Heroic lvl 85s. a sales pitch or a reward to loyal customers? confirm / deny please.

Recently I read that heroic lvl 85s were a sales pitch, as opposed to a reward for people who stuck with the game for the years and years.

""This is primarily a Winback program to attract veteran players.""""
is a quote from tenton hammers. I sure hope this is not the case.
World of warcraft rewards players with 1 free high lvl character on every server.

I would hope that sony isnt going to add a great content to the game, then revoke it as soon as they have made thier advertisement compensation.

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Can anyone confirm deny this report ?

Allowing us one free toon with the option to buy more heroic toons is a model I could agree with overall.

I can also see a temporary heroic toon with the option to buy after so long. Ex. Play one heroic toon for an hour or such and then it is locked on character selection until you pay via sc to unlock it fully. I could see that method really happening because most of the functionality is in place (sc, toon locks, etc..)

I will say if we do have to pay a heavy fee for a heroic toon that it is fully equiped with mythical mess done and some really nice armor. I would also like a free elite merc tossed in but that is probably asking too much haha.

I highly doubt it'll be a temporary thing. They're completely redoing the Velious overland quest lines specifically for heroic characters. That's a lot of work for a temporary winback program. More likely they're transforming Velious into the new newbie experience and they're wanting new or returning players to start there so they can get into the current content (and into the social aspects of the game) more quickly.

We don't know what the point of them is yet, they haven't yet given us any details aside from "Everyone will be able to try one, for free." or something along those lines.

This. And we'll probably see more Heroic versions of old zones in future. This way they can just recycle old content for higher level play and keep players busy without creating new content that frequently.

I stand firm on the try before buy method. The demand is there for elite mercs and geared toons. They will capitalize on the resources used for this someway somehow...and nothing is wrong with that really.


As stated though the lack of information states they are not sure of what they are doing or have something so incredible they do not want to give away any spoilers.

Of course I should ask what part of Ten Ton Hammer did you get the quote from? Who is being quoted? If it is an opinion piece then it has no more basis for being believed than any of our guesses about what the level 85 characters entail. On the other hand if they cite a source for that statement then you have a place to start.

after all the hype about these, i can see them putting a perma beta buffer on the test server and saying here ya go, there's your level 85 /280 aa toons with gear lol

The team is fully aware of how bitterly we have felt about past Winback programs that rewarded quitters and punished consistent subscribers. Realize a lot of that came from Marketing. The one quote we have is that everyone will be able to try a level 85 character out. And we know they're adding the 280 AA bauble to the marketplace. It's a given that there will be *some* cost somewhere along the way.

And I am a firm believer that there SHOULD be some a cost for jumping straight to the end with gear and AAs and everything. Call it as a convenience fee. You can still level naturally, but if you want to try out a new character at level 85+ and see what it's like (either veteran, returning player, or newbie), you'll get to try out that class right away.

EQ2 is two games:

• Level 1-85: Solo tutorial where you don't really get to use your class's abilities.
• Level 86+/280 AAs: Your class now has most of your abilities, and you get to try them out in Adv Solo, or with other players in Group and Raid zones.

There's no way the EQ2 team went to all the trouble to setup hotbars, AA specs, and build armor sets for one server.

Can you link the article?