down the road a ways EA puts that 12x boost to level 55 in the cash shop, I am going to say it pretty much falls in the same category, being clearly intended as a way for the player to pay not to play as much of the game as you otherwise might have to, as opposed to the garden flavor of xp boosts most free to play games offer, which I cannot recall ever exceeding 2.5x.

What do you think?

Rift Joins the Insta-Level Club with Nighmare Tide Expansion

While I haven’t been in Rift for ages, that doesn’t mean Trion Worlds isn’t still out there plugging away.  During that very busy stretch in August… I thought people went on vacation in August… they announced a new expansion, the Nightmare Tide.

This will bring the level cap up to 65, adds new content in the Plane of Water, gives you a new bag slot (woot!), and a host of new and improved features you can read about over on their site.  I just hope it isn’t an all under water expansion.  Too much disorientation for me.

The expansion, set to come out on October 8th of this year, is available for pre-order in three flavors.

Nightmare Tide Editions

Selling new content, expansions, is one of the business models I can really get behind. But, as always, we get into the discussion about what is worth the money.  You can go compare the three editions on their site to see if you would drop an additional $100 to get the Ultimate Nightmare Edition.  I am not sure it would be for me, but I am also not playing Rift currently, so the $25 option isn’t for me either.

The interesting thing for me in all of this is the item available only with the $50 and $150 editions which will boost a character to level 60, currently the level cap in the game.  From the site:

Boost one character to Level 60 with a swig of this powerful draught! It comes complete with gear to begin your quests in the Plane of Water and is even tradable to other characters – but be careful, it only works once!

Where have I heard about something like that before?  Oh yeah, back at BlizzCon last November, when Blizzard announced the Warlords of Draenor expansion, which included a boost to level 90 for a single character.

Not that I am trying to scold them for copying an idea that is starting to spread.  Rift has made its mark by working hard to be a better WoW than WoW,  putting themselves directly up against the big gorilla in the room… or something.

Remember this?

So if Trion is copying a feature from elsewhere for Rift, it generally means it is a feature worth having.  But I wonder how much of the Blizzard playbook they are going to copy?

As of right now, the insta-60 option… which would let me skip past the Storm Legion content I got mired in, and eventually gave up on… is only available by purchasing the top two versions of the expansion package.  It is not available as its own item in the in-game store.

But will it stay that way?

As Silverangel notes in her look at the whole thing, that the idea of insta-levels staying locked to an expansion purchase seems naive.  And Blizzard itself started with insta-90s being tied to the Warlords of Draenor expansion, but eventually moved to make them a cash shop item.  An expensive cash shop item, for sure, ringing in at $60 a pop.  But if you want more than the one you got with the expansion and three double sawbucks burning a hole in your pocket, Blizzard has the deal for you.

Yours, if the price is right…

So I suppose that just leaves us with two questions.

The first is, “When Trion will offer insta-levels as a cash shop item?”

My gut says that they will be available after the expansion goes live, but before the end of the year, so you’ll be able to buy yourself or a friend a character boost for the holidays.

And the second is, “How much will a Rift insta-60 cost?”

Blizzard wants $60, but even down to almost half of their peak user base, they are still sitting on such a huge revenue stream that they can afford to stick to their notions of the world, like the idea that people should be encouraged to play through the content.  I think insta-levels are more a utility than revenue stream for them.

Back in the real world, where it isn’t raining cash, SOE priced their level 85 boosts in EverQuest and EverQuest II at about $35.  However, that is taking the strict, default valuation of Station Cash and translating it to coin of the realm.  Theoretically it could be much cheaper if you bought your Station Cash during a sale, got one of those Walmart bonus Station Cash cards, or found some other loophole in the SOE accounting system.

And then there is Lord of the Rings Online and their goofy option, which only boosts you to level 50… 45 levels shy of Helm’s Deep content… and which they are trying to promote through scarcity by only offering it on special occasions.  That has run for 5,000 Turbine points which, due to how Turbine’s valuation of their in-game currency vary depending on how and when you purchase it, could put the real world price somewhere between $38 and $70.  Or less, since you can earn Turbine points in the game, one of the outstanding features of LOTRO, so you could subsidize your purchase with that.

