by Abazzagorath » Sat May 29, 2010 9:26 am
Wow, that's a name I haven't heard in a LONG time, welcome back! Let's get Iustus, Romidar, that erudite paladin that used to wear black (before dyes) armor and had the tag line, "To do good, you must look good" and a few others and get PoN rocking again hah.
If you want to come back, this is about the perfect time. If you restart this weekend there is a promotional 125% experience boost until tuesday morning. We are also going to see server merges between June 22nd and July 6th, so you can come back, figure out a server you want, and then use the free server transfer option (active for 7 days after the server merges) to go to any server you want. Plus, prevent any mules you have below level 10 from being deleted for being inactive for 6+ months.
There are so many changes since 2002, its probably impossible to point them all out. Some highlights:
1) Mercenaries - cleric and tank version (and soon to be melee dps and caster dps version) - you get to pick one, pay a one time plat cost and then a minor upkeep cost ever 15 minutes - if it dies you can revive it for free after 5 minutes - can set its AI a bit and give yourself a tank or puller tag to prevent it from doing stupid things - free at lower levels - cost ramps up some at highest levels - highest tiers require group flags from Seeds or Destruction expansion. Good to help soloing, filling out a missing role in a group, etc. Give people a lot more flexibility.
2) ALL experience penalties are gone (class was gone when you left I believe, but race gone too), the halfling and war/rog bonuses remain.
3) There was a couple rounds of flagged/keyed zones being opened via level, basically, almost any flagged/keyed zone up through TSS expansion (2006) has had their zones unlocked. If you're high enough to be in them, its probably not flagged. They haven't moved it further yet.
4) A big one is that AA exp is no longer equal to the experience in level 51. It is now set to be about the same number of even con kills at every level, so it takes more experience to get aa at highest levels, but because of how aa exp ramps up its still faster at 85 than say level 70 (assuming same total aa). It was put in place to stop the need to start having like 100 cost aa since it was getting faster and faster to gain aa as you leveled and mobs gave more experience. Tied into this is number 5:
5) There is now a bonus experience curve at lower aa totals to allow peoople to catch up faster. With 0 aa, you get a 300% experience bonus, and that bonus decreases along a curvilinear fyunction until you get to either 1250 or 1500 aa (not sure if it was raised from 1250 when UF was launched, the last 2 expansions it has gone up 250 aa with each expansion). So instead of "get to max level first" its actually a good idea to do important aa as you level.
6) Out of combat regen was introduced. Basically, for non-raid zone/flagged mobs, 30 seconds after you are off of their aggro list, you go into ooc regen, and if you sit down, you'll gain 3% mana/endurance per tick. It was taking people 30 mins to med to full after a wipe or dying, so this was a positive change.
Tons of other changes of course. But those are some big ones. Paladins are still awesome, of course! If you end up on maelin, and need some help getting up to speed, send me a tell.