Future Content: A Letter from Director of Development Dave Georgeson

I honestly think EQ2 was better when the F2P and the subscription communities were separate, I think it was better still when there was no F2P. I would be all for having a subscription only server that got all the SC stuff as part of their subscription (aside from player studio items) even if that meant the subscription price per month went up for that server. I doubt I'll see this anytime soon, but that's my feedback.

While I mostly agree with you, I believe that it would be very difficult to go back from full blown FTP, without doing more harm than good. SOE made their choice, and now they have to live with it.

One point I disagree on, is your opinion that it was better when FTP and subscription communities were separate. I believe it was a terrible time, as the large portion of legitimately new players were funneled to the FTP server. This is because of the Trial (and then RAF) programs being removed from Live servers, leaving the only way to "try" EQ2 as the Freeport server. The website design for getting into EQ2 was also heavily focused toward going to Freeport. It was as if SOE wanted to make sure Freeport got a population surge, so they could tell the rest of us how glorious FTP is, and try to make people more accepting of it.

Full blown FTP achieved exactly what I expected it to do... A brief population surge, that receded with little more than a whimper.

You are not incorrect in any of that post, well said

The reason I felt that it was better when the F2P and Sub communities were better separated is simply because the mindset of each of these communities are almost polar opposite when it comes to new stuff being added to the game and how it should be done. I make this statement in general so please do not take offence.

In general, the Sub community likes to see new stuff added to the game be it a house or a mount or whatever in the form of lore or quested or obtainable by means outside of the earth wallet, hence why we pay our sub.

In general, the F2P community likes to see stuff added to the SC store so they can support the financial means of the game in that way.

What we have now is neither of those, yet both of those and so in that way both communities I feel are suffering more of a lose/lose rather than celebrating a win/win.

I know Silver accounts are to be obliterated (I thank heavens for grandfathering mine! ;->), but what of Bronze accounts? Haven't heard much about them... /shrug

Uwk

Bronze was renamed to Free several months ago. Almost all the restrictions have been removed over the years, so much so that long-time subscribers were scratching their heads wondering why they still pay $15 a month when they can get almost everything for free. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way and we are seeing more and more perks for subscribers.

Cool! I appreciate that way, actually; the other way always aggravated the heck out of me in the otherwise fairly decent superhero game run by NCSoft, City of Heroes (amazing character creation, best anywhere, and really, really dull and formulaic "missions" [quests]...and only 3 at a time, for that). There were like 5 different "roles" one could take with one's powers and concept: the Tank, pretty much like it sounds; the DPS-from-a-distance Blaster, which would be like a Mage type here; the DPS-up-close Scrapper (Scout); the...oh, shoot, it's been too long, but basically the support (Priest [Defender? something like that]), and the Controller, which kind of really doesn't have an equivalent, other than maybe Storm in the X-Men comics.

It could be tricky to solo, especially the Defenders and Controllers, especially at low levels, but it could be done (/raising_paw), as long as one was careful about one's fights. Entirely too many people whined and poor-mouthed around at how difficult it was, but instead of giving the Defenders and Controllers more powers/abilities/options, they NERFED the Blasters, then the Tanks, and finally the Scrappers. :-/

Not long after that, they insisted that everyone participate in PvP on all servers, and a while after that, the game died. Appeals to NCSoft to return the game to its original creators were met with a resounding, "Noooo! If we can't have it, no one can! Waahhh! Up yours!" Lovely people. X-P

Uwk