Given all of that, I would guess that Trion would price insta-levels in Rift closer to the SOE price range than the Blizzard.

Then again, Trion isn’t shy about asking for money.  They have a $150 option for their expansion and they were looking for $100 if you wanted to be in the ArcheAge beta.

What do you think?

Level 85 in EverQuest… Now What?

these new boost 90s are ruining the game

-Search term of the day

Last week we got insta-level boosts in both EverQuest and World of Warcraft.

In WoW they are a $60 option, though you get one “free” with the purchase or pre-order of the Warlords of Draenor expansion.

In EQ they are a $35 option… or maybe less, depending on how you acquired your 3,500 Station Cash… and you can get one that is actually free for a limited time.  The offer for that ends on March 26.

So I had to go try these out.

I went for the WoW option, boosting up a Death Knight, which I covered in another post.  There were quirks.  Some of them have been addressed.  You no longer get dumped at Timeless Isle when starting out, which is probably good.  But there are still points where you wonder how a new player is going to handle an insta-90.

I had to go look up how to play my Death Knight now that he had all of his skills and access to all of his talents and would be expected to have glyphs in group content.  I went to Icy Veins this time around, which has a nice set of class guides.  A new player might do that as well.

However, I did have a serious advantage over a new player in that I knew what I wanted this character to do at level 90.  He is already out and exalted with the Tillers so I have another farm for trillium when I need it.  I have him on a couple of other faction hunts and running through some content that benefits me overall.  I never hit the “so what do I do now?” question.   Of course, he got through some of the things I wanted so fast that I’ve gone back to another low level alt that I am leveling up.  But that is more a matter of being boosted to level cap where there is only end But he is also my third 90, so things like LFR are no longer fresh and new.)

I did wonder how it would feel if I didn’t really have a goal, what the game would be like if I got that insta-level character and was facing a world in which I had no real plan.  I couldn’t do that in WoW.

But EverQuest looked like it might be a different story.  While I have played plenty of EQ over the years, I have never had a character past level 60, so most of the last decade of new content is completely unknown to me.  So I was curious to see how the EQ insta-level plan, which gives you a fully equipped level 85 character, would guide me.  Time to take advantage of that free boost.

Heroic for Free

Insta-85 in Norrath.

I logged in and decided I would create a fresh character for this rather than boosting one of my old characters.  I chose a paladin, whom I named Valmont.  I am surprised that name was available, but this was on the Vox server, the one they launched when the game went F2P, so it probably has the most free names.

As for boosting my character, I am not sure if I did things in the right order.  I created the character, ended up in the tutorial, boosted him up, ended up as a level 85 in the tutorial, then left the tutorial and headed to the Plane of Knowledge.

So I was already screwed up when it came to following the path of a new player because I knew how to get to the PoK.  I would have followed the game’s advice, but it did not actually tell me what to do.  Still, the boost seemed to go okay.  At one point I was asked to make a gear choice of some sort.

What should I pick?

I couldn’t tell you which one I should have chosen, but I chose one and moved on.  I got some gear, which the game equipped me with automatically… except for the weapon slot.  For some reason EQ left the default level 1 newbie weapon equipped, so I had to swap the new one in manually.

The game also asked if I wanted some pre-set hot bars, to which I answered in the affirmative.

Heroic Paladin Hot Bars

I thought that was an excellent idea.  The hot bars included skills and positions for some spells.  No spells were selected by default, and that became my next issue.  The EverQuest spell system made a lot of sense when you capped at level 50 and had maybe a couple dozen spells.  My freshly minted level 85 Paladin however had 211 spells in his spell book, sorted out in the usual way for adding to the active spells.

Not the best selection scheme…

I picked a couple, stared at the list for a while longer, then said, “Screw it!” and moved on, assuming that I would figure out what sort of spell support I really needed once I got to a point where I was killing things.  I had a mercenary there set to heal me, time to get stuck in.

Overall, I seemed to be pretty well prepared for that.  I had a full set of equipment, including an awesome Lexan riot shield, a mount that wasn’t that awkward looking raptor (okay, it was a unicorn… I’m a pally, what did you think I would get?) and I was there in the Plane of Knowledge, the gateway to all of Norrath.  Time to set forth and adventure.

