EverQuest II adding "Free to Play"
 

Sony Online Entertainment has announced a new EverQuest II feature that brings the free to play MMO model to the game called EverQuest II Extended. This new service will be applied to the NEW EQII Extended servers only. The service will not be available on the existing servers.

You can read more about the service in their official announcement. You can also see a breakdown of pricing vs what you get for free here.

So what do you guys think? Good for the game? Bad for the game? Reply here.

Bad for the current Live servers. Might be good for the game in the long run but that does not help those of us who currently play.

Silat

I'm kinda glad they aren't allowing F2P users on the old servers mainly because most EQ2 players at least on my server are well seasoned MMO players. I just hope it doesn't take away from the population of the regular servers.

It can't help but take away from live.

1. There will be no trial after extended launches for live except recruit a friend.
2. The platinum Pass is $200 but nets you $60 station cash and includes the box so you save $15-$45 for that. So you are looking at a real cost for a year sub as $95-$125 assuming you currently buy lon or station cash.
3. Their will be stat items on extended that are not on live.
4. You will get bonus items for a platinum subscription on extended that are not on live.
5. You get 3 extra character slots on extended with platinum.
6. You get 12 shared bank slots extra.

Only downside (besides f2p economics and playerbase) is you only get to choose from 4 races without more money.

You will be able to transfer to extended from live but not vice versa.

So poulation will leave live and not come back. Also new population will not be added as there will be no trial for it they will be redirected to extended.

Silat

I agree it's bad for live server.

It redirects all new players to F2P stopping flow of fresh blood to Live servers.
With time Live server players will have to move to F2P to have someone to play with - leaving a lot behing, guids, friends etc.

Then player base is already split bewteen servers. Now it will be spread even thiner between F2P/Live.

Those are some good points I didn't think of. At first I was glad older servers weren't part of the f2p but now thinking over what you guys said I agree it might bleed the old servers dry. I don't think it will attract any of my guild mates to move but we wont be getting any new blood.

Personally, I think the entire purpose behind this is to bleed the live servers dry. They're turning it into Freerealms 2, because that's where the money lies.

For veteran players, or just anyone who likes the game as it is now.. there are no positives at all that I can see coming from this.

That's exactly what I see happening unless they change things down the line. There has to be either some huge incentive for someone subscribed on the F2P side to start over on the regular side OR some way for them to transfer from F2P to regular (with some minor restrictions).

I also think it will kill the live servers over time.

While constantly players will leave the live server no new players will join to fill up the gap. So while it will not kill the live servers directly after ~ 1 year I think only 50% of the current live servers will be left. An other year later it will be an other 50% less and so on.

On the other side you can't really play bronze or silver. You won't even be able to equip loot you find in Black Burrow or Wailing Caves and you won't be able to carry even all the quest items you find on the way. The only way to play on EQ2E is to pay at least as much as you pay now (,if you hate SC, like I do).

All in all I think it is a bad concept.

The way it's set up now will kill the Live servers.

You won't be able to transfer from F2P -> Live. So nobody that's using it like a "trial" like SoE, will ever switch after getting their character up in level. No new blood at all coming to Live.

You can't really transfer your character from Live -> F2P at all, because all you get to keep is NO-TRADE and ATTUNED items. No Money, no harvestables, or any other misc items (like say house items). This pretty much means people from live aren't going to spend $35 to move a character over.

Of course, I still think this is a big ruse so that at FanFaire they can announce how while they were going to make it separate, they "listened" to the playerbase and are bringing F2P to all the normal servers to prevent them from dying.

And, as much as I don't want F2P model coming to the Live servers (especially if they don't grandfather us in on the races), its the only way that the current population on Live is not going to get the shaft.

I agree that the way it is planned to be implemented will bleed the live servers dry. I kind of hope that isn't the idea behind the implementation, but they must know what kind of effect this will have on the current servers.

That being said, it's really a no-win either way for the current subscription players. If it's implemented the way it is set up now, then the live servers will slowly, but surely, bleed players out, and without a free-trial and all new players being directed towards F2P...the writing is on the wall. However, if they went ahead and integrated their current F2P model onto live servers in addition to the current sub model, many of the current players will revolt and up and quit, especially the end-game raiders who seem mostly opposed to the "pay2win/F2P" implementation.

I understand why they are doing it, Smed has said for years that F2P is "the future of the MMO industry" and he's probably right, at least from a business standpoint. From what I've seen so-called F2P brings in much more revenue then the current subscription model.

Still though, I don't agree with what they're doing, they should've just left EQ2 alone and just continued to make their new games F2P. If EQ2 was really in such bad shape population wise, which I really don't think it was by all estimates I've seen, they should've just did what they did w/ EQ, continue to support it, and get what money they can from it while it lasts. When it is no longer profitable just shut it down...that would've been much easier to accept then watching a game that I've put so much time into continue to operate, but in a way that I don't want to have any part of.

While it might be bad for the Live servers (in the long run)... the Live servers (in the long run) were pretty much on the long slide to server-merges anyway.

