Some people said they finnally heroed first time in CF.

Will it happen again? How soon? Why not make it permanent? Do you plan to double practice-rate as well? No, really - why not make it permanent?

It's pretty pointless to rank too fast and not have enough time to practice needed skills for some classes.

For example a-p who plans to use spear to gain first charges and then use whip in the primary hand for lashes and dagger for faceslash or mace for crippling strike in the second hand needs to practice all these skills to the middle 80's or 100's: mace and cripping strike, dagger and faceslash, flail and lash, whip and lashes, spear and pierce and thrust, polearm and slice, axe and cleave to learn edges what improve lashes, faceslash, faceslash and cripping strike from the offhand, offense and defense with spear, cleave.

As Soidel (human a-p) i only managed to practice everything except mace and cripping strike, dagger and faceslash only when i got 40 level.

Some of these skills (for example bash, lashes, e.t.c) don't go up when you fight mob who is worse than razor-sharp teeths - mobs whom a-p cannot tank and fight alone.


Do you plan to double practice-rate as well? No, really - why not make it permanent?

I agree with Zulgh in that double XP weekend achieved what it intended. I think the points below are valid, and are things we'll need to address if we do this again. Some people liked it, some people didn't like it...but hey, some people don't like PK and some people don't like exploration. We do our best to balance the game to make it interesting and enjoyable across a wide spectrum of player types.

I'm in favor of it being maybe once a month, shorter, say 24 hours or so, and pre-announced. I'm also in favor of randomly applying it for much shorter periods (2 hours or so) as a "quest reward" if you will (I actually experimented with this during the last questy weekend, following the Hillcrest quest I ran). In my mind, double XP periods encourage folks who don't have as much time to play as they did previously to return to the game, knowing that the time they DO spend will give them a greater return on their investment.

I think the game mechanics downside (skill gains lagging behind your level) is a good balance. I don't think I'd be interested in seeing a double skill gains weekend, though. I think skill gains more than hours or levels will work to keep folks attached to a specific character, and not just make them a throw-away.

I think there probably wasn't enough Imm oversight. I know I was busy with my mortal... . If we do this again, we'll need to have some high level imms on keeping a close eye out for the OOC chatter and possible multi-killing of newbs.

All in all, I think it was a success, though I agree that we should probably try to work in some more questy weekends to balance double XP out.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

*** Email me your testimonials or two-line blurbs. Help our marketing efforts! ***

>I'm in favor of it being maybe once a month, shorter, say 24
>hours or so, and pre-announced. I'm also in favor of randomly
>applying it for much shorter periods (2 hours or so) as a
>"quest reward" if you will (I actually experimented with this
>during the last questy weekend, following the Hillcrest quest
>I ran). In my mind, double XP periods encourage folks who
>don't have as much time to play as they did previously to
>return to the game, knowing that the time they DO spend will
>give them a greater return on their investment.

I think if you do it once every three months for a 36 hour period, the 2 hour periods as a reward for quests triggering it globally will be worth more.

>I think the game mechanics downside (skill gains lagging
>behind your level) is a good balance. I don't think I'd be
>interested in seeing a double skill gains weekend, though. I
>think skill gains more than hours or levels will work to keep
>folks attached to a specific character, and not just make them
>a throw-away.

This is both a good point, and the dent to skill percentages isn't as high as people are making it out to be. I played a >18int char during the last half of it. Not having to rest evens out alot of the skill problems.

>I think there probably wasn't enough Imm oversight. I know I
>was busy with my mortal... . If we do this again, we'll need
>to have some high level imms on keeping a close eye out for
>the OOC chatter and possible multi-killing of newbs.

Probably would be harder to engineer on a 36 hour period yes.

Perhaps you could waive the multi-charring rule for imms and let them play mortals while still having the ability to police, if it wouldn't create an awareness for the mortal that shouldn't be present in the first place.

>All in all, I think it was a success, though I agree that we
>should probably try to work in some more questy weekends to
>balance double XP out.

Double XP would be more meaningful, the characters more valued and heroes actually be on during these periods if people could only play one character at a time (and thus be forced to delete a hero to participate in the weekend, freeing up leader spots and such) but there's a slew of mechanical and philisophical problems with that thought.

People level up in the process of battling the monsters during their invasion, stopping of which is the quest, for example. That would work much better than the double xp reward in my opinion.

