You can unlock TBM now...

The vast majority of content is unlocked, but requesting raids and missions still require tasks and such to be completed first. That however is not what the thread is actually about, the OP is actually asking for TBM to be released as F2P; it was due previously but was not done when RoS came out for reasons.

If you understand that, but think that everything except the newest expansion should be free then that is even crazier than thinking that all of the progression except for the newest expansion's should be meaningless.

I should have clarified. I meant all expansions should be unlocked except for the newest one. content inside the expansions should remain locked until the player acquires the ability to request it.

wow..

F2P accounts now pi##ed an think they have rights to demand stuff of dev's because of the way TBL was tuned..

#metoo is powerful.. oohhh soo powa !

I thought TDS was still not unlocked.

That would be a horrible business plan. Requiring players to buy an expansion to get the 2-3 (or even 4) newest expansions is not that bad. The standard version of the expansion is like $35, so divide that by 2 you get $17.50 per expansion , by 3 you get $11.67 per expansion, or by 4 you get $8.75 per expansion. People who are complaining about TBM not having been made free now ignored the chance to get TBM, EoK, and RoS for just $17.50 back in September/October.

Eventually, DGC will restart adding expansions to the free content side, but everyone needs to remember that all the waiting does is make the next expansion that much more of a steal to buy for those who have not bought an expansion since TBM or before.

TDS is free content. It is not unlocked in the "zones being open without doing progression" sense. The OP's whole rant was about free content, not the opening of content that is locked behind progression.

I've suggested they just make them Heirloom before multiple times over the course of many many years .. and nothing has been done .. so I'm suggesting a new course of action for them that they can make money on .. I'm sure they like making money at least one would think they would but well you know the saying you can lead a horse to water, but you cant make them drink..

1. add an Heirloom unlocker in the marketplace where everything in /claim (experience potions exempt) becomes heirloom
2. and an heirloom container in marketplace (one time use) and a person can put 1 item from /claim only to make it heirloom.. they could sell them for 10 to 20 bucks a pop..
3. just be a considerate dev and realize these items should of been Heirloom from the start and make it so .

items that are only claimable by a single character on an account should be heirloomable .. I believe iirc most everything is already but those few specific items ..
aspect of the brook an old LoN Illusion .. 99% of the petamorph/metamorph and polymorph illusions are heirloomable . and I'm not 100% positive but I believe the majority of the LoN illusions were heirloomable..

they want to make money , but they refuse to do some simple things .. instead they work on a LUCK stat that not many people wanted..

they could put items from past expansions in the marketplace .. couple of the houses bixie hive, tree, ship come to mind .. I know id buy the bixie hive in a heartbeat .. I missed that expansion ..

Lol dude come to some senses. Since daybreak took over in Feb 2015 the only content they unlocked to free2play was The Darkened Sea. Ain't nobody logging in anymore to find a group to do Combine Dredge or Brothers Island. If people could play the newer expansions they just might subscribe or buy a krono then maybe buy some DBCash.

If some random was actually serious about spending money on this game they would have spent it on an expansion or two over the last 3 years. It does not make business sense to just give away your entire product for free. People have had 3 opportunities since TBM released to unlock TBM at half off and yet dropping less than twenty bucks per account is to much for them. I doubt anyone that is this cheap is going to spend any real money on the game in the first place. If they just give everything away for free what incentive would there be for anyone to spend any money on the game besides wanting to see the lights stay on? Simply saying "I have created xyz # of accounts and I don't want to pay for content on all of them but because I have spent some money on the game I should be entitled to free crap" as the OP has stated is disturbing. This is not how business works and it most certainly is not how life works unless you are some kind of freeloader just looking to benefit from the contributions of those around you.

lol.. always the same.

EQ is not Free2Play.
EQ is Free2Pay.

Whoever defines it different is blindfolded or has eaten the usual programming without even noticing. The whole concept in business and every part - esp. in the high price economics runs it. It is the typical concept every "I want to make my millions"-participant gets taught:

a) Lure people into a cheap entry option and make them interested/addicted.
b) Sort them out so that you get the ones with the money bag and the incentive to pay more.
c) Sell them the real deal and provide a way to do only the minimum to keep them on bord
d) -> addon for computer games: hide everything which fills the ego behind micro transactions, so that the addicted does not really get aware how much he pays

So yes, Free2Play is a wordplay, it is not what the word stands for or what it implies in the common thought and it is common practice. But still there are some believers who have no clue about how the industry works or simply ignore this fact.

Look behind it, see clear, accept it or fight it. But to defend this system it is only possible if somebody is completely blind from addiction and has no clue about todays economics.

There are two principles - one old, one young:

1. Money first, customer second.
2. Customer is king, money comes because customer is happy.

The (1.) is typcial from US companies and the typical mindset in the US. Meanwhile in Europe and esp. in our country, this mindset influences the whole industry. This was completely different some decades ago. (2.) was a standard a very long time. Meanwhile I would even say that this is a grey zone towards fraudulent behavior. It is visible in many ways - look into the smartphone contracts which say you have a flat rate and in small letters you get the constrains about the minimum quantitiy you are allowed to suck before the data rate drops into oblivion. And there are still people who are so mind-dulled that they defend this system. There are countries which have meanwhile forbidden this strat but even in our country this is the same problem - besides the usual corruption in the government...

Another solution is revolution or money into the pocket of a high end lawyer. As long as nobody complains, nothing will change.

So if you want to reason it then look how high end economic specialists teach how to do it. This is how the whole market of F2P works.

You never get meanwhile, what the package promises - as long as you don't read the small letters on the backside (and even then you get sometimes your surprise)...

