The New All Access Plan Information & FAQ

Not with this change. It's not really fair for those that have been subbing and and whose sub ends after this all starts. No way to buy silver status when you are currently gold.

Rather bothersome.

I do not think you can point to a single post on this thread where anyone had a problem with paying a subscription fee. Nor do I think you can find one that demanded member level benefits for free. Just because a person has an issue with the way SOE prices, markets, and incentivizes, it's products does not mean they have a sense of entitlement, it simply means they disagree. When you put everyone that disagrees with you into one group that you dismiss as a whole, you cease having a discussion, and come rather close to simple name calling. The only thing I can take away from this post is that if you have a problem with the way SOE costs its products and services, you are just another beggar looking for a free handout.

I get how people that made past investments feel about costs. I felt much the same way you do when my last game made all the pay to play TCG quests that I had purchased, available to all players for free. Even non-members. Looking back on that though, I can recall how having early access to that content gave me a long term edge that I enjoyed, but play in that area of the game fell off as old players drifted away, and newer players were hesitant to invest in multiple pay to play quests in order to earn cards. By bringing new and current members on par with players like myself, they increased interest in that area of the game, and earned revenue from increased card sales. I did not like it at first, but have to admit it benefited the game. Just before that game announced "sunset" there was even talk about retiring old, slow selling SC goods into the Coin Shop, as new SC items were introduced.

I also feel I should point out that the OP and I are in the same boat. Consider yourself fortunate that you still have full benefit of your investments into EQ. You think people should pay for everything? Well, we did pay. We paid hundreds or more (I try not to think about it), over a period of years into SOE games, just as you did. The difference is that while you still have use of your investment, our investment is gone, due to the "sunset" of those games. I get the fact that companies need to get paid, but do not companies often offer incentives to long term paying customers to encourage them to stay with the brand? After paying hundreds into other SOE titles, where is my incentive to invest in this one?

Yes, I want past content for free. Live with it. That does not detract from the fact that in exchange for that content I would buy membership, purchase the most recent expansion, and fully expect to pay for future expansions. The EQ franchise would not be where it is today without your business. In order to stay viable however, it is important to attract new business. There are three things that a player to a new game will consider before investing.

1. What is my cost for entry and membership.
2. What is my cost of coming on par with current players of the game.
3. Will this game be around long enough to invest in.

The lower the entry and catch up cost are for a beginning player, the more likely they will stick and invest. It may feel right to say "Hey, They should pay full freight for every thing too!" but the fact is that many of them will not if the cost is too high. So the solution is that if you have a problem with costs, go find another game? Well... there goes another customer we could have gotten cash flow out of. Sometimes it is good business to give incentive, as opposed to saying "pay top dollar or go elsewhere." If too many people choose to go elsewhere, none of you will have a game in the future. You will be in the same boat that I and others are in, having invested for years into a game, simply to see it vanish. With this over-saturated market, anything that brings a new customer in the door is a good thing. Some add on for pay content in a game is fine, but too much will turn a perspective customer off from the beginning.

Relax if you sub and your sub lapse you will get the same things that silver now gets.

see here for the information https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2...onze-accounts-buy-silver-this-weekend.547028/

The thread you link to was created by the person you answered.

That link doesn't address my question, it states that a current silver member who goes gold will revert back to silver at the end. I am currently gold, but never paid for silver on this account, and while I am gold there is no way to purchase it (my current sub doesn't end until after the planned changes). My concern was how to insure I would be silver if I decided to drop the gold sub in the future.

From the other forum thread ( https://forums.station.sony.com/soe...soe-all-access-program-faq.11500063040/page-6 )

Ashlanne said:

Somewhere else in that thread it was said that they hadn't made any plans to change what a free membership was though she said she would pass along feedback.

From the time F2P was introduced theoretically all accounts from before the switch to F2P were automatically granted silver, theoretically. I know it worked for accounts I had before but no longer paid for, but I have not dropped the sub on any of our gold accounts since before F2P so I don't know if the granted silver is still actually in effect for those.

All in all there are just a lot of questions still and no one at SOE seems to be forthcoming with answers. Whether because they don't actually know or because someone somewhere just doesn't want to tell us I don't know =(. I wish they'd just say though. The 16th isn't that far off now.

As someone dropping on and of from gold to silver after being grandfathered: All your accounts created (and paid for of course) before F2P should drop to silver. Time since F2P is not a factor.

I think they will likely grandfather in as silver anyone who drops from gold after April, if they were gold before April and obviously had no chance to buy silver. If not right away, then after the forums get lit on fire from all the complaints and the debris flies up onto the rooftops of SOE's CA offices.

However, it is obvious from 3/4 SOE dev studios closing, 4 games closing, and various layoffs in between on top of it all, that SOE needs more money. Putting the squeeze on free players in the future to try and nudge them harder into going gold is apparently one way they want to accomplish this.

Silver was obviously so nonrestrictive that hardly anyone left is gold. And I've seen Dave Georgeson pass the comment in the past that hardly anyone buys anything out of the cash shop. (Although I feel that when items are full price in the SC shop, those prices are uniformly too high and I personally don't buy when it's like that. But he passed that comment a while ago, when double SC sales were still fairly common, so apparently nobody much buys even with the sales. Or not enough people anyway.)

I'm always gold on both my accounts and my daughter's, all since launch day, and I used to spend quite a bit of money on SC during SC sales, but I guess I'm just a weirdo, hehe.

When will Silver no longer be available?

Will that option disappear when All Access comes out, or is it already gone?