Those chars that want to blow through learning and learn new skills and spells quickly can do so. (shifters for example)

Those type of people that want to have skill practice and focus on being more 'elite' can focus on that.

There could be a second ability to gain skill points quickly while learning but recieve less XP from skills.

Make the improvements not so drastic. Say 1.5x

WOuld be like the Empire skill-

ie) Call Perception - Focusing your observation skills you begin to learn things at an exceptional rate, etc, etc.

People could learn at whatever pace they want. Rank to hero to battle it up. Or slog it out in the lowbie ranks with great skills that never fail.

Might be something to play around with.

Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man.

To have an assassin at level 35ish that weekend. You wouldn't have had to hunt for people for ####. I swear I could have probably perfected that #### in those 48 hours.

T

Splntrd

There was a time when I was hardcore CF player. I had a string of very sucessful characters back to back to back and I had a blast with this game. When trying to come back with another character I was pushed away with having to grind out the same levels\skill work\preping and gathering. I know that is what this game is all about but it just became very dry. I just wanted to be hero have a good set and a stack of preps so I could start playing again. So like most players I took a break.

So with the thought of double XP week end I decided hey they are offering me a chance to get through one of the things I dislike the most about a new character. So I made plans to play Friday night and most of the day Sunday. I was one of the dozen or so who was able to power from 1-40 in under 20 hrs. It was fun to be back.

Because this was only a week end thing I put as much time into leveling as I could. If this was normal, I wouldnt have felt pressed to power level as I did. Sure my skills could be better. But I wouldnt have taken the time to practice either way. My experieince so far with interaction and char building has been close to the same as with any other char. I attacked, got attacked, made some good relationships and some bad. I just happen to be higher level than I would have been. Because I havnt soaked a bunch of time into the char I guess I am not as attached or feel comepeled to play because of a cabal or what ever. But that would have been the case had I setup triggers to works skills\spells while at work or what ever.

So the marketing incentive worked on me. I came back and rolled a character. I am making plans tonight to login and do some prep gathering. So looks like the replay value for the char is still there for me. Would I like to see double xp all the time? Sure for me why not. Let me level up at my own pace if its super fast or slow. I know much has already been done for skill improvements but I would love to see a change there. I wanted to play a low int race and I knew right off I wanted to play the character now and not after 100-200 hours so my skills would be perfected. Not even going to mention anything about preps. I hope some of my old sources are still around. Looking forward to finding out tonight.

-Dranolian

God I feel like such a huge douchebag admitting this after I vowed not to CF again like uhh..2 weeks ago after deleting Fakefi but I broke down and participated in the double xp weekend and generally I loved it. I agree that it might be a bit excessive, so what about like 1.5x xp instead of 2x? Something like once a month on the weekend would be cool imo. I don't think it would drastically change the flow of CF, but it might increase the playerbase, help along some newbies, and create a lot of fun PKing. I don't agree with what Lyristeon said about the decreased PKing, my character over the weekend probably fought more (because there was actually more than 4 ppl in his pk) than I have with any other character in the last year and half.

Good stuff Imms and thanks for the fun weekend.

Regards, Grysh

This sounds about right to me.

1) Gets stubborn old s_hit heads to give the game a try again.

2) Can be used to set up a quest so that lower level players or
newbies can get some quick levels to be able to partake.

3) Great way to get feedback on classes since more people are
willing to try those classes they usually do not play out.

Thats it, thats all.

PS Nepenthe.. you can go to hell instead of responding.

Double exp equalled nearly four times the levels. Very few people were rping or hunting. I watched someone with a 14k tnl gain a rank with 4 kills. That was the point of double exp. But, he had two skill gains in three levels at that pace. It would be too easy to toss away the character and just roll up another. Is it okay every once in awhile for shorter periods of time? Perhaps. This is definitely not something I would want to see on a permanent thing. I wouldn't even want to see it once a month.

nt

You will see in my post that I said that "Perhaps" it was something to do every once in awhile. But, definitely not a permanent change.

I know the feeling of putting in the effort. I have my 14 year anniversary this month myself.

Is that the battlefields was a ####ing blood-bath, even moreso than usual. I know my group had at least 3-4 major 3on3 battles there in about 2-3 hours on Saturday afternoon.