This way at least, there is a safety net. The character copy is a COPY, not a transfer (minus gold), and if there is a growing population on X, at least Live will continue to see expansions.

Anyway... as a subscriber, I'll already have Gold access, so I'll probably check it out myself.

The problem is that you've accelerated how quickly the Live servers are going to die out.

As for a safety net, it's not really. If I can't take my house items, my items that I received for events, my harvestables for my crafters, and my considerable amount of platinum, I'm not copying, I'm just quitting the game. Thats too much effort that SoE basically just told me "You lose! haha!" over.

The one way transfer is only for now and it is a copy not a transfer. SJ said they will change the copy to a full transfer back and forth later on. I am not a F2P fan but something has to happen to give live back to this game.

Decent concept - bad implementation
 

As others have said, with no new stream of people going to the live servers, this most certainly spells the demise of the live servers. Hopefully they will re-think this and add F2P to the existing live servers instead.

Unless Sony upgrade the client significally to improve performance. Even the F2P server wont have many people on it.

Many may try it, but when they will try crank the graphic quality and see how bad their new comp handle this game, they will simply leave to other better games.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game, this is the lore I prefer. But client graphics speed is getting on my nerve. They could have done things long ago. But no, they only change bit by bit things. But now they may have their back on the wall. They have to generate more revenues. The fan base is shrinking on both EQ1 and EQ2.

I'm very sorry for my rant. I just had to let it out.

Martin.

Bad news
 

I don't see any way what so ever that this could be good for the live servers, most likely it will kill them.

I see this becoming a game of haves and have-nots based soley on their fluid cash flow. At least the way it is now everyone that is willing to put forth the effort to level up and progress, then work hard to get good gear is on equal footing. I don't think that will be the case on the free to play servers and will lead to poorer overall experiance.

As for them being able to transfer from the free server to here....absolutely not! Its hard enough to find people who will take the time and effort to learn to play the toon and find out how to maximize it without the server being bombarded with one-day wonders. Right now if your wearing top gear then you likely have earned it. (Yes I know you can buy gear in a manner of speaking now, but you had to earn the plat in the first place.)

I do see how ever the need for SOE to make money, I do sorely wish that they would invest in Eq3 with completely redid game engine, instead of going to a free to play model. I feel that doing that would keep current customers, attract new ones, and keep the door open for a longer period of time.

As for the free to play.....there are a ton of them out there, most with much better game engines....whats the draw to SOE going to be?

Another SOE bad idea

Lvl Cap
 

I actually like the idea, but i agree with others that it will bleed the current servers dry unless they lower the lvl cap on the f2p servers.
If they lower the cap to 50 on those servers, they will still attract new ppl, and they will be forced to the current servers after a while

Ogier - Nektulos : Noob for life

That is actually a pretty decent idea...

I stated this on official forums.

They need to scrap the separate extended servers and integrate ftp into live servers with one caveat - rmt of statted items would have to be restricted to Exchange servers. This would actually help the game and the live servers at the same time. We already have rmt on the live servers of fluff items - so it wouldn't really change things except lots of new people trying the game and reinvigorating the live servers.

About the FTP server. Once people realize that it cost more to play on it, than the live servers. THey will come back to the live servers.

If they do nothing but the FTP option, then you can only get the following:
2 character slots
only certain classes/races
CAN'T have Legendary/fables
ONLY have up to adept (can't do anything with adept really)
CAN"T have more than 5 gold (or 20 gold for 10.00/1-time-fee)
CAN"T send email
and Can't access BROKER system.

They will see that after you do the math you will be spending more money (like SOE really wants).

and again for ALL NEW THINGS, people have to try it out, and some might like it, but most ALMOST always GO BACK to they original.

So if you're worried, don't be, in a few months they will be back to their "already developed" characters.

I know I tryed it myself, and found it very laggy, and the lack of being able to do certain stuff made it just not interesting, I dont' have much money, so I watch what I spend, and did the math, and figure that it will save me money to stay on the Live servers. and like Exchange servers and role playing servers you can only transfer certain items. I know SOE will make the same rules or similiar ones, for the FTP server.

Anyways, Happy playing everyone.

My son and I tried out the EQ2-Extended.

EQ1 back in 1999 was my original gateway drug. I left EQ1 back I think summer 04 (They'd had a nifty 5 yr anniversary event where they introduced new "fabled" rare-spawn versions of original EQ mobs, which was cool but I got a bit burned out after camping a spawn for literally 39 hrs, and was extremely frustrated by a couple bugs, in particular being blocked in an epic quest line by a known bug for months).

Now, over 6 yrs later, back in Norrath. Kinda cool. :D

The freebie version of the game is good, cuz honestly I'd been curious about EQ2, but it didn't get a lot of positive buzz. And for at least a while there was no way I'd play a SOE game. So we tried it.

There are parts that are just stooopid. In a social MMO game, making newbie trial players unable to talk to other players... :mad: I guess it makes it harder for gold-farmers to spam or whatever...

But the game itself seems really well done, and for the first time in years we both had the horrible sick feeling of OMG look at the time :eek: Immersed to the point you forget that you needed to sleep.