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

[Kalros]

Big news!

http://kotaku.com/5597645/everquest-...-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.