I love that part of it. I totally agree with a Nepenthe post from a while back stating that ranking has become too easy in a way; in that ranking isn't the constant 'Oh #### someone is probably going to come and kill me in 2 minutes so let's power these mobs' struggle it used to be. My last hero before my current leveled pretty much unmolested to hero. Sure it took a lot longer than my current char took to get to hero range, but I was in WAAAAAAAAAY more pk events because of the double xp weekend.

According to Zulg's stats, we had 273 pks this past weekend compared to 236. We also had more players this weekend. That's roughly a 16% increase in pks. We had nearly a 350% increase in levels and we had 1 hero the previous weekend compared to 17 heroes this weekend. Percentage wise, pks were way down.

I can only go by what I witnessed, not numbers or %'s.

I have been playing this game on and off with huge periods of off-time since around '96. I am by no means a hardcore or a skilled player in any apsect of the game but for what it is worth I personally think that the double XP idea was great, and I think it should be as frequent as full double XP weekend every month. Those people that tend to rank to hero and then delete/auto do the same thing with or without the double XP, those that tend to go deeper with their chars still will. Making the game easier in some aspects will not necessarily hurt the game because 9 players on line at certain time intervals is what hurts it more in my opinion. Another reason why you might be seeing less PK inspite of the player counts is maybe because the bulk of the regular CF players are only the veterans that have a great grasp on the game anyhow. As a newbie/casual player you don't tend to run headon into PK you just want to get to hero and maybe explore without getting owned by the likes of the goblin shaman or the troll commander. It is after all easier to delete the unsuccessful storm axe warrior in the 20s than a hero shifter with which you can explore. At anyrate, the high 80-90 player count is bound to create more interactions and while I am aware I might be talking out of my ass I have the impression that in the past when there were those kind of numbers it was still more or less the same people that did PK. Nowdays I get agressed almost the same ammount as five or six years ago. With the differance that now almost all that attack me have rather good skills at finding me even as a teleporting mage.

On a sidenote as it was brought up in a post further down as some were asking for a double practicing bonus... Ever since the changes to practicing went in I've had certain issues with it. It was my impression that the change was made so that people would not spam practice since the effect was not all that great and was not neccessary (and were uneccessarily level sitting while they should be ranking up), but from what I gather on the forums I see that most veteran players practice their skills up anyhow. Are those 15% that big of a differeance between the mid 80s and a perfect skill sheet? I really don't know since I do not play all that much or often to be able to make a comparison from my own experience. If so, why not change skill pracices back to the way it used to be? It was rather straight forward back in the day even for a complete newbie while now it is not so. Finding razor-sharp mobs that you can tank for an indefinite period of time isn't all that easy for the rest of us. At least it isn't for me since I have absolutely no OOC contacts with anyone that plays this game and so the inflow of second or third hand information has been non existant for me. For example, I know only of two stoneskin preps, a few protection preps, and only one highly limited haste source that I've seen only a handfull of times. How can I compete? The game has only become harder for the newbie/casual player, and facing a PK range of 90% veterans is rather daunting, even though I am seeing more fair play than in the past, people don't seem all that inclined to go for the multikill if they cearly manage to destroy you the first time.

Wow, a long ass post. I apologize. It is a good thing I don't post often I guess.

Cheers.

Mostly over ranking grounds. Do your stats include fights that didn't end in death? 40 more pks and probably a boatload more fights where nobody died is a significant increase I'd say.

Well, PK's may have been down, but player on player interactions were up from my observations as well. It's been along time since a ranking group had to dedicate one player to constantly keeping a lookout for encroaching players / groups. Up until this past weekend, on the few times I do get to play, it's been pretty much my entire PK range, or half my PK range, in the same group (1 - 8) in range normally, in middle ranks.

This weekend, during the small 3 hour window I had to play in, there were about 20+ people in my range. That was nerve wracking and kept us on our toes.

I dont think you can measure everything by PK%.

I already know a majority of the players, and about 100% of the imms didnt care for it, but damn, it had to make you feel good to see that many people playing the game you created and run. And from my perspective, anything that gets that many people involved, at all ranks, not just hero (though that is the goal), is a great thing.

I think what you are seeing is there were fewer PKs percentage-wise, because people were largely uncaballed, and a massive amount of the PKing nowadays is done via cabal wars. With the double exp, instead of knowing your prey will be at cabal X if you raid/retrieve, you know your prey is probably in one of 5 or 6 leveling spots.

