November 1, 2011 - Tasks and Missions in House of Thule and Veil of Alaris

[Riou]

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=180755

As many of you are aware, Tasks and Missions represent one of the most rewarding ways of obtaining experience in EverQuest. As of November 15, there will be some changes to these systems that we feel you should be aware of.

Currently Tasks and Missions in House of Thule reward extremely large amounts of experience with very little restriction. These Tasks and Missions had their experience calculated based on a formula that used the amount of experience required to gain a level, not the amount of experience earned from defeating a mob. Unfortunately with the amount of experience required to gain levels continually increasing this led to a situation in which Tasks and Missions gave experience significantly more than they should have.

Group Missions also had an issue, in that they gave full rewards to anyone who was added to the task, regardless of whether or not that person participated at all in the mission.

On November 15th, with the launch of Veil of Alaris, we will be addressing both of these issues. We wanted to make sure to give all of you plenty of notice so that you can take appropriate action and receive the rewards you have already earned. These changes will affect tasks in House of Thule and Veil of Alaris and are as follows:

Experience Rewards
 For group tasks not in instanced zones, experience will be awarded to all group members within 300’ of the final step in the Task. This is usually a Hail or Delivery, and in the few cases where a Task ended on killing a NPC these tasks will receive an additional step.
 For group Tasks in an instanced mission, Task experience will be handed out upon opening of the chest. Experience will be shared with group members within 300’ of the chest.
 Characters will need to be living at the time experience is awarded, please make sure to resurrect anyone in the party who may have met an untimely end before you trigger the experience award.
Other Rewards
 All rewards other than experience including progression flags, coin, and any items will be shared as they always have been. No changes to rewards other than experience are being implemented.
House of Thule Experience Changes
 As stated above, House of Thule Tasks (solo and group) are currently awarding too much experience. Experience for House of Thule Tasks will be reduced by approximately 50%.

Given these changes we highly recommend claiming any unclaimed Task rewards before November 15. If you claim previously completed Tasks after November 15, your awards will be affected in the following ways:

 Previously completed Solo Tasks will receive the modified experience rewards.
 Previously completed Group Tasks will receive no experience reward, as the Task Rewards will have been significantly modified.

These changes are being made for the long term health of the game. Please understand that we did not make these changes lightly, but only after significant consideration including a variety of methods to address these issues. Ultimately we picked this method of restricted experience rewards as it was the least invasive and exploitable of all possible options. For most players this should provide very little difference in day to day play of EverQuest, and we appreciate your understanding in the matter.