Now I am not the person to question the business model EQ runs. However, with HH Old Sebilis Gear being on par with current xpac gear, non-prestige and the zone not bound to owning the current xpac - one can now go max level + max group gear without spending a dime on this game? Wonder how much valuable dev time was spent to bring this gift to the poor and who payed for this. Maybe devs should spend a second thinking about who brings food on their table?
I would say the vast majority of ftp accounts are linked to current all access owners. Most of which probably already have EOK on their ftp box accounts which they most likely burn krono's on here and there to get AA's on. This very small percentage of people who roll ftp without any expansion upgrades is not worth punishing others imo. The only ones you might make an argument against are the script kids running bot armies with ftp accounts to farm plat will now have access to better gear which will allow them to potentially expand their kill radius and farm more crap while doing what ever it is they do in RL while the game plays for them.
Gift FTP all the gear from seb... and they'll want to subscribe. There are very few if any FTP players playing in seb or wearing gear from seb.
I would agree that FTP should not have access to the Seb HH gear. Has a Dev commented on whether it was intentional? If Daybreak feels it is worthwhile to allow FTP to have the gear then I don't have an issue as long as it was intentional and based on a planned strategy regarding Free to Play. Script adults and they probably are busy monitoring their script bots in other games And I would disagree I think a lot of people run a lot of ftp with no expansion upgrades. A lot of FTP accounts got made or started getting used more when the free heroic giveaways occurred. Also not sure how anyone who bought expansions would be getting punished. Either they allow FTP to use the Sebs HH or they don't but either way no one is being punished. You don't lose anything other then access to the Sebs HH gear or am I missing something? But apparently Daybreak made the decision to allow the Seb HH to be useable by FTP peeps. I would love to hear the reasoning behind it they must feel it somehow improves their profit margin indirectly.
I did think it was strange its not prestige. If it was intentional, I wonder what their thinking was? Don't really have a problem with it though.
The free HC giveaways did not produce that many extra accounts. The first giveaway was one HC per household unless you had an account that was made months before the announcement. The second giveaway you also had to already have an account made before the announcement. If these restrictions did not apply then yes I think everyone would make HC armies for free (yes some have if they had the accounts). As far as being punished it boils down to the fact that old HH gear is non prestige or at least the glowing stuff. This trend has carried on over the years so why change it now? I am sure the same argument came up in years past but fast forwarding to present day nobody even blinks about the fact that the other glowing gear is non prestige and better than a lot of current group gear for that level range. Maybe the gear itself needs to be scaled back but then it would make it not worth the effort I imagine. Less than 6 months from now it will be an arbitrary argument as new gear will roll out and make this obsolete. This HH event will be on farm cycle like the others for people to make money but making the gear prestige will eliminate it for that purpose basically making this a one hit wonder that most people would never touch again.
The second offer was bugged for at least three days you were able to create a new account after the announcement and make a free heroic. I think because most people don't read or just hear about it second hand a lot of people were creating new accounts and making free heroics not aware they shouldn't be able to. There were even threads here I believe about people making more free to play accounts and not being able to get a heroic after it was fixed to only be accounts open prior to the announcement. So ti was two accounts a day people were making and getting free heroics for 3 or 4 days.
When did the last hard core heritage zone get created was chrushbone added after FTP started?. If they didn't do it intentionally that could be why they missed it. Never had a new hard core heritage zone added after free to play. People will still be able to make money there will still be all access people who would want it. But maybe that is why Daybreak left it as non prestige. Boost krono sales some similar to chase loot.
I am assuming there is the glowing style gear here that is tradeable? If so it is nice to at least have some tradeable gear for this level range. Rare loot aside TDS is the last time we saw any real tradeable gear not counting augs or merc gear. Also even if someone is running a true ftp toon without any AA's this gear would be no better for them than fear touched. I know this because I have some ftp buff bots who had fear touched and I gave them latent armor. They don't have the AA's to even support that gear and their stats basically went unchanged. For me I try to see the bright side of gear like this as a paying customer and that is I can probably make some plat from ftp accounts off gear like this and turn that plat into a krono or two or another purchase. All access member do benefit from the ftp people in game via transactions if you as a player try to market towards them.
Just a carrot on a stick. An FTP with that gear but only 1k AA and no decent augs is not gonna come close to a sub with 20k and full EoK augmented. Having that gear is only gonna push FTPs to sub or use kronos to realize its full potential.
TBM currency was tradeable and very, very easy to farm. You could get a full set of visible and non-visible gear with just the currency. The only requirement being completing two rather easy tasks for the vendor flag. [edit] Realized you were probably talking about gear that could be traded and used without the expansion.
Yeah I know about the remnants market which was pretty good for a while and the tradeable augs were also good money makers but no actual tradeable gear that I can think of from the expansion and the same thing with EOK outside of the merc gear. I guess I am more of the mindset of instead of nerfing things lets make other things better. Maybe we should ask for more as all access players instead of asking that ftp get less. Something like an all access buff that provides a 10% boost to stats and maybe an all access xp buff that also provides a 10% xp increase but to be eligible you have to either purchase a 3, 6 or 12 month sub or your account has to be all access for 3 consecutive months. Again I see this as an opportunity for all access players to make money from ftp people and looking in the bazaar at the prices of this glowing gear others are thinking the same thing. The cheapest piece on Tunare is selling for 250k and the high end of 2m.
The bottom line is those FTP accounts, even if they are wearing ftp gear will sub eventually, which means more money for Daybreak. Or else its income that Daybreak would have never have gotten once those FTP accounts didn't sub. Unless they start granting the most current expansion, AA limits, rank 2-3 spells for free, those FTP accounts will be forced to sub at sometime.
