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WoW a chance to bring some fresh blood to the game! A couple months ago when Worlds of Warcraft went free to 20, there are a lot of toons running around at low levels. This may bring back some old timers who for whatever reason just don't want to pay the 15 bucks.

What a change. I hope to see a positive response from the community, well not most posters on the official boards, man they can be depressing!

Originally, I was against the idea of ftp for EQ. But when I look at the packages that they intend to give with the launch of ftp,it isnt so bad for those who have the monthly subscription. Look and compare their intended packages: http://everquest.station.sony.com/free/index.vm

The 500 station cash per month for each existing monthly subscriber accounts is handy for xp pots,mounts etc. While the ftp will bring in some returning players and maybe even a few absolute new players..I hope a good bit of them get hooked on EQ enough to stay.

Personally, I'll keep my 3 active subs as they are, and gladly take and enjoy the bonus station cash.

My only worry is if one year later, SOE will still dedicate the same amount of resources and developers to the game as today ( which is skeleton sized as it is) for fixing bugs etc.. Seeing that they have other pay to play mmorpg's competing for the same developers.

If the developer team do this right it could be win win for all, including ridgid grumpy old veterans like myself lol.

Good question. I dont think there was much if any advertising at all...other than EQplayers.

In its present state, I think the devs got it a bit wrong with who they are targeting.

For instance, the last few years, most newly activated accounts seem to be returning players. Many with existing characters that have 8 slots (many full with bags,clickies etc in their inventory slots).Yet the F2P and Silver packages only allow 4 and 6 inventory slots respectively...They forgot to cater for the biggest population of "new" players the last few years who cannot use those packages without losing bags,items (petition horrors)on their old characters.

This renders the F2P package as an unattractive option for many returning players without losing items on their old character when logging in as a F2P or Silver package account.

They should consider at least raising the inventory slots to 8 for F2P and Silver to woo the returning players with dormant accounts.


Edited, Jan 30th 2012 9:24pm by hexeez

http://everquest.station.sony.com/free/index.vm

The link says that Races and Classes are purchasable beyond the limit of 4, that F2P and Silver package offer. But the Inventory slots are not marked as purchasable beyond 4 or 6 (for the silver package). This leaves the issue unsolved for returning players with their 8 slot characters.

Interesting thoughts from the standpoint of a current subscriber:

From the FAQ:
If you have an active subscription when the free-to-play conversion takes place you will automatically be converted to Gold membership status, with full perks and privileges. This conversion will be seamless and you will not need to do anything for the conversion to take place. Your Gold Membership will continue as long as your subscription remains active.

Any player with a recurring membership will receive 500 Station Cashâ„¢ per month as long as they stay on an auto-renew payment plan.

Basic access in EverQuest is free! Silver membership costs 500 Station Cash ($5.00 USD). Gold membership costs $14.99 or 1500 Station Cash per month. (See below for more details on memberships and pricing.)

Gold status includes all expansions up to HoT. Gold status also allows 10 inventory slots per character. If I change nothing and continue to subscribe to EQ, I will gain all expansions up to HoT (that's 4 expansions for me). I will gain 2 bag slots per character. And I will gain 500SC/month, allowing me to pay for 3 months per year using free accumulated SC, effectively reducing the cost by 25%.




And finally, sadly:

With the transition of EverQuest to free-to-play, we will no longer support EverQuest: Macintosh Edition as of 3/29. As a result, the Al'Kabor Server and EQMac service will be closed down.

I hope they are providing these people free transfers off the doomed server.

The sad part is that server can't really be serviced much by a transfer anywhere, there just isn't anything else in the eq universe to match their version of norrath. Unless the server is just flat out losing them money I really hope they reconsider this move, what a shame.

This ^^

As someone who plays sporadically, sometimes for months at a time/take a break for 1-? months/return, etc., I was initially excited when I saw the F2P announcement...until I looked at the options for each category. Although I primarily play in older zones, I've had my characters for over 7 years, have Rk. II spells, need every bit of space for my items, etc. For me, this will not change how I play at all. I will continue to purchase station passes at $15.00 for the months I play and then won't be on at all when I'm not playing.

I was hoping if Sony went the F2P route for something more along the lines of certain zones might be locked to free players. I can see this as a viable introduction for someone new who wants to try out EQ but I agree with the posters who point out - where is the marketing to a new group of players. Returning players will not want to be limited to certain races/classes/limited storage, etc.

