Upcoming Changes for Free and Silver Members

I'm one of those that due to my lack of steady income can't afford to pay monthly at least not every month. I am able on occasion to spend $20-$75 on station cash and I have spent about $500 in the last year doing exactly that since March 16th of 2012 across my accounts. It is a viable income stream and the f2p aspect still allows me to enjoy this great game that I've played for 10 of it's 14 years without being excluded due to my financial situation. I'd love to buy RoF on several of not all of my accounts but $40 x 12 is too much for me

Maybe I was focusing on the part where you said

This does two things:

People who have a lot of alts get hosed / only get one viable character.
People who play only one character circumvent the restriction entirely.

Definitely not ideal, but I suppose anything would be an improvement over the current system. Ultimately "prestige" should have been a specific point in time, probably VoA/RoF.

No offense to anyone at SOE, but any item you loot while having an active sub should be use able after your sub expires. I paid for it and earned it while paying to play this game now you want people to pay to use items they already earned ?

Exactly. I think the only way to ensure that, while still enforcing prestige is via a check when the item is initially acquired.

if it isnt correct and soe makes oh so much money off this why are they taking it away? just something to think about

Probably making it easier to get into the game, there really is no like trial in the current version of how it is set up, if you spend the $7.50 on a class you end up not liking, then what are the chances you will try a different class? Same with the races. With it all unlocked you will probably more likely buy things that you know you need instead of taking a chance and getting burned.

On top of that it sort of helps some people who are Gold as well who want no restrictions, as now you get a much wider pool of classes (mainly) to play with, it isn't stuck with the Warrior / Cleric / Rogue / Wizard combo only.

yea but we had to upgrade from 1 month to 3, 6, or 12 to get golden.... yes we got ivory but to get better one we had to upgrade

trust me I am happy for silver player and free i just feel that gold members should get something out of all this..... i know we still have alot of other stuff not complaining about anything... i just think soe should give gold members something awesome to make the new silver and free say oh man i need to sub to gold now to get that.... besides the prestige and aas those def should be only gold... but like we should get like more bank slots or more shared..... stuff like that

I"m happy to see free and silver members get these upgrades.

Asking for prestige items/augs, more AA, etc to me is wrong. They should pay the sub like the rest of us.

The exception would be what Dreneth suggested, allowing folks to use/wear what they acquired while gold seems fair.

so i understand free and silver accounts cant use rk 2 spells can you change that we can at least mem them but only use rk 1 for it? kinda sucks atm...

You didn't actually fix the problem with your free to play model. Players still can't ever become equal to gold.

You admit that it's that way to incentivize subscriptions, but it mainly is just going to keep people away from the game instead. You should have handled subscriptions like TERA did.

I think all these changes are good for gold players and will keep them gold. I myself have 6 accounts but due to the awesome economy can only keep 2 gold at the moment. I have been playing support roles with the other ones depending on what I want to do. The only thing I would change other than what I see was changed is increasing the AA's for old accounts by 500 regardless of number. Simply put I have characters that had to basically burn aa's as expendables because there simply was no where to spend the experience. Increasing this number would make it possible for characters that were already over 1000 to experience some of the new expansions AA's and thus making it more likely for them to turn that account Gold.

I appreciate these changes, especially the ability to send parcels will be handy to me as a Silver tradeskiller; people often ask me to make things for them when I am otherwise occupied. Being able to Parcel them at my convenience is something I will use often. On a somewhat related note, I would probably be willing to pay SC to unlock the ability to send in-game emails.

However, I really, really want to see some way of unlocking Prestige items and augmentations.
I have no problem paying SC for the ability to have more AAs; give me some mechanism, whether it's per-slot, per-item, or per-character, of equipping Prestige gear. I will pay for it!

I also like the proposal of removing Prestige from gear older than the most recent Expansion or two.

You can already purchase the ability to use rank two spells in the Marketplace.

What exactly are they taking away? They are giving free and silver players more options to encourage more people to join the game and existing players to create new characters and make new accounts.

This all great news I like it and thank you Sony Ive been playing eq since its birth. I had retired for a year and came back when it was free as a silver memeber. I dont think you should have any restriction at all. You can make enough money at item mall Like 1000's of other MMORPG do.


