Feldon EverQuest Executive Producer Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has unveiled the news that EverQuest II is fully going Free-to-Play on all servers, and the segregation between EverQuest II and EverQuest II Extended (F2P) is going away (as is the ‘powerful cash shop’ and the LiveGamer service).
From EverQuest2.com:
Many of you reading this letter are long-time EverQuest and EverQuest II players. You’ve been part of the SOE family for a long time (earlier this week was EQII’s 7-year anniversary!) and our aim is to take care of you and keep you entertained for years to come.
Part of caring for our customers is listening to you and hearing what you have to say. Additionally, we need to be aware of changes in the industry, changes in player expectations, and larger economic trends in general.
We’ve listened to your concerns about the complexity of the subscription structure, how the separate forums between EQII and EQ2X divide the community unnecessarily, that the Live Gamer servers are under-populated, and that many people want more flexibility with payment options so they can better manage their personal budgets.
We believe the key to meeting your expectations is to provide more flexibility and to deliver what you want when you want it, whether it’s basic game content, full subscription access to the game, or something in-between. So in early December we’re going to change things to be “Free to Play. Your Way.” Let me explain what that means…
Membership and Pricing Changes
There will no longer be an up-front fee for downloading and installing the game. You no longer have to buy the software in order to use it, and game content through the Sentinel’s Fate expansion will be available to all players without charge. You simply download, and then launch and play the game for free.
Last year, we created a successful, but separate, “free to play” service for EQII called “EverQuest II: Extended” (EQ2X). However, now that all servers are becoming free-to-play, we are combining both services together and EverQuest II (including the EQ2X servers) will operate as a single game with a single membership structure.
The new membership structure for EverQuest II is simpler and easier to understand than the one we used previously, and we’ve adjusted the model so that Gold members in EverQuest II will get everything that current EQII subscribers do currently.
Here are the differences between the new EverQuest II membership model and the prior EQ2X membership model:
- Gold membership in EverQuest II will provide access to all races and classes (except the Freeblood race and the Beastlord class) and is identical in all ways to the current subscription status on EQII Live servers.
- The free membership level will be called “Free” instead of “Bronze.”
- Silver membership now costs 500 Station Cash instead of 1,000 Station Cash. (If you purchased a Silver membership in EverQuest II: Extended within the 60 days before the launch of this change, 500 Station Cash will be refunded to your Station Wallet.)
- Players can no longer purchase a Platinum membership. Existing Platinum memberships will continue until they expire.
- A matrix showing the details of the three new EverQuest II membership levels – Free, Silver, and Gold – is available here: (insert link)
So basically, you can play at the Free level (with restrictions), upgrade to Silver to remove a bunch of those restrictions… or sign up for Gold membership and remove *all* of those restrictions, depending on which expansions you have on your account.
Additionally, Gold memberships are no longer required to recur each month. We will have non-recurring memberships that you can purchase with Station Cash or real-world currency. Recurring and non-recurring Gold memberships will be available for 1, 3, 6, and 12-month durations. Recurring memberships are still available for those of us who don’t like having to remember to pay each month, and recurring memberships also get the perk of a Station Cash bonus grant each month.
The aim is to give you as much flexibility as possible, without drowning you in a sea of confusing options. Free, Silver, or Gold at whatever duration and recurring state that you desire. It’s up to you to play EQII your way.
How Does this Affect Me?
For EverQuest II players, at the end of the day all we’re basically doing is making your subscription optional. For EQ2X players, we’re simplifying the membership model and adding benefits to the Gold membership. That’s about it.
If you’re an existing EQII subscriber and you keep your subscription active then the change will be in name only. We will simply call you a “Gold” member instead of a subscriber.
The conversion will be seamless; at launch, your current subscription status will roll over directly to an equivalent recurring Gold membership. The cost is the same, and all your benefits are exactly the same, including veteran status. There is no difference in service and you don’t need to do anything unless you desire to change your membership status.
If you’re an existing EQ2X player, then you will not be affected, except that Gold members will actually get a bonus.
If you are a Bronze member, you will simply be called a Free member instead.
Silver members will carry on as if nothing had changed.