Valmont ready to set forth

Only I was wondering where I might go.  There are, according to yesterday’s anniversary infographic, more than 1,557 zones in the game at this point. (Don’t they know how many zones? Why say “over 1,557?” rather than an exact number?)  The choices seemed daunting and I had no real clue as to what was appropriate.

Somewhere in the back of my brain, a little reminder arose to tell me that the game always sends you an email at every level to tell you what zone is ripe for your adventuring pleasure.  Advantage veteran again I guess.  The mail icon is pretty subtle.  But I was right, the game had a zone picked out for me.

Go here fresh pally!

I was to go to the Old Bloodfields zone!  Excellent!  I now had a destination!  And it was even a Hot Zone, though again, not sure a new player would know what that meant.  Now I just had to figure out where in the 1557+ Old Bloodfields was located was a bit of a mystery.

This turned out to be my undoing.

Standing there in the Plane of Knowledge, there wasn’t much in the way of clues.  The map of the area is fairly… busy.  I went to Google to help out and found out that Old Bloodfields was part of The Void and that I should get there via Druzzil Ro.  However, it wasn’t quite clear if that was an NPC or a location or what.  It did, however, indicated that whatever it was was somewhere around the Priest of Discord.  Him I could get to, thanks to the find feature and the guided paths.

Still better than the EQII paths…

However, while I found the Priest of Discord… or where he should have been… he flashes when I arrived at him then disappeared… there were no likely prospects in and about that location.  But, given the problem with the Priest of Discord, it might have been obscured in some way.  Back to Google.

Another search result suggested that I use the in-game atlas to figure out how to get there.  I wasn’t really aware that the atlas was of much value.

The Atlas of Norrath

However, it turned out to have some uses.  There was The Void in the midst things, and clicking on it game me a more detailed map of the area.

The Void Displayed

From there, it looked like maybe I just had to get to the City of Dranik or some other location in The Void.  But the zone connection list for Plane of Knowledge wasn’t helping me here.

PoK Zone Connections

Fortunately, I discovered yet another useful tool I had no idea existed in EverQuest.  The game has a built-in travel planner.  It knows what zone you are in, so you just tell it what zone you want to get to and, hey presto, a route is listed along with a glowy path to guide you on your way.

EQ Travel Planner

At least that is the theory.

And the route seemed easy enough.  Plane of Knowledge to Plane of Time via a “translocator.”  Plane of Time to The Void via a portal.  And The Void to Old Bloodfields via another portal.  A hell of a lot easier than getting from Deklein to Curse.

The only problem was that the path wouldn’t show up to get to the Plane of Time.  Instead, the game threw an error:

The zone path was unable to determine the exact location of the zone connection to Plane of Time.  If the zone connection is made through an NPC, you may be able to find it by searching the NPC’s in the Find Window.

No amount of tinkering about seemed to be able to get past that and my usual resource for this sort of thing, the now horribly out of date Allakhazam, wasn’t exactly helping out.  After a bit I got distracted wondering if this was the only path the game would send you on or if you might see something else with a different character.  So I hauled out my other EverQuest account and logged in to create another insta-85.  That should have been a viable option given that SOE had written:

For accounts created before Nov 8, 2013, the free Heroic Character option is available one time per account.

For accounts created on or after Nov 8, 2013, the free Heroic Character option is available one time per household.

My second account had been created even before the Fippy Darkpaw Time-Locked Progression server was launched, so I figured I was covered.  After all, that went live back in February 2011.  However, when I got to character creation, I was informed than I had no heroic characters left.

You get zero more.

So SOE fumbles again.  No second heroic character for me.  I logged Lentil in just to put Valmont in the guild just because.

Valmont and Lentil in the PoK

After which I poked around some more and then went on to other entertainments, as it did not appear I was going to get anywhere productive as a level 85.  Valmont never once drew his shiny new sword in anger.

All of which brings up a question I have been wondering about for a while now, which is who is the real target audience for level boosted characters?

