So EQ2 has this pretty cool idea going on – Refer a Friend program/promotion, which means that if you get a friend to sign up and subscribe (not just do the trial), both of you benefit. By linking your game accounts together (for this purpose only, I’m sure), anytime you and your friend(s) are grouped and you’ve mentored down, you both get an XP bonus. It’s designed to help get your friend up to speed fast, especially if you have a max level character and they are just starting out.
Well, it works. 
Tuesday night, I managed to hook up with a friend of mine whom I referred. He subbed (mainly because he’d already maxed out all his trial characters at 20, lol!) and was almost level 25. I was 40% into level 78 at the time (yeah, one year plus and I still don’t have a max level character). He wanted some help so we grouped, I got him invited to the guild and then I headed over to Freeport to meet up with him in the Edgewater Drains. Mentored down, I discovered that I hadn’t done this zone, so I got the bonus of doing quests as well. Oh, and that experience bonus? He was at 215% and I was at.. 150% overall I think. It’s odd to figure it out since I had plenty of vitality, a -50% bonus because I was mentored but a +200% bonus because I was mentoring my friend. So I’m thinking 150% is about right. Either way – it rocked!
By the end of our play session, he was almost level 37 and I was about almost 70% through level 78. That just seems incredible. I mean yeah, I have decent gear on my dirge but it’s nothing particularly special. I’m just wearing the level 72 Mastercrafted gear and weapons, no raid gear or shard armor here yet. But even mentored, it’s not a hardship for me to tank Fallen Gate like it’s nothing. Well, I did die once when we accidentally pulled the entire final room in FG, the bull ring or whatever it’s called. His Inquisitor couldn’t out heal the damage I was taking from mobs behind me. But we played it smarter the next time around and cleared the named mobs, got access to the final chamber and went in to complete that as well. Then our night was over (especially since it was 2am for me).
Last night I hop in game intending to do a few things for my alts, but it was a “newbie group run” night and Murryha, a guildie was mentoring to take folks to Runnyeye. Well, that was even more perfect than going to Nektulos Castle like Revanssi (my friend) wanted. Perfect level range, he’d get to group with other members of Safe Haven and we’d scream through the content even quicker. I ended up staying on Darema instead of switching to my 43 monk because once the group was assembled, my dirge was the best choice we has for a tank, lol! A (mentored) Illusionist, an assassin, a troub, an inquisitor (in really crappy gear) and a (mentored) dirge – I had to be the tank! After a bit we had a necro join us, but we really cruised through RE; it really was a blast. And of course, I’d pretty much skipped almost all of RE when I was leveling, so the quests were nice to do at level.
Later in the evening, after our necro left, the assassin called in a friend of his (from another guild) to join us. We got that guy a level on his char and then the real fun began – he switched to his 80 shadowknight and brought him over. Oh. My. GAWDZ!!!! That was hilarious and astounding and so freaking glorious to watch and see and play with. Oh, I know it was because the guy is max level with good gear and all that – but he was a crazy blast to play with. He’d run through a room and grab up EVERY mob in there and then we’d all go to town. Most of it was him still, but we’d just decimate entire rooms at once. It was like a roaming natural disaster that we could point in the same direction we were going, LOL!
Seriously, he was a great guy and really helped us out a lot and it was just plain fun to do old content like this (there was even a quest he’d not done yet) in such a crazy fashion. Plus afterwards, he and the assassin helped me and Rev kill the two epics in the Enchanted Lands – Overseer Ix and Clamshell.
So all in all, it was a really fun night (even if it went too late again, I can’t stay up until 2am like that anymore), we killed a whole bunch of mobs like crazy, everyone in the lowbie group got tons of levels (Revanssi ended the night at 46? or 47?, I forget) and we all had a good time chatting and discussing strategy on voice comms.
Oh, and did I mention I made it to level 79? *glee*