So, about that Silver/Broker Selling thing...

Um, NO, they don't. NO ONE with a Silver account at any point was purposefully ever given the ability to sell things for free on the broker, before the last few months in 2022, which was quickly patched away.

If you'll read the thread again, people including myself have had "Grandfathered Silver" accounts FROM DAY 1 of SILVER ON.

There is exactly zero time period where Silvers were ever intentionally given the ability to sell on the broker for free during the past 11 years (outside of the past few months-- clearly bugged), and it has been a major pain point across all those years. My accounts both Gold (main account) and Silver (secondary account) also hail from Day 1 of launch in November 2004.

Don't give me any nonsense. People got away with it, never reported it, and may have used a 3rd party cheat to get it, if it wasn't an exploited bug.

Meat cleaver indeed! If I was a dev I'd be $hitting bricks about now. $1,100 per account just flew out the window because people didn't admit they were exploiting a bug (at the very least) for the past 11 years!

I’m not an expert in any of this. I just flat think we don’t need silver and free accounts because there’s no such thing as “free to play” for eq2. Especially since you pay for practically everything including the BROKER of all things. It’s like, come on man!

I am not going to accuse anyone who had a silver account that could sell of wrong-doing. But I do want to add some of my anecdotal experience. About 8 years ago, I fired up an old inactive account that was a paid sub from 2004-2008. I remember being unable to list items on the broker. I had to pass things over to a subbed account to sell.

I could not find anything relating to grandfathered silver accounts getting unlimited broker access, despite searching for it on these forums, Google, and way back machine (including looking at backdated saves of the eq2 subscription info page).

I completely understand that you are saying sites like eq2.zam, eq2.fandom and eq2wire are not official SOE/DBG/DPG websites. But it does add up when all those sources of information relating to EQ2, make no mention of the claimed grandfathered unlimited broker access. The only thing I have been able to find in writing, is that silver accounts have restricted broker access.

I did find an official post by smokejumper, introducing silvered grandfathering, dated Dec 2011. It made no mention about being able to sell.
Grandfathering Characters Created Before F2P | EverQuest II (everquest2.com)
I'd be happy to support the concerns being raised, if there is any record of it in writing? Surely there would have to be, if it was a change made due to concerns raised by players?

Honestly, I just don't care - these arguments are bad as politics, worse in some ways. I'm NEVER going to convince anyone who refuses to believe what I say is what I have experienced for over a decade. Refusing to believe what I have experienced when I lay it out in detail doesn't mean it didn't happen. Enjoy your alternative facts.
I
AM
DONE.

It is true that we don't know what your experience has been, but our experiences are not "alternative facts". They are facts, that are supported across multiple documented writings about the Silver level membership.

It does not appear people are refusing to believe that you could sell on the broker, using a grandfathered silver account, for over a decade. I believe you. But the question is: Were you supposed to be able to?

You being able to list items for sale on the broker as a grandfathered silver account, without requiring tokens, is not proof that it was intended. There are people (myself included) who have grandfathered silver accounts that were not able to sell on the broker without using tokens. Something was not right.

If it was intended for grandfathered silver accounts to have sell access to the broker without using tokens, surely there would be some documented evidence. I have searched, and found none. It is entirely reasonable for people to ask for evidence beyond "Because I could for 10+ years" to support your position. If you can produce anything of substance, I will be happy to support your cause. If you can't, then you are empty handed.

If you refuse to read and comprehend a post there is no point to be addressed.

I think you're just all mad & butt-hurt because you were never a real grandfathered account. Don't know why, but if you were, you'd have had sales access. Calling it an exploit, a cheat or any other unauthorized use of the game still doesn't make you right. You're not. Purchased Silver, NO SALES. Grandfathered Silver DID have sales access.
But, I also agree with Morukta - you're never going to accept anything other than what you say and believe, even if the devs themselves came out & backed up the truth for you. So, by all means, please enjoy your bubble of fantasy.

Both my accounts hail from Day 1 of EQ2 in Nov 2004. The only way to play the game was as a Gold Sub, until F2P and Silvers came along many years later. Already-subscribed customers (now called Gold subs) were auto-flagged as "Grandfathered Silvers" on Day 1 that Silvers became a thing (lest we drop from Gold at any point) because we had already shown we weren't "gold farmer" accounts who might require the chat/mail/plat restrictions of Bronze F2P. I also paid the 5 bucks for many fam/friends/guildies so they could go Silver later on, from Bronze. NONE of us has ever, as a Silver, been able to sell on the broker without buying broker tokens.

When I let my 2nd Gold account drop to "Grandfathered Silver," it could never sell on the broker. Others in this thread have all had that same experience. Silvers have never been legitimately given the right to sell off the broker: at the very least, it's a bug that all those who abuse it have been exploiting (instead of reporting it, which all of you you should have done) all these years.

