Heroic Characters Begin Their Adventures in Norrath on March 12

Honestly, SOE should only offer the free HC to gold accounts during that time period.

I just tried again less than two minutes ago to verify before I posted.

Gold account - Woodelf Beastlord and Frog Monk can only choose Crescent Reach as a home city no matter Heroic or regular level 1 toon. All other race/class combos have no problem picking their home city.

F2P account - Woodelf Beastlord and Frog Monk can only choose Crescent Reach as a home city no matter Heroic or regular level 1 toon. All other race/class combos have no problem picking their home city.

Being gold or F2P is a moot point as this is the test server. F2P accounts on test get all the benefits of gold, including being able to pick your home city.

There's a huge difference between virtual goods and physical goods. A virtual good has no tangible substance and no real intrinsic value; its value resides solely in what the user is willing to pay for it.

With that, here are several differences between EQ and Best Buy that would make your comparison moot.

Televisions are physical objects made by parts that costs a lot of money to mass-produce. Heroic Character are lines of codes that costs little to nothing to replicate, whether once or a million times.

Best Buy exists in an economy in which competition helps keep the price of televisions in check. EQs economy has no competition, therefore SOE can choose to charge whatever they wish without worry of competition. There's absolutely nothing that drives down or up the price of anything in the SC store other than occasional sales of useless petamorphs.

Best Buy offers televisions of all sizes and price ranges. That gives people without as much money, an opportunity to at least purchase something for themselves. If all they sold was only 1 model of television priced at $3,500, then yes, I would say they were trying to out the poor guy. The fact that there's no lower tiers at a lower cost (perhaps level 55, 65, 75, and 85 heroic characters each at a different price, respectively) proves my point that you either buy the best or don't buy anything at all.

This isn't EQ saying "here's a bunch of TVs at all different price levels so you can pick one that fits your needs and budget", this is EQ saying, "Here is one TV. It costs this much. If you don't have that much then build your own TV because this is the only one we got, and this, the only price."

I'm excited about this. I have three accounts, two high level characters and very little time to play them. I've always wanted to see what it was like to play a high level bard, wizard, and warrior. Now I can. I don't see this as OP in any sense of the word. I'm not all the sudden going to be downing end game content just because I get to try out a few new toons. Groups aren't going to hate me because honestly, if I even have time to group, it'll be on my main monk or alt shaman, both of whom were leveled the old fashioned way. I just see this as a great way to see classes that I would never otherwise have time to level up and play around with.

Who knows, I might even buy a few down the road so I can play around with an Enchanter or mage, maybe even a necro. Personally can't wait.

It seems like SoE is encouraging boxing with these heroic chars.

Your accomplishments and achievements in EverQuest are what they mean to YOU. If you are GRANTED a few FREE 85 toons, they can empower your current character. Make some complementary classes, even if they are just for buffs.

Accept it, and get ready for it, so when it comes, you aren't left in the dust.

You can't make that statement in all honesty. What determines the services that SOE provides is competition with other games. They also offer a tier of service that Best Buy doesn't - they let you play the game for no charge. While I like your idea of different tiers (55, 60, 65, 70, etc..), the heroic character is not the only service that SOE provides, it is merely an option for someone who has the money to do so (after the freebies are over).

RoF expac was designed for you to get experience by doing quests and progression ... not by killing things.
Do one of the kill quests and see how much experience you get ... by completeing the quest.

I had the exact same issue could not select Gukta for Frog Monk or Kelethin for Wood Elf Beast as starting cities. I /bug'd it on test and made a post mentioning the issue in the test patch notes thread last week. They went to the trouble of putting guildmasters(no spell vendors however) for each in those cities. You'd think they'd let us start the classes there if we wanted to.

the basics are still the same. this is a business. to stay in business it needs to make money. it can't go around offering more cheap stuff than it has already given and still follow its business mode.

it doesn't matter whether it is molecules or data bits, it is still a commodity. if you think other people should have the same privileges as you but not pay for them, then perhaps you can do them the favor of paying it for them.

besides, the heroic toons are not really needed- they are a nice luxury. i know a lot of people think they need them to be on the same level as those who have played for a long time, but that has to do with being on the game long and working hard. luxuries are not really necessary for the game.

Since coming out in eq2, most of the people buying the heroic character with sc are the ones who allowed their free sc to accumulate. there are some with plenty of money to spend who buy them but mostly they are bought with the free sc. the one item that i hear a lot of people talking about having bought is the bauble that grants all of the aas that the heroic character got. hope they put that on sale here.

Not needed because they are already autogranting the aa's.

I personally know of 5 that started and have gold accounts, that's just me so how many are there? I have no idea, I just personally think that if you are paying for a gold account you should get ALL the perks available to gold accounts and not be told sorry you made your account and have paid us your money to late you aren't good enough to deserve a heroic character.

those aren't supposed to be for the heroic toons, they are for those who are not heroic.

i agree. i noticed a lot that have created new accounts both on eq1 and eq2 in anticipation of the all access pass coming up.

Perhaps there is some significance to the date they chose for the cut off? I'm sure that it's mostly to counter people who made a lot of free accounts to take advantage of the free HC.

The non heroic characters got the autogrant option, the heroic characters will come with those aa's already added, no need to opt-in.

if it is anything like eq2, you won't need to know a command. there will be prompts when you start the game and a button at the bottom of the starting interface.

kk you are missing the whole point. or maybe i am missing something. are you saying that my level 100 who doesn't have 4k aas yet will get an autogrant of those aas? i didn't see that anywhere in the announcements. it says that heroic characters get 4k aas. doesn't say anything about those who are already higher than 85 getting any autogrant. or did i miss that somewhere?

the bauble i am talking about was given to eq2 as a claim item from the previous expac. then when the heroic characters were made, they put the bauble on sale for those who still needed aas. you can buy it for $20 and put it on any toon from level 10 at anytime. it helps a lot if you are say 90 and only have 20 aas but you can't get to 92 without having 280 aa (eq2 only) It is called Untapped Achievements if you want to go to eq2 and look it up.

a completely different thing from the Level 85 Heroic Character you can buy for 3500

At 100 in the alt advancement window there is a box that says "auto-grant enabled" checking this box and zoning/relogging/leveling then grants you all aa's up through underfoot except for tradeskills if I remember right.

Heroic characters get DoN and OoW progression AA and I don't think that auto grant gives them.

thank you much- i didn't realize that. doing it now for all of my high level toons