My (uncaballed, sub-30) mortal was involved in about 6 PK situations while attempting to level. No way no how would I have been involved in that many if I was leveling the weekend prior.

I'm not necessarily a fan of it - generally the PKs situations were ones I didn't initiate, and I ended up running/dying, and I'd sure rather have had that suite double exp unmolested, but there WAS more general PK action, IMO.

I ranked my guy for 10 ranks as well and didn't encounter a single pk attempt on me. Although, I tried a few times with others just to take a break.

chasing my ass around.

Well, I am obviously in the minority, or else alot of people just dont want to speak their mind, and want to appear to agree with the Imms.

I love the world of Thera. I like reading the descriptions, I like finding an area I haven't been in before, and I like the players (generally) that I run into in game.

That being said. I THINK DOUBLE EXPERIENCE WEEKEND was the single best thing to come along to CF in a long time. I like playing mages, and for the past several months, with my playing time, finding a group was nigh impossible. I only had an opportunity to log in for about 3 hours this weekend, but it was spectacular. There were so many people on, it reminded me of playing CF several years ago (I been doinking around here since shortly after I got out of the army, sometime around 1992).

I logged in, found a group, we RP's some, we leveled alot, and within no time, I actually had enough skills to become a productive member of the group.

I loved it, and would like to see it more often, rather than less often. Someone said every 12 weeks, I am more in favor of every 6 weeks. The people that only log on for those weekends are going to be cannon fodder for the people that continue to play in the off weeks, and the one thing CF needs is more high level targets. Remember the good old days when you could get 8 - 12 empire, 8 - 12 forts, 8 - 12 (then) sylvans, etc. That's what I think it would be again, if people could plan ahead for an experienced enhanced weekend. If I had known about it earlier, I would have definitely changed my schedule to allow more than the 3 hours I had to play.

Just a my thoughts, and I know I am in the minority, but I give a thought publically so rarely, and I think this was very awesome, and I apprecaited it, and I had a great time, and I am very appreciative of the game, and the work the imms do, etc.

I know hardly anyone agrees with me, and that this is not going to be a regular feature of CF, but still, I thought it was awesome.

If we did this for a short period once in a while that we announced in advance? For example, 2 hours on a Saturday afternoon or something like that?

2 hours wouldn't be long enough.

Maybe 6-12. But I do like this idea, provided it's done with some regularity and not forgotten.

Splntrd

I know at least one person got screwed out of a whole Sunday afternoon due to visitors of some kind. It's just one example of a mess a fractional day would create where you'd be limiting participation severely. A single day however say 5 PM again the 'day prior' to 5 AM Sunday morning, wouldn't be too terribly restrictive either.

There is always the chance that those chars who level off of these weekends will be retained at hero. Skills can always be spammed up later, or depending on how much dam redux and healing you can milk in your cabal, be ignored in PK.

There's a perceived negative where players who have these weekends will refuse to play any characters with depth, something that is probably a red herring. Many players, including myself, play that way already from just flat being tired of crap. If anything it can inspire the opposite.

The real negative consequence is you trend the game back toward hero level being be-all end-all, and also end up shortening an already thinning 25-40 PK range that circulates gear more than others. And that's a legitimate concern, especially if the huge gains from ranking is preoccupying some otherwise very PK capable players that happen to be in the mid-level. There's a chance though that these players are perma-ing anyway and/or they would have zipped through those ranks just as fast regardless if that's precisely what they wanted to do.

I think that would be too short, and you would have people logging in an hour early, just to form groups. Then the next time, people would be loggin in 2 hours early, just to form groups. Anyone logging in at the beginning of, or during the selected time, would be left out because of the "limited" nature of the run.

I liked the next idea, of the 12 hour window (5 pm to 5 am). As long as it was announced a week early or so, this give people time to arrange their schedules, and doesnt reward people who can log in 2 hours before 5pm, just waiting. People can log in, talk to some other folks, and maybe they have to hang out for a while and wait for an opening that fits them, but it's not a limited contest at that point.

Considering not all players are from the same continent, not all would be able to take part in it depending on where you are from. Could be considered "unfair".

And only making it a 2 hour window will most likely just promote perma groups, just to be able to maximize the gain from that time. If you really want to rank, you dont want to take the chance with finding a group IC and wasting those 2 hours with a couple of "noobs".


