There is an "Alternate Ability Cap Increase" package available in the DB marketplace for 250 DB but alot players won´t buy it because they would have to spend a small fortune to bring their heroic toon above the AA cap. As example a lvl 85 heroic druid does receive about 4.500 AA points automatically. When the account is in free player mode the AA cap is 250. So that would be at least 4.250 AA points to raise to the cap which is as much as 43 "Alternate Ability Cap Increase" packages. So the only solutions for heroic toons is to stay free player or buy All Access as nobody sane would buy 10.750 DB which do cost about 95 €/$ for something they already had bought for 3.500 DB and to just raise the AA cap to a level where a few new AA points could be spend. Alot more additional money would have to be spend to make such a buy making sense at all. Another thing is that player characters have AA points available (from previous All Access and patches) but cannot spend them. Both situation are not good for the players and their trust into Daybreak Games. Solution: A new heroic PC should receive a new AA cap which is identically with the amount of AA points receiving as a lvl 85 toon. To already existent heroic PCs this cap could be granted too. For free and silver accounts previoulsy collected AA points should be spendable but the PCs do receive a lock to earn AA experience when they hit their AA point cap (Assigned AA points >= max AA). This won´t affect the "Alternate Ability Cap Increase" package but buying such one could unlock the AA experience earning lock.
Its a lot cheaper to level you free or silver account to 105 or 110 and sub for one month or buy a Krono with the plats you made while leveling .. once you are all access hit auto AA and get instant 20-25K aa's or so (not sure what the max free ones are now) play like mad for the month your All Access and get several more thousand AA .. drop back to free / silver .. you get to keep all those AA's and you have much more rounded character to use.
If someone wants to raise their AA cap then they pay up for a monthly subscription. They can't keep giving the game away like the Vet rewards. Soon there will be no incentive to pay for the game at all and I can guarantee EQ will not continue if its 100% free. The marketplace AA "Alternate Ability Cap Increase" and the Rank II spell were up-sells that were brought into play for additions to the F2P back in 2012 and to encourage players to go All Access and pay for a subscription. Like the task cap. The task cap has since been removed. Plus the amount of AA a player could have back then was much lower. Once Auto Grant came out it made the AA Increase in marketplace moot. Although I have never been able to earn 2 million plat in a month in order to buy a Krono to go Gold for one month its less than $15.00 to pay so that route is not that hard. $2.50 for 100 and you buy 6 units = $15.00 You would only increase your AA by 600 If you paid for a month = $14.99 (or cheaper) And then auto grant = hundreds of AA depending on your level If you go Heroic to 85, even on a F2P you get all (except tradeskill) AA for level 85 - you do not have to be All Access to do that. They gave away free Heroics many times. Or you can still buy one for $35. Between auto grant and heroics they should really just take the AA increase out of the marketplace all together. There has to be some things F2P do not get other than the J5 merc. Even the ability to wear prestige is not that huge of a bonus to go subscription since the better gear has come out.
earn Krono quickly by playing on a recent TLP server .. make a necro / mage / enchanter that does not need any gear to be good and go mass slaughter guards in cities (they generally drop 10-20 plats worth of gear per kill) you will rake in lots of plats quickly .. within a few days you should have enough plats to get a krono.. you only need 5 to 15K on the current new ones .. buy a krono and head back to your 2 million plat server.
I just wrote a long post with detailed calculations about the worth of AA points cap increase but it got lost somehow. The essence was that when assuming a power share of 65% for assigned AA points above 10k the worth of 1.000 AA points (cap increase only !) would be about 450-500 DB and the 100 AA bundle if overpriced by factor 5 per AA point. There are alot players that do not want to obligate their lifetime to a subscription and play like mad just because of this and never will. For this type of a not so active player, a big AA cap increase (DB) bundle would be a nice alternative. All Access still has alot other stuff to offer for those that prefer a subscription pay model. Its now 2020 but alot price policy parts of EverQuest are still 1999. DBG never did gave the game away for free nor did they do now and I do not request something like this. Correct is that these supposed up-sells are offers for free and silver accounts and therefor not up-sells. They cannot motivate players to go All Access as all this is included in a subscription. Actually All Access does offer more than 15 boni which F2P do not receive. From the official advertisement (I had to translate a few into english): Premium benefits in all participating DGC games 10% off unlimited marketplace purchases* 500 Daybreak Cash Reward to claim each month Special membership promotions and offers throughout the year Access to thousands of alternate abilities 6 extra character slots (worth 60$) Unlimited access to spell ranks Maximum loyality rewards Unlimited access to mercenary ranks Unlimited access to ingame housing vendors Access to all all houses and guild halls Access to progression servers Unlimited access to chat channels Full guild functionality Preffered (better) customer service Increased cap of active Overseer Quests *10% discount applies only to Marketplace purchases made using Daybreak Cash or real world currency. Excludes Daybreak Cash top-ups, Krono, memberships, and purchases made using certs, gold, or other in-game currencies.