TDS is unlocked for sure Trump Derangement Syndrome. The age of entitlement is upon us!

I doubt anyone who don't want to spend any money would choose live server. Giving an old expansion for free can be incentive for some players to spend a Krono on their free account(s), buy some AAs after autogrant, then do old expansion progression with their main paying account. It is also useful for making their main acount(s) busy and keep paying.

They can add little value for expansion purchase or give it for free and expect some more subscriptions, and they have chosen former business model "right now".

So someone else made the decision for you to create "way too many" accounts?
You play the game the way you want, they release and unlock expansions at the rate they want.
The title of your thread could not come off more entitled.

I've said it on similar threads and other's have said it. Wait until October when the current expansions usually go on sale and buy them.

$34.99 TBL standard price, with no sub (includes TBM, EOK, ROS TBL)
$17.50 TBL 50% off Fall sale price (assumed based off historical DBG practice)

~$4.38 TBM's bundled Fall sale price
~$4.38 EOK's bundled Fall sale price
~$4.38 ROS's bundled Fall sale price
~$4.38 TBL's bundled Fall sale price

In my opinion, it's more than reasonable for DBG to stop granting old expansions, because they usually off that deal. If you're not willing to spend that little money for that much content, you're probably not going to spend any money on EQ!

I'm a casual and I'm considering buying the Marketplace items for the 12 Days of Frosfell achievement (unlocks a merc.) which costs about as much as those expansions. In, brief they usually offer the old expansions on sale (albeit bundled), buy in the Fall or stop complaining.

I wouldn't even complain if I was F2P, I'm all access and only have 21 of 25 expansions. So until those of us that pay a monthly fee get the expacs free I don't think F2P will.

Well aint that one helluva assumption. We should get you a Crystal Ball and start calling you the Great Kalderasha

Yea, we have a difference in opinion on what a good deal is. I can also wait every year until black friday to buy what I need - but that kind of defeats the entire purpose.

IMO, DBG should stop granting the content of an expansion for free,

After all DBG is not a charity shop, but a business.

Stop being wanna give me everything for free, but start to contribute to making the game roll on.

I don't really see a counter argument there. $17.50 is a month or two of subscription, or a few market place mounts, illusions, etc. Relative to other things DBG sells, $17.50 for more content is a bargain. The other alternative would be DBG uping the subscription cost again or just not making new content.

EQ is a niche game, and probably being subsidized to some extent by Planetside and players willing to shell out money for extra cosmetics and convientences. I'm dumbfounded how anyone can complain about the pricing structure more than I'm dumbfounded how we keep getting NEW CONTENT close to 20 years after release. Aside from EVE online & Ultima Online, I don't see any other mmo's from my youth still running. Those games are PVP oriented so the Devs need to worry less about new content. EQ is a lot harder to maintain since it's a PVE game, we're paying to keep the ENVIRONMENT fresh.

There was no counter argument, I was just pointing out how silly his comment was. Telling someone to wait until one month out of the whole year to make a purchase *rolls eyes*

His implication was, that offering expansions up in the market place wouldn't make Daybreak any money, that people just wanted the expansions for FREE from farming plat or whatever. It completely ignores the fact that, if Daybreak priced the expansions at say, something crazy like 3500 DBC, it would take 7 months of subscribing to the game (111$) to purchase an older expansion pack. Sounds like a pretttyyy good deal for Daybreak to me.

Also, it completely fails to take into account the large majority of people that have alt accounts, maybe something small like a 3 boxer, who would purchase an extra 500 - 1000 DBC (5 - 10$) in order to gain access to one of the expansions in the Daybreak store.

Daybreak COULD make money off of say, TBM or EoK by putting them in the store all year round because people could essentially buy an expansion by only spending 5-10$ if they had accumulated previous DBC from months subscribed to the game.

That's why I didn't offer him a counter argument, I believe he basically only said what he said in a deliberate attack towards me, because his argument was so nonsensical I can't imagine an sane person putting it forth.

I thought F2P was stupid the day they announced it and I still do. It was always I heavily reworded free trial. The game is P2P and always has been.

Though I actually disagree with keeping multiple expansions relevant. The older the game gets and the more fragmented the player base is keeping the last 1-2 expansions relevant and providing a quick catchup method keeps the playerbase together and larger.

But after 20 years EQ is what it is and at this point doing massive changes to things like that most likely wouldn’t bring back those who left anyway (though auto grant AA is great).

EverQuest is as free to play as rotten bananas are free to eat. You can eat them for free and nothing bad does happen but their taste is old and the demand for them is small.

By demanding cash for new expansions Daybreak is choking itself and EverQuest as the player community is getting fragmented more and more over now 25 expansions and the classic zones. The "pay for new expansion" business model is a big barrier for players and so for the company too. 15-19 years ago it was necessary to finance EverQuest by selling new expansions but today sold expansions are a rather small fragment of the total income that EverQuest players do produce for Daybreak. Also every player has a budget that he is willing to spend for EverQuest every month and instead of paying $35 (€31 ) once a year players would spend this money for marketplace stuff or gold memberships so Daybreak won´t loose any income by offering new expansions for "free".

Another problem is that in the very past we had big expansions like Ruins of Kunark, Scars of Velious and The Shadows of Luclin with 17-28 zones. Since then a downward spiral started and the expansions became smaller and smaller. The last 4 expansions only offer 6-7 zones but they did/do cost about the same like the really big expansions from the past. Its ~23 zones vs ~6 zones at the same price ! We players are not stupid, why should we pay so much money for such few zones now ? A zone is only worth about $1.50 dollar and not $5.83 like now. This is a difference by nearly factor 4.