Locking expansion spells behind language skill and questsFollow

Just got my toons to 25 in Alaran language skill and I was ASTONISHED how many very useful (indeed, NECESSARY) spells were locked behind the completion of that work. My boxed set is caster-heavy and I just bought over a 100 spells, many of them providing HUGE boosts for my level 95 toons. It was "nice" that the single-target versions of symbol, skin, haste and crack don't require any minimum Alaran but it's sure nice now to have the group versions and not to have to cast these spells individually on each toon.

Yeah, I did this part of VoA advancement very belatedly. Which made it a lot easier for me since I did all the quests in Lunanyn and the zone was empty most of the time, giving me competition-free access to camps and spawns. I can imagine what a logjam these quests must have been back when VoA first went live.

This expansion appears to have been rather UNpopular and I think a lot of the reason was locking spells (and AA's, and to a great extent, quest armor) behind acquisition of language skills achievable only by doing specific quests. Frankly, I think I should and could have done this a lot earlier but the general negative discussion about VoA in various game-related forums led me to procrastinate tackling these "challenges", as I never like to be "forced" into certain very limited paths for advancement. My loss, ultimately. But I do think it was a major mistake to sell customers an expansion with a 5-level cap increase but locking vital spells behind quests which are rather hard to do without attaining those levels first. In essence this forced players who invested their hard-earned dinero in this expansion to play "crippled" for quite a while until they levelled up and geared up enough to cope with the challenges of the quests needed to unlock the spells and AAs. Yeah, some players will argue that these kill and loot missions weren't all that hard but those players tend to be well-geared raider types. I do remember first tackling a couple of the kill missions at level 90 and they were pretty brutal.

I think locking Rank II spells, and maybe a few exotic spells (nice to have but not class-defining or otherwise essential) behind quests isn't a bad idea. But how they did it in VoA... well IMO they won't ever do this again because very few players are ever going to list this particular expansion among their favorites, I don't think.

And don't get me started on how they locked druid and wizard VoA ports behind ludicrously HIGH Alaran language skill requirements. That's a rant for another weekend when the sun isn't shining and the birds aren't chirping! ;)

Wow I'm surprised at your problem with raising casting skills. I made a few new toons recently and since I PL'd them quite a bit, I was WAAAY behind in my casting skills. I found by chain-casting a cheap mana low level spell I was raising the skill VERY VERY rapidly, usually getting one skillup with EVERY cast. I actually figured they must have made code changes to accelerate the pace at which spell-casting skills rise. I'm shocked to hear you're levelling so slow.

I agree with you about future expansions should have content for lower levels, especially if Sony is trying to "grow" the customer base. I'm sure it's a razor-sharp balancing act for them between catering to the dedicated raiders, their hard-core consumer base, as well as satisfying the more casual players, many of which are at max or close to max level, and then trying to add content for the smaller but not insignificant group of mid-to-low level players, and then finally trying to entice newcomers (or returnees) into the game. Another expansion like Serpent's Spine, with something for every level, would be sweet.

Introducing a new class would be a huge boost to the game as well, methinks. They haven't added a class since Gates of Discord (berserkers). That class was NOT a big hit when introduced, although it's reasonably popular and in-demand for raiding now. Would love to see an expansion with (a) a new class, (b) new zones for every level, and (c) raise the cap <finally!> to 100!

I can dream, can't I?? :)

Rank 1 Spells
•Rank 1 Spells have the following language requirements: •Basic Rank 1 spells from level 91 to 93 are available with no restriction.
•Basic Rank 1 spells from level 94 to 95 are available if you have a language skill of 25 or more.
•Uncommon Rank 1 spells from level 91 to 93 are available if you have a language skill of 25 or more.
•Uncommon Rank 1 spells from level 94 to 95 are available if you have a language skill of 50 or more.

Rank 2 Spells
•Rank 2 Spells have the following language requirements: •Level 91 spells are available without restriction.
•Level 92-93 spells are available if you have a language skill of 25 or more.
•Level 94-95 spells are available if you have a language skill of 50 or more.

Here is a breakdown of your skill increases up to 70:
•+10 Skill - Do any 5 kill tasks from Argath or Lunanyn, each grant +2 skill.
•+36 Skill - Do either of the 6 quests chains in Argath or Lunanyn, the first 3 you complate grant +5 each, the next 3 grant +7 each.
•+24 Skill - Do the 2 group missions in either Argath or Lunanyn, each grant +12 skill.



yup, they sure are a-holes there at sony. you have to do as few as 5 quests to get to 25 and 8 quests to get over 50 and unlock all rk 2 spells. i ran my 3 box crew, who were at 92 at the time (1 shaman with 2200 aa's and HoT teir 2 raid gear and 2 mages under 300 aa's and HoT tier 3 group geared) through all of argath's quest line in one sunday afternoon. i sure had to do tons of work for them spells.




Edited, May 28th 2012 10:56am by Radiant

Shame on you, thats botting and can get you banned pretty quick. Not something i would openly admit to. Besides saying its easy when it takes 8 hours and you're not even maxxed in everything is pretty silly.

Is it really that much different than locking them behind a faction though? It's really all the same. Getting faction, raisting language, heck, even doing missions for special currency to buy them with. They are all just ways to put roadblocks in our path to make us spend time in the expansion to get the expansion benefits.

HoT had a level cap increase also.
SoD had a level cap increase and spells locked behind currency and quests/tasks.
SoF had a level cap increase and spells locked behind 5 different factions which required completeing dozens of quests/tasks for each faction..

in VoA, you have a level cap increase and spells locked behind a grand total of 8 quests. they made you work a "faction" called alarn to get these spells. they even made it so you can see exactually what you score in this "faction" is. and let me repeat this again, you can unlock all rk 2 after doing a grand total of 8 quests/tasks. what do you want in the next expansion? want them to change the name to "Ever" and remove all quests?

Edited, May 29th 2012 5:41pm by Radiant

Hi, most of my other characters don't have all their specialize skills maxed. How's your cleric's specialize conjuration?

I'd admit to it because it's an edge case and can't be tracked (my work IP doesn't even trace to the same STATE I live in). I'm at the keyboard (technically) so how is it botting?



Riiiiight. Like the 'Quest' part of the name had any correlation within the game until well after late 2004 (gee, I wonder why?). So all of a sudden the name means something just because they add a handful of 'must do' quests while the rest are garbage and ignored by the vast majority of the populace, eh?

I have no beefs about requiring a particular type of progression. None. I raged when they opened the tier 2 planes and made the PoJ trials superfluous. I raged when that other company did away with attuning (flagging) and made Kael'thas an afterthought because he was hard, awwww. What I have a problem with is balancing things for people who no longer need those things. That's why they had to go back and castrate all the mobs in SoD and Underfoot and they'll probably do the same thing in August for VoA. UF at launch was balanced (from Brell's Rest on) for people in Korafax gear. The majority of the playerbase was not in Korafax gear, so they couldn't really survive that, not to mention all the see invis/see SoS stuff. The expansion, by all accounts I've seen, was not well received (financially). That's what I have a problem with. No one in Korafax gear cared a whit about anything that dropped in BR. You had to get to Pellucid or Cooling Chamber to even see anything that didn't scream, "Gratz, my trader!".