Not ImpressedFollow

I just logged into EQ for the first time since I've been downgraded to a "Silver Account" ie. my current station pass expired. Half my inventory bag slots are gone with the items in "Parcel Delivery" - except that I have no room to put those items due to no shared bank account with my alts. Much of my armor is "yellowed out" due to having a "prestige item" in it. I didn't even open my merc slots, knowing my two mercs, one of which was a reward during some specific holiday, are either unusable or not there.

I knew this would be happening, but *seeing* my character basically gimped with half of what I've worked for since 1999 really ticked me off. I honestly would rather not have any access to EQ unless I paid like I did previously, knowing that all my items/characters would be just as I left them than to be able to log in but be in essence useless.

In further thinking on this change, trying to encourage new players to return to EQ is torking off some of us who have been with EQ since almost the beginning with this half-assed "tier" system. I know the responses will be: "You can still pay and have your items back." True, but to me, this "you can have part of your items and still play" just rubs me the wrong way.

Sony - I am bidding you adieu.

I think we will see more unlockers, but not at the detriment of maintaining the subscriber base.

Some of the things people are asking for as unlockers would be unlikely (to me) unless the sub base really crashes out at some point.

F2P is ideal for up to level 70. There is a ton of the game a person can effectively do up till then. After that... the limitations are going to bite harder the further you level up.

Keep in mind that other games with solid sub bases only let you F2P up to level 20 or some other such nonsense. Considering I got to level 59 in that one game in 2 weeks of casual play...

My advice for a returning player that wants to come back F2P (with no intentions of resubbing) is to reroll totally fresh on Vox. You'll have tons of company of others doing the same thing and there is population playing 1-70.

I don't think you understand the purpose of the F2P model. The F2P model is not meant to bring people back in a hope that they'll resubscribe, it's meant to get people off of the subscription model since F2P caters better to the player and brings in more money for the company.

The problem is that SOE is trying to make the F2P model do something it isn't meant to do. Which is interesting since they've already seen the benefits of the F2P model with EQ2.

Which is what makes this a failure. You can't take a model designed for one thing and make it do the exact opposite. Subscription based models require a commitment and restrict the income potential of the individual customer. The F2P model does not require a commitment and generates significantly more revenue per customer on average. The purpose of implementing a F2P model into a game that already has a subscription is to get people off of the subscription.

The servers are busy, what's your point? They just opened up to F2P and everyone (myself included) is coming back to partake in the nostalgia. In a month or two we'll see whether or not the F2P model they're trying to implement is successful or not.

As far as an actual study between F2P and P2P, there aren't enough mainstream MMOs that have started as F2P to make a proper study, but pretty much every mainstream MMO that switched has praised the F2P model as having saved the game, or significantly boosted revenue. Believe what you want, I'm not digging through piles of blogs and interviews looking for quotes.

As far as the hybrid model, the main reason it exists is because the F2P model in mainstream MMOs is still fairly new and games with a current subscription base aren't going to force people off of a subscription because those people will likely leave. Every MMO that's switched has had a very vocal group swearing off the game or condemning it because of the switch, yet they remain successful. And in cases like LotRO they can't eliminate subs because of the founders packages they offered. Playable demos are designed to bring in subs (what WoW is doing), F2P micro transactions are meant to bring in people without forcing them to make a commitment.

And where are subs supposed to spend all of this money in the cash shop that would make a hybrid more lucrative than a normal F2P? They already have everything unlocked, that leaves consumables and cosmetic items, everything they would still buy if they were on the F2P.

Lets do some quick numbers.

$15 a month for everything, or

(Not logged in so I'm remembering what prices I can and adding in others at a reasonable price to fix the plethora of crap they missed)
$3 per race
$7.50 per class
$5 per character slot
$2 per extra bag slot per character
$10 for shared bank access per character
$5 for J mercs per character
$2.50 per spell rank per character
$5 per 100 AA cap raise per character
$2 for the use of augs per character
$5 for the use of prestige items per character
$2 to remove the plat cap per character
and so on
and so on
and so on
...


Go look at DDO and LotRO. You could easily drop $100+ to unlock everything a subscription offers for $15.

I agree with this, I didn't quit because the $15 a month (not even 4 gal of gas), but because the population disappeared. What fun is a MMORPG without the MM? Now that I re-rolled on vox, I'm having a blast just running around with people, some of whom are even new! If this new population sticks I'll pony up the $15 without even a second thought to the money. I don't see f2p as a viable gaming strategy, it's a hook to refresh a dwindling population.

