Sony, I feel you lied to us

Well, heck. If you are going to go that far, might as well go the rest of the way and ask them to send you money to get you to play.

only thing I agree with on the OP's part is that the latest expansion should include all prior expansions. $80 + $15/mo is a bit steep for a game. this could be fixed if the change krono's to $5 each and have them be usable for any cash only purchases idea were implemented. I would cash in some plat for krono's and prolly buy some krono's too at that rate.

If soe had correctly label AoD as a feature pack we wouldn't have newbies coming to the forums going on about how they 'need' AoD and 'have to' buy it along with CoE to be able to play at the top tier.

at least SOE bundles the real expansions unlike blizzard.

what posses someone to make ridiculous threads like this?

you either pay the premium or put up with spam..
internet radio does the same thing.
tv does it and then makes you pay for cable anyway.
you want a free week at the gym? guess waht.. you're getting spammed with a presentation.
you want some coupons for whatever? guess waht you're getting spammed with other stuff too.

you get a lot more in this game than you do in any other game and you turn around and slap them in the face with this non-sense?

Lucus you better check yourself before calling peeps newbies, I have been here since beta and EQ1 before that. Furthermore, it is not required to have blah blah blah bull snot. I think all prior content (no matter what you name it or call it) should be included with current expansion, that is my opinion, if you like shelling out that much money just beacause they gave it a fancy "feature pack" name then by all means go ahead.

EQ2 should be completely free. It's ok, they'll make it up in volume.

Dear OP,

I don't agree.

And since my vote counts for exactly as much as yours (i.e., nothing), then this is simply an exercise in how big of a rise we can get out of people.

Since we're voting on inane stuff, I vote for cheese for all! Every time you log in, free ration of cheese!

But seriously, I feel that ftp gets a lot for nothing. There are no expansions required until around 90+, you can solo fine with apprentice spells and treasured (or less!) gear, and the pop-up, while annoying, is once when you log in, and a redirect when you log out. It's not in your face every hour, or an eyesore banner at the top or bottom of your screen. Add to that you now get full access to all races and classes, and you've surpassed a trial by leaps and bounds.
I think SoE has been generous with what they give ftp; a lot of the things they really could have kept locked, and they didn't. You really can't claim they have false advertising at this point.

If you want to play your characters up to their highest potential, you need AoD. Otherwise you're a step behind

And if that business plan fails they can always go door to door collecting money, I'm sure I can tell my better half to put away the shotgun somewhere between the religious nutjob and the newspaper subscription guy

bc xbox and ps3 are better online play

Ok, this thread just went from really funny to completely insane. Clearly you are delusional.

Plus, it IS free to play.....the part that's free....oh and here's my 'radio' addition:

PLEASE take hold of my hand, that
I might understand you

Won't you please
Oh won't you

Give me love
Give me love
Give me peace on earth
Give me light
Give me life
Keep me free from birth
Give me hope
Help me cope, with this heavy load

Isn't the concept of a free to play game to give the consumer a chance to sample the game with the hope of getting them interested enough to pay for the subscription? Why anyone would expect the game to actually be completely free seems silly.

Because that is the type of crowd that "Free to Play" attracts.

We all know the type... People who never make an effort to be aware of what they are getting into. The same people who cry victim, when their uneducated expectations turn out to be less than desired.

What they really need to do, although its kinda to late now is rename free to play, say it for what it really is - trial play. I havent found a single MMO where the f2p version is not irritating, restricted, a pain the butt.

However, I've always subbed within a couple of days - the ONLY reason i use f2p on any platform is to see whether or not I like the game before subbing.

SOE - please et rid of f2p, instead offer 1 week trials, available once per month... no chance I know but we can wish.

Free to play to me just says 'Hey we've got a product, but we don;t think it is really that good, so we'll give you a load of stuff, and hope.'

One day maybe a game will open, and be so good people will want to play, and want to pay.

Or tie in a ad server and get per-click payment

Even back when EQ2 was $15 a month I at least understood they have to keep servers running, internet bandwidth costs for the servers, power for the servers. Meanwhile, Xbox Live charges you a subscription fee, then turns around and shows you ads all over, and then just as a kicker it had Xboxs connect to each other client to client rather than having dedicated servers to host everything. Meaning - they charged you for what was considered free functionality on PC games for the longest time.

I never specifically called you a newbie, i was speaking in general.

actually i got AoD when you could buy expansions with SC so i didn't pay full price on it.

If AoD was correctly labeled "feature pack" and not "expansion" we wouldn't have new people getting the idea that they need AoD to play at top tier.

See what happens? Troll wins again

Should have stuck with the singing, y'all.