I've heard lots of good things about Everquest. I was too young to play Everquest 1 and since EQII has gone F2P in the recent years, I've considered playing. However, some f2p models are REALLY restricting and almost FORCE you to pay if you want to get even a semblence of content. Is EQ2 the same way? Can you truly be a f2p player in this game? Or does SOE nudge you in the direction of a subscription quickly? Thanks for the info!
For end game grouping or raiding you'll either need to subscribe, or spend money on gear/spell unlockers. But from 1-89 you'll be just fine playing for free. http://eq2.zam.com/wiki/Membership_Matrix_(EQ2)
Mohee wrote: Thanks for the reply! So about how much per character would I have to spend end-game if I chose not to sub? EDIT: Also, going through a spells list, there seems to be a lot but I'm not sure. There's a lot of different tiers but how many unique spells are there per class (about)?
Its kind of hard to guestimate actually... For gear/spells the unlockers are 150 SC (or $1.50) for 5. The spell unlockers are the same price as the gear unlockers. If you buy SC during a double or triple SC event the end up being far cheaper technically, but for the sake of this example, i'll just use current prices. 100sc = $1 Gear/Spell unlockers 150sc (or 30 cents per) There are 21 different slots for gear. At end game, most classes have an average of 25-30 different spells between level 80-90 to upgrade. For gear if you do 21/5 = 4. Unlockers come in sets of 5, so you'd need about 4 to unlock every slot (4 x 150sc = 600sc). Spells: 30/5 = 6. then (6 x 150sc = 900sc) Now, once you upgrade the spells to master, you wont need to buy more spell unlockers until the level cap is increased and you have new spells available. Gear on the otherhand, if you are playing the free model and buying unlockers, you'll need to keep buying unlockers for the gear upgrades that you get during your groups and/or raids. Also, they just came out with an in game item called "Krono." As a free player, if you save up enough plat in-game (currently 400-700pp) you can buy one of these from a player and when you use it, it gives you 1 month of gold membership. From what I understand, since at level 90 with a free account you can only carry 4 plat (18p for silver members), they've created a special bank where you can deposit your plat to go towards buying Kronos. A better description can be found here http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=523825 Hope this helps and/or makes sense! lol Feel free to ask any other questions
oh... and for the spells/gear, there's really no need buy unlockers for gear/spells until level 90. (or for spells, only buying unlockers for spells level 83 and higher). Gear quality goes like this Common -> Handcrafted -> Treasured -> Mastercrafted -> Legendary -> Fabled Common being the worst quality, and Fabled being the best. As a free player you can wear up to Mastercrafted gear. Although the 1-89 game, Treasured gear is almost as good (if not better in quite a few cases) than Mastercrafted. And you will do just fine wearing that. Spell quality goes like this Apprentice -> Journeyman -> Adept -> Expert -> Master As a free player, can you upgrade a spell up to Adept quality. Which again, from levels 1-89 is good enough And of course, almost all the other restrictions for being a Free or Silver account can be bought via 1 time payment through the marketplace. Such as character slots, races, classes, ect...
I found the Silver account well worth the onetime SC 500 fee. 4 characters instead of 2 (though you can always just start a new account) 4 bag slots instead of 2, way cheaper than buying individual bag slots if you add it up over all 4 characters.. More bank slots. And two shared bank slots which make passing stuff and money between characters much easier. You get to use Expert spells. Gold limit raised to 20 Gold per level. You can buy stuff on the broker without buying broker tokens, 10 for SC 50. Free accounts need them for both buying and selling. Apparently there is a triple SC sale on sunday, not announced but confirmed. So you've got two days to decide if you want to spend some money on the game.
You guys have been very helpful, thank you! I will definitely give it a try now. Can you guys speak to what the combat animations and spell animations look like? I'm picky and one of those gamers that likes pretty games lol. Lol, TRIPLE SC?! I'm goin for it!
In my honest personal opinion... I think EQ2 has the best combat/spell animation. It was profesionally done with motion capture using the same professional combat artists that worked with actors on movies such as the matrix. Not many MMO's use mo-cap for their character animations. To me, EQ2 character movements look and feel more real than any other game i've tried. However I do think some of the spell particles could look better (I personally enjoyed the original Spell Effects a lot better than the revamped ones we have today). Again, just my 2 copper pieces. Also, maybe another tip if you are going to try the game... The first thing I'd do when you enter the world of Norrath, is right click your chat window and leave the 1-9 channel. That is where a lot of "bad apples" seem to congregate and talk trash. The crafting channel and newbie channel will probably offer more mature chat and better help. Also joining a nice casual helpful guild is always a plus
Best way to make money at low levels is from shineys, they are the gold question marks on the ground you collect. But as a f2p player you won't be able to put things on the broker without it costing you real money. Honestly, I would not worry about money at all and just play the game to level and get items from quests. There currently isn't a way for a f2p account to store money to buy kronos, the link given was a mockup by a player to show what they think SHOULD be available. Personally I don't think you need to worry about being gold until you're at L60+. But, if you can afford to buy subscriptions it opens the game out a bit more. Being able to move your xp bar to ensure you get plenty of AA points, and the coin limit removed and being able to sell on broker is the biggest things under 60. After L60 quest rewards and item drops start becoming more frequently Legendary, so that benefit of being gold helps also.
you probably wont even notice the difference til about level 50 or so, apart from maybe the occasional legendary item. Items that you can't equip start becoming more and more common after you level up after then, it is a bit annoying not being able to equip stuff you have found, but they aren't essential to progressing. Item unlockers are pretty cheap if you got a bit of money to spend, but you will probably find if you do that at low levels you will outlevel the item you unlocked very quickly.