Gold memberships have been improved! They now have access to all races and classes (except the Freeblood race and the Beastlord class). (If you purchased a Race Pack in the 60 days before the launch of this transition, we will refund the Station Cash for that purchase.)
Platinum membership is going away. If you are an existing Platinum member, your Platinum membership will continue until normal expiration with all of the original benefits. That membership is currently set to recur, so if you don’t change it, you will stay a Platinum member and continue to get those benefits. However, if you drop Platinum membership, you’ll be unable to re-subscribe to it. You’d have to rejoin at a Gold membership level for continued full access to the Game.
How Does this Change Benefit Me?
Some of the changes affect you directly, whereas some of the others are more of a “soft return” that makes your gaming experience better by making the game better as a whole.
Here’s a few of the obvious benefits:
- More population! Our recent launch of free-to-play for DC Universe Online has been extremely successful with tons of new players logging on within the first week (1000 percent increase in concurrents!). With more players, everyone benefits!
- Payment flexibility! You don’t want to pay anything at all? We can do that. You want to pay month-by-month? No problem. You want an annual recurring membership because you’re going to be playing this game until 2050 and don’t want to think about it? We can do that too!
- Better service! By merging EverQuest II: Extended and the original EverQuest II into a single game our messaging will become much easier and we will be able to focus our attention on one game instead of two.
What Does this Mean for the Future?
Our content delivery plans are unchanged. We’re still going to be delivering everything we’ve promised previously, and a lot more.
As a reminder, here are a few things we’ve committed to you previously (and maybe a bit of detail you haven’t heard before):
- We’re going to create more content for “Destiny of Velious” through 2013. Skyshrine, the Withered Lands, Siren’s Grotto, Cobalt Scar, the Western Wastes and more are all being worked on currently and will be released periodically during that time. Velious is a huge continent and we’re giving it the justice it deserves. Please note that there is no additional price tag for this content if you own the “Destiny of Velious” expansion; all this content will be open to you when it is released.
- Next summer, we’ll be revamping Qeynos as we’re doing with Freeport right now. Just as Freeport is being Reborn, we’ll be returning the “Greater Good” to Qeynos, making it a much more interesting and vibrant city, pivotal to Norrath once again.
- We intend to revisit old backwaters in Norrath, bringing them back to life with new content and new ways to game in those areas.
- In many cases where we’ve released features or fixes in the past couple of years, we had contingency “Phase 2” plans for many of those features. We’re going to circle back around and implement many of those Phase 2 plans (including much of the feedback we received on those features), improving them and making them even higher quality than they already are.
- Plus a lot, lot more. We’ll release more details on those things as we get closer in 2012.
The EQII dev team is still fired up about this game. We all love what we’re doing and we want to make this the best MMORPG in the industry, partly out of desire to deliver great entertainment, and partly out of pure pride of craft.
We’re also looking into mechanisms that allow you, the players, to help guide us on what gets developed in the future. Look for more on that soon. In the meantime, a great way to provide feedback is through the forums, as well as through Facebook and Twitter. We’ll also be covering topics you surface in our livecasts so be sure to tune in.
What about “Power Items” in the Marketplace?
EQ2X currently has a list of items that are not available on the regular server marketplaces. These include:
- Power potion
- Health potion
- Self-rez scroll
- Wand of Obliteration
- Rune of Devastation
- Mastercrafted Equipment (all)
- Tradeskill Components
These items will no longer be offered on the marketplace when this revamp occurs.
We may reintroduce some of these items again later-on, but we intend to do some in-game polling of players about how we might bring them back before we do it. You will get a chance to chime in and we’ll incorporate the results accordingly.
What about Live Gamer?
The Live Gamer (“Exchange”) servers were set up to allow players to sell items, coin and even characters to each other for real-world profit. Those servers were walled off from other servers and over time, their popularity has waned to the point where their populations are currently very small.
We’re going to liberate those players and characters by turning off the Live Gamer service, and merging the existing Exchange populations into other servers already in existence.
In mid-December, we’ll merge Vox with Nagafen (where they can continue to play in their chosen PvP style), and then merging The Bazaar with Freeport. There are more steps than that involved, of course:
- We’ll shut off the ability to post new sales in mid-November.
