Feldon There will be a lot of reactions in the coming days in response to the announcement.
I’ve been surprised how many have had positive reactions to the speculation here and on EQ2Flames who think F2P on a separate server, or for levels 1-50 are a good idea to bring in new players and then convert them to a Subscription account. And no doubt there are many who feel that any opportunity for people to “buy” progress threatens the moral center of character advancement in this game.
We’ve got a survey here on EQ2Wire that you may like to fill out. But before you fill out this survey, we would REALLY prefer if you read the EverQuest II Extended FAQ. It answers dozens of questions about this new service, exactly what form it will take, what you get for your money, and when it will start testing.
THERE ARE NO CHANGES COMING TO SUBSCRIPTION SERVERS
So now that you’ve read all that, check out the survey…
I’ve actually gone from hating the so called F2P to being fairly ambivalent over this.
But there are some key implementation features that worry me here.
1) Turning off the free trial for the subscriber service, this could damage my game badly.
2) Its not very well integrated into the current EQ2 game, done right F2P should feed new players into the subscriber game, this way has a high cost between the two and apparently one way thanks to power being sold for money I assume.
3) Power being sold for money, this is a dangerous move for SOE, they risk their reputation getting dirtied badly if they are going down this route (not really sure if they are, the FAQ probably just showed limits to upgrades that can be used).
Personally I would have prefered a endless free trial sort of service with pay to play extra bits added on, but I admit myself I’m not sure how that can be done without potentially losing money from current subscribers.
If you look at the feature matrix you really don’t get much at the bronze and silver levels and are extremely limited to what you can do in the game. If you look at the bank slots, quests slots, coin limitation, and even spell quality, there is almost no reason to play at those levels. Even at the gold level you are restricted to level 80 (unless you purchase upgrade) and restricted to Shadow Odyssey content.
The only thing I can see that I would want is the ability to have more character slots that the platinum members get. It may be a free 2 play model, but if you want all the bells and whistles of the current live game its going to cost you monthly and with a few one time purchases.
“THERE ARE NO CHANGES COMING TO SUBSCRIPTION SERVERS”
This is highlighted and bold like it’s good news. This is death to existing sub servers.
Now I’m seeing people that were absolutely foaming at the mouth threatening to leave forever if they brought in F2P, are now considering going to a free server. PEEPS, you’re the reason they are doing it this this way in the first place.
Ya i don’t blame them I’m shocked they took this route to be honest.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2x/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=12 
Amnerys wrote:
The truth is, no one knows how exactly this will play out. If everyone who is posting on the other forums saying that they aren’t interested in the new service stays put, then the servers won’t see much change.
It’s difficult to embrace change when we’re used to something, but in order to stay competitive, these are the kinds of things that games need to do in 2010. If the game stayed exactly the same as it was when it opened, the population would have been long gone by now.
I removed your second post. No need to cross-post from the other forums. We saw your feedback over there and would like to collect it in one place.
Thanks!
This is what I’ve been waiting for..eq2 has always been a game I liked but never one I could justify paying a monthly fee for. I’ve tried to come back a few times but due to low server pops, frustrating hardware requirements and the recent race nerfs I’ve never felt like staying long. Now I’m def coming back and I’ll prob pay the extra 10 for the silver membership. I imagine it sucks to be one of those people whos been building a community for years on AB..but this should be better for the game as a whole..its cant compete in the play to play and would dwindle away if not for this change. I’m sure that would be fine for some people but i miss norrath and I’m glad I’ll get a chance to return.
While I think this is the death to the current sub servers…the immediate effect that I’ve felt is that I have several guild members canceling accounts, we were already hurting for people to fill raids. People I have played with for years have finally had enough. Sad really.
“THERE ARE NO CHANGES COMING TO SUBSCRIPTION SERVERS”
Not true. They are preventing normal servers from getting any new members, and are planning to force people from normal to F2P… Claiming that normal servers will be unaffected is showing serious lack of foresight.
Truthfully, I’d rather they just did it with the live game and been done with it. New players will go the extended rather than live game, you can’t move from extended TO live, so live will continue to dwindle. I can’t get bothered by stat items in station marketplace — what someone else does or does not buy/”earn” on their own/whatever has zero impact on my gameplay. Of course, I’m one of the vast sea of ‘hardcore-casuals’ which means while I play 20-40 hours a week often enough, I just group or craft, I don’t raid. I sortof kindof get why the raiders might get upset (though not really, because if I DID raid, all I’d care about was what MY guild could do, not someone else’s. Clearly I’m missing the competition gene)
Not enough options, and the ones on there are way too vague.
In my opinion F2P is an awesome thing, it will bring in a ton of new players where some of them will filter up to be paid subscribers. But doing it on a different server is either a) a huge mistake because it will cause the live servers to dwindle dramatically, or b) a calculated move on SOE’s part to get the live servers, thru attrition, to migrate to the F2P servers. My money is on some non-conspiracy version of b.
While I fully support F2P BUT for ALL servers, it’s the RMT that I cannot stand, and that’s the caveat. To get F2P for the live servers we have to embrace RMT for stats gear as well, and that’s just something that goes contrary to grouping and working hard to achieve things in these types of games.
My main concern over this is the statement made by smokejumper. “We dont want our live servers to become backwater”.
Hello!!!! Have you seen the counts on Nektulos and Oasis. Our servers are already dying. All this does is keep the new guys off our servers.
What I would like to know is what do they intend to do for our dying servers in live right now.