The Level 16+ Experience on the Server

[Vilhelmina]

Gear grind, Gear grind, Gear grind, Gear grind...

This server is more or less the same as it was on live. 'Pay' a monthly subscription fee for the privilege to continue grinding for the next level of über-gear.
Only nowadays, we don't have to complete a financial transaction in order to grind, it's just your free time you have to pay with.

So... unless you acknowledge this and just go ahead and enjoy playing the game with whatever character(s) you have, then the grind won't get you down.

Gear grind, Gear grind, Gear grind, Gear grind... it's what makes the worlds of 2008 MMORPGs go round.

[Hogtooth]

Get a group together and run scenarios. Comms is a big help to coordinate too. This coming weekend with 2X is your chance to grow fast. Take the scenario quests, the kill quests and each RVR warcamp has travel quests, T2-3 sc quests should be around 40k exp per win on top of what you earn in the SC.
Myrmidons have been running a static group leveling destro alts to T4 and the problem order is having that we are seeing is not understanding the mechanics of the scenarios as well as unbalanced groups. Understand how bolster works as well, the points you spend in renown are different in T2-T3 than when you reach T4.

When you build a solid group you can run the rvr lakes together too, work the edges of the campaign with hit and move, bolster does well to level the playing field against level 40's.

[istvar]

Getting Renown/XP seems like less of a problem than acquisition of gear. I started playing on the server again a few weeks ago and had to relieved my character since my old ones got deleted. I am almost RR 60 now and there is no way I will be able to get the RR 55 scenario Gear till I probably reach RR 70 since ranked solo never pops. Invader Gear is useless to me and people are now starting to run multiple pieces of Sov gear. The fact that it’s easier to maintain high RR gear for older player than to get upgrades for my low RR gear as a new player seems like a very poorly implemented gear progression by the devs

[Aurandilaz]

I think leveling should be considerably faster if you're slapping T2-3-4 in the same bundle.I just started playing, fully cleared T1 quests and all and made my way to T2( roughly lvl 16). I was amped to get into some RvR action as I kept lvling but what do you think happened? I was a motivated naive Shaman, joins warband, spam heal people left and right, get kicked. I'm like "huh", join again, get kicked, join another, get kicked within seconds. Then I suddenly realize almost none of these people should even be here in the first place as most of them are lvl 40 and I get spat on for being exactly where I'm supposed to be. 10/10 great game.

Split T2 or substantially boost XP gain or prepare to lose most of that influx of new players.

T2 T3 T4 rvr campaign was merged because normally there is not an influx of extra few thousand newbies arriving within 1 week and flooding the starter zones. Your 500v500 Nordland pvp experiences differs from the usual 20v20 t1 pvp lake that was the common for months/years before. While 5-10% of players kept brawling in T1 lakes, the remaining 90% or so was busy in T4 lakes, meaning the occasional levellers faced usually quite empty t2 t3 lakes, which kinda kills motivation for many, if you roam t2 lakes for hours without finding any group and sc pop might as well need days to appear. Therefore the merge, to spice up the usual t4 campaign with addition of t2 t3 zones into the mix and allowing people to straight up join the endgame pvp process as rank 16s.
Even lowbie healers will do ok in warbands, but generally your main warband heal tool is your group heal which you get around rank 20 or so, so it is not uncommon to avoid "too low level" classes if the leader gets to be picky and there is enough players to choose from. Or the warband leaders were playing elsewhere + trying to rally their groups around the leader, and maybe you were elsewhere on the map. Or maybe the warband was a guild only, and was only open on accident before they realized to close it.
Filling t2 t3 lakes with every player between rank 16-40 is normally enough to keep them populated for leveling + gameplay purposes, this last week has been kinda interesting since nothing like it has happened before with the raw amount of newbies joining.

[sogeou]

Lots of bad info in here. The 16- 30 is by far the best time in the game. It has zero gear grind and if you keep your gear up to date you will be stronger than almost every class. Some classes are better than others because they get the tools to be successful at an early rank than others. I would love it if the mods would let me lock my toons at 30. Please....?

[Xergon]

Gear grind, Gear grind, Gear grind, Gear grind...

This server is more or less the same as it was on live. 'Pay' a monthly subscription fee for the privilege to continue grinding for the next level of über-gear.
Only nowadays, we don't have to complete a financial transaction in order to grind, it's just your free time you have to pay with.

So... unless you acknowledge this and just go ahead and enjoy playing the game with whatever character(s) you have, then the grind won't get you down.

Gear grind, Gear grind, Gear grind, Gear grind... it's what makes the worlds of 2008 MMORPGs go round.

Or simply play the game, enjoy it and take gear rewards as actual REWARDS ? No one force anyone to grind anything, its players who put pressure on them selfs, so dont blame devs or game for it.
I have almost 20 characters at RR60+ and 4 of them 80+ with full Invader atm missing only latest released gear, yes i grinded those but i enjoyed that grind and every bit of it, because playing different characters is fun to learn and understand how they works, so it was never boring for me.
Everything that comes from PvP is not boring, unless you setup your mind like it. PvE dungeons can get boring, thats ture but do them with friends and communicate on voice and it wont be boring...

[Starx]

Get a group together and run scenarios. Comms is a big help to coordinate too. This coming weekend with 2X is your chance to grow fast. Take the scenario quests, the kill quests and each RVR warcamp has travel quests, T2-3 sc quests should be around 40k exp per win on top of what you earn in the SC.
Myrmidons have been running a static group leveling destro alts to T4 and the problem order is having that we are seeing is not understanding the mechanics of the scenarios as well as unbalanced groups. Understand how bolster works as well, the points you spend in renown are different in T2-T3 than when you reach T4.

When you build a solid group you can run the rvr lakes together too, work the edges of the campaign with hit and move, bolster does well to level the playing field against level 40's.

Expecting new players to just form up sc premades is kinda idk man, and ya OS/lords is gonna probably also have a 6 man leveling group for mid tier scs but I almost feel bad about it bc its going to be a really shitty experience for order players.

It's not about ppl like you or me its about keeping new players around by making their experience better so we keep this population where its at. Amazing I can even find ppl to fight an scs popping even extremely late NA time.

[Ghostwalker]

Interesting topic, I love these ones.

So I agree with the OP, I started here a few weeks before the influx of new players, I stopped playing around level 30ish cause its not fun going against 40's that are geared through their teeth, I truly believe that bolster is just a visual placebo.

The facts are T2-T4 was never combined on live like it is here, that was for a reason, because gear was spread through tiers and gear is everything especially gear that has huge set bonuses.

The other problem is people that have been here for so long and never had their characters reset.. it parallels the real world, the rich get richer and the poor stay what? exactly.

Have a lovely evening all

[adamthelc]

Something I've thought about and talked about the last few days. You see experienced players forming premade groups in mid tier and even T1 because the population is higher. My first thought was "So you like the fact that there are a bunch of new players and to show that you get a group to farm them and give them a bad experience so they quit?"

After thinking worrying about the leveling experience in this game is productive. You are going to get farmed at some point in this game, the more experience you have the less it will happen. There are going to be a bunch of people who quit because they cant deal with that, dont doubt it. In order to really be a part of this game, you are going to have to tolerate taking your lumps. I dont think it matters if new players are faced with that earlier or later.

[BrownStar]

I went into T1 yesterday and was blown away at the huuuge number of new players. I have been on the server for over 3 years and have never seen anything close to this.
I wouldn't mind a full character reset at this point to get everyone on the same level even though I have hundreds of hours invested in my toons. This and separation of the tiers provided consistent population would perhaps keep player retention and population at high levels we are seeing now.