For a long time in EQ it has been custom that upgrading expansion to the latest would not grant you an additional month of usage. However, starting a brand new account with the latest expansion would give you 1 month free playing time. This was true in old days before Free2Play when retail boxes for expansions were more widely sold. How is it now? Reading thread: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/silver-and-cotf-purchase.209705/ I see that buying COTF for an existing account would still require buying gold membership separately, this is as before. However, is it possible to start out with COTF and have gold status? Or is that not even possible, as all new accounts start on bronze? In other words is it possible to pay $39.95 for COTF and go on a crazy leveling spree from lev 1 to 100 including auto grant AAs , or do you still have to pay $15 for gold?
Thanks, it seems there is not even a retail box version of COTF anyways. Steam purchase requires a Free2Play account. EDIT: So it seems there is not much point in buying COTF as a bronze/silver, unless one wants to reach 100 with only a few AAs. It would make more sense to buy Gold first, get AAs and 95 and then buy COTF. Is this thinking sound?
If you have not played EQ before, or are adding a second account, there is no advantage to buying COTF or going gold immediately as the character you intend to play, may not meet expectations and you might simply abandon it. It is possible to reach level 95 for free and the first 250 AA, by the time you get to 95, you should know if you want to max out, then gold and COTF become useful. It is possible to make your decision before that, and of course your financial condition would have a bearing on the matter, lower income folk might be looking to invest as little as possible, going gold as able to buy a Krono for plat, or during times when playtime will be higher, higher income folk would likely have less concern about spending for the gold and expansion benefits.
HA's are available at 85. If you have a heroic character, COTF is well worth it. You won't be able to get gear or exp like you can in HA's anywhere else. You get a decent amount of AAs with Heroic Characters so you're good enough to at least 90.. maybe even 95 for some classes. If you don't have a Heroic Character and never plan on going gold. I don't recommend going past SoD. Being limited to 1000 AAs past 80 means a merc will outdo you. and they're pretty terrible as it is.
I have a question somewhat related to this topic. I am a fairly new player, and recently upgraded my account to silver. I also have a heroic necro on that account. I have no plans at this time to go gold, due to financial reasons. Should I have not made my necro heroic? Is there any point in having a heroic character on a silver account? Also, I have heard that some quests are only for gold members, how will I know if a quest I am attempting to get is one of these? Will I be able to get it, do it, then turn it in, but not get whatever reward it offered? I really like this game, but don't want to waste time trying to do quests which I can not complete due to account level.
once you get your aa going gold . you keep them is my understanding. you just cant get anymore unless you go gold again
Check the reward to see if the item is Prestige, that will tell you if you need to be gold or not. As for a point to having a heroic character. You can do alot of HoT content that normally you couldn't do as a silver account. Heroic Characters get a ton of AAs for free that help with that. But the issue is you won't be able to do much past 90 if you don't grab up some AAs which you will need to be gold for. Normally Silver is only good up to SoD, Heroic Characters will get you through HoT. Gold is for everything beyond that. Some will argue you can -do- more as a silver. But honestly, the 1000 AA limit makes you worse than a merc, and mercs are terrible.
One of the problems with a silver heroic character is the inability to gain quest abilities that you get from the aa tab.
You can still find boxed versions on Amazon.com or e-bay for a fair price, I checked into that already. Been playing for 12 years now, lucky to have 5 expansions on CD so I can install them a bit quicker than just through this site alone, sure it still takes time to get the rest of the expansions (if that's what you want) to download. Some people choose F2P for either 2 reasons, times are tight and they can't afford bronze, silver or gold anymore or they are new to the game and want to have a feel for it before they decide to pay for it. Yes, a long time ago they offered the first month free with no drawbacks, but that changed a while back. F2P is fairly new, but I've always had a gold account.
Installing from CDs isn't really going to help you. So much has changed between releases, it's only just some of the zone files that will be unchanged. If you want a fast install, save a copy of the game after each expansion to a USB 3.0 stick. The stick costs more than a blank DVD; but then you need a DVD burner as well. People go F2P more because they are used to "free" games now. Marketplaces take more from you than a subscription only game does, unless you are very careful. It's psychological warfare.
To add, installing from older expansion CD can, potentially, cause some issues down the line for Vista/W7/W8 users (we know there are tons of XP users out there still). The CD have a default installation location under Program Files directory, which Vista+ will not shadow copy to a hidden/virtual location. Since EQ is very customizable, placing or customizing files in Program Files directory does not mean they will be automatically copied to the hidden location since the actual program did not make those changes. SOE workaround on that issue and to reduce CS issues is to prevent the current installer from installing under Program Files directory. I believe it has been that way for the last few expansions. As Borek noted, best to save a copy on a USB stick or burn to a DVD if moving from one machine to another or as backup to save time installing.
It was a non issue for most of us, and you honestly didn't want it to do the real copy to ProgramData. The issue was that you had to run the Launchpad as administrator, and most people had problems understanding how to make it do that automatically or they got sick of having to click the UAC question every time if they didn't want to turn UAC off. SOE just stopped saving it by default to Program Files; you still can have the games in Program Files or Program Files(x86) with zero issues. You can install EQ and copy & paste it wherever you like honestly. You simply will have to go into the Launchpad afterwards, stop the install, direct the Launchpad to look in the location you now have EQ saved, and have it restart the install (you might need to go to the default location and delete the files it had started to download). I will 100% support this, at least the USB stick thing. I would suggest either USB 2.0 or 3.0 if possible just to save some time moving the files. Also after you have moved the files to their home on the new computer, then you will want to install the EQ Launchpad and direct it to the same location that you saved the files to if the Launchpad doesn't auto detect the EQ folder (which it should).
