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!