How do you feel about the upcoming AA changes?Follow

I am totally in love with the AA grant (saved me about 200 years of play time, with all my alts) and the leadership thing on everybody is so slick, yes see the buffs is my favorite, too. Jobs well done dev people, really well done. I had alts that I knew would never go anywhere, cuz I just didn't have the life cycles to do with them what I wanted, and AA are so important for survival as we grow up. Now they can go places too, and I can learn how to deal with things in a variety of ways, each toon soloing having its own limitations.

I had a spreadsheet where I was tracking all my alts and some of the things they had, I play so casually that I had to review the spreadsheet to figure out where an alt was in terms of quests, aa and so forth, before I sent him forth to destruction. So I tried one alt, was impressed, then did them all, 20 or so 70 plus. Net gain for all of them was 24000 plus AA. If I made say 50 an hour, and played say 5 hours a week (included set up, travel, actual questing cutting fight time down to say 2 hours), call it 100 AA a week. So it would take me 240 weeks of steady play to earn those AA, 5 years before I could gain the access to higher content that I have now. My demographics are age 71, widowed, retired, Viet Nam Era vet, and a very full active real life outside of EQ. I have been playing since 3/2000, always bought every new release, even if being so casual I could never go there, so I know and remember the 'good old days,' and have some pride in the fun I had and obstacles overcome in those years. All the guilds that I joined, learned from, and contributed to are now gone, all those wonderful friendships are memories, life moves on. But it didn't take much playtime to figure out how huge this game is and the committment I would have to make to have 10 toons at a hundred, max AA on any of them, maxed tradeskills, etc, so I made a choice, the one outlined above. Others make other choices, that is their call, their fun, their life.

So the full gratitude that I feel is now I have a better chance for maybe a few of my alts to see some of that wonderful content that I have paid for over the years. I was never in the race to the top, and I don't see anything wrong with that, although I see in the threads comments from those that seem to resent our alternative style of play, and resent these changes that allow more of us to see that content. I bought those releases to help keep the game alive, knowing that I would probably never see any of it, unless I was was chosen for betas, which I was, again thank you devs.

So I am thrilled with the changes (leadership, too), and can hope that by the time I am say 75, I will have seen a bunch more of the game than I ever hoped to before. Good job, devs, very very excellent good job! A much larger world awaits me, and many many others as well.

Good hunting, all.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2014 3:00pm by Numantic

I play a level 80 Warrior... I had only 490AA... after I have now over 2k... This was a huge Boon for me. I had all my AA in Defense and none in offensive AA's I had maxed CA/CS and got some of the other AA's for HP/etc.. This made my character catch up in offense. This is a huge jump for me, this is my highest level character and I was struggling to get AA's with no one to help. I had started offering to pay for AA power leveling just to burn through some but when I heard of the grant I waited. I got Max AA's banked but turned out there was nothing I needed after the grant which is good to hold onto. Now I can sit back and level and work on my gear/Augments. Tanks needed this... maybe not every class will benefit and care about it.. but for tanks.. we had to have max to really be effective.. I feel that now I am effective and I am loving it.