Is there anything that remains in membership after it ends? Or basically, only thing you get out is while it's active? I have no interest in becoming a member if there is not some residuals. Other games I've played, there are permanent lasting perks for getting membership, even for a single month. If they're too greedy to offer such things, they don't get my business .
You get AAs via 'auto-grant'. They stay. May be other things, I haven't played in a while. But the AAs are pretty substantial to your character.
The only thing that remains if you don't pay is pretty much your character. Only for paid: Access to general chat. Have to be paid or Silver to get that. Use the J5 merc. Rank II spells (unless you purchase the rank II increase for free/Silver accounts that is offered in the marketplace Overseer ability to do 5 quests - F2P and Silver only get 3 and tons more. Nice chart at the bottom of this link that illustrates what is what https://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Free_to_play
The meaningful things you don't get to keep (wearing) are just prestige armor and augs and higher level mercs. Everything else you earn you get to keep. Things that stick around... AA from autogrant or earned Additional Overseer slots Any Rk2/3 spells you have mem'ed DBC accrued People on friends lists from general So if you want to not have a sub permanently, level to 85 and sub for a month, you can bank x2 your level in AA (so 170AA). Level to 105, sub for a month, Autogrant ends at EoK presently so you will have all autogranted AA. Spend your 170 banked AA and then grind out as many AA as you can, leaving 210 banked if you don't need them. Next expansion, RoS AA will probably be autogranted, so sub again each cycle. Also the perks are for the account, so if you want to maximize short term memberships, level multiple characters to the point where you don't have enough AA, then sub for a month in log in all the characters for the autogrant.
You keep the rank 2/3 spells you've memmed, but you can't cast them, unless you buy the rank 2 unlocker from the store.
I honestly wish FTP would go away. People who act like they're owed something because they play my game for free really aren't the kind of people I want in my community. If you enjoy the game, why wouldn't you support the game by subscribing????????? At the very least, stop whining about what you don't get when you play for free.
And it's a whopping $15 a month. As everyone has said before its not much. But if folks don't want to pay up then there are plenty of other free games
I don't think the OP was whining. If you get a month of stuff and then it is taken away, then why buy the month is a reasonable question. However, if they spend that same $15 in the DBC store for a specific illusion they want, they have made the same contribution to the game but got to play it in the way they want. FTP also has many other benefits, such as keeping people logged in who need to pinch pennies for a few months. Maybe money is tight and a family of 4 is going to cancel the kids accounts but keep playing. That's $30 a month, and if money is tight and food is on a budget, that's several days worth of food. I just like FTP because when I tell people they should try EverQuest, content and the fact that the older engine plays on any cheap old laptop are my biggest pitches.
OP wasn't asking if his purchase would endure. He specifically asked a question, then framed it with "If they're too greedy to offer such things, they don't get my business" I never said his question was unreasonable. I stated that people who whine about what they don't get as a free player are people I do not want in my community. Is he whining? That's a reasonable question.
I didn't give that part of the post enough attention. I may have overlooked it completely. I completely get your point after highlighting that part of the post. Unfortunately people have been so inundated with such a large volume of low content games they don't understand it when they find a single game with a large amount of content, and since they didn't play when all the content was locked, they can't appreciate all the content they get for free (because we already paid for it.)
I wish there was a standard rules live server (not TLP) that was mandatory gold subscription. Transfers free TO that server. That would eliminate most of the entitled, weasel whiner FTPs and children. Then again, my nephew (who is 13!) has been paying for his subscription for a year now by cutting grass, raking leaves, and shoveling driveways. What is your excuse?
We agree on that, 100%. Other games are desperately trying to hang on by offering up bigger and bigger carrots. Why shouldn't EverQuest follow suit? They have. Over, and over, and over again. Expansions opening to FTP, ensuring non-Prestige gear is available for FTP, etc etc. If OP enjoys the game enough to ask what else they can get...is that not reason enough to support the game and subscribe?
Ok. I think the "I'm better than you because I pay" thing should calm down a little. How many people started playing this game, for free, than moved onto a paid subscription. That's exactly why it's there. It's free, people see how many people are still playing and realize this is something they want to pay for. Their free play doesn't effect you. There are jerks that pay, and there are jerks that don't. I see plenty of people stressing out and whining that pay on these forums every day. I see people that take daddy's credit card and charge for a subscription and then tell everyone else that $15 a month doesn't cost a lot. Who are they to decide? Daybreak makes the decision on whether or not they have a free service or not. And, I'm sure there is a financial incentive involved for them to do so. I'm sure there is some data out there that shows how many times someone starts out as free and moves onto a paid service. They original poster makes a good point in that if he is paying for a service that doesn't meet his needs than he doesn't want to pay for it. Yes, a paid service should offer incentives. But, a free service shouldn't also be garbage because a paid service is offered. At one point I was a subscriber and I paid for the service for years and years. I would get stressed out over so many things like the power leveling or the sharing of accounts in the big guilds just to steal kills from other guilds. The I'm better than you mentality. Screw all that, I play the game my way and I don't interfere or bother anyone. I pay for a one month subscription from time to time. It's worth it to me for the AAs that I get as they unlock an expansion. I don't see a problem with that or with other's doing the same thing.
Some of us started in classic, and there wasn't a FTP option. I think any of us that played then, should remember the sound of modems connecting until it's ringing in your head. free to play, here to stay, all the better to play your way. But I will say servers requiring a sub are a great idea too.