I didnt mean to bash on the idea, just pointing out a few obvious drawbacks.

The average shelf life for a hero-range character is three months, give or take.

You figure if anyone is rolling a char just to rank to 51 in one weekend, those chars will die off in the next month after the double xp weekend, at the very least (probably even quicker in some spots).

And I think everyone who was complaining about skill %'s not being good with all the ranking didn't go about it in the right way. You could have solo-ranked a fire warrior to 35 this weekend, and I guarantee you would have pimped your skills (you can fight tougher mobs because the double xp makes it worthwhile...I know that's what my group did, and our skills were flying up).

I think this weekend was awesome. Even though I had been lurking since the end of July, I hadn't even come close to rolling a char. Rolled one on Friday though, and I may even stick with him.

This was a pretty awesome weekend. I tried a new class that I never got around to because I thought the leveling would be tedious (and I still think it would be at normal rates) but I love the class and how it works, so woo Definitely something I would love to see happen more.

How about another weekend which is double learning improvements and no double-leveling rate? Either from leveling (the % bonus each level) or the "get better at/learn from mistakes" make it give twice as much.

Personally I think this would be huge compared to leveling twice as fast and you'd get a lot more quality characters over a ton of classes that require no real practice (shifters).

I personally couldn't think of anything I'd want to make that would level so fast over their abilities (I'm a shameless spammer usually). Was there even one invoker on this weekend?

Got me to roll a character.

It got a lot of people who had lost interest, waning interest, no interest in the game, back for at least a little while. I honestly think an entire weekend of this is too much. I've been paying very close attention to players leveling during this time, and there are dozens that have plowed from 1 to 40+ in under 20 hours. My personal hope is that they actually continue to play the characters, and that's one thing I plan to keep an eye on. We pushed the number of pfiles up over 1100 for the first time in 3 months, and I'm curious to see how long that lasts.

To answer your repetitive question: This will NOT be a permanent thing (this coming from the guy who ground down everyones resolve to actually have double xp weekend).

Why? Overall I've watched the RP go down as everyone just scrambles to find a group and plow as far ahead as they possibly can. I actually think the PK'ing has gone way down as well (though I haven't checked the numbers to see). The hero range has been non-existant. I think there were roughly 2 hours I was watching that there were NO heroes on last night. In other words, it's a completely different game, and not one that I'm a fan of permanently.

Now I've said before that I think there are some things that we can do permanently to the experience system to help out in the leaner times, and I'm still kicking those ideas around, but a flat out double boost is just not going to happen on a permanent basis.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

How was it now? From friday 00:00 to sunday 00:00? Or was it the full friday aswell? I think 48 hours of this isn't a bad thing. Two days of less/worse RP (Just as long it ain't blatantly ooc) and less PK can't be that bad if it just happens like twice a year or once a year heh. But no more than that. It's GREAT if we get back old players.

I'm curious on the ideas you have regarding the xp system. Something I've wanted to see myself is bigg xp rewards from imms, not "imm xp" that grants edge points, but if you see a lowbie/newbie doing something cool and you know he wants to lvl, you push him up with a few 1000xp (depending on lvl of course.) For newbies, I think, (atleast I think so when I try a new MUD) xp is damned important. Getting up through the ranks rather than learning that much. Just getting a chance of trying out the hero range even if it means getting pwned over and over again. heh

Well, that was more of a rant than I intended.. Not much constructive...

Keep up the cool stuff imms!

Ooh, a side note. I would rather see quest weekends or overall more quests ingame. (Even though my chars have been very lucky in that regard lately. )

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.

I agree that double exp is just way excessive, especially in a good three man group. Skills fall behind too much.
My only problem with leveling under normal circumstances is when you play a less-than-optimal class for ranking, and only manage to get another less-than-optimal class to join you, and try to go at it 2-man.
If something could be done to help in that situation, I'm all for it. But normal 3-man groups dont really need a boost.

I would think anything in moderation that gets more people coming in would be a huge bonus. We could also advertise it on mud/game sites as an incentive to lure fresh blood in. I saw nothing but positives from this experiment.

You said: "Overall I've watched the RP go down as everyone just scrambles to find a group and plow as far ahead as they possibly can."