In theory it is for new or inactive players so that they can come back and launch into more recent content.  There have been a lot of words written about how you do not need to level up a character in order to know how to play it, though my experience so far does not bear that out.  I couldn’t even follow the indicated path in EQ.  I still don’t know how to actually get to the Old Bloodfields which, considering that is where SOE told me to go, adds up to at least a flaw in the system.

Sure, EverQuest is an archaic old game and opaque in many ways… look at all those spells, not to mention all the hidden features… but even in World of Warcraft I felt I had to go out of game to look up how to play a character at 90 that I had been playing at 68.  It reminds me of the Dennis Moore line:

This redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought.

This insta-levels thing is fraught with minor peril.

So my gut says that the primary audience is the current player base and that it is just a quick source of alts.  If you already know what you are doing in EQ, you wouldn’t have even noticed the issues I ran into.

But that seems at odds with some of what I have seen in WoW since the WoD pre-orders went live.  The search term at the top of this post is indicative of some feelings out there.  I did a couple of LFRs over the weekend and the main topic in chat seemed to be an inquest to figure out who had a freshly boosted level 90 and was thus the obvious reason the raid was wiping… or at least wasn’t progressing fast enough.  The assumption seems to be that insta-90s are primarily new players who have been given a shiny toy they don’t know how to use.

(My daughter insta-90’d a priest, a class she doesn’t have currently, went immediately into LFR and, after her first run, actually succeeded as a healer.  I am not sure if that says more about her, the optimism of youth, or the ease of healing in LFR.)

But what are insta-90s supposed to do in a game where the 91-100 content is slated to show up by December 20th of this year?

Who do you think the real target audience is for these boosted characters?  Is it for new players to get into the “good” content, lapsed players to catch up, or just an alt factory for the current player base?

The Insta-90 Choice is… Death Knight

I went out and pre-ordered Warlords of Draenor because… well… because I wanted to play with the whole insta-90 thing and I didn’t want to just lay out $60 for the pleasure with nothing else to show for it.  At least I have the expansion queued up for some time this year.  This is what you get with your insta-level:

• Boost to level 90
• 150 gold
• 4 Embersilk (22-slot) bags
• A stack of 20 food items
• Full set of spec-appropriate Item Level 483 (blue-quality) gear
• If a boosted character was already level 60 or above, their existing Primary Professions and First Aid are bumped up to level 600
• A faction-specific flying mount—a traditional Wind Rider for Horde or Gryphon for Alliance
• Artisan flying—that’s one rank below max flight speed
• Northrend, Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms, and Pandaria regional flying skills trained

I chose my level 68 Death Knight so as to get the primary professions bump as well.  I pulled the trigger and ended up with a level 90, fully equipped DK.

Tokarev, Level 90

Of course, that list of what you get is general.  The details can be… interesting.

I didn’t bother to read any descriptions about the process or watch the video, I just did it and found myself standing at the flight point on Timeless Isle all geared up and with 102 free bag slots.  The starting location was no doubt a prompt to go get some even better gear, which I promptly did along with finding a crystal of insanity. (The cave was full of people doing the same.  I’d love to know how many fresh 90s there were this week.)

But 102 free bags slots?  Out of 104 total?  Where did all my stuff go?

Oh, it was in the mail.  Blizzard unburdened me of all my past worldly possessions and set them aside in a locker for me.  I guess, of possible options, that was a decent choice.  At least once I figured it out.

And on the unexpected front, I did get my primary professions boosted to 600, giving me max skill mining and jewel crafting.  What I did not get was any of the recipes along the way.  And the price of getting them… just the Pandaria ones that you can train… is a lot more than the 150 gold then give you.  Fortunately, I already had a pile of gold on my DK, so I trained that up, though I still have to go out in the world and find a good portion of the top tier recipes as drops.

Not the worst thing in the world, but it does put the question of the target audience in mind.  If you were a brand new player enticed in by the insta-90 scheme and only had that 150 gold… well… I guess you wouldn’t get the profession boost so it wouldn’t matter.