And if I was a dev, I'd think it prudent to search for 3rd party programs out in the wild that also might give this benefit, just in case. They seem to have buttoned up the problem at this point, but better mouse trap, better mouse and all that. It might be good to keep a watch on it in the future.

I really don't understand any decision to risk longtime players to leave the game, when they should be thinking about keeping as many as possible. I just can't imagine those affected people (including me) would suddenly switch to Gold membership or buy broker tokens, just to be able to sell on a broker. Remember, even those people may have been contributing to EQ2 sales by buying new expansions and Gold membership here and there, just like I have been doing.

But, c'est la vie. I guess my EQ2 life stops at VoV. It's been fun, and although there was increasing level of frustrations in recent years, I'm happy I've experienced the world of EQ2 for about 11 years.

My opinion is this game could be a tax write off for something else.

I always thought it was counter productive to deny basic gaming functions to free to play members (broker, mail, chat, etc.).

Also, whenever I let my paid subscription lapse to silver, I have never been able to sell any thing on the broker without buying tokens.

Bronze F2P needs to be so restrictive because gold farmers would overrun world chat, drive broker prices way up selling their botted goods, dump huge swathes of plat onto players and therefore into the server economy, and spam players with in-game mails (plus use mail for plat deliveries). Bronze is plat capped, or was at one point.

Gold farmers use stolen credit cards to buy things (leading to expensive bank charge backs for Darkpaw), or use Bronze so they don't have to spend at all. They wouldn't have even spent 5 legit dollars for Silver back in the day when you could do that, because they get caught and their farming accounts shut down so often.

I hear and appreciate what you are saying, but at this point in the games life, do you really think that is as big of a concern as it once was? Honest question, not meant to be snarky. We don't have the player base we once had and seem to lose more with each expansion release. I just wonder how much money they could even make any more at this point.

I am just going to repeat this. When I looked at upgrading from ftp to silver way back in 2011, I looked at what the benefits were before I paid real money to get that upgrade. Had it said at that time it granted access to unlimited SELLING anything on broker, I would have made use of that feature way back then. So no, we are not living in a bubble. Unlimited Broker access, buying/selling, was exclusive to the Gold level accounts as a benefit of subscribing.

Again, please provide valid documentation or update notes that indicated it had been changed or ever allowed before posting anymore about this issue. Otherwise you are just beating a dead and fully imaginary hippogryph.

We cannot know if they even realized that they were not supposed to have access to selling on broker, so we cannot know they were deliberately exploiting it. As it seems the OP genuinely believes s/he was supposed to have that feature, maybe we should leave the judgement of "abuse/exploiting" to DBG.

Having played games that allowed unrestricted access to those features, I can totally accept, and even welcome, these restrictions. With them, I almost never have to /ignore anyone in game anymore versus literally every 30 minutes due to spam/gold farmers/cash grabbers or whatever else you want to call them.

At this point, these restrictions could be what is keeping the game alive financially for the company.

I don't like the tone in this forum entry somehow implying that people who had grandfather silver accounts and the ability to sell items were exploiting something to have it. I have played the game for 16 years with my partner and have had this access for a long time until a month ago. I think changes like should be communicate better to the player base and the reason why for removing it.

Prices on the broker have skyrocketed anyway.

They will argue your purchase of silver will disqualify you for the grandfathered status/benefits. All good. However, I have never purchased a silver membership on any account. That means I should have had SELL access on the broker for any of the accounts I had in use between 2004-2010, right? But I did not. Siren had the same experience, so something does not add up.

So how to get to the bottom of this? Get some evidence, of course.
At first, I thought Morukta and others may be on to something. DBG/SOE may have done me dirty all these years!
I tried find any viable written evidence to support claims. I find none. Nudda. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

It has been claimed that broker SELL access was granted to grandfathered silver accounts due to a player uproar. Can't find any evidence of this uproar on forums or fan sites. Nor could I find any evidence of this in patch notes, official announcements, or even in the official announcement from Smoke Jumper about grandfathered silver being introduced.

I am leaving the ball in their court. If they can provide any viable evidence beyond "Because I remember" or "Because I could for 10+ years", I will be happy to support their cause. Should be plenty of documentation on this, so I am waiting...

Hmm... did you look in the archives here ? And there was a forum software update several years ago.

I don't have any silver accounts in EQ II, mine are on EQ. I don't remember having a character in the bazaar in EQ unless I was using a paid membership.

And it will be a very long wait my friend.
In the transition from SOE to DBG the latter chose not to retain the services of off site contractors who supported quite a bit of data SUROUNDING the game for SOE.
It is in no way probable anyone can go fishing for the documentation you wisely ask for.