You realize this is because it was a limited offer? For so many people the game simply takes on a different flavor at hero. If you create an incentive to make as much headway toward that goal as possible but within a given timeframe then that incentive will be followed. Make this permanent and people will adjust (the incentive will be rescaled) but will still reap the benefit of having less tedium in ranking.

Put another way:

Go out a cut the price of gas by 50% and people will hoard. Make the price reduction permanent and people will likely binge at first but will adjust.

>For so
>many people the game simply takes on a different flavor at
>hero.

And it does so, in large part, because of the time it takes to hero.

>You said: "Overall I've watched the RP go down as everyone
>just scrambles to find a group and plow as far ahead as they
>possibly can."
>
>You realize this is because it was a limited offer?

Of course I realize that, I was just offering my observations, and one of the reasons why I don't see something like this happening permanently.

>For so
>many people the game simply takes on a different flavor at
>hero. If you create an incentive to make as much headway
>toward that goal as possible but within a given timeframe then
>that incentive will be followed. Make this permanent and
>people will adjust (the incentive will be rescaled) but will
>still reap the benefit of having less tedium in ranking.

Make it permanent and I think you end up with more of the bad (no RP, griefing, throwaway characters, etc) than the good in my opinion.

As I said, it was a nice marketing stunt that accomplished what I wanted it to. It also got me thinking about some XP/skill improvement changes again. Overall I would say it was a success, but not anything I want to see permanently.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Typically, it seems like skills go up equally with levels, so you don't have to stop and spam a lot. With it the way it is now, you're ranking up WAY too fast for your skills to keep up. If this was a permanent thing, it'd make skill spam a common practice (and a requirement, to be competitive) again. Not a good thing.

Plus, it could be because it's a once in a lifetime thing, but it seems like everyone is ranking up a worthless character just to take advantage, and in the process decide that since they don't care about the character, they can be complete douchebags to everyone around.
Seriously, I watched firsthand as a group of 3 multikilled a legit newbie at least 3 times, for no reason whatsoever (including once when he was 100% nude). And from what I've heard and seen, that isn't even remotely unusual this weekend.

The idea of this should be to attract new players, not to grief them so much that they swear off CF forever.

nt

I saw some people talking about gaining levels fast, openly like that. And similar borderline OOC stuff.

I played around with a mortal to see how it went and the leveling outpaced my skills so much, it makes it a really different game. In all honesty, I never had issues leveling before, so I don't really know why the double xp is necessary.

I could see us doing it as a once in a while fun weekend thing, but I'd much rather have questy weekend or something like that instead.

I would vastly prefer more questy weekends. Or more quests in general, even if not crammed into a weekend.

I like CF for the roleplay and interactions, more than pounding out 51 lvls and deleting. Questy weekends actually give the opportunity to flesh out a role, and interact with folks. This 2x exp thing gives people the perfect excuse to do nothing but kill as many mobs as quick as possible.

Yawn.

I like the competitive aspect of quests. Not so much the "kill the rampaging mob" ones, but the "find some stuff" ones and those that are sort of PK-oriented.

>I could see us doing it as a once in a while fun weekend
>thing, but I'd much rather have questy weekend or something
>like that instead.

I really liked the questy weekend, and I would agree that I would prefer that way more than double-XP weekend. Part of the reason I pushed so hard for double-XP weekend, is because since questy weekend nothing has happened. Consider it my way of trying to shame Immortals into doing questy goodness

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

One of my chars got a quest from Enlilth! (A very strange one involving turkeys, but still! Hahaha!) I really enjoyed that one, and it came right out of the blue when I actually had intented to logg off. heh

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.

>In all honesty, I never had issues leveling
>before, so I don't really know why the double xp is
>necessary.

I think the tedium in the game isn't leveling, it's practicing - your mileage varies on how "hardcore" you are but it's still required to be somewhat competent. Kind of why I like the idea of a "double learning" weekend and not double experience weekend.

oinf

If it's permanent or too frequent, it loses all point, from our perspective.

Just to answer the question you wanted to ask a whole lot of times.

People may stay in the game who otherwise would have deleted prior to 40 in boredom. Those who don't make hero range would languish in the 30-40 range.

Quests are probably more about player retention. Double exp is more likely about player/character aquisition and increase. Questy weekends don't do anything for a newbie who doesn't know his way around the world if he either has to find or kill things without a more experienced leader.