- The auction service itself will be discontinued in early December.
- The server merges will happen about a week after the auction service is shut off, with Vox first, and then The Bazaar a couple days later. This will occur in mid-December.
If you don’t have the time or inclination to log onto an Exchange server to take your sales down, we’ll auto-return the items to you at the time that we shut down the auction service in early December.
What? You’re Still Reading? Okay… A Summary!
All of this (and more) is planned to happen on the same day in early December (we’ll announce the exact date as we get closer):
- “Age of Discovery” expansion launch (pre-order available now!).
- GU 62 -“Freeport Reborn” launch, free to all players!
- Free-to-play conversion.
- A brand new website with an all new players section!
- And more. Yes, there’s still more that needs to firm up before being announced!
When all is said and done, there will only be two types of servers, PvE and PvP. You’ll have complete flexibility on payment options. There will no longer be a mandatory up-front cost of any sort.
Everyone will be a winner.
Today, we’ll be doing a Community Webcast covering all of this. Please be sure to send in any questions you might have via the Facebook page or Twitter so we can respond with answers during the Webcast!
You’re going to love Age of Discovery, and Freeport is fantastic. Now that everything else is so incredibly flexible as well, there’s a ton to love about EQII. We’re looking forward to a great future with you!
— Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson
EverQuest II Executive Producer
And there it is. They wanted this years ago, looks like Smed finally got his way. Enjoy.
Have been playing eq since 1999. Today is the last day for me. Thanks SJ.
40 bucks for Age of Dissappointment, lol.
….rants deleted…
…superfluous goodbyes deleted….
…last shred of faith in SOE deleted…
I got nothin left.
I really, REALLY hope that they leared a lesson from the DCUO conversion and make sure that we can actually log on and play come the F2P switch
Kind of sick to my stomach I just re subbed my wife’s account and mine for 6 months about 3 weeks back.
Excellent news!
Call me insane but…
Posting his picture seems like a very bad idea. Anyone sees a resemblance with Britlebane??? Trickster and God of Mischief? I mean seriously…
Honestly the changes are “empty”. Instead of focusing on important stuff like game content and numerous bugs that have been in game for insane amount of time, like Call of the Veteran… /sigh,… ok I won’t go on about what people already know. Basically they advertise pointless information… Bristlebane is strong within this one.
As far as their real customers are concerned, those that pay, there is nothing of interest. It’s basically an excuse to “delay” content and other deliverables. If they made a mistake by creating EQ2X,… that’s their problem. If server population is going down that is also their problem.
Managing server population is an every day chore for game admins. It’s NOT a great announcement.
I didn’t know who the executive producer was but now I understand many of the posts I see on boards.
If his “team” is fired up as he said,… we should feel it. Having to tell us is simply mesmerizing customers… sadly his subjugation appears to be very very high.
Just another player that can see beyond the box.
Which pill did you take? Red or Blue?
“We may reintroduce some of these items again later-on, but we intend to do some in-game polling of players about how we might bring them back before we do it. You will get a chance to chime in and we’ll incorporate the results accordingly.”
this part just made me laugh my a** off. like any other time they have “polled” the players and actually cared. notice the politician wording where he says “we MAY reintroduce” then in the same sentence basicaly confirms by saying “before we do it”. then the last sentence is just a slap in the face. just like the history of EQ2 with SC and F2P they will shove it down our throats if we like it or not.
“Everyone’s a winner!”
Totally free to play. After all the denials about how it would never happen. Someone go find those quotes.
“We’ve listened to your concerns about the complexity of the subscription structure, how the separate forums between EQII and EQ2X divide the community unnecessarily, that the Live Gamer servers are under-populated, and that many people want more flexibility with payment options so they can better manage their personal budgets.”
Well, I can buy the complaints about server population, but can’t really buy that subscribers were concerned with their personal budgets, or that it was too complex (oh wait, I don’t play on EQ2X). Note to SJ: people were not resubbing and cancelling on the regular servers because of a lot of other issues, not this one!
As Maesym correctly pointed out, Smed has wanted this for a very long time. It was probably inevitable.
