No one seriously thought it was going to be that. What people were told however was that it was going to be useful and faster than swapping to an alt; neither of those is true. **Honestly, I think that if the limitation had been Out of Combat and in a static zone, then people would have been fine with that kind of restriction.
Well the whole only being able to swap in starting cities is stupid for another reason that I don't think that anyone else has stated yet, If you are an evil race and swapping to a good race, in an evil starting city, you will likely die at low levels; or the same vice versa.
Even something simple like personas spawning with resurrection sickness and minimal mana/end if swapped in an 'unsafe' zone
It should be only allowed in cat rooms as they are save enough. They got used by GMs in the past to spank players.
It would be nice if they added a way to camp between alts while skipping the character select screen. This would've been a much nicer feature than personas, and would've given us a way to switch between classes faster, rather than much slower
I'm rather excited about this. As a gamer that has some serious restartitis and alt character issues, my new character is the first character that I've been this excited about, since EverQuest's initial release. I've played every class here, but (outside of a server merge) but it's never been possible here for a single account owner to play all of the classes on a single server. Let alone with a single character! This is really game changing for a player like myself! Outside of Final Fantasy XIV Online, I haven't seen any MMORPG that even comes close to allowing players to play "all-in-one" characters. Of course, there are certain to be limitations for it. Even there, it is impossible to see all of the content within its world with a single character. I might be mistaken here, so, please, correct me, but is there any locked content in EverQuest that absolutely cannot be seen by a single character? Again, there are certainly going to be limitations to what an single character can *do*, but I'm meaning content that they would never possibly have any access to. (And not referring to any content that has actually been removed from the game or one-time events, such as some of the older GM events). The character that I'm about to start will be my first character that is allowed access to every class, profession, craft, etc. Yes, the first "all-in-one" characters that we've been allowed access to. Will we have access to every spell, ability, tradeskill, and *everything* all at the same time? Of course not! There are bound to be limitations! Some of the limitations here are quite severe, but I'm trying to keep an open mind about it and keeping in mind that this feature is brand new.
Why do I get this weird sinking feeling... that this will somehow be related to limiting the number of toons you can play at once. IE Truebox for all servers. Well, that or they plan on charging a nominal fee for all accounts in the future. Probably paranoia, but I can't think of a single reason to have a persona rather than just roll an alt.
Personas are not meant to replace alts so it shouldn't be surprising that if a player wants to use alts that they still will after this.
You can do that now. Just log onto an alt and be whatever you want to be. If they didn't have the ability to create a second character on an account, this would be fantastic, but you can have 7 different personas, aka alts already. It's basically an alt that has to share your inventory and you can't just park where you want to login, you have to go back to a fast camp zone to switch, then back to the place your group is at or place you wanted to camp. You only get exp for progression on the main or persona that completes it. That will make leveling much harder. I don't see many pluses at this time, besides sharing the same name and flags?
Sharing the achievements is actually a negative when it comes to leveling beyond 110. One of the very few pluses is that you also share the alternate currency. So you can use your saved up raid currency and such on an alt. But then, that could have been done much easier with making the currency account wide. The code for that is already in game. See loyality points.
Sharing the same character is the real appeal for someone like myself. Prior to today, it wasn't even feasibly possible to play every class on the same server (for a single account). Now, if I'm understanding how it will work correctly, any single character of mine could have access to every class, every profession, every craft, every spell, every skill...you get the idea. There are going to be several limitations to this, of course, but any single character that I have should be able to tinker, create alchemy potions, create different poisons, tank, track, heal, perform well in pulling or crowd control duties, charm, you name it. Yeah, for now at least, I'll have to revisit a safe zone to switch over, but the real appeal here, for myself, is the real possibility of doing it all with a single character.
I see your point, but I think you might have missed mine. This has little value as long as you have can have alts.
Don't get too excited about being able to play every class on one character. 16 total classes. You get 3 slots with expansion purchase. Your main plus three = 4. At 1500 DB coins each for the remaining twelve classes that is 18,000 or $180 dollars. Unless you plan to use your 500 free every month for 36 months or...3 years to fill your roster. Much arguing over whether it is a cool feature or not is missing the point. Who is the target audience? It is not a feature targeting the majority of currently subscribed and paying players which is why it is a baffling choice. Then again, if was made to be swappable in any zone, DBG may be afraid to lose some of the subscriptions of current multi boxing alts.
If EQ didn't allow you make more than one toon per account, this would be an amazing addition. The fact that you can already make alts, makes this a head scratcher. Why? A simple change, to allow switching in any zone, would make it a fantastic, game changing upgrade, just that one change.
Ok, so basically it's the role playing aspect of it you are excited about. I thought you were thinking it was adding something you couldn't already do.
In part, yes. Also, in part, I was currently limited to 14 character slots per server. For myself, that had left to the wizard and berserker classes barely being touched by me. Edit: Now, if I'm understanding how it will work correctly, I'd be able to swap over in a safe area (with a single character) to cover any significant role.
There are neutral cities or locations considered inside the city. Nothing says you have to use the origin city of your original race/class just a starting city or fast camp zone. Assuming you're on an early TLP, that would still be ANY starting city. As an example: a High Elf switching to a Dark Elf could do so in the area in front of the West Freeport between the wall/gates and the zone line to Commonlands or the same for Qeynos. Shar Vahl would also be safe for either. Work on faction for either the High Elf or the Dark Elf and you would expand locations for switching, too.
They have little value for you and others but that does not mean it is true for everyone. Some people don't like the idea of needing to create alts to do things and would be happier creating personas instead.
Unless you purchase a higher tier expansion either for more slots or the other items that come with them. And with how long it will take to level them up to max level with out the achievement XP you will have time to wait in order to get all of them.
