Dethdlr 
E3 took place this year from June 15-17. SmokeJumper was interviewed and said that the current subscription model would not change. When asked after the announcement of EQ2 Extended about that interview, he had this to say:
Yes, at that time, we were discussing the concept. No, we were not ready to commit to it, nor did we have any details of what we might be doing.
On July 27th, EQ2 Extended was announced. I counted up how many work days passed between the interview and the announcment. Guess how many work days went by?
28. That’s right, 28 days. They were discussing the concept, and then 28 days later, Alpha was released.
Coincidence? When it goes from Alpha to Beta they’re taking away the 14 day trial.
Still a coincidence?
Many have said that without new players joining the live servers, they will certainly wither away due to attrition. I tend to agree. So far, the best answer we have got on how they plan to prevent this has been:
We’ll figure things out as we go.
28 days didn’t give you enough time to come up with a better answer? No surprise really. That’s pretty quick. Almost sounds like it was a half baked idea but that can’t be the case since SmokeJumper previously told us this:
We prefer our ideas fully baked, thank you.
SmokeJumper, I believe this one needs a bit more time in the oven. It’s not quite done yet. I just hope someone comes to their senses when it comes to this plan and how it will impact the live servers. Until then…
(Note: As always, the views presented here are those of Dethdlr and do not necessarily represent the views of EQ2Wire.)
Proud of you Dethdlr, tell it like it is.
Free to Play will be fine as long as there is no fabled/legendary quality gear in EQ2. The community needs to be more accepting to change as long as it isn’t crazy drastic changes that are going to effect our game. No, EQ2 isn’t getting anywhere near as simplified/easy that World of Warcraft is. Raids/dungeons are still very difficult (at least most of the high level ones I’ve done) and they haven’t said any changes about that. They just want to breathe new life into EQ2 which could be a great thing for the genre. At least we are getting a new producer that sees how underrated Everquest 2 really is.. the other producers just wanted to keep EQ2 a slowly dying niche game, and this one wants to make it easier for a modern mmo player to pickup the game and be able to at least get into it with the early leveling revamps. Seems like the community wants the game to die a slow death with their own niche of players and no fresh blood. I do think SoE should have made more performance improvements for EQ2 in the past and made the game more accessible and actually marketed EQ2 for once.. however at least they are finally doing something now for the game.
@Sasquatch: It’s not a question of F2P or RMT in and of itself and whether that is good for EQ2. It’s a question of how they’ve put things in place to isolate the existing live servers. If they want to move us all over to that new model, that’s one thing. But they’re currently saying they want the existing live servers to continue and not whither away while putting things in place to specifically cause that to happen. This is the best analogy I’ve heard of the problem:
Pretend the servers are buckets. The water inside them represents the players. All the buckets have small holes in them with water pouring out which represent the players who, over time, decide to stop playing (happens with every game). All the buckets also have streams of water pouring into them which represents the new players. If the stream coming in goes faster than the stream going out through the holes, over time, they add more buckets (new servers). If the stream going out goes faster than the stream coming in, over time, they remove buckets (server merges).
EQ2 Extended just came along with a new bucket. On Aug 17th, all the streams going into the current buckets will be moved over to the new EQ2 Extended bucket. The only way to get into the old buckets to even try them out will be to pay $40 or know someone who is already in the bucket. Basically, EQ2 Extended just put a lid on all the old buckets but left the holes in the bottom.
So here we sit, knowing, that with the current plan, eventually the water is going to flow out the bottom of the bucket and leave the bucket empty. There is no way the flow from RAF and people buying the box is going fill the bucket faster than attrition is going to empty it. But the best answer we have gotten so far about how they are going to keep this from happening has been “We’ll figure things out as we go.”
Feldon posted last night that apparently we don’t have all the info yet and that more info will be released at Fan Faire. Hopefully they have a plan to fix this. I just wish they would fill us in on what that is rather than the current answers we are getting. Even a response of “we have a plan to keep that from happening and will be announcing it at Fan Faire” would have probably knocked 150 pages of messages off the over 200 page thread on the official boards. Instead, we’ve been told “We’ll figure things out as we go.”
Good article Dethdlr, I had to chuckle at some parts, but your comment hit it on the head. However, to me it has gone beyond the servers dying at this point, it has gone into the realm of utter disregard by SOE to it’s current paying subscribers after reading the posts that feldon has made from fan faire. There were no questions answered about how live will survive. Instead they ask us to trust them…(insert audience laughter), and that they will figure out things as they go. To me, not a way to run business to “see how things turn out” and not have any answers or any even soothing words to calm the doubts that many many veterans have voiced…instead we are told to shut up and sit down, since we don’t know what we are talking about and “asked for this”. For me, even if tomorrow they said that they were canceling the f2p model and going back to the old way, the damage is done, SOE has treated me like garbage, and I won’t pay someone to disregard me or treat me like that, so in the end I would be canceling anyways.