SOE's model isn't free to play. They're using that moniker as a marketing term to smokescreen their real model ('faux freemium').



It has absolutely nothing to do with catering to the player. That just happens to be a coincidental benefit that they can market under. Look, a true free to play model does not have a subscription option. AT ALL. Look into where this model originated and see how it compares to the models floating around. Turbine's model is the purest fusion of the two models (subscription and free to play) but subscribers produce revenue outside of subscriptions fees also. Subscriptions are just steady income (think: salary), microtransactions are more often larger but not as predictable (think: commission checks or tips). Turbine's model isn't designed to get people off subscriptions, it's designed to give them a choice. But either way, they're (more likely than not) going to be giving Turbine more than a mere $15 a month. It may not be on the first day of play, but they will fork over more than a vanilla subscriber.



I disagree. What makes this a failure is SOE is willfully duping people who don't know any better with this transparent enticement to subscribe. Make no mistake, this model was not designed to bring you (or me) back to the game. It was not. Is that not obvious by now? This model was designed to remove the barrier to entry (no upfront cost, every expansion except the most recent one, few restrictions a new player will actually notice (no frame of reference, remember), etc) and attract EQ neophytes. You know, the people who are bored with WoW but have never played anything BUT WoW (or maybe they ventured into Telara for a cup of coffee). They only want you if you're willing to give them $15 a month. If their intent was to bring you (and/or me) back in addition to new players, they would've copied Turbine's model, just like City of Heroes did. Notice how CoH rolled out a 'VIP'/subscriber only server when they went free to play? Why is that?

Again, this wasn't an accident and nobody 'got it wrong'. SOE did EQ's model this way on purpose. As I said in another thread, if you look at the other games and their models, you'll see those games (Turbine's, CoH, Champions and Star Trek Online, Fallen Earth (GamersFirst games in general, actually), etc) are designed to produce as much revenue as possible. They have a wide variety of items in their cash shops, they have subscription options but lots of cash shop exclusives. An example is autoleveling invention enhancements in City of Heroes. I'm a subscriber and I still see the value in paying some points for a set of enhancements that automatically upgrade themselves as the character levels. Can't get those in the game (regular IOs don't expire or lose effectiveness but their values are fixed at the level of the enhancement). EQ's system is designed to drive people to subscribe. It's basically a long term trial. Let's be real, can you really thrive post-70 with no augs, rk1 spells/discs, and a maximum of 1000 AA? Survive, sure, that's easy. But EQ still being a very social game, and until additional unlocks are introduced (if they ever are), you're going to drag down any group or raid you're in due to being underdeveloped. Later expansions' content was designed around characters having certain abilities, certain AA abilities, not to mention gear (remember the Underfoot hubbub about how "hard" it was at release?). It's essentially a trial until the 70s (when spells/discs gain ranks and augs really start to come into play heavily).

Don't fall for the okey-doke. If you don't want to (or can't) subscribe or reroll, EQ probably isn't for you right now. They're not going to roll out unlockers until they have a full picture of what's really going on. That should be a month or two (spike in numbers post-change with a steep dropoff of active players post-anniversary), then they'll port EQ2's unlocks to EQ most likely (I don't think they'd do anything different/unique for the ol' girl).

alwayslost, right now you're not wasting a dime. The only way the characters in your sig would be playable is if you paid $15 a month. That may change but then again, it may not.

Actually, if you need to make a judgement right now,t hen F2P has been a resounding success. Tons of people returned to the game, new subscriptions and market place items are going like hot cakes. There can be no other conclusion, if you must make one after 10 days, than that.

Obviously, though, it's far too premature to say it succeeded as well.

Back to the original question in the OP. There were some issues with the prestige not working correctly. If you had a power source, then it was causing things to be prestige even if they shouldn't have been. The defiant augments were accidentally flagged as prestige as well. That was all patched out on Friday, so hopefully it fixed some of your issues.

I did feedback to the devs that the prestige was too restrictive and that a more liberal policy should be considered (including letting augments up to TSS or there abouts be open to everyone and either popping augments off or giving everyone a bunch of augment removers to remove everything. We'll probably see more in the next patch, though I don't have an ETA.) Other CRT members were supportive of doing something with the augs to let more be used.

Since they fixed the newbie augs (newbie as in pre 70) so I am content right now. The only thing I am REALLY missing right now is a shared bank. If its like EQ2 later on they probably will implement more pay to unlock options. I would personally love to see them unlock 1 shared bank for example. They should also consider adding a unlock feature to give you more money per level.