From reading the FAQs, if I went with a Silver Membership, for example, the following would happen:

*Characters - Since my 3 characters were created prior to February 29, 2012, I will retain them even though they are not in one of the 4 class/race offerings for that level. The wording of the FAQ sounds like I will still be able to play all 3 of them.

*Prestige Items - Will still be in my inventory, but tinted yellow and unusable.

*Rk. II & III spells will remain in spell book, but only cast at level I.

*AA - At the moment, this limit will not affect me personally due to my low number of AAs, even on my main.

*Plat per level - I can see having to distribute plat between my 3 characters instead of having most of it on my main and not being able to earn much more until I spend some of what I have. This could cause a situation on my trader alt.

*Bag slots - I'd have 4 bags of items mailed back to me on at least 2 of my characters.

The character, AA, and spell Rank levels I could live with the way the FAQs are stated; however, even as a casual player, the plat and bag slots would be a consideration.

Therefore, as previously stated, for me personally this will change nothing. It will not entice me to play more regularly and I still think that any returning player will not want to be limited on especially plat and AAs, even if they can still access all their characters.

I would agree this is a good way to bring brand new players into the game with the Free & Silver levels serving as a trial IF there was some promotion outside of announcements on the Sony website and EQ forums.

Honestly this would solve so many issues with the whole thing. 8 slots for silver.

I've seen posts that they will be selling a 750AA extension for $5, so maybe they will be easily extending all of these limitations in $5 increments. That's fine, they need to make money too. Just give us all the details.

Eagerly awaiting the webcast on Feb 2...

LOL, and here we are almost 13 years later. =-)

We sure showed them.

So who else, upon reading the news, immediately thought, "Hey, I could finally have a free dual box. I'd keep my main's paid account and fire up my old second account for free. That'd be great!"
Of course, with the AA limit of 250, the plat limit of 100xlevel, and the apprentice tier 2 merc limitation, I think the character would be pretty frustrating to play. However that wouldn't stop me from just playing it to 90, for free, before switching over to gold membership. I imagine we will see a lot of this. And I also think that's what SOE suspected/expected, and thus they placed some heavy incentives to have players upgrade their accounts. The limitations are very severe, too: how would I allocate 250 AA? Perhaps skipping what I consider the no-brainers (CA/CS, spell mastery etc) and just picking up activatables. And at level 90, the plat cap is 9000. That's absolutely pitiful, a player couldn't even purchase the armor molds from the vendors in Feerrott.
Like a player on Xegony pointed out the other day, this isn't true F2P at all. True F2P would grant every player equal and open access, and sell mounts, items, and fun things on the side, and generate lots of revenue from that. Incentivizing players by severely limiting their ability to play will probably frustrate a lot of new players, especially when they only have four bag slots.
After all this, I'd really like for Smedley or whoever is running the show to step forward and explain why they chose this mangled/pseudo/frankensteinien version of F2P. They could always repeal restrictions if there's too much community backlash I guess, but why wait for the (inevitable) furor, when they could simply start F2P off more fairly?

I thought that. For me, it would be a 3rd for my box (full group with the mercs.)

The limitations wouldn't impact me that much.

The plat limit, I'd be playing with 2 gold characters who can hold the plat.
The merc limit, I'd otherwise not have the 3rd PC and 3rd merc, so anything I get is a benefit.
The AA limit, I'd plunk down the 500 SC, probably waiting for a double SC time. I think I may have an old 3rd account I could dust off and have the characters grandfathered and set at the silver level. So that's not an impact.
The bag limit, I'd be playing with 2 gold characters, plus with larger bags it's not as bad as it used to be.
The gear limit, I'm not anywhere near that now, so it wouldn't be an issue. And if I did do high end group stuff or raids, I'd do it with the main, not the 3rd box add on.

You're right though. It's not true F2P. Free to play is a misnomer. Why they chose this version of F2P? You don't need Smed to answer that. The answer is clear. It's specifically set up to encourage people to subscribe or otherwise spend money in the SC store. F2P is a different way to monitize the playerbase. Some players will take the free and nothing else. Some will buy unlockers and mounts and stuff and many will upgrade to silver.

There will be no backlash. This is pretty much the same set up they have in EQ2, and they have seen a significant increase in accounts (300% increase) and log ins (40% increase.) Check out Smed's twitter and he'll have information (www.twitter.com/j_smedley).

Edited, Feb 2nd 2012 8:29am by amastropolo

Really? Because it did wonders for DDO