Feldon 
If you thought all the bases had been covered on Character Slots with November 12th’s announcement about the Free-to-Play conversion of EQ2, there was one group who still had questions. These players are in the unique position of having characters on both the EQ2 and EQ2X servers AND having also bought character slots.
If you feel a math headache coming on, feel free to run away. To quote SmokeJumper “This situation only affects players that have characters *both* on Live server(s) and EQ2X.If you don’t have characters on Freeport, then this is a non-issue.”
From the EQ2X Forums (since this only affects people with both EQ2 and EQ2X characters):
When we announced the F2P conversion, we rolled out a plan that we thought would ensure that everyone got enough character slots to use all their current characters after the conversion. “Cool!” said we. “We did the right thing!”
But we forgot a case…and you all were quick to point it out. (Thanks, btw.)
That case involved people that had accounts on both the Live servers *and* EQ2X *and* only occurred when people had purchased character slots, but didn’t have all of their slots filled with actual characters. (They had empty slots.)
This resulted in situations where that player could end up with enough slots for their current characters but still not be “right” because they’d still lose the slots they had purchased due to empty slots not being counted as characters.
It took a while of pounding our heads against walls, but we have the solution now, and it handles all cases.
Rather than make one huge TL: DR post, I’ll break this up into successive posts. The first will be a horrible-to-read logic display about how the fix works. I sincerely apologize for how complicated it is, but I know that some of you *really* want to see this logic, so we’re showing it.
This is then followed by examples, that will hopefully make the logic more clear.
In short:
- You will be able to use all of your created characters after this conversion.
- You will have access to all of the character slots you purchased after this conversion, even if those purchased slots are currently empty.
In a nutshell, we’re checking your created character counts, your purchased slots count, and then doing logic comparisons to ensure that you lose *nothing at all*.
and:
You would not believe how much of today was spent talking about exactly this issue. First the solution, then communicating it to all the departments internally, then, well…a lot of hours.
If you’d like to read the further details including the coding logic, and 3 test examples, proceed to the thread on the EQ2X forums.
It’s Sony. We already know they are going to completely botch this merger and people are going to lose their characters and the only thing Sony will say is “lol, sorry”.
is there an date when F2P is coming to live server?
I am wondering if they have considered the international servers? As the character limit now is 7 slots per region, I assume the merging of FP with the US live servers has no effect on the number of character slots us Splitpavians have. Can’t find any conclusive evidence of that though, all SJ mentions is “Live”.
Sole, word is that this will be happening on December 6th with the launch of Age of Discovery.
Llenwyn, it should only concern you if you have characters on the Freeport server. EQ2x was considere a seperate game, and it was possible to have 7 characters on live and 4 on Freeport, then purchase extra slots. The concern was that if these extra purchased slots might disappear since now you would end up with 11+ slots on a single account.
I’m glad they came up with something, but while it all may look good on paper, I will hold my thoughts until I see it actually put into action.
As Llenwyn says, he only mentions “live”. He still hasn’t clarified the case of those who have a station account with additional slots with characters on US live and EU live and Test and Freeport. About all they’ve confirmed so far is that the characters on that account in Vanguard and Free Realms won’t be affected.
Here’s my question:
I’m a “grandfathered” Station Pass account holder, i.e. I was given the 7 character slots plus 5 extra for being an All-Access member, giving me a total of 12 character slots, one of which has remained empty.
I tried to get some family and friends (who were (and some still are) playing WoW) to try EQ2. They didn’t want to pay to play, but they also didn’t want to play without me, so I copied 3 of my characters over, giving me a total of 15 character slots. (11+1 empty on live, 3 on X).
Now, I have not PURCHASED any character slots. However, all 15 character SLOTS are slots I am entitled to, and have been for years now. What happens to me now that one of my slots is emptied, but not technically purchased? Will it be filled by one of the Freeport slots giving me 14 slots and no empty one? So now I have to pay $10 dollars, or delete a character, to create a beast lord when I shouldn’t have to do so?
I didn’t get my friends or family to convert to EQ2. Those EQ2X characters have remained untouched for months now. My suggestion to SOE, if they can’t do this “right” and give me my 15 character SLOTS (which is how it SHOULD be, empty or not, these are our slots) instead of making me lose one is, delete the three Freeport server characters, refund my 10,500 in station cash I paid to copy them over, and leave me with the 12 slots I should have (one STILL being empty).
I actually prefer that last scenario. I really don’t want those Freeport characters, gimme my money back!
Jesus, all of you people that post comments on this site are a bunch of whiney little girls, if you’re that unhappy then go to WoW, if you’re not going to do that, then shut up and stop complaining about every little problem that arises in eq2…eq2 is a HUMAN made game and there will and always will be HUMAN made errors or mistakes
And Charn, if you’re THAT concerned about your ONE unused character slot being lost, then make a character and leave him there until the merger, there your problem and concerns are solved, grow up people.
At Christamir’s request I have moved comments about the Webcast here.