Well, perhaps my flagon will be half full, and the influx of new players from the FTP servers will revitalize the game. I have a feeling, though, that it’s going to be weird playing with people who don’t have all the content everyone else does — think that might be one reason that Smed decided to do this, so the FTP silver members might just want to spend more money to catch up?
I hope this was the exciting annoucement that some people wanted to hear … wasn’t the one I wanted to hear. I suppose all those people who aren’t playing because they can’t afford it will be overjoyed.
I’m happy about using SC for my sub. Although, will have to have self control not to spend it all on other crap before the sub is due. Whoops, I’m feeding the monster.
Evolve or Die. EQ2 is a dying game bleeding subs month after month. At least Smokejumper is smart enough to see this and make this change.
Which would you rather have, EQ2 for another 6 months then gone alla SWG or the new F2P model with a influx of players across all servers and continued support for years to come?
I would like to see how they reached the conclusion that the problem with EQ2 was the subscription model and not the worthless people who can’t find their arse in a wet paper bag constantly screwing things up.
so when do we hear about f2p servers merging into the regular population?
Aethin – I would like to have a quality game experience. Making it F2P does not in any way guarantee that.
I dont get it – what is really changing here?
I can still pay my fee every three months as I do now
The name will be Gold instead of Platinum.
There will be more people from Live.
I cant see how this will affect me.
Pls say if Im missing something here…
This is great. seriously.
Just makes me laugh that SOE had to learn the truth from DCUO instead of believing the research and information coming from all the other companies (c.f. turbine) stating that making it a simple F2P model drastically increased subscriptions and cash flow.
Meh. Whatever. tomorrow, Skyrim!
Deah – oh there will be TONS more people standing around in their guild halls and instances. They will be there…somewhere…you just won’t ever see them. At least that’s how things will probably play out if somehow the MMO world forgets that it is still an SOE game.
The merging of the F2P servers is a REALLY GOOD thing in the long run. Of course there will be some problems at launch, this is SOE after all.
Perhaps they will rotate the recommended servers like in LOTRO, to cycle the login/account creation spikes between the servers.
The new EQ2X subscription plans is much better, giving access to all races and classes.
The “game breaking” items are removed, but even if they come back, they don’t have a significant impact on the game. I played on EQ2X for a couple weeks before taking a break on LOTRO, and while I reckon the Wand of Obliteration does allow cheating by letting you insta-kill bosses that are required for quest lines (eg. ToFS).. that an ill prepared group wouldn’t be able to… my biggest problem with such items is that they simply show a great lack of imagination on SOE’s part.
I had copied my Dirge to EQ2X in hope of getting more pickup groups at my EU time, but honestly, at level 90, there isn’t much difference with Crushbone, an already fairly populated server. It will probably be a while before this actually creates more grouping opportunities at level 90.
The addition of F2P on all servers is a good step, but it won’t really give us more options; contrary to the PR talk. It won’t because nobody wants to log in a level 90 character after a long break, and find that they are naked and all the legendary items are put into the bags. At least in LOTRO bags and some skills remains unlocked forever, even if you downgrade.
Yes there are lots of issues. There are also tons of reasons why EQ2 is one of the best MMO’s out there. We’re stuck with SOE. Deal with it.
I’m going to check out the forums and laugh hard at all the whiny comments. This is going to be priceless.
This is great news for the health of the live servers.
Several questions:
I copied several of my characters to EQ2X in hopes of getting my cousins and some friends (who I played EQ1 with years ago) to quit playing WoW and start playing EQ2 . . . they never did. I never touched the EQ2X copies. If the servers merge, what servers will the EQ2X characters merge in to? Will we have a choice of servers? What happens to my copies if they merge onto my original characters’ server?
Since EQ2 Live and EQ2X are considered “separate” games as of now, the EQ2X characters don’t count as additional character slots on my EQ2 Live account right now . . . what happens to my character slots after it all becomes one game? Will I have to purchase extra slots to access those characters now? Sony had us pay $35 dollars to “copy” these characters (minus tradable items and coin) to EQ2X. Having copied three characters, and paying $105 dollars to do so, will I have to pay even MORE to access the copies because I’m already maxed out on character slots? Or, even worse, do those copies just go “poof” and vanish? If so, I damn well better get my money back, or at LEAST a refund in Station Cash . . .
