Is it time to end free expansion unlocks at CoTF?

Or how many expansions? 40 expansions, 50 expansions?

Said weapons are still relevant for level 100 F2P players. Good TDS weapons have level 102, 104, and 105 requirements anyways.

And with TDS being unlocked, they dont' have to limit themselves to 100.

As of today, logged in my box cleric/necroTinker account which has not bought TDS or later and 21/23. Seems like they just had not flipped the switch on the live servers yet the other day.

I think it was a bad call to make TDS f2p .. f2p have enough expansions and content to keep busy for a long time and to decide if they want to go gold .. or they can buy the current expansion and still play f2p in the most current content .. but for true f2p peeps who just want everything handed to them is just ridiculous

Personally I think you are living in the past just by reading how you went about stating your opinion.

Every single new mmo coming out is using a newer model. Old ones are adapting to stay relevant. It just doesn't work anymore, things change. The goal is to make content so good the ftp players want to buy the game, hence pushing your numbers, assuming you don't go the buy the game and have unlimited access route. There have been numerous articles over the last year pointing out the same conclusions in the gaming industry and providing data. No company uses subscribers as a marker anymore.

What specifics would be so ridiculous that things are handed to them as you stated? A game wanting to gain more players, f2p or buy an expansion or sub, shouldn't really matter. To me that sounds like you are upset they decided to try to gain more players, which is weird.

Jchan posted in a thread in Veterans a few days ago that TDS was unlocked for FTP.

Saw it, was watching for it when he posted.

She.

I stand corrected, thank you.

So looking at this thread I see a bunch of people suggesting what I think would be absolute disastrous policies. Ending FTP? Really? I know with a certainty quite a few players logging in just to say hello to the guild after retiring have come back to the game and likely would not have without the FTP mechanic in place.

I'll never understand why some are obsessed with a weird indignant desire to attack others. The game actually has far worse penalties for FTP players than many others. Last I checked EQ2 for example allows unlock items for prestige gear and spells and such that you consume but unlock the item forever. I don't know what other limitations EQ2 has but I felt like I had incredible freedom with my EQ2 alt, until they unified the subscription system to apply to all their games and my EQ2 alt effectively became free. I haven't played him in a few years though.

I really hope they stop offering stuff to f2p player so the game actually dies out, once the money starts drying up in marketplace sales. You know those f2p players never spend any money on the game, and us All-Access players are entitled to everything, and f2p players should get nothing. I'm all access and a veteran whose been playing for 15 years, I'm entitled damit!

/sarcasm off


I'll explain it to you why they are so obsessed. Majority of the players are veterans that have been playing for years which makes them think they are entitled to holding onto that old content that they hardly ever go back to. The others are just grouchy they payed for it and so they think old content should be payed for by others as well.

They won't come to grip with reality that by having f2p and unlocking of expansions actually helps the revenue for Daybreak. Its working for majority of the top games out there, in fact alot of those games even the current content is free to play without a sub, all you have to do is buy the base game or DLC.

Yeah ending FTP would be a disaster for EQ. If anything EQ FTP is too restrictive, with tiny AA caps and all the gear restrictions (some of which make no sense at all).

Doesn't bother me if they do end FTP. Would be interesting to see how it accelerated the decline towards closure.

It's similar to how I hated it years ago when my guild removed players when they were inactive for six months (this policy ended when we merged with another guild for the first time). For a top end guild with strict attendance requirements that makes sense, but in an aging game where for many guilds recruitment period is important having people log back in without a guild tag both reduces the likelihood they will keep playing and even if they play again it reduces the likelihood they will stay with the guild. Not booting them is essentially free recruitment, even ignoring the "it's nice to keep guildies together" part of it. I didn't say that the other day and I should have, because people showing up to see old friends or even just the guild tag still active is a huge boon. We have quite a few active players who have years of gaps. True not having a tag doesn't mean they won't come back; we have a few members who returned to app even from prior to our first merger with another guild back in 2010 for example, but I suspect it sure does help and the free-to-play model is a ridiculously strong recruiting tool.

Heck, we keep the MOTD of Haven's Edge up to date with information that the guild is still active but in another name post merge (the original guild inactive since the merge six years ago) and we have in fact had returning players contact us to app in the merged guild all these years later. I can't speak for the other guilds that merged, but I should probably bring it up with the leadership to make sure they have done similarly.

Nice to hear Zunnoab. I think letting returning players return and play with us is a huge boost. Leaving them in the ghetto of cotf would have been the wrong call. I'm glad they didn't do that.
They're still behind you. They won't steal your cookies.
You can still lord your new progression over the plebes who don't have the latest expansion.
The fact they can enter 2 expansion old content shouldn't trouble you unless your EQ life depends on being better than returning players. Because you can't step up without keeping them down.