New ideas to really help eq profit even more so it lasts forever.

Regarding the FV transfer "token" it has to be a reasonable price or it won't sell. No need to punish someone because of the server they chose to play on. They shouldn't have to pay more than anyone else to transfer just because people don't like the rule set.

Regarding the transfers off Test, most of the players on Test are some form of a copied toon or have copied items so the "no copied gear" thing would not go over well. There's no need to make people transfer naked or nearly naked. The economy of any server & the "integrity of the game" will not be affected if this or that person is allowed to transfer to another server no more than it would if someone with 2 billion plat & full TDS raid gear were to transfer to FV.

The whole idealistic "this is how it is or how it should be & that is set in stone" mindset is part of the problem that needs to be remedied. Try to be open minded & considerate of your fellow players. Just because we play on FV or Test & have copied gear or raid gear that was bought or bought as a full copied set of gear (I earned mine for my main & some for some of my boxes on FV) doesn't make us bad people or mean that we should be shunned or punished.

See, it's not about "shunning" or "punishing" players that play on those servers. Most players, myself included, are considerate enough about the situation to support airlifts to healthier servers. That being said, Test and FV players knew full well about the both the benefits and repercussions of playing there, not the least of which is that they're stuck there. It's not unreasonable to expect that a financial premium (in the case of FV) or gear limitations (for Test) should apply

There would clearly have to be some loopholes closed. One could bypass the FV token fee by testcopying, then happily transferring for free back to the live server of their choice. Disabling FV testcopies would be too draconian of a fix, because that really would be punishing FV players who genuinely want to test things.

As for the price of a FV token, everyone would have a different answer. I would wager somewhere not too far north of a regular transfer token (2250 SC with the All Access discount), but again, cash only. If people want it badly enough, they'll fork out the cash, but it wouldn't be priced stupidly high to where it will just create more ill will.

I have two characters on FV myself. I enjoy occasionally playing them, and they'll stay put even if the option ever presents itself to move them. Sadly, I doubt it ever will, but my support will remain.

I like the idea of pay to win the older expansions because these days I sure as heck can't convince someone to travel to the Heart of Fear with me.

Test and FV are completely different animals, and should be regarded as such.

Doesn't test have like a permanent XP boost and access to all vet rewards on all toons?? That's not really fair to people who start on the regular servers.

That I can't speak to, since I am not an artist. However, I can say that I don't like the squareness of the shoulder pads in the current robes.

This is just one (primarily) regular server player's opinion, but I personally don't give two farts about Test's XP bonus, nor one and a half farts about FV's. Although I'm ambivalent about copied gear, XP bonuses and vet rewards (which are mostly fluff, let's be real) are non-starters for me. Undoubtedly those XP bonuses would be left behind in a theoretical transfer to a regular server, and I suspect the vast majority of Test/FV refugees would care even less about losing them than I do about them having them in the first place.

I do hope this eventually happens for players that would benefit from it. Player retention benefits everyone.

A good way to get me to buy more hero's forge armor is to give me an account bound wardrobe. Something where I only need to buy a piece of armor once, and I could easily select to use it from an ingame wardrobe on all characters. The genre is moving towards account bound for everything from mounts, to pets, illusions, dyes, armor/weapon skins, etc.. With GW2 going a step further making ascended gear account bound (it's the best quality items ingame), as well as crafting materials.

EQ1...is slacking a bit behind the genre's movements, as it has been since 2004. I never liked the idea of having to pay for each character for the ability to even use hero's forge armor, then getting dimed again on having to pay for each individual pieces. That alone have stopped me from buying hero's forge for majority of my alts, as I only have it enabled on 1 character. Imagine if you never had that restriction, the amount of hero's forge armor people would've bought for all alts and such. Missed opportunities and bad calculations from the management.

If you make these things account bound, and give me a wardrobe function ingame where I can easily change my looks around, I will buy a lot more of these things. Fluff matters, I've always said that. Gamers in MMO's particularly care about how they look. EQ1 have missed the boat, but I think it's salvageable. If you give me account-bound illusions, and an easy way to access them rather than filling my bags, same with easy way to access account-bound pets, I would totally be spending money just to collect them.

The ability to gift items is also big these days. I've bought many things for my friend & g/f via gift options in GW2 & WoW. It's definitely a revenue potential EQ is missing out on.

Also the dev team needs a bit of a reality check. SoD expansion for an example, was said to be too easy by folks on the forums. Yet ingame, there were people everywhere, in many zones, farming in every corner. It was an inclusive expansion where majority could access, and it showed ingame. That was a case where I think majority actually rather enjoyed the expansion, but vocal few on the forums somehow made it seem like people hated it. The bad thing is devs listened, and they followed it up with an exclusive Underfoot expansion that was not nearly as enjoyable & fun, nor was it as accessible by all. Granted they then followed up with a good expansion in HoT. Still, expansions like UF & TDS scare people away. Once gone, it's hard to get players back.

People generally just want to buy an expansion, do the content, enjoy their time ingame, have fun with friends, and feel that they're progressing at a decent pace. They want to get loot, they want to get cool fluff items, they want to look better ingame. Expansions like SoD & HoT sell, those are the expansions where friends bring in friends because they can enjoy the game again. Artificially slowing people down by nerfing exp, or making mercs not as desirable, or making it tedious to progress through a zone, all you're doing is hurting the casual and core playerbase. And the casual & core playerbase are your backbone to any MMORPG's.

For this game to continue to survive, it needs expansions where people will want to buy and tell friends about.

Well written, Mardy.