Also, and again, no mention of the All-Access subscribers. I presume we will be considered “Gold” members, but since I’m a subscribing member on the Live servers, AND a Gold member on EQ2X with my All-Access . . . How the heck will it all merge together? Just ONCE I’d like them to remember there IS this other subscription model out there, All-Access, and actually address those of us that pay EXTRA to play their games, instead of saying, “Oh yeah. We forgot about them . . . ” when they finally see one of us ask, “What about us?”
I’ve heard of Hoof-in-Mouth disease. It just seems they’re suffering from Head-in-Ass disease . . . /sigh
DiaF SMOKERJUMPER !
That was his Plan all the time . He was always one thing in first place.
Expert in Microtransaktions and Supporting Station Cash.
This will be the Stone on the Grave of Everquest 2 as we once know it.
It will be an MMO like many others of this chinese bullshit that is just designed to sell virtual goods.
I see it as a good thing. It wont effect me except that my copied version of Eschia will add to my max level character bonus. I’ll be able to play on AB again, with my guildmates, plus my f2p friends. They are removing the hax items and MC armor from the marketplace. So what’s to hate? I hope people aren’t going to complain just for the sake of complaining. Brell knows back in the day people complained about people dual boxing, and it effected them in no way what so ever if they didn’t do it themselves.
My perspective as an Extended player:
– Paying for subscriptions with SC? Fantastic. I’ve got loads of SC that cost me $0, so this means free sub time!
– Game-affecting items leaving the marketplace? Fantastic. I find it hard to believe anyone bought them in the first place, but apparently people did.
– Bazaar merging into Freeport? Ugh. The Bazaar is more “pay to win” than Freeport ever was. Thumbs down to this one.
The Bazaar merge isnt too bad. They are finally getting rid of LG. I just feel that this xpac is a huge waste of money. I know this has NOTHING to do with the convo, but OMG GoatBlower, err Smokejumper looks like a troll. One thing to remember is if you downgrade to the free subscriptions you will have popups every 15 mins or so. Then when you log out of the game it will want to open your browser to a page to get you to go to an active subscription. Thats how it was when i tested out the F2P. Sorry Feldon I felt I needed to mention he looked like a troll.
EQ2 playerbase is the only one I have ever seen with such an adverse reaction to free to play models. All this means to me is getting an additional stipend of station cash with my membership and of possibly seeing some of my old guild mates come back to the game. I don’t see how that is a bad thing.
And about time with the server merge with the Bazaar. I only have one toon left there but maybe they will finally allow transfers off that server.
I don’t quite get it.
I just paid for a 1 year subscription like 10 days ago.
What does this mean for paying customers ? I see what EQ2X players gain from this (a lot) but paying customers ?
If EQ2 becomes free to play, what do WE get ?
To play the game you’ve been playing for years. Your 1 year subscription did not drop in value one penny.
Players of EQ2 at the Free (previously Bronze) and Silver levels aren’t able to access all the Races, Classes, items (Fabled/Legendary), that you are. “Free” players can’t access the Broker, form Guilds, etc. Free-to-Play allows them to access some content, basically like an extended Trial that they can buy features for, but not all of EQ2. For a “Free-to-Play” player to experience the full world of EQ2 as you currently do, they must pay a subscription.
By the way, you gain the ability to pay for your subscription with StationCash. If you take advantage of double and triple SC weekends, you could conceivably be paying as little as $3.75/month for a ‘full’ EQ2 subscription.
Well, not sure if an influx of free players on the servers is a good : one of the (few) good thing of low population servers was to pretty much force you to get in a guild and have a bare minimum of social relationships ingame.
Plus, call me a snob, but paying to play seems to help “refining” the playerbase a little : in my experience with MMO gone F2P is a massive arrival of noobs and jerks.
Just hoping it isn’t the case here…
More folks in the world due to the merge, as well as ones that will come back to play with friends for free (and yes, already know a few), I’d say that’s a win.
Less server configurations / considerations for developers = more time for content and corrections, I’d say that’s a win too.
/scratches head… why is this a bad thing..???
