People are talking about more server merges and there are no people for me to play with as I am levelling up. But surely if you want to make the game welcoming to new people, you should not withhold such an important thing like Silver? Playing without Silver is really bad. The merc is totally useless in fact, the tank goes splat, and the healer goes OOM in seconds. Also not being able to read or chat in the main chat is really bad, and the AA limit is so low that your character really starts to become a burden on the group and dangerously weak in the higher levels. So I subscribe on one character, I really have to, is the only way to get a good merc, plenty of AAs, and the ability to read chat. But if I multibox (and lets be honest, this game would be unbearable for a lot of people without multiboxing), I really shouldn't have to subscribe on all of them. Old timers are content with their boxes on silver, but us new players really miss out. There is no way for us to buy more AAs, or buy a better merc, so the only option is to subscribe on all the accounts which is really expensive, or to sub on a main guy and then have other characters in the group with very low AA cap, very weak merc, no chat, no prestige, etc. I am sure I am not alone in thinking that I would never pay for multiple subs. So currently I am spending on 1 sub and nothing else. If you gave the option to buy silver, I would buy that on multiple accounts. You are missing out on money in other words. It doesn't matter that silver is cheaper than all access, because people who have one main character will only want all access anyway, and most people who box wont want to be buying many subs. So I am sure the silver idea was not taking away from the all access sales. Also you should bear in mind that for us new-ish players, we have to buy the expansion on all accounts too. So if I buy a years sub on just one account, and then buy the expansion on just 3 accounts, it would cost about $225. And that still leaves me with 2 gimpy characters with a worthless merc, very low AA cap, etc. At the very least I would need to sub the other 2 characters for a month to up their cap, so that would be $255, and even after all that money, they would still be using a merc that is very bad which after spending that sort of money, is not acceptable. The people who only play one character will argue that the price of the game is reasonable, and some people hate multiboxers. But both of those points aren't really relevant to many of the players in this game. I have nobody to group with, up to 70 I didn't even see a single other player to group with... and even then it was only 1 guy (who was boxing 3 characters). So boxing is here to stay, most people do it, and the game would be unbearable for a lot of people without it. But the f2p model doesn't take any of this into account. Silver would at least fix this, and let people sub on their main character and have 2 silver characters that aren't as strong but at least not dragging down the entire group with useless mercs and very low AA cap. TL-DR: I can live without the chat because my main character has a subscription so can use the chat. I can live without prestige items because there are alternatives. I can live without the baz because again my main can just do it. But I can't live with my other characters having such a low AA cap and such a bad merc. I would pay to fix this, but I wont pay 3 subscriptions.
I only play with one character and have a sub, so im not sure how it works, but doesn't silver have AA and merc limitations aswell? Are silver boxes good enough to carry you through the higher levels at all? or are you just trying to postpone the inevitable?
I really like this idea. I have about 4 toons that right now are ftp that i can't afford to go all access on. Silver I could live with.
I don't really know, I haven't reached high level yet. Silver characters probably aren't good enough for raids and end game stuff. But at least for levelling up I would get a better merc and the better AA cap. The merc is still only apprentice but at least it can be max rank which isn't as useless. And the AA cap is 1000 which is so much better than 250. At least with 1000 you get all the essential stuff. I think Silver is just a much fairer option for newbies and alt-aholics etc. Hardcore end game people will still want a real sub.
But Silver has some disadvantages: - I would not make a longer break without being temptated to play - Silver would drive me into paying an account fully because I would take my toons and get them further - Silver would give me 2 more toons to play, Free mostly has locked exactly the toons I would play if not at gold... mostly always.... (how stupid is that btw? I have toons and on free/silver I cannot get access to them) So Free Account is much better: - Free has always the same -> "oh my god... so bad... not worth the hazzle... better don't play....he dies in one round in the higher levels... and my main is complete and boring... So to avoid playing EQ at all, better let Free be Free and not Silver because Free is so useless in higher levels that I even would not like to take a toon with me and play with a full account together with a freebie But honestly - Free sucks! But hey... perhaps it brings more money in the pocket because most would play Silver instead Gold (which is as a main a ridiculous playfield in the end game).
My free to play accounts are like backup singers and I doubt I would go silver if offered on those. You get more characters on your all access than you would on 3 silver accounts which would be the same price a month - $15 for all access with 14 slots vs $15 ($5 x 3 accounts) for Silver with 12 (4 slots each account) slots.
there will be no server merges. The only people talking about them are a few guilds having recruitment issues - in august. Which is historically the WORST time for guild attendance. In reality, if they were serious about solving their problems, they would either: A. cultivate new members instead of waiting for them to come knocking B. Merge with another guild
no one is going to take a silver account to raids, they have the same limitations as a free account iirc. crappy merc, 1000 AA cap, cant wear prestige augs or gear.
F2P characters are limited to 250 AA's at all levels, and silver is limited to 1000? That severely sucks hard! I have 3 lvl 85-90 characters (all heroic), 2 are gold for the merc cause like you said, the tier 2 f2p mercs are simply garbage and utterly worthless. I play them to twink out my "main" characters, the guys i'm leveling from the ground up (monk, bard, cleric). Monk is silver, other are f2p. I'm stopping at certain levels to AA xp, and if i'm limited to 250 aa's on my f2p account, then 2 of my 3 characters are approaching their cap fast, and only at lvl 71, which will suck a lot. So my choices are the following: go gold for one month to get the AA's, then back to f2p (i'm under the impression you keep these aa's once you go gold and then go back to f2p, am I right?) - downside is I don't get to enjoy leveling my character, I am buying power instead of buying the ability to gain power (like silver is) live with characters who will constantly underperform once I reach around lvl 80 and above.
auto grant stops at around lvl 99, but f2p lvl caps at 105 .. so you could lvl your toons up to 100 and then buy a krono, autogrant youself 8-10k AAs and yes you keep tham after your account lapses. buying a krono is just like paying for a sub, so yes i guess all of us who pay a sub are buying power in a sense, but its just a game, might as well have fun with it
Not to be mean, but to do it right now would not be the smartest. At least if you only got 1 krono. I would wait for expansion to get out and then get 1 more expansion of AA that you get presently with autogrant and then earn aa like mad for 1 month. Autogrant gives you ROF aa and when expansion out you also get cotf aa. But can then earn manual TDS/TBM. And you can earn those within 1 month if you work hard.
