Modified XP CapDecember 9, 1997
Hello all:
The 5% XP CAP has been increased to 10%. The reason we did this was because of numerous complaints of mortals being encouraged to kill weaker mobiles because they weren't getting fair XP for killing the tougher mobiles. This was definitely not something we had intended to encourage.
We put the CAP in there in the first place to discourage "powerleveling". This is when a high level mortal unfairly brings a low level mortal to higher levels by doing their work for them. This occurs in many ways: paralyzing mobiles, group "bridging"/"xp lotteries", and so on.
Many people are also concerned that all-too-often people zoom to level 100 and then spend an eternity as an avatar. This is primarily because of the 2,000,000,000 total XP points available, we have 100,000,000 of it to get to level 100, and the remaining 1,900,000,000 is lumped in the 15 avatar levels. Many people think this is bad because it causes people to miss out on character development in the early levels.
Yet another concern the mud faces is that many people consider the mud to have become a "power mud". A "power mud" is a mud where every time a new area comes out it always has better EQ than the previous ones. This leads to a situation where older areas tend to go unused and leads to excessive EQ hoarding and competition.
Another concern is that many mobiles are not balanced in the amount of XP they give out. For example, some mobiles which are tougher than others give out less XP.
Not everyone agrees with all of these issues. Some agree with some, all, or none. Many only agree with these issues to a certain degree. Many (if not most) of these complaints come from mortals, not immortals. We (the immortals of Tera) are trying to work together a compromise that will address many of these complaints while not ruining it for people who like the way things are. It would be very helpful to get mortal feedback on this as well. Please post your thoughts to the mortal board.
We will try to arrange mud-wide meetings once we have some workable solutions to these problems so that we can try to come to as close to a general mud-wide consensus as possible. It will not be possible to please 100% of the people 100% of the time, but let's try to get as close to that as possible. As a final note, while it may not always look like it, our goal is to make the mud as enjoyable and fun as it can be. We may fail at this goal from time to time (maybe even frequently) but it honestly is not intentional. Also, keep in mind that many changes that cause short-term pain may also cause long-term increased playability and enjoyment.
Happy Holidays!