And this is the point. Just as many do not move on to a paying account but instead come to the forums and whine about what they don't get when they are free. So perhaps the "I think I am entitled to everything a paying account has" should do a google and find out. There are plenty of sites that would show them the benefits and many of us have posted those links in these forums. Just don't come to these forums with the entitlement attitude that the game owes you and call the game producers greedy. I don't care if the accounts are free or paid or owned by some guy boxing 20 mages, it a big world and you can play where ever and how ever in it you want.
It's hard to calculate the value to a player of the stuff that get's added in monthly patches and content outside of the expansion. I am really glad we don't have to pay for that - other games charge you for quest packs and things like that. When you die, a $ pops up if you want to revive immediately. EQ doesn't have that and I am grateful. For me personally EQ is an escape from reality, and I don't like having prices attached to everything - it kind of takes you out of the game and instead of "playing" you are now making decisions about whether or not to spend money. At the same time, other games that are more open in their free versions also want to make money somehow, so they charge for many more things and advertise to you regularly (sometimes at an annoying rate). I personally don't like games like that at all - you are thinking about "I don't want to pay another $0.25 for this shortcut" and then you have to do the thing the hard way, and are thinking about whether or not you're having you're time wasted. It takes you out of the game world. I guess what I'm trying to say is, when you pay a subscription you are getting something, but it's hard to measure. You're getting the positive changes that happen in monthly patches, potential improvements to the game, additional features that get released that aren't attached to the expansion, server infrastructure, etc. All without having video advertisements and microtransactions attached to every activity. I much prefer EQs subscription model to the alternative.
As was pointed out above, the OP made a comment indicative of their own attitude problem regarding what they feel they are entitled to as a non-subscribing "customer." Personally, I have zero tolerance for that kind of behavior and don't care what they want or feel they are entitled to. Apparently, they missed the memo a long time ago about there at least under normal circumstances being no free lunch as a rule. To them I would say, get over it and get over yourself too along with grow up and more that isn't suitable for posting here. The free to play model in EverQuest is quite generous. One can enjoy many, many hours of great entertainment in a vast world for zero cost, absolutely zero. If after having that much fun for that long you feel entitled to the full game or more of it, I cannot help you. Maybe a therapist can but I doubt it. I had been away for years and returned for a nostalgia trip, now years ago. I rolled a mage, discovered mercs had been added, got the one I could as ftp player and off I went. I had fun, lots of fun for a long time leveling a mage with a healing merc to help me out and finished at the wall camp in WoS just playing by myself and reaching level 75 before I retired him. His name is the same as the one I am posting under now. I had played for many years, raided, etc. and always been a subscriber. At one point I recall paying a premium to be on a special sever I forget the name of now that was long ago shuttered. Some of you old hands will remember that and perhaps can remind me of that server's name. I do remember you had to pay a premium to be on it. It was fun and I felt it was worth it at the time too. Anyway, eventually, I took the long aforementioned break and returned to find EQ ftp so I did that just to experience Norrath again on a character class new to me that I thought could hold their own solo before even knowing mercs existed. Fast forward to last year I returned again and immediately subscribed this time, first on my main account and then adding two more. By year's end I decided to fork over the money for annual subs for all three accounts. It feels good to not only have the full game with all it's features available but also as a nice benefit to feel like I help support this game which ultimately for me is the best one I have ever played. Nobody including me can predict the future accurately but I like to think I am here now for the rest of the ride. To me, it simply doesn't get any better than this and what I pay for this entertainment is cheap, very cheap compared to what I might spend on other pursuits. If the game had not been f2p last time, I would simply have paid but since it was I took a free ride and I actually felt a little guilty on and off doing it. I have nothing against f2p, or people choosing it until and if they complain about the generous amount of content and features being less than they feel entitled to. Do I think I am better than they are? No with one exception, I don't have that same sense of completely unjustified entitlement that some of them do and this I imagine and hope is a minority as well. This is where my complete lack of sympathy for or tolerance of such folks comes from. To them my message is pay up or shut up. You got free coffee and now you want the donut for free to? Seriously? How is the company supposed to stay afloat? Does that ever even occur to you people? Are they a charity and you are the needy? Seriously? Come on. Be real. Please. I do want to add one more important thing, particularly in our current difficult times. I know firsthand what financial insecurity can be like and the choices that go with it. I certainly am glad that so much of EverQuest can be freely enjoyed by anyone including and especially those who might otherwise not be able to afford this fun which they more than most can really use. Ftp isn't really a problem. It's just some who make completely unjustified complaints that are. As somebody else noted above, you get difficult people wherever you go at times and certainly on both sides of this particular fence.
The server I could not remember was Stormhammer and it was part of the Legends service offered back then.
I've resisted subbing games for financial reasons for a long time. Part of that has little or nothing to do with the game in question, but rather that there are so many games worth buying and devs worth supporting that I don't have that much money to fund them all. EQ is the only MMO I plan to subscribe to in the near future simply because I think it's overall worth the sub. To the OP point, I don't know of any game that makes a lapsed sub worth it. EQ arguably has the best reward for occasional subscription with the auto AA. I can think of several games that are much less playable after dropping sub. ESO, EVE come to mind. I'd recommend subbing if you care at all about EQ, at least level 51 and occasionally after for the AA at the minimum.
