Greetings community!As all good things must come to an end, with this post we are bringing an end to the summer-long GM break. Along with this comes an end to the extended bonus period. XP/Fortune rates and GP drops have been reduced, and the Soul Mother is back on duty. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the extra goodies while they lasted.If it is any consolation, I have set a new “baseline” for some of these rates, mostly as an experiment. This baseline is, on average, higher than our previous baseline, though likely subject to change over time in announced and unannounced ways. In other words, I might make adjustments for balance reasons (generally unannounced) and I might have the occasional bonus weekend or experiment with other tweaks to our various rewards. These adjustments are not likely to take things below the “normal” rates that have been in place for years, but they may fluctuate without warning.Over the next months we will be conducting an experiment on what the new baseline for rates of various rewards on the server. We won't necessarily be announcing these and they will likely not stay steady over the time period of this experiment. Meaning sometimes you may log in and see a very noticeable difference but at other times, it may seem much closer to normal. The rates will not be adjusted downward from the current 'normal', so don't worry about that! Additionally, we may run some bonus weekends to do some more concentrated tests which we would really like it if the community would be able to help us out with that. (Besides, bonus weekends, right?) With only the rare exception, our GMs will be returning to running quests and events (though a few never actually stopped), and everyone is very much “on duty” once more.