But I biggest moan is dang change the hot zones already its been 3 years since last update and what happened to fables. Hot zones and fables were done every 6 months

I mean can they make it we can mem the rk 2 spells on silver but only use rk 1 spells when casted at the current time you cannot mem rk 2 spells without being gold or having unlockers... my one silver account has 5 levels he can mem with the spell gems provided by my main but i would have to make him gold to mem them get what i mean? lol

x12? so yo uspent 500bucks..on 12accounts in a year. tahts nowehre near comparable i mean 12accts is a bit much. anyway, can't do it now but you couldve gotten the whole 30bucks a year deal for first few months after ftp launched, since your budget is sporadic that wouldnt have gotten you 12accts necessarily but yo ucouldve gotten a year on one, or you could get 6months on one each time you have 72bucks to toss at SOE, then youd could work that toon's aas up and use that acct for baz etc to make plat to buy kronos etc. at this point you never have to pay a dime to eq again except for expansions due to kronos, and with these new lifting of restrictions, there's nearly nothing left TO sub for.

to those asking for other things to be raised , removed, or buyable...wahts to stop every single gold player in the game from buying those things and never subbing again? or only subbing for a month each year to remax aas? if they sell item unlockers for prestige and allow baz traders etc as some are asking here...there really would be no point in havingsubscriptions anymore, and they do that, open up everything left in the game reserved for gold..and theyre gonna have a LOT of people demanding refunds on their prepaid subs.

edit: at this point the only reason to sub is if you're a tank or you raid. everything else can be made do with unlockers pretty much, and be able to play the game at 95% capacity. why pay for 5% increase unless its the main thing you do in teh game (tanking/raiding wehre augs and prestige mean the most, aas can be unlocked slowly or with a month of grinding off a krono then back to silver) dont need mercs to raid, dont need mercs period if you know how to type /general LFG bazbot, aug, and prestige. none of those things are necessary except certain classes, everything else can be unlocked or gets grandfathered from temporary gold subs.

I personally am really glad they made these changes. Those asking for more more more, think about it. If they made prestige gear and a lot more AAs free, would you still be subscribing? A LOT more people would be answering no, and then there would be no more game. The F2P thing is indeed helping people try it out again.

I paid to play for about 10 years from about 3 weeks after launch. I returned last month to check out the F2P version and at first I was really excited about getting my warrior going again but then I began hunting in HoT with a friend and found out that all the t3-t4 armor is prestige and 1k aa really doesn't buy enough to tank in those zones... I've been told that if I go gold to use the armor I will have to remain gold to continue to use it.... I feel like I'm being extorted, pay the protection money or go back to being a ... not much incentive to even bother trying to play my warrior unless I intend to start forking over a monthly fee. Frankly I'd trade every single one of these so called upgrades for the ability to unlock prestige items, that restriction and only 1k aa where multiple thousands of aa are needed are what hold high end players back. I might even poney up the cash for a few months subscription if I didn't know i'd just be setting myself up for disappointment the moment I couldn't keep the account going.

And for those of you doubting the $ contribution of the f2p and silver players, in the month i've been back I'm 100% positive i've spent more than a gold subscriber pays in a month for a sub and I am just one person... I gaurantee you there are many others like me out there. I would even consider spending more but since EQ is about the gear hungriest rpg I've ever played I am begining to question my desire to bother since once I do lvl up I won't be an effective group member... in fact i'll be a huge drain on resources to any gold subscriber who picks me up since I can't wear the gear i'll need. For that matter why would I even want to buy the expansions I don't own if I know I won't be able to explore them with any reasonable chance of success unless I also pay for a sub

All in all these upgrades seem nice but fail to address the real problems of a f2p/silver account.... why do I need a shared bank when I can just make a f2p account and pass most everything I need? (yes I know there are exceptions to this)...Why do I care if I have more classes/races when they are all going to suck once I get to the high end? If I could unlock the prestige stuff with SC or if prestige items earned before or during a sub would stay useable I might feel like I could actually be helpfull to the gold members but as things stand now I don't see myself paying for anything else.

Bottom line is, it is all well and good to draw old players back to EQ but if they feel like they have only been lured there to bleed more $ out of them rather than to enhance the game experience of all involved, which includes you Goldies unless you don't want more competent characters to group/raid with, they probably won't stay long. I quit in the first place because I was tired of the p2p model, why would I want to saddle myself with it again?

heh sorry for the long post, I just had to vent what has been building since HoT =)