Regarding Veteran Rewards for All Players

Level playing fields are not a myth. Though it's a different genre, Starcraft emerged as one of the best and as close to level games ever made. That's why it's a sport now in some countries, think what you will.

And I'd offer novelty for utility, as I said 100x before this. And as well as novelty, convenience (as Sinestra pointed out). I'm cool with that, too.

I'm proposing multiple things here.

1.) One is the whole catch-up-in-time with money model, in case the next veteran reward after this one is utility (who knows?). And have them be bought in order in which they appeared. In the station store as a "Loyalty Bonus" or whatever they want to call it, worth a year's subscription or thereabouts. This would allow devoted players to catch up to current end-game players, however, the cost might be prohibitive to new players, so I am more inclined towards #2:

2.) That all Vet AAs be changed to either loyalty or convenience, in which case, I don't mind having only 8 of the 13-14. Allow the player to obtain the current utility Vet AAs as achievement bonuses, that guilds can raid for. Or that one can spend a lot of time solo for.

But at the end of the day, I mind if you get rewards as long as they don't make you more powerful in PvE or PvP. That's it. Any other Vet reward, I'm cool with. Whatever you can imagine. Novelty or convenience. Take a moment and sit back to think about what you might want if this option was presented to you. I'd be curious to hear what would satisfy you if you were limited to the categories of novelty and convenience.

If you don't like that idea, then I think there should be SOME WAY for other players to get the utility AAs. Buy them, play long hours for them. Whatever. Different people on these forums have proposed different ideas, the above models of which are two.

Bad example again. We're talking about inaccessible abilities. All I'd need to do is make a new character. There are 8 slots after all, plus 3 if you pay. Then I have access to those ACCESSIBLE abilities. And have you heard of two-boxing? Yeah, it exists.

And I meant "don't mind" in the 6th word cluster.

The mindset that anyone and everyone is ENTITLED to and MUST have access to EVERYTHING instantly and that they are, somehow, deprived unfairly if they do not receive their heart's desire merely because they MAY pay to play a game is downright ludicrous. As for a level playing field, it IS level! Merely because someone came to the game LATE is no reason to grant that which those who began earlier have. Much as in real life, if you missed the sale, missed the special, missed the low interest rate, missed getting front row seats at that concert, etc. , if you missed earning Veteran Rewards because you began late, it certainly isn't the fault of the game, the developers or SoE.

Lots of pointless bickering in here.

More accessibility to conveniences for all players
More money coming into the game

One would be foolish to fight against these for selfish reasons.

If this is what you want, it has already been done. SOE has flat out stated that there will be no more Vet Rewards Like LotD or 7th. The seventh Vet Reward was the last that wasn't a merely a convenience. This is now SOE policy. You can catch up. It will just take a few years to get them.

As for the whole concept of novelty rewards. A novelty only has worth when it is new. In essence it would be a temporary reward.

As an example: You specifically mentioned illusions. Illusions are so commonplace in this game now that the novelty of a specific illusion lasts about a month (two months for the senile who forget they got tired of it). There is some people in this game that have come to despise illusions. The same can be said of many other novelties. You will never get general acceptance on any novelty item. Yet, you want to replace some Vet Rewards with them. If you ever hope to get this idea of yours to fly, leave novelty abilities out of it.

Well, I take that back. there is one novelty item I would truly love to have. Give me the ability to target a Jester, press a button and Sacrifice the owner down to level minus 100 and you can have all the Vet Rewards you want. But understand one thing. Some people love their Jesters, so they might take exception.

If more money into the game were your real motive, you would be pushing for SOE to sell xp.

EQ2 Call of the Veteran and Self-rez plx. But Call of the Veteran if we're only picking one of the two. One of the things I truly miss about that game.

You really don't get what these rewards are for do you?
They are there as a thank you for players for playing for the last year! This is our bonus for playing and supporting EQ for the last year.

You don't go into a shop and say "I don't want to buy your product, can I just buy the freebie it comes with?"

and you do not go to the airport and demand the discounts from frequent flyer miles when you have never flown with that airline before.

Do you guys realize that free accounts get vet rewards now?

But from what you've said, it isn't actually a compromise. A compromise as you yourself have said is both sides giving a little to come to an agreement. So far you suggest vets let go of the rewards they earned and the new players get what they asked for. That literally isn't a compromise. They've already offered to buy them.

Even if we placed them for $100.00 per reward, it would create unfairness to players who can't afford that kind of cost so it would continue to create a problem. There isn't a vet reward that keeps people down though so I am not sure why this "level playing field" is even being discussed. I have items that I can use that newer players can't get anymore. Some no drop as well which no amount of money could buy that gives me a "leg up" in some sense, do we offer all old items that are no longer available in the game for sale as well?

They do, but they want to be able to get all the vet rewards without having to play long enough to get them.

I've played for 9 years without a banker or vendor at my side and that's ok - I can wait my turn for them. At worst, vet rewards could be based on hours in combat - perhaps use the counter the Energy essences use. At best, leave them as is.

Veteran awards are more than money related.

We play-tested, suggested, suffered through bad ideas. It took us YEARS to reach 75. We reached caps and had to wait for another expansion. We didn't have double XP weekends. We suffered through long meditation periods, broken raids and quests, server crashes, staring at spellbooks. We worked the early instanced zones of LDON to help SOE work the kinks out of the design. We sufferer through class imbalance. We made suggestions and gave feedback, both explicitly and implicitly (by showing SOE which features we liked and which we didn't). We did tradeskills with broken recipes and THREE implementations of Research.

Yet we stayed with this game we love. We didn't abandon it - we helped shape it to what it is today. THAT'S what Veteran Rewards are for - conveniences, gifts, to reward us for our patience and actual contributions to the game.

Yes, the game still has its warts. If you suffer through them for a year, you will get LoTD as a reward.

I, personally, think giving LoTD instantly is a Very Bad Idea (tm). A gold account could be created and LoTD could be used (for free, as opposed to buying potions) to powerlevel toons to be sold.

To clarify, my comment was directed at the people saying that only they deserve vet rewards because it's their reward for paying for EQ all that time. That was true in the past but is no longer the case. You now get vet rewards for doing absolutely nothing. It just seems really weird to me to see people getting all worked up about how vet rewards are their right as loyal subscribers and how it's equivalent to a medal of honor recognizing their blood, sweat, & tears, when free players are getting the exact same thing at the exact same rate. So I'm wondering if maybe they missed the memo that everyone gets them now. I don't really get the logic behind giving vet rewards & loyalty tokens to free players, but once that's happening it doesn't seem to make any sense to delay them anymore.

Free accounts don't get them for doing nothing. They get them for contributing to the evolution of the game over a period of years.

Again, people miss the point - Vet Rewards are not about money, they are about contributing to the community.

How many groups did you form over those years, perhaps keeping other players in the game? How many newbies did you help out? How many discussions with devs, suggesting/tuning spells/classes/AAs? How many guilds did you participate in? How many server merges did you suffer through? Broken boats?

These conveniences are REWARDS for loyalty and participation. Not for cash spent.

That must be why they're based entirely on money spent on subscription fees.

EQ is a business. The rewards are for customer loyalty.

No, they are not. The basis is on continuous subscription, which is an (albeit imperfect) indicator of participation.

But we're not now since free accounts get them too.