Now I just have to figure out how to play my DK.  I had been leveling him up as a tank, so blood spec, which was easy enough in The Burning Crusade.  But for the boost I opted for frost DPS spec, since you have to know what you’re doing at level cap to tank.  The insta-90 process gave me the choice of spec.  Now I have a dual wielding DPS DK and have to figure out skills and glyphs and what not.  But at least I know where to go and what to do with him.  He is already stuck into faction with the Tillers and the Cloud Serpents.  We will see if I have the fortitude to bring another melee DPS into LFR.

So far, so good I guess.

I also plan to take advantage of the freebie insta-85 boost over in EverQuest this weekend.  We only have until the 26th for that.  I will be interested to see how the two compare.

Warlords of Draenor to be a $50 Expansion? And Something About Insta-90s

And while we were on the topic of insta levels…

Blizzard has finally opened up pre-orders for the Warlords of Draenor expansion.  The price falls between my expectations and my fears.  WoW expansions have been $40 items up until this point, while the EuroGamer article two weeks back said the expansion would be $60. (Though they deleted that without reference when Blizzard objected.)

The actual price, according to Blizzard’s announcement, is somewhere in between.   The standard edition will be $50, with the usual $20 bump to get the Digital Deluxe edition.  Presumably the physical Collector’s Edition will be an additional $20 on top of that, making it potentially a $90 purchase.  So there is your buy-in price for the next two years of WoW content… once it ships.

There were a couple of items of note in the announcement, starting with that potential ship date.

Pre-order announcement

You probably cannot read it in the thumbnail, but if you expand it by clicking on it, you can see that they have tacked on a line about the expected release being in the Fall of 2014.  My September 9th guess seems even more optimistic at this point.  And, as somebody pointed out, Fall technically goes all the way out to December 20, 2014, though I would imagine that Blizzard would do all it could to get the expansion in the pipe at least a month before Christmas.  Like, maybe at the 10 year anniversary?  We shall see.  (Elsewhere Blizzard says, “Game is expected to release on or before 12/20/2014.”  If this were SOE, that would mean February.  And even with Blizzard, “expected” is a hedge and not a promise.)

Then there are the in-game items you get with the Digital Deluxe and Collector’s Edition.  A mount and a pet are the key items, and you get them as soon as you pre-order.

Dread Raven mount and hatching pet

The other items, StarCraft II portraits and Diablo III banners don’t really thrill me.  Blizzard does insist on these cross-game items though.  Occasionally they are good.

And then there are some details about how the insta-90 process will work, including a 2 minute tutorial on YouTube, and what you will get with your character after you wave the magic level-up wand over it.

• 150 gold
• 4 Embersilk (22-slot) bags
• A stack of 20 food items
• Full set of spec-appropriate Item Level 483 (blue-quality) gear
• If a boosted character was already level 60 or above, their existing Primary Professions and First Aid are bumped up to level 600
• A faction-specific flying mount—a traditional Wind Rider for Horde or Gryphon for Alliance
• Artisan flying—that’s one rank below max flight speed
• Northrend, Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms, and Pandaria regional flying skills trained

That isn’t a bad list of items.  I’ll happily take one with the expansion, though I am not sure I will fork over $60 for any more after that.

Four 22 slot bags are more than any but my main have on them.  The gear is a decent start on things in Pandaria.  The flight boost, including opening up all the areas that require specific skills, certainly saves you some gold.  And then there is the boost to your primary professions and first aid.  No cooking, no fishing, and no archaeology I guess.  Have to level those up the old fashioned way.  But that is still enough to keep my Death Knight in the running as I try to decide which class to boost to 90.

So there we go.  This will have to keep us all busy… or not… in Azeroth through the summer.

Will Blizzard be able to keep the subscriptions from ebbing between now and then?

Insta-Levels Come to EverQuest

Paid boosts to higher levels were pretty much a given for EverQuest at some point.  The only real question I have is why it took this long.  After all, EverQuest II got its own insta-level scheme… erm, “heroic character” plan… way back in October of last year.

My guess is that they wanted to wait for the game’s 15th anniversary to roll this out.