I don't have a problem with buying the AA's with a paid subscription, in fact, I like the idea. however, i'd like a different option (silver) where you pay less, or a one time fee, and it allows you to gain those AA's, but you have to level them yourself. This is sort of a hybrid of gold and F2P now. Gold gets you 8-10k aa's without doing anything for $15 dollars roughly, one time fee (if your character is at max level or around there). F2P gets you 250 AA's, and you have to earn them yourself. There is a massive gap there. Gold gets you a J5 merc (with a easy quest), F2P gets you a Apprentice 2 merc - massive gap there. Silver bridges the gap and is free also (but only available to certain people). It gives 1000 aa (you have to earn) and an apprentice lvl 5 merc. Silver should be able to be purchased for a one time fee, or a lesser monthly fee ($5 a month?) and allow the following: 1) Access to a J1 merc through a quest (gold starts with J1 and quests to j5, silver should be able to quest up to J1). 2) Access to maybe 4-5k aa's, but you have to level them up yourself 3) Not sure on prestige, but should be able to wear I'd say with any paid subscription That's a nice middle ground for both. For me, my gold characters would stay the same (2), but I would add 4 silver characters. As it sits now, those 4 characters will be F2P with one month purchase of gold when they get of level instead of constant silver.
The OP says "But surely if you want to make the game welcoming to new people, you should not withhold such an important thing like Silver? A new player knows not of silver accounts that were grandfathered in....They know Free to play, and Gold when subscribed. What you are asking for is a free pass to play your alt accounts without paying since silver is "playable" but free to play is not in your opinion. Unfortunately DBG is in this business to make money, were you even around when Free to play wasn't even a part of the game? And the only way to play was to subscribe, they gave us a free option and now people want more for free. Not surprising.
Are they even trying to bring in new players? I cant remember the last thing they did for new players.
F2P is supposed to give you a "taste" to hook you on the "product". Giving gold subscribers the option to buy/earn a silver account might be a nice reward but if new people want to play more of the game, they should have to pay something more than a one time fee.
You can go from FTP(green) to silver with just spending 5$ on cashshop, or use a krono once. so silver is still in game, you get more AAs/better merc, and if you use krono or pay for 1 month sub you get all the Autogranted AAs, can get more AAs to keep when sub/krono expires and you can use a better merc to help you get those, with multiple accounts you can rotate between them what one gets a sub/krono a month you dont have to get all at once, if you are FTP there is no reason to buy the latest expansions you will have VERY Difficult time killing stuff for about any class. I main one char that is always all access and i have couple other accounts that i rotate kronos to get more AAs or i just keep them Silver for while, its not hard to do if you know what you are doing. if you are FTP you have to really plan your AAs paths what you specialize the chars on otherwise they will be crap.
New accounts cannot be Silver anymore. It's gone from the game. Only old accounts at the time it existed can be. You can go All Access for a month, get the AA's and then drop back to F2P though.
Unless you are low level or have already gained your AAs and went back down to Silver, high level is still not really playable for Silver. You can just go gold once to get those AA you need on the box. Spend the month farming AA. If you want the chat, just use the account you pay for gold on. I'm sure the reason FTP cant use general is they do not want people spamming general with third party sites.
Yeah, I always planned to subscribe all my accounts when they are high level to get all the auto grants. But I have lots of accounts because I like to box different characters together so I would have to subscribe several times. I only need a month for each but it would still cost quite a lot. I wish there were bulk deals for this game. Also after the subscribed month, they have the AAs but they will still have the weak merc :/ Ideally there would be a bulk deal for multiple subs, and a silver deal for the 1000AA cap and slightly better merc. At least I could use that on my twinks and just sub them in the high levels.
Silver gave you: *1k AAs instead of the 200 *4character slots instead of the two *access to normal channels instead of these dumb restrictions. You had to buy increased AA-caps with insane amounts of SC - don't remember the value, but it was a LOT for the 100AAs you could then get. You still had the same restriction on spell-levels and mercs unless you bought those things individually on a per-character basis as well. And you could STILL only origin a new character in CR, not in any of the old cities - that was gold only. A shame! In retrospect, silver was not that good of a deal. Except perhaps for the extra channels - iirc it was 5USD to buy silver for the account and you had that. So yes, a bit more flexibility and more "accomplishment" before you reached the limit. Especially with the AAs, it was even worse than a bad deal - you could easily pay for a year's sub with what you would have had to invest for a half-decent AA-cap. And you then did not get autogrant either, had to get these AAs yourself. Which had the added advantage of you getting what you wanted, if you were CAREFUL. E.g. a level 105 ROG with SoS2 - can't do that with autogrant alone nor with Free2Play, but could do it with silver and the 1k AAs you had to spend. I'd actually like silver for the 4character slots so i could consolidate some tradeskill-mule-accounts. But other than that... it's not worth it.