@NightEye: I think that’s the only criticism I’ve seen thus far that’s reasonably based. 😛 In my experience it’s true that a “pay wall” can help improve the quality of a community, in some cases. I know many players of Champions Online were quite dismayed at the influx of certain types of players when that game went F2P. (Especially roleplayers. The F2P crowd doesn’t usually like to RP.)
However, to be perfectly honest, my experience thus far in EQ2 has been that the Extended population isn’t any ruder than the Live population. I remember plenty of jerks back on Antonia Bayle. The same rules apply: Crafting channel is the friendliest; 1-9 chat is a cesspool; put the right people on ignore and the world is peachy. 🙂
I am skeptical that any more double or triple station cash events are going to come up, with the new pricing model — that wouldn’t make much economic sense since it now pays for everyone’s sub. Maybe there will be one more before the changeover? If so, that’s when to stock up, for sure.
Told ya, they are pulling the plug.
Actually, we’ve had FTP in some form for a long time (usually 2 week trials). Nobody objected, as if it might grow population, fine. When SJ came along, his philosophy was that you can’t have FTP without a “robust” cash shot, meaning, game changing items are for sale for real money. That got enough outrage that he had to create the X server. We now equate FTP with selling game changing SC items, so dislike it by proxy.
EQ2x itself failed in 3 important categories.
1) it did not grow the game. Going into the 2nd year there is still only 1 server.
2) not very many made it to 90. As a server, it has about 30 or 40% of the number of level 90’s that other servers have (leaving out Live Gamer, which died long ago), AND a reasonable number of them were transfers from the main servers at inception of X, to get the SC items. Many start, not many stick it out.
3) it did not generate nearly as much revenue as the real servers. That left it with the standard FTP problem of a high turnover, low level population, generating costs but little revenue. The fact remains that most people who want to play for free actually do want to play for free, or nearly free.
The new approach just shifts the unproductive free players across the servers, as the incoming free players might choose lesser loaded servers, or start where friends already are. There is no reason to expect a massive influx of new players, as they could have come in uninhibited for the last year+, and we can see they did not.
Lastly, you can see duplicity at work. To eliminate the X server, the “enhanced” SC items were removed from the game, at least temporarily. However, SJ seems to have conveniently forgotten that he formed X because the main population objected stridently to the “enhanced” concept. Rather than declare it dead, and move forward, he intends to have a vote. Looked for a rigged election, as nothing has changed that would indicate the main population wants it now. With over a year of people being able to move to the X server, only about 1/6 of one server’s worth did (out of the total 8 servers now online). The avalanche of “we don’t want game changing items on the market” hasn’t gone away, but the fact that he’s not accepted that is clearly apparent.
Complete BS and you know it.
Umm, you have never played on freeport long enough to know that most people don’t buy the game-changing items—and for those that do, it is not affecting my game–it is affecting their wallet—so who cares? Oh yes, the person who wants to whine.
Umm, NEWSFLASH – It did not fail–if it had failed they would have made the business decision to move AWAY from that model not towards it—but I digress, let us look at your reasons shall we?
This is a bit of a mis-leading statement – Actually, if you play the game you know this and shame on you for mischaracterizing the situation – The newer hardware allows for exponentially more players on one server and yes, Freeport’s hardware is the newer hardware–Secondly, Freeport is only rivaled by Antonia Bayle as far as population goes.
How in the world can you claim this? Do you play on Freeport more than once a month if at all? It is obvious to me that you don’t as I have a guild full of people who have made it to 90 on their own who are not transfers. Again, you are lying and trying to mislead–Shame on you.
To say it did not generate nearly as much as the “real” servers? So that is why they are doing away with the “real” model huh? Because they don’t like revenue? Your statement is inherently ignorant my friend.
Unproductive free players? a little judgmental aren’t we? The fact is, they may not “produce” on your level but they keep the server populated and many of them make very nice grouping partners in the lower levels – unlike those “real” players on the “real” servers who play in “real” ghost-town zones in the lower level.
Again, obviously they have had an influx or they would have made Freeport a “live” server and ended F2P altogether. Again, another inherently ignorant statement.
Which is was to make the switch easier to digest for the whiners.
You must work for SOE to have numbers like that. Wow, this is the first time I have heard that number of 1/6. Show me your research on that number buddy?