Why should I pay more to win a game I already pay for ... not

Anser is race specific gear that includes the skin look with the gear as part of it, most races have a simalar skin, except eudirites, vah shir, and iskar, you could make specific ones for 2 of these, one generic one for the rest.

Vah would never work because of changable fur patterns. Or you could say. only useable with white fur pattern or tiger pattern or something like that. using it could lock the fur pattern.

NO TRANSFERRING OFF FV. People decided to play there and need to live with it. You want to play on another server start over. Or let people transfer off FV with no gear or plat. That could work.

Unfortuantely account binding items isn't helping generate income for Daybreak. They would acutally be doing work to get less income. I don't see that happening. For those who really want items on other toons they will spend the money and generate more income for Daybreak and hopefully help keep expansions coming. If EQ was doing great with tons of players account binding items and such would be great. But as things are now I don't see ways to save us as players money as being good for the continuance of the game. I don't think most people are giving up on EQ because of the cost of micro transactions.. But that's just my opinion.

I disagree. Account wide micro transactions increases the value of those micro transactions, making a purchase more likely. World of Warcraft does this and it works very well for them. I have all the cash store mounts and pets in World of Warcraft because all my characters across all servers and all merged battle.net accounts can use them. The value is there. In EQ I have one station cash mount across my 7 accounts (which are all silver now). I would have more if I could use them on more than one character. I have absolutely no hero's forge armor for two reasons, even though I was really excited about it when it was first announced.

First is the absolutely terrible value the unlock is, this needs to be account wide, maybe even free for the good people who have been paying $15 a month for years and suffering with the horribly out dated character art (that was ugly and subpar when it launched). Second they are atrociously ugly. If I am going to pay out additional real money to look GOOD the things I am buying better actually look GOOD. Hero's Forge is self defeating.

Hero's Forge is a great idea but the execution is below sub par, it's a cruel joke played on the EQ community. Being a professional and experienced 3d artist myself I downloaded the robe template to make a texture for a robe myself. Much to my horror the hero's forge robe template is so critically flawed that creating a good looking texture would be impossible with the restrictions placed on player's studio items. My hat's off to the people who have the patience to work with such terrible base assets, you all are real troopers and more than deserve every cent you earn. Daybreak on the other hand should be utterly ashamed to put their name on, let alone charge their extremely loyal customer base for such low quality work.

Scrap Hero's Forge, start over, and do it right this time. Involve the dedicated and talented community of creators in designing the templates they will be spending countless hours working on top of. Go look at how much DoTA2 gives away to their community of creators and do the same, heck, GO FURTHER than DoTA2.

Its the copied gear on Test and on FV its that ALL the gear is sellable/tradeable. I say transfers with no gear is fine. Otherwise I don't think it is fair to everyone else. As has been said people knew they could not transfer off when they started on Test or FV. I am not sure why people who have special rules or ways to get gear on these servers would think they should be able to transfer off with all this gear or the plat they have earned because of these features.

And its not about punishing the people on FV or Test its about being fair to the people on the other servers who had to work for their gear based on those servers rules.

I agree that the unlock for heros forge should be for an account. It is far to expensive to be per character. For myself it doesn't matter because I only play one toon on each account I have but I can see that others simply wont purchase it because of the expense. I suppose they could raise the fee to 20 dollars and make it the full account.

That's the old way of thinking. Account bound items get people to buy more things, not less. When people know they can use what they bought on more than 1 character, they'll spend more money. One of the biggest problems with SOE (and some of them are now working as Daybreak still) is that they're behind the times. With Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon accessible, you can't expect to make good profit running a Blockbuster business renting videos one by one while charging people for memberships. That's how I see it with SOE/Daybreak, they're the Blockbuster of the MMORPG genre. They're wanting to stay afloat with diehard fans that have been playing their games for so long, hoping people don't know what else is out there.

Blockbuster did try to start their own streaming service, but it was too late, too many have moved on already. That's the problem I'm seeing here. Daybreak can't wait too long to make changes that fit the genre's standards. Gamer's standards have changed over the years, their expectations have changed. People play these games for fun. When they're nickel & dimed, it's not fun. When people are already having to pay a premium subscription to get rid of all the restrictions they place on F2P accounts, and then they see so much more are still locked behind microtransactions, that's a double no. Some may not quit due to issues with microtransactions alone, but it compounds on top of their other complaints.

Account bound will get people to spend more money. Ease of accessing those items will further get people to spend more money. Don't fill my bags with junk then try to sell me large bags. Give me an account bound wardrobe, illusions, and pets panel. Give me incentives via achievements to collect these things, and reward me with special titles or special mount/pets for collecting a certain # of things. Then you'll see people buying, collecting them, completing achievements, getting rewarded for doing so, etc.. That's how things work these days, it's proven successful in many other MMO's.

I am not totally sold on account bound but you make some very good points. I think its something that would be worthwhile for Daybreak to assess and figure out where the greater profit would be.

nm wrong post!

Yep SOE said it had something to do with a server issue. Their answer was to have me manually reinvite every player. I wrote to Mr Smedly and he told them to fix it. Which they did. I think there were only about 10 or 15 inactive toons that could not be reinstated out of a roster of about 2500. I did have to go back and manually fix everyone'd guild rank though.

SOE also gave every active account ten dollars in station cash once the guild was restored.

Oh and apparently these accidental deletions are rare but do happen from time to time. When they fixed my guild they also created a tool to allow them to fix any other guild it happens to in the future.

Our roster now is almost to 3000 members.. sadly a lot of inactives but I keep getting players who return to EQ and are very thankful they are still in the guild so its very much worth carrying those players on the roster.