It will no longer be available on 4/16/2014 when the new All Access plan goes live.

Has anyone been able to confirm: For those of us that have been paid for years, what happens if for some reason we cant pay our sub for a month, will be still drop to silver since silver is being removed? Or are we then dropped to free to play? Theres a huge difference between free and SIlver. Would suck to be dropped lower then the grandfathered in Silvers since we have been paying full subs.

I would log in to your Station account via the Website (station.sony.com), and go to View Account Details. This should bring up a list of Station games, and show you which ones you have active accounts on. Click on the Details button for your EQ2 account and make sure that "EverQuest II Silver Membership" is listed under the enabled features on your account.

I was a subscriber before the F2P transition happened, and have not let my sub lapse since. I see it under my account features. If it's NOT there, I would wager that you drop back all the way to free if you unsub.

Ah never thought to check that, thanks Ozien. Maybe someone can answer this one for me. It says in their FAQ that whether you use kroon, SC card or Credit card to pay you get ALL benefits, does this include gifting ability?

I'm curious about this as well. Will we be able to gift items if we are a gold membership but do not have a credit card on file? It does say "all benefits" but some clarification would be nice.

Thanks

I was curious about gifting, as well, especially after I noticed that you now have to be a paying member for 30 consecutive days (no longer 7). I don't know when that changed - I only noticed after my sub was unable to charge for a day because of a changed expiration date. After I updated the card details and logged in, I had lost gifting for 30 days. With that change, it might be ok to let gifting be available for all types of payments including Krono. Still rather annoying that you lose it after it lapses for a day, though.

I am very disappointed over the decision to discontinue Vanguard: Saga of Heroes as well as the other games just to add 2 other EverQuest games that people who don't have 64 bit OS will never be able to use unless they are financially able to upgrade their systems to play. It seems to be such a waste and a loss because so may players are going to be leaving instead of finding another game to play. I was under the impression that by adding EverQuest Next it would attract new players as well as retain the older players, in actuality it is going to do the opposite and only those who have the upper end computers or 64 bit os will be able to play, this is only because the programers are not going to make it for the 32 bit os. It's sad, but your loss of money and players, so when WoW is said to be the #1 mmorpg out there you guys will know why.

No word on the gifting question? Has it not been decided or they just don't want to say?

Thanks for the clarification. I will be sure to pass that information along at the fan-site I moderate for. Several of our members there play EQ2, among other SOE games, but do not often visit the official forums.

Sadly, many of our members that were connected to one or more of the four games that are going through "sunset" have decided to opt out of SOE games entirely, while several others are unable to move to the new ones due to the greater system requirements. I do not know what prompts decisions of this nature at a corporate level, but I am left to wonder if corporate is aware of what prompts us at a consumer level. While the All Access plan sounds wonderful when first hearing of it, it begins to lose its luster when one becomes aware of what is being sacrificed in the bargain. On the one hand, you are telling us that we will have access to all SOE games for one low price. On the other hand, you are telling us that the "All" in All-Access will be trimmed by four games when it becomes available. Take cheer though, for we are about to launch two all new games to bring that number back up. Games that we are aware a large portion of our customer base will be unable to play due to greater system requirements. The closer we get to the launch of All-Access, the less attractive it becomes to many of your current customer base.

I doubt it is the case, but I have heard a general theme emerging from members of various forums. The perception I most often encounter is that you have decided to market your services exclusively to upper end users, at the expense of your middle and low end users; Users like me. I happen to like having a simplistic game like Free Realms in my stable of games I play, and I do not own a 64 bit OS. It is highly unlikely that I am among your top 20% of spenders, but I HAVE in fact spent hundreds of dollars on SOE games over the past four years. The decision to trim out four very playable games, and replacing them with two games outside my capacity to play is squeezing me out of the herd of long term dedicated customers. It is as if you have decided to harvest dollars instead of dimes, oblivious to the fact that there are 12 dimes for every dollar out there.

I have little doubt that the powers that be will see that as an unfair portrayal, but I ask that you bear one thing in mind. As consumers, we are unaware of what guides decisions made at a corporate level, so we are left with little more to go on than how these decisions affect us on a personal level. While that portrayal is likely untrue, it IS true that these decisions have impacted a large portion of your customer base in a highly negative fashion. SOE has stripped us of the services of four games we were comfortable with, and offered the users of those services, zero in the form of compensation or incentive to shift to other SOE games. They have eroded the value of All Access by doing so, before it even had a chance to launch. The fact that we will have to heavily invest in system upgrades in order to make use of new offerings is simply one more straw upon the proverbial camel's back. Fair or not, this is the impression that many of your customers are feeling tonight, as two of those four games have had their "sunset" a mere three hours ago. I am not so foolish as to think the hands of time can be reversed, nor am I asking you to agree with anything I have conveyed, but can you at least see how it is that so many of your customers feel this way? Would you at least bear it in mind going forward? I have enjoyed SOE games for the past four years, and would like to continue making use of your products. Sadly, the recent decisions by SOE are making that more and more difficult for me, and I fear that if it continues at this rate, the last post by Blueiris may well prove to be prophetic.

When Vanguard sunset was anounced some of us decided to move to EQ2. Our VG gold membership subscription was kindly transfered to EQ2 after a petition, which we apreciate. Saddly, currently we have a non recurrent subscription due to this transfer which in my case ends the 5th of May and I'm waiting for that date to "resub" to EQ2 since Idon't want to be charged twice.
I would like to know if subscriptions that at the moment are non recurrent will be converted to all acces pass too or if a recurrent subscription is needed.