So here we are.  The anniversary is this coming Sunday, and starting Wednesday of this week you can get a level boosted character.  Per SOE:

Players should find it much easier to begin their adventures in Norrath when they start at level 85 with a full complement of gear, Alternative Advancement Abilities, and a unique mount. Regardless if you’re a veteran player that wants to try a new class, a new player that wants to get caught up to your friends, or a player that hasn’t visited Norrath in a long time, Heroic Characters are a great way for you to get in the game!

And, from this Wednesday through to Wednesday, March 26th, the first one is free.  The second, or the first after March 26th, will run you 3,500 Station Cash, which translates into $35 if you leave aside any possible discounts or stipends.  You can apply this boost to a new or existing character.

$35 is the same price as EverQuest II charges for their version of the boost, which was somewhere near the possible price range for Lord of the Rings Online’s experiment with insta-levels (depending on how you value Turbine Points), but is considerably less than what Blizzard is planning to charge for a level 90 character in World of Warcraft.

That last bit makes you think.  After all, the prices of other services… realm transfers or race/faction/name changes… even expansions… for these games run about the same.  But a boost to a high level character? $35 vs. $60.

What ever your particular market can bear I guess.  Or maybe it depends on the target audience for the offer.

Otherwise, the deals are similar enough.  You get a boost up into what the company considers the current/best/optimum/most up to date content.  You get some good gear and whatever else goes along with the being at that level.  In the case of EQ that means Alternate Advancement points, one of those things that went from a way to keep people busy after they hit level cap to “you must have n AA points to join our very serious guild.”  And there is even a special mount for you.

Not at all awkward on that mount

I remain somewhat indifferent to insta-levels.  They are still something I would only pay money for under very specific, and pretty rare, circumstances.  But I get the appeal.  And in the case of EverQuest, the idea probably makes as much sense as it ever will.

After all, the content in EverQuest has evolved a lot in the last 15 years.  And the bits and pieces of Norrath that I think I “know” represent a tiny fraction of that content.  What I might call “my” EverQuest adds up to the original content, much of Ruins of Kunark, the areas around Crescent Reach up to about level 50, the tutorial, the Plane of Knowledge, and a few lower level locations scattered around the game.  Anything above level 60 or that was added after, say, Planes of Power, is pretty much unknown to me and likely to remain that way.  I mean, I didn’t even find a “lost” dungeon (2003 content) until about two years ago.

If I want to see anything new in Norrath, an insta-85 is probably the best way, as I have long since lost my ability to level up over time in the game, even with reductions in the level curve, mercenaries, and some attempts at directed content.  And I suspect I am not alone in that.

And then there is the cash shop in EverQuest.  SOE was extremely sensitive to what they put in the cash shop in EverQuest II.  In EverQuest though, the felt much less constrained.  Things that would make people’s collective heads explode in EQII… like actual gear or trade skill supplies… are readily available for Station Cash in EQ.

Gear packs available

But in EverQuest gear acquisition, and the constant flow of gear upgrades, is not as obvious or ingrained as it is in EverQuest II, where you have to pretty much change out everything every 10 levels.

And then there is the whole “this game is 15 years old with a lot of uneven content between character creation and level 85” aspect.  It might make sense to just put people into the newer content and leave West Karana and Butcher Block to those with a yen for nostalgia.  Of course, you might ask why they chose level 85.  That puts you into the House of Thule content.  If I recall right, that is about the peak before you have to start buying expansions again, so perhaps that is the right point to put people.

So I will likely go and get my free boost to level 85 later this week, and maybe even run around to see what there is to be seen these days.  If nothing else, having a character at that level will make touring the world a little easier.

Actually, I will probably boost a level 85 on both of my accounts.  One curious little tidbit:

For accounts created before Nov 8, 2013, the free Heroic Character option is available one time per account.

For accounts created on or after Nov 8, 2013, the free Heroic Character option is available one time per household.

I seem to recall this “one time per household” thing coming up with the free boost EverQuest II.  I suspect that people were angered… SOE has a knack for angering customers that boggles the mind some days… and now they have spelled it out in a very specific way while grandfathering older accounts into past rules in order to limit the rage level.

Meanwhile, I am wondering who will offer character level boosts next?  Which games have enough content for this sort of thing to make sense.