AA Points
 

I am interested to hear arguments for and against AA points being implemented. I understand the server is no where near even considering this. Lets put that aside for now.

Here is my take:

Pros

• Allows a means to buff crappy classes
• Incentive to have players choose a main character
• Provides measurable progress post 60

Cons

• AAs are another aspect that can potentially be exploited
• Creates an additional barrier to entry for raid guilds
• Client may not allow to add, remove, or alter AAs
• Additional overhead for server staff

A short story with a TLDR:

See Shards of Dalaya for AAs gone wrong (IMO). That game is great. But it suffers from too much horizontal progression. It got to the point where you couldn't be considered for a raid guild until you got 200 AAs which is alot of work. Not to mention, when they ran out of AAs to program they added a feature called tomes which extended AAs further, only they each required like 100AAs to complete.

Next thing you know guilds were asking people to have 5 tomes to enter a raiding. It was ridiculous and why I quit the game. I earned level 65, 100 AAs, and still there was no market for me to tank any appropriate content (500-600 online prime time). There was such a great divide between: those with 500 AAs and 10 tomes, and those who would burn out trying to catch up in a race they started 1-2 years late. No one wants a tier 1 tank when they can just group with their t12 tank and crush everything. And how do you think those who have 500 AAs and 20-30 tomes feel about revamping the system? I wouldn't like it either.

TLDR; AAs are dangerous if not implemented with the long term in mind.

Having that experience, I am against anything that creates an unrealistic barrier to entry for the new guy that just hit level 60. But for anything that helps bring less played classes into their own role in a fun, meaningful way.

What are your thoughts?

I always found AAs to be a barrier against playing alts. I felt compelled to XP for those AAs in order to stay competitive. I'm content not to have AAs, even though some of them are very awesome.

I love it. Bring on the AA's.

I actually just made a post saying about the same thing in another thread. Here's a bit of it:

I was a shammie on live, and loved the rather useless but fun AA of sending in an extra 4 pets to the macro "release the hounds" ;)

Personally, I never liked the grind level 51 x times approach..

Don't take what I'm about to say as gospel, but if custom content is created post-Velious, I'd like to see the class-defining AAs introduced as epic quests.

Once Velious is expended I'd love to see Luclin and AA's. Would be classic.

Wonder how much certain groups of cockblockers would charge for those MQs...