Please unlock Elite straight away.

[SquelchHU]

I don't see how there would be any harm in it, since the group still needs to be good enough to handle Elite, and if not they shouldn't be going in there yet anyways. But if they can they still have to waste time with Hard and Normal if not a VIP. Sure you can get in anyways with someone to unlock it, but you'll probably be waiting longer for that than you would to do it on Hard then Elite.

The main reason people would bother is favor, and how much is that worth nowadays? Exactly.

[Zenako]

Lots of new players would end up dying and giving up far more quickly.

Honestly, if you were a new player and you were faced with being able to just open any setting you wanted, or the group was, how many would say.

"OK, we might all suck at this game at this point, so we better try normal first" vs
"OK, cool, I know D&D this should be easy, only wimps do less than ELITE, lets do it" and procede to die left and right with no chance of beating the quest and give up in frustration.

The only reason Vets get Hard is that they have had to progress a character past a certain point in the game and get a feel for how it works, making the chances of getting owned on Hard significantly lower. In practice most vets just have an opener anyway and are not faced with the conumdrum in the first place.

[dbrottman]

Favor is worth everything now, for F2P people, which is exactly who Turbine would NOT want to open up Elite "straight away" for. They'd, understandably, prefer to have F2P'ers grind out as much as possible. This is fine.

However, if you're only talking about opening it up for VIP (you didn't specify)... that's a different discussion.

[IronAngel]

I still run normal and solo on the quest that I can open on hard for the one time XP bonus. I would do the same if elite was open. Although for my high level characters I would much prefer to just run a new low level quest once on elite, if I was not getting XP, just for favor.

[Healemup]

It would be a good reward for say... 3200 favor. So, once you get a single character that high all of your other characters would have that ability.

Or on a far easier level (for most folks not necessarily from a technical standpoint), make it so that if you have completed that quest on elite on any character that it makes it available to all your characters.

[SquelchHU]

Lots of new players would end up dying and giving up far more quickly.

Honestly, if you were a new player and you were faced with being able to just open any setting you wanted, or the group was, how many would say.

"OK, we might all suck at this game at this point, so we better try normal first" vs
"OK, cool, I know D&D this should be easy, only wimps do less than ELITE, lets do it" and procede to die left and right with no chance of beating the quest and give up in frustration.

So in other words, they don't know their limitations, and they don't have the reading comprehension skills to recognize that the hardest setting is in fact the hardest setting, and that it might not be a good idea to set the difficulty to 'Expert' when they are not that familiar with the game. I don't see this as a problem, and is the community really losing anything to lose players who don't understand the meaning of words? I think not.

The only reason Vets get Hard is that they have had to progress a character past a certain point in the game and get a feel for how it works, making the chances of getting owned on Hard significantly lower. In practice most vets just have an opener anyway and are not faced with the conumdrum in the first place.

This statement is false. VIPs get the ability to unlock Hard right off. A VIP is anyone who is paying a subscription fee, which anyone can do even if they just started the game yesterday. Along the same lines, someone who has been playing a long time might not be paying a subscription fee anymore because it is more efficient for them to simply purchase Gianthold and the Vale of Twilight for all their grinding needs. I've met at least one such person in game and seen several more on the boards.

Now with that said, I don't really care about the F2Pers one way or the other. I'm subscribing, most of the people I know and game with are subscribing, and I see little reason to argue for something that is irrelevant to me. So if it's only a VIP thing, I'm ok with that. According to those who are going the GH and Vale route it would probably add some more incentives to be a VIP which would be a good thing based on how I understand their viewpoint.

I suppose the F2Pers have a lot more favor grinding ahead of them, though I doubt very many are actually doing that since it's more efficient to grind a part time job (or mow lawns, for the younger crowd) to come up with the points for adventure packs or the ability to pay a subscription. In any case, not my place to argue for them.

And for the VIPs? You'll probably be able to afford +2 tomes of whatever stat you want by your second character, I know I was so the 1,750 award is not so useful. You already have Drow, you already have 32 point builds, it would mainly be there if you missed a quest and just want to hit it up on Elite. Being able to open on Hard right off is an improvement, though I'm not sure why they didn't just go all the way, or at least add a feature where if you are say... 3 levels higher than the quest you can play it on Elite, even if you haven't been in on Elite before. Elite adds 2, so that's the highest you could go in and still get full XP.

[Shade]

The only reason Vets get Hard is that they have had to progress a character past a certain point in the game and get a feel for how it works, making the chances of getting owned on Hard significantly lower. In practice most vets just have an opener anyway and are not faced with the conumdrum in the first place.

Except that vets don't get hard.

I've been around the block a while I can't open hard at all on a new char meh.

VIP noobs can.

Think they should add the unlock hard to veteran status favor reward.

[KillEveryone]

Or on a far easier level (for most folks not necessarily from a technical standpoint), make it so that if you have completed that quest on elite on any character that it makes it available to all your characters.

This is what I agree with. If you have compleated it on elite once on any character, I think it would be nice if it is unlocked for all characters.