EQII going Free-To-Play, sort of .........

[Kalros]

Big news!

http://kotaku.com/5597645/everquest-ii-goes-free+to+play-in-a-different-way

I may have to drop the extra $10 per account for the few extras,but this could be very cool for us boxers.

[Lyonheart]

200.00 a year for platinum membership is a rip off! thats 50 more than live and you still have to buy races ( only 4 available )? I would think you would get all races with that.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

lol....if I'm reading that right, they just increased the price of normal EQ2, while giving people who don't care the option to pay less for a lot of extra restrictions. Hope that works out for 'em.

[Lyonheart]

they are tempting you with things like >. 20 shared bank slots, being able to buy weapons and armour, purchase faster leveling etc.. But in the end you will pay a lot more to play the same game, if you want to play all of it. The plat service should include anything and everything the live games does and all the extras ( bank slots, races..etc. Im not sure what they are thinking with that.

[Khatovar]

Wow, what a half-assed yet convoluted way to go about it. "Frequent" In-game Pop-up ads? Cash limits? Restricted class, spells, gear and race options? So basically, they yanked the time limit off the free trial and added store access.

And since EQ2 and EQ2X are two totally different systems, there's no swapping between the two. As a former subscription player, there's far too many restrictions on free for me to want to bother with it. If I want to lose the restrictions, I'd have to pay the recurring fee, but if I'm going to do that, why wouldn't I do so on the current live servers, where I'll get all, instead of "most of" the restrictions lifted? But then, all the new blood is on the X servers and there's sure to be a good chunk of bleed off from current players who'd rather not pay a subscription, so I'd be going back to a dead server and waiting on server merges.

So I go to the X servers, start all over, pay the subscription, pay out of pocket for the rest of the races and classes, and eventually the cap increase. But now I'm facing a warped economy because a good chunk of the players are limited at the broker and a skewed playerbase because a good chunk of the players can't play most classes or use upgraded spells. Just so they can offer stat gear in the store without pissing off current live players. ROFL!

[EaTCarbS]

I don't think I've seen this much fail in quite some time. Turbine actually did a good job, unlike EQ2 is doing.

[Acerak]

Agreed, this is complete phail. Typical SOE funny-money tactics to try and bilk people who suck at doing simple comparisons and math.

[Ellay]

Quite confusing. I agree with Khatovar, a free service that ends up costing more doesn't make sense.

The idea should be to get more people playing while charging less, in the end the player base is higher causing a larger longevity of the game. Everyone wins.

[Noxxy]

Have to totally agree re the rip-off the platinum service offers.

Missing classes include: pally/sk, shamans, dr00ds, bards and CC - these are basically the most important classes in the whole game

..and which raid doesn't have a few d0rfs, fae/arasai, delfs, helfs, gnomes, sarnaks, etc., etc.

So let's say a 'casual' player only plays for a year;
- drops 200$ on the plat service
- then say 20$?? per extra class and grabs 1 of each of the missing classes so 100$
- then they drop another 20$ per race they are missing so say another 5 races = 100$

Could easily cost a casual player 400$ in the first year of play. This equates to 33$ per month! Easily at least double the cost of doing a regular subscription. Even then, the casual player is still restricted to what they can do.

Cheaper to 'casually' play the monthly subscirption game and just leave it sitting on the desktop.

[Velassra]

Have to totally agree re the rip-off the platinum service offers.

Missing classes include: pally/sk, shamans, dr00ds, bards and CC - these are basically the most important classes in the whole game

..and which raid doesn't have a few d0rfs, fae/arasai, delfs, helfs, gnomes, sarnaks, etc., etc.

So let's say a 'casual' player only plays for a year;
- drops 200$ on the plat service
- then say 20$?? per extra class and grabs 1 of each of the missing classes so 100$
- then they drop another 20$ per race they are missing so say another 5 races = 100$

Could easily cost a casual player 400$ in the first year of play. This equates to 33$ per month! Easily at least double the cost of doing a regular subscription. Even then, the casual player is still restricted to what they can do.

