DISCRIMINATION

Get the freaking heck off the Real Life Card there, me bucko. I'm old, I'm on disability due to C-PTSD, I have physical issues also, and I have limited funds. But I realize that EQ2 is a major part of my entertainment, and helps me escape some of the dismalness of RL, so I budget to pay that $15/mo. This is the same amount of money that we would spend on one pizza, or one bag of Sonic burgers, or a movie.

Heck, I've had young members of my guild finance the game via collecting bottles for the turn in fee (in states where that happens) - that's 750 bottles if the turn in premium is $0.02. Others have done babysitting or lawn-mowing (one season of lawn-mowing apparently pays for a year's subscription to EQ2). If you have physical limitations (I do as do many others) you can pick up extra cash via Amazon's Mechanical Turk or companies that pay for surveys online.

Anyone who really WANTS to subscribe can and will find the money to pay for it.

We get that this is EverCrack, it's addictive, we ALL would be upset if we couldn't play. The queue is going to be in place for F2P until such time as DBG gets the server performance issues worked out. Even paying members are getting lag in the game. They've told us they're working on it.. BREATHE.

Moral of the story: go do something else for the next few weeks while Daybreak deals with the server mergers, lag, beta testing, and all the other fun stuff that their employees are getting paid to deal with. Your F2P toons will still be there, and you'll eventually be able to log in and play them again.

Think of it this way: your computer dies, and you have to get it fixed or have to buy a new one. You'll be offline a few days/weeks until the problem is resolved. This happened to me a few times over the 11 years that I've been a paying member of this game. First time: I had to wait for a new Intel chip to be sent back to me, because it died within a month of a new computer build. I was offline for almost a month, but I didn't ask SOE for my $15 back. Another time, my motherboard died, and I took the computer in to get it repaired, and 2 weeks later I got it back. Because I couldn't last that long without this game or the intrawebs in general, I went to Fry's and dropped $700 on a new laptop that I had been wanted to get anways. Played EQ2 on the lowest settings during those 2 weeks before my main PC was back up and running.

My AT&T Uverse died for 3 days, thanks to major storm damage in the area. I was "off the grid" for 3 days, and OMG I found other things to do in life. I suggest you do the same.

OP - you said you can't afford to pay for the game, but yet you plan paying for a lawyer to sue for discrimination? I'm confused where the money for the lawyer which would cost more than a monthly subscription. Besides what they're dueing is legal. Every where you go in real life, paying customers do get more that a freebie person. Example: McDonalds, customers who buy off the dollar menue gets a tiny hamburger without the works, (leaf tomatoes and such) where a Customer who buys off the combo menu get a bigger hamburger with the works which is better than the dollar menu. Do you hear the low cash fund person complain about it NO! they don't. Which applies to all the other stores too who offer cheaper product which breaks faster or expensive product which is better quality. You get what you pay for. That how world been running for years.

It warms my heart to see the people who actually contribute to this games upkeep take a stand, and speak up against the over-entitled freeloading trash who think DBG should bow to their selfish demands.

It is smart business for DBG to ensure the paying customers are looked after, especially in times of important transitions (ie: recent mergers, and I suggest they do the same with the upcoming expansion). I hope DBG staff see through the facade of the FTP parasites who claim they spend copious amounts of money on the game, but are mysteriously above paying for a subscription. My Bee-Ess-Omoter red lines every time I see a post containing stories of that nature.

Want to play this game for free? Go play on a server that is not affected by the merger processes. And before anyone goes on a diatribe about what they paid for in the past, you got what you paid for in the past, the moment an account goes FTP, you're entitled to nothing, and privileged to get anything at all.

You're unemployed and/or on disability but you can afford a lawyer to sue a game company over double EXP?

Sounds to me like you have your priorities warped. It would be much cheaper if you...ya know...just subbed.

PS: The Double EXP/status All Access Only benefits were long before SoE became Daybreak. You're either new here in these parts or you have very selective memory.

Free to play is a ******* blight on the MMORPG world and just needs to be abolished already.

Not sure whether you're reminding the OP or yourself here.

Better call saul

I said in comparison to other games, not in comparison to itself. They were forced to make those changes in order to stay competitive, that's not exactly charity. I've been playing this game since launch I am very well aware of how it has changed over time, they should have just copied how Asian devs were doing free to play in the first place instead of that awful failure of an implementation they had originally.

And I mean, they sell levels and gear. That's all I said, I never said anything about being raid geared or even participating in raids.

People can moan and complain about the F2P players all they want, but if anyone at all thinks that a 24 hour queue is okay in any way shape or form, I would like them to try it out for a while.

I do pay for all access, on three accounts even and have for many years. However, that doesn't make it okay for anyone who isn't paying all access to have to wait hours and hours to actually get into the game. In the end it doesn't matter why they aren't currently paying for a subscription. It may be from just not having the cash this month or not wanting to drop the money on a sub and spending it in the marketplace instead or because they want more than one account but don't want to pay a sub on all of them or maybe they are just starting out and don't want to drop money on an advertised F2P game until they've tried it out.