It’s a business, businesses are in business to make money—they make decisions based on the trends they see—it is ridiculous to think that business does not change over time as trends do. What you are wanting is a business that will cater to your wants exclusively even if that means they are to go bankrupt in doing so. Get realistic man.
My suspicion is that you are from a “certain” website that is organizing these kinds of rants because they love to whine—heck it is even in the name of their website.
If you are so upset, then leave, the COMMUNITY is better off without you and will survive just like they always have.
Wow Glenolas,
I haven’t seen that much misinformation in a long time. 🙂
The 2 week trial was horribly broken because it was a huge download, you couldn’t talk to other players, join a guild, trade items, use the mail, etc. You were playing a solo RPG and facing a $15/month bill to do so. It was just wrong all around. EQ2X allowed people to truly trial the game, including them in the player community.
It was not “SJ’s philosophy” that you must have a “robust” cash shop. I asked him point blank about this at last year’s Fan Faire and he said SOE wouldn’t let him do F2P without the “powerful” cash shop.
And anyway, it wasn’t that powerful. Actually stop and look at what was for sale on EQ2X. It was health and power potions, self-rez (available on live as a deity miracle or cleric AA), and a few other items. The mastercrafted items weren’t as good as player-made mastercrafted. The rares were flagged HEIRLOOM. The only “powerful” item on the cash shop on EQ2X was Wand of Obliteration which could one-shot heroic enemies. All of those items go away when this merger takes place.
I heard lots of rumors about SOE selling access to quests or dungeons, but none of it sourced anywhere near SOE. Everyone I asked at SOE answered with a straight face that this wasn’t coming. The fact that AoD costs and doesn’t include Velious reassures me that we won’t see “pay as you go” dungeon unlocks. Requiring free-to-play players to buy Classes, Races, etc. is how F2P should be done.
Your “3 failures of EQ2X”:
1. They did 1 server because they wanted to do F2P on all servers (which is the only sensible way to do F2P).
2. You seem mad that many players on EQ2X are enjoying the level 1-89 content.
3. No population numbers have been released so you are talking out of your butt here.
The rest of your post is discrimination, prejudgment, and half-formed ideas about what EQ2 players really objected to with F2P.
Thanks for allowing my post to stay up in some form Feldon. I was afraid I might have stepped over the line by dissecting his post but I absolutely hate it when a member of our community starts talking like he/she has the facts (or represents the majority) when in reality it is all (even my opinions) just a matter of pure speculation. I think this gives new life to the game. My only fear is that they are making a huge misstep by not making AOD all-inclusive with previous expansions but I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here and see how it plays out.
i dont understand all these people who insist that the game is dying. every time a change comes, people say ‘im quitting!’ and ‘this game is dying!’ and ‘this is the end!’…. ive been playing this game since it started. pops rise and fall. some changes are good, some are bad. this game wasnt dying 5 years ago and it isnt dying now. the problem is that people hate change. get over it!
So I should shut down EQ2Wire? I don’t agree with all of SOE’s decisions on EQ2. In fact lately, I don’t agree with most of them. Should I, too, “get over it”?
Hi all
I’ve been playing EQ2 for 3 years and I love the game, but need to be honest with each other – the good game is going down the drain.
So with EQ2X that has arrived, new life been added into the game – I know it from my own experience – been on EQ2X from the start. More players, more fun – you should try it. If that same thing is going to happen to the EQ2 it’s only for the benefit to of all of as , that includes SmokeJumper’s too.
After all – no honey no money for them
So… Instead of improving the game and advertising it, SOE finally throws in the towel and goes “Free To Play Poorly.”
I wish Smokejumper would explain, carefully, how the game will be improved by adding people who aren’t bright enough to simply subscribe for $15 a month to the general servers. At least having “F2P” on only one server kept all the real whiz kids in one e-ghetto…
The company is trying to make some money out of their product and all the marketing geniuses are angry. Why am I not surprised?
If you marketing analysts have such brilliant ideas, why aren’t you trying to sell your very own MMORPG?
Do you not understand the current situation with the MMORPG market? It’s over-saturated with games.
Investing more money in to an old product becomes a liability when your consumers are few in numbers.