I cant find the exact quote, and I know that when all access went live it "ended", but what's the point of locking out T3-5 apprentice mercy on FtP? If someone goes all access, they aren't going to use T3-5 apprentice mercs, they're going to just jump straight to whatever tier journeyman merc is available. I understand removing the $5 upgrade to silver completely, that was way underpriced IMHO, but there should be a "way" to achieve silver status. Like a 3 month all access purchase or something? The quote that I couldn't find mentioned, "when all access expires, the account will revert to silver", but there didn't seem to be a consensus that I could find, some said a FtP would go all access, lapse, and be silver. Some say if you're FtP before all access, you'll only revert back to FtP. I used to 3box all access accounts, but I had taken a 2ish year hiatus from EQ. Out of my 6 accounts, I've got one currently all access, 4 silver, and one FTP. I plan on going all access with my original 3, but at $45 a month you'd think I could get a bone thrown my way on the FtP. The sooner i get those 3 accounts high enough to 6box with my main 3, the sooner i might opt for making 'them' all access as well. Maybe just by using the "grandfathered" system that's already in place, on a per email (used for accounts) basis, instead of it being linked directly to the account? IDK.. Something?
Maybe add merc tier purchasable from marketplace? Obviously not J5, but something.. at least A3-5 I'd say.. you can already purchase char slots and AA max increase there
I would MAYBE go so far as to say they could put unlockers that allowed the higher tiers, to a point, but still required doing the quest(s)/progression needed to unlock those tiers in-game. At least players could then have a slightly more stable merc environment.
I'm pretty sure it's still in place that if you go All Access, and then your subscription lapses, your account will be Silver. I can't confirm it, but I'm fairly positive this is still the case.
I think if you understand the way it went it might make sense: 1)Silver accounts are offered for $5. Low cost for players but not all benefits of paid. Can buy upgrades. These accounts are "purchased silver" 2)Free accounts are offered - no way to buy upgrades. Industry standard for free rpg around then. 3) Purchased silver are a big bomb. So they are discontinued. However the code is in place for this type of account that has a mix of paid and free stuff. They apply "SILVER" to any old account that is getting reactivated. So now we have "SILVER" accounts. These are a carrot to bring in old players who can now play free but still have some benefits that are better than Free accounts but not as good as Paid otherwise players would not pay! 4) There are now 3 types of accounts. All Access (letters in gold above your characters on select screen which is why this is called Gold sometimes). Silver (letters in silver etc. which are old accounts reactivated) and Free which say Free in green above char select. It is only human nature to want something for free such as mercs. Silver can buy all apprentice tiers although free can only get tier 1 and 2. These work for back up in a group quite well. I doubt you will see any options to purchase upgrades or unlockers in the future as they took away the rank II spell upgrade and the AA upgrade from marketplace.
For accounts in good standing in March 2012 when F2P went into the game. There were three levels, Bronze (F2P), Silver (One-time level that you never went below) abd Gold (Now All Access). Dropping your subscriptin took you from Gold to Silver, even if you were Bronze before then upgraded to Gold (as a reward for subscribing). When Sony went to the actual "All Access", Silver accounts are not achievable for NEW F2P or All-Access accounts that downgrade. They are only available if you were a subscriber back in 2012. Silver accounts get the bonus of being able to choose any Apprentice Merc, Free accounts are restricted to only T1 and T2, this is the "penalty" for playing for Free. You are also restricted to 250 AA's, no Auto Grant, etc. Silver still get 1000 AA's but can't auto grant either.
But you cannot get silver now. It was grandfathewred in and could be obtained for $5 a few years ago. Now, there are only All Access and FTP accounts, unless you got a silver years ago.
1. If you have a Silver account, upgrade to All Access, and then let the All Access expire, you go back to a Silver account. 2. If you have a standard F2P account, upgrade to All Access, and then let the All Access expire, you will go back to a standard F2P account. You will NOT get a Silver account. In other words: there's no way to create a new Silver account. Contrary to what people periodically claim, going All Access for a month will not turn an F2P account into a Silver account. You can confirm that it doesn't work just by reading the occasional posts here from people complaining because they tried it and it didn't work: when they let the All Access expire, they were right back to a standard F2P account.
Yes catspaw. If your account was active in 2012 it would be Silver. I am not sure that if the account was not active when F2P went into affect in 2012 whether you would be able to get Silver. I haven't tried with any of my ancient accounts.
I was trying to help clarify for people that one of my old accounts from 2001 was NOT active in 2012 and it was reactivated last year as silver. So any older account from before 2012 will come back as silver.
They should be grandfathered in. But as stated, no new silver accounts by getting all access, that will always go back to f2p after subscription is gone.
As far as I know, all the inactive old pay accounts were upgraded to Silver when the F2P option became available. Down below is the E-mail SOE sent me; presumably they sent something similar to all their old customers, I don't know for sure, but I would guess that all the people who still had paid memberships at the time the F2P option started also got an upgrade to Silver as a 'fallback' option if they ever let their membership expire. The upgrade was completely automatic. Other than what I've read in the forums, I don't know anything about the pay Silver accounts that apparently were available for a while: those started after I stopped playing years ago and were gone by the time I came back last year,. But I do know that there's no way to convert an F2P account to Silver now, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Sony Online Entertainment" <info@soe.sony.com> Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:15:06 -0700 PLEASE READ THIS IMPORTANT NEWS ABOUT YOUR EVERQUEST.® ACCOUNT! On March 16th, EverQuest was converted to a free-to-play game model. As part of that transition your EverQuest account was upgraded to Silver Membership with access to game content through House of Thule. For more information please visit the EverQuest website. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm fairly certain the following is true: I created an account after F2P was introduced and before Silver was no longer an option. I never went Gold on that account. Some time after Silver was removed from the marketplace, I went All Access for a month or 2 on that account. When the subscription lapsed, the account was Silver. I expect (but can't say with 100% certainty) that if your account was created before the switch to All Access (or maybe before the announcement), then you will have a grandfathered account and be able to revert it to Silver if you let an All Access subscription lapse. However, even Silver is so limited that it's not much of a step above f2p. Maybe the A5 merc is much better than the A2, but it's still a far cry from J1-J5.
I had 2 ftp accounts. I remember reading in here somewhere that in order for them to go silver the $5 needed to be paid. So I did. These two ftp accounts were created just before silver was no longer available. I think about a week before.
That was never how it worked as a rule. There was a very small subsection of the subscription base who claimed that they were not grandfathered and went All Access (back before it was the same thing as gold) but upon the end of their subscription they went to Silver instead of back to Free. It started as a bug but the left it in All Access as a bonus. There was a big hubbub about it with people wanting them to make it true with Gold too, but that never happened (or if it did it was very shortly before Gold was merged with All Access); then a few years after that they completely removed Silver. When they did away with the difference between Gold and All Access they also did away completely with all ways of gaining Silver Access. Presently, if you are not flagged to be Silver you cannot get Silver. That said, from the moment that they announced that they were getting rid of Silver level Access; I have stated that they should add an Unlocker for Apprentice Merc Tiers 3-5 (or at least 3 & 4 if they want to keep 5 unique to Silver) as well as a one time Unlocker that would up the AA cap for free from 250 to 1000. I wasn't expecting too much though since we had been waiting for them to add Unlockers for Prestige armor to make it useable but silver or free toons as it is (last I knew) in EQ2. Presently, I have even lower expectations of Unlockers being added amidst the reports that the Spell Rank 2 unlocker has disappeared from the Marketplace for F2P toons.