Usually I just delete posts like these because if someone wants to stifle the constructive criticism of commenters here, I’m guessing they also want ME to stop posting constructive criticism.
If that’s really the case, you’re welcome to avail yourself of all the other EQ2 websites out there that are mostly positive about EQ2. Oh wait, most of them have shut down.
People seem to want to blame the community for EQ2’s fortunes. I think Occam’s Razor applies.
Well Feldon, its just that, most of the comments aren’t constructive, they’re just criticizing and complaining about SJ, and just overall pessimism.
I come to your site because you do an excellent job of keeping up-to-date information about whats going on with EQ2, i LOVE the game and I’m super excited about whats to come with AoD. But when I come here and i read everyone’s comments, it just brings me down.
And as per your comment : “If that’s really the case, you’re welcome to avail yourself of all the other EQ2 websites out there that are mostly positive about EQ2. Oh wait, most of them have shut down.” — Are you saying that in order to keep your site running and popular then you have to be negative about EQ2?
When i logged into your site and first saw this thread, the first thing that popped into my head was people commenting “Oh, can SJ really count?” or “SJ is gonna mess this one up again”. Beneath this comment box you state, “Please post your comments without flaming or insulting other players.” But it just seems that all everyone does is flame SJ, is this the kind of site that you want, Feldon?
All I’m saying is people need to take their negativity elsewhere, and just post CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM, not complaints or whines.
In order to keep my site running and relevant, I have to be honest about EQ2. Most of the EQ2 sites which have come and gone used to be very positive, very enthusiastic about the game. The ones that are left seem to document EQ2, but I don’t know how many of them are enthusiastic about the game these days.
Some would say, If you don’t like the game anymore, leave. Well, look at the Fan Sites. Many of them have left. I see so many mistakes being made it’s almost insurmountable, but I hang on hoping that cooler heads will prevail.
As for moderation of the comments here, it’s always a fine line. When people post “this sucks” or threats towards EQ2 staff, community, and developers, I delete them outright. When it delves into EQ2Flames type stuff, I usually trash it. I don’t stand for personal attacks on Developers and Designers as usually they aren’t the ones making these decisions.
On the other hand, SmokeJumper has been rather smarmy and sarcastic towards players on the forums and especially on his Twitter account. And he’s got an ego the size of Montana. So yeah, I allow a certain amount of leeway for people ribbing SmokeJumper. He can take it.
I think most people are speaking what they feel. Nothing wrong with that, whether they are moaning, or cheering. We are all entitled to an opinion.
Most aren’t optimistic due to the very fact SOE usually does mess stuff up, anyone that has played the game for years, knows that. So its a concern to most, maybe misworded here and there, but still just them worrying as to what is gonna happen, I had to write down a list of all my toons, due to YES I too am concerned and worried, and have so many toons that I personally paid for. 17 in total. Thus do not want to lose even one slot!
But in the end SOE usually fixes the broken stuff… some they dont. Thus causing people to assume the worst right away. And tbh SOE is the one that created the messy state things are in at the moment with to many slots, or grandfathered slots etc… and haven’t always been right on top of things as far as fixing them, so yes there will be a lot of doubt that this will go smoothly, without people losing toons or slots.
This site is great and I love it… and even like both the positive comments and the negative, due to the fact most of them have a reason to post either 🙂
Update: I added a Hide/Show for Comments and will look at making the choice persistent. For now, comments are SHOWN by default but can be hidden if you prefer.
Mike:
I thought of that, making a character as a place holder, however, that will not work. If you go to the Announcements page on the EQ2 Forums and click on the post by Smokejumper entitled “F2P answers promised (11/11/11)” towards the bottom he stipulates, before revealing any of the solutions:
1. Everything you read below pertains *only* to characters that existed on your accounts on 11/10/2011.
So making a placeholder character now will not work. It will be (and I envision Doc Emmett Brown from Back to the Future as I say this) “Erased . . . from existence!”
I don’t want to have to pay an extra $10 dollars over and above what I’m paying now, nor do I want to delete a character to play the new expansion (and let’s face it, the only thing this expansion is offering that has ANY new “content” are beastlords . . . everything else is just a new game mechanic that can in no way be considered an expansion).
Telling people to go play somewhere else if they aren’t 100% happy with EQ2 is like saying you shouldn’t eat pizza if you don’t like anchovies. The main reason people complain is because they love the game and hate to see someone doing things to it that we don’t believe are in its best interests. You can’t leave out of account that most of us have made considerable investments of time and money into developing our characters, and will obviously be upset if our plans are scuppered because they don’t coincide with someones vision for next year’s salary. The other reason is that SOE tends to first announce things, then try to devise a plan for how it will work and then have several attempts at communicating the details before customers have a clear idea of what’s happening.
Charn that comment about the character being “removed from existence” applies so that people don’t rush over to Freeport server and make a ton of characters do that they could get free slots, if you already have that slot allotted to you, then the character in said slot will not be deleted. I would hate to think that my friend (who just started 2 weeks ago) would lose his dirge that I PLed to 90 because it was created after 11/11/11…