Cheaper to 'casually' play the monthly subscirption game and just leave it sitting on the desktop.


Sounds like they didn't put much thought into it.......or hoping the subscriber doesn't.

[HPAVC]

Does EQ have a eastern style hourly block model working?

[Noxxy]

...eastern style hourly block model ...

Huh? No idea what that is but if your asking if you can get a subscription where you only pay for the hours you play - the answer is no, never heard of one - just all monthly subscriptions, same price no matter how many hours you play

[HPAVC]

Huh? No idea what that is but if your asking if you can get a subscription where you only pay for the hours you play - the answer is no, never heard of one - just all monthly subscriptions, same price no matter how many hours you play

Interesting, all the games in asia are like this, including wow. This model of free to play with riders is similar to the systems they have for a number of games.

[PyrostasisTDK]

Lots of issues with this damn format.


You cant form a guild unless you pay $10 to become silver level, then $10 more bucks to purchase a guild charter. Guild creation $20 bucks.
As a free member you have 0 public chat access. Just /guild and /say Can you say 0 social interaction?
As a free member or Silver member you have 0 auction house access. You have to pay 15 bucks a month to buy or sell on the AH. Can you say no economy?
They do not sell classes. So to get the non-free classes you have to pay 15 bucks a month, or subscribe to EQ live, then create a toon, pay 35 bucks to transfer it, now you can use this class regardless of subscriptions. So...15 a month or 50 buck one time fee.

Anyone else seeing the massive issues with the above?

[Noxxy]

You cant form a guild unless you pay $10 to become silver level, then $10 more bucks to purchase a guild charter. Guild creation $20 bucks.
As a free member you have 0 public chat access. Just /guild and /say Can you say 0 social interaction?
As a free member or Silver member you have 0 auction house access. You have to pay 15 bucks a month to buy or sell on the AH. Can you say no economy?
They do not sell classes. So to get the non-free classes you have to pay 15 bucks a month, or subscribe to EQ live, then create a toon, pay 35 bucks to transfer it, now you can use this class regardless of subscriptions. So...15 a month or 50 buck one time fee.


/boggle

40$ for a guild...ummm, no...then to get chats and 'free' AH you'd have to buy the platinum service (200$)...but the real fork in the undies is the 15$ per month for non-free classes!! per month!!!

So if we assume / accept that IMHO pally/sk, shamans, dr00ds, bards and CC are extremely handy to have - we could be up for 75$ extra per month (on top of the guild fees, platinum service charge and any other charges) just to have a viable boxing group...

It costs me 6 x 15$, so 90$ per month to run my teams. I get full access to all features of the game including end-game content. For a boxer, the F2P service is useless.

I'd even go so far as to say that for a beginner, F2P is also useless as (using Pyro's comments as a guide) you couldn't interact (LFG anyone?) and you couldn't sell you goodies to anyone other than a vender (who will give you nothing for your uber purple sword of +10 papercut)

Seriously - what are SOE thinking

I have been following the discussions in a few EQ2 forums - and a fair few ppl are all getting themseleves in a tizz about how many ppl are going to jump ship from paid to F2P. Honestly, unless the model radically changes, they just have to do the math to work out how expensive (and nerfed) it is going to be.

n0x

[PyrostasisTDK]

Well they have decided to sell classes. It looks like 5 bucks a pop, but may be as much as 10. They are also considering selling auction house "chits" IE you pay 1.50 and you can sell or buy 10 things off the auction house.

Most folks like the idea of paying to use the auction house, but would prefer a one time fee...say 5 - 10 bucks.

IMO, for a boxer, the best bet is to have one toon subscriber, and then simply purchase the classes you need to fill out your group. Then funnel all items and such that need selling to the main, and boom your golden.

However, it still costs 10 bucks to make a guild and you must be subscriber or a gold member... so $20 bucks. I dont like that, but its a one time fee... and I can swallow it if I have to.