Nice read, GJ Sekimen

The nerf was a lowering of xp rates across the board due to people hitting level 40 during the head start weekend.

Thanks for clearing that up :)

This was the real problem. Players missed entire quest hubs (eg Stronghold) and skipped to higher level content. Eventually they reached a point where they were too low level to continue the quest chains they were doing, and were too high above the content they had missed for it to award enough XP to close the gap.

This was still a design flaw in the game: There were no missions sending players to some of the more remote quest hubs, so they never went there. They hadn't needed to on the old leveling curve, so it hadn't been identified as an issue previously.

A second issue was that many players disliked Lemuria immensely, and refused to quest there. Unfortunately the level progression was not designed for any zone to be simply skipped.

Those of us who knew where to find alll the sub-30 mission hubs and didn't mind Lemuria were able to level to 40 without grinding at all.

Heh. I had a lot of moments reading the article that made me realize all of the little things that happened along the way when I was gone. I signed up back in Beta and got the Lifetime. After a few months... I disappeared off into my old habits (World of ********, other MMOs, school, work). 600 some odd days later, I came back to this game because I was sort of bored with everything I had done up until that point and needed a break.

The changes were incredible from when I started the first time, and the second. It almost feels like an entirely new game, while still having the same basic feel that I wish they had expanded on at the original release. It's not quite the OMGBESTEVER yet, but it's making me feel glad I got the lifetime when I did.

Very solid article - I look forward to others, because it's kind of a window into things I missed out on while I was distracted with other things.

Looking at those anniversary pictures it reminded me that I was out of town that weekend and missed it completely.

But all (four) of my character's costumes have changed since then, so I wouldn't have recognized myself if I had been in any, anyway.

I clicked, thinking I'd just skim across, and ended up reading the whole thing.

Even though I experienced most, if not all of the things listed in the article, for some reason I got a sense of nostalgia, even over the things I hated.

The article really drives home how much CO has changed.

A good read - thanks for taking the time to write it.

Very nice article, thanks for taking the time to write it up.

I have been here from beta onward and while Cryptic makes some large mistakes every so often, they also make a great game. I think you covered both of those perspectives well.

Same here.

Excellent article. Very well written.