Making excuses for the queue times needs to stop. There is no reason there should be a 24 hour queue or even a 2hour queue (that's what it was Sunday afternoon). These queues are going to drive people away from the game and unless that is their intention I would recommend Daybreak getting on fixing the queues. I don't have any problem at all with free/silver players not getting all the bonus xp and all that. Those things while fun aren't required for the game, simply nice perks. When the free players who have actually spent I don't know how much money on the game can't even get into the game is something entirely different.

My free accounts have more than 100 DBC sitting on them I can't spend even if I wanted because I can't log those accounts on. I could by the new expansion, but I can't finish leveling alts to be ready for it because I can't get on, so no point in buying the new expansion for the silver accounts,.

They weren't forced. It was charity opening up everything they did for F2P. You have any sources/links/dev responses to back your statement of them being "forced"?

Also, they sell a lvl 90 heroic character.....can you buy a level 50 from them? no.....can you buy a level 64 from them? no. Can you buy a level 100 from them? no....Where do they sell non-appearance gear at? Any official Daybreak site or place? I was saying go ahead and buy a level 90 character, a character I can make in 30 minutes for free while you pay 40 dollars. How is that winning in any way? Do I win EQ2 because I can make a lvl 90 character in 30 minutes?

I really have to laugh at all those P2P "members" that call the F2P people "freeloader trash", as if that makes them superior at life. Bit insecure there, measuring yourself by gaming payments?

I am a F2P player, and I play EQ2 solely for entertainment. I do not measure my worth by paying/playing games, killing mobs, raiding, or PvP ganking. When I play games I am killing free time, not creating the Magna Charta.

I also have enough income to afford the $15/month IF (and that's a BIG "IF") I could find an MMO that was worth $15/month of entertainment. That would be an MMO that wasn't about playing statistics games and mindlessly killing mobs in order to get bigger and better loot to kill bigger and better mobs, ad nauseam. These games are nothing more than a hamster treadmill, developed over and over and over again ad nauseum, and once in a while the hamsters need to get off the treadmill, follow Alice out of "looking glass land", and smell the roses.

EQ2 holds about two hours of my interest when I play, which is usually very early in the morning while I wait for the rest of my household to wake up so we can start our day. The game is so easy a 2 year old could play, and "win", whatever that is in a "pay to win" game. Frankly, EQ2 was much more of a personal challenge at launch, it has devolved ever since, giving out candy (or is it platinum and gear?) to keep milking the player base for cash. Once in a while they throw in an "original idea", like Dungeon Maker, or a new alternative currency, to hold the player interest for 30 seconds more.

At times when I can't log on, I go and do something else. Watching squirrels burying their nuts in the fall can be just as entertaining as most MMOs. It's a stagnant industry, "AI" is not true AI, just a fancy buzzword for adding more hit points and damage to mobs, as the mobs cannot be programmed to learn. Hype your "new" game, show fancy graphics, a hot female character generator, sit back and watch the cash roll in for the same ole, same ole, game play experience. Mix and repeat in 6 months with a different game. That's the MMO industry.

Maybe one day Daybreak Games will give some thought on how they can part people like me from a few bucks, but probably not, when they can so easily target the whales.

Kinda makes bragging about being a paid subscriber a little foolish,now, doesn't it?

No I don't but considering they made their free to play conform almost identically to how Trion did theirs I would have to assume it was a matter of keeping on par with the competition. And by forced I didn't mean someone made them, I meant either they do it or no one uses their free to play. Daybreak is a company out to make money, they aren't just giving things away out of the goodness of their hearts.

They're selling 90 levels. I don't see how this changes anything I said, they're still selling levels, and it comes with gear. They also sell achievement levels. For that matter even they're selling early flight with the CE of the new expansion, early flight is definitely powerful especially in the older zones.

I don't think it's a big deal personally, in fact I would encourage them to go down this route as a way of opening the game up further for people to play how they want.

Yeah I don't get it. I mean I totally understand that they contribute more to the game, so they are entitled to more, but I don't understand the point of being so hostile on the forums over it.

If you look back, I am wondering how it is winning.

Paying 40 dollars for a lvl 90 character that most people could level in 30 minutes (probably another 30, if that, to finish aa). The gear is level 90 and will be replaced in 8 levels by way better gear (or even 5 levels). So you are paying for a level 90 and gear that will be outdated in 5+ levels. Still trying to understand how you are winning.

How do you win in an MMO? Power is pay to win to me. Evidently you think it's something else. I've expressed my opinion and I really have nothing else to add at this point.

I gave you a situation in which it is not "pay-to-win" but you didn't understand. Thing is, there is no winning in this game so that is why I am against anyone who uses the term "pay-to-win".

Agreed to disagree though on this matter.

By that criteria any game that sells anything similar to a krono could be called pay to win. Buy one, sell it to get ingame coin, pay for help to level super fast, buy gear....voila! 1 character that you paid to "win" on.

Sorry dude. Your ****** life decisions (like playing this game for the last 8 years) don't count as discrimination. If you cannot afford $15 per month to play this game then your priorities are not in the right order.