I figured that since everyone would be busy questing away trying to level, I’d attempt to snag a few discoveries from tradeskilling. I was able to get most of the server-wide discoveries for the level 80 – 82 Provisioner crafts, making an adventure level in the process too from all the mobs I had to kill while harvesting. I had to leave for work then, and when I returned, I was twelve hours behind. All that can be discovered had been discovered by then.
That was when I started going through the adventure quests and exploring. The land mass is huge, and although I did enjoy the view offered while traveling on the NPC mounts from point to point initially, the long duration of the travel soon became rather irksome. I got annoyed, I got impatient. The disc-shaped mounts looked fantastic though, and riding on them reminded me of my Magus in Warhammer Online.
Taking the advise of the public, I found my way into a Hole group, where I experienced the fastest leveling I’ve ever done in EQ2. My group found a spot where large encounters of mobs constantly spawn, and with very little respawn time inbetween too. With full vitality and a 55% experience potion, I went from level 82 to 85 in about two hours. I finally understood the reason behind the significant amounts of level 90s I’ve seen in game barely a day after launch. There’s been much debate over whether the high amount of exp given by the group mobs in the Hole are intended or a result of some mathematical formula gone wild. Either way, now that the game has already been launched in such a fashion, it’s too late to ponder over if which was the desired outcome but accept the situation as it is.
Asides from the whole international cd key fiasco, launch day went by very well. The server came up on time, and remained up. Performance was also good, despite the heavier load. I think the development and members of the IT team did a really good job with the load balancing and scaling.