If you want to buy a heroic character normally it does not include a character slot, unless it's been changed recently. It didn't last time I tried, anyway. Which, to be fair, was before the current expansion. You still needed to have an open slot to buy a new heroic character. Don't know why people assume that they'd be getting a free character slot as well, as that's a different purchase. I guess if you've never tried to make one before, that might not be obvious. (Or again, unless it has changed recently.) But that's usually how it has worked when it is a paid purchase. That said, I am also disappointed that they decided to go this route, instead of letting us level an existing character. I actually have slots on both my accounts, but I just don't have any interest in making another new character. When I heard it mentioned in guild chat I thought they were giving out the tokens again, like last time, until I read the actual release. Was considering maybe checking out live again, but just have no interest in making another completely new character right now. Guess I will stick to TLE for the time. Hope they consider this next time they run the offer, and go back to the previous way of granting tokens.
I never expected them to give us a free character slot. I was just taken aback that this was limited to creating a new character. To the best of my recollection, every other free heroic character promotion allowed either a boost to an existing character or the creation of a new character. I actually thought there was something bugged when I could not apply the free heroic upgrade to the character of my choosing. I have no desire to delete any of my characters but I am also not too enthused about making a new one. (I have more alts than I care to admit to.) My guess is that creating a new character involves all kinds of opportunities for sales of things like -- lvl 100 tradeskill boost token............... It never ends. Everpay...............even for the free stuff! In all fairness, this is clearly a promotion to encourage players who have not yet purchased PoP to do so. I am still very disappointed they chose to go this route! The things I would gain by boosting a current character would be deity quests done, crafting timelines done......... all which present a significant time dump on a new character.
I really hope this gets re-thought out. I think many won't bother with it, because they don't have a free slot and don't want to either buy a slot or delete a character. That means that many of those that you want to try to entice to try out PoP will never do so, and will get even more discouraged and disappointed in the franchise. On my main account I have empty slots and I already own PoP, but I'm hesitant to create a new character because, quite frankly, I already have too many characters. I would like to use this to boost an existing character, particularly since I like the mount and familiar, and I absolutely love the idea of the avatar merc. But I really don't want to add another character to my already existing and quite exhausting stable. I have a friend who hasn't been playing for the last few months; he heard about the free level 100 character, then found out he'd have to delete a character in order to be able to even try out PoP. That put him off, and he's not interested in coming back to EQ2 anymore. So I truly believe this is a mistake that you're making. I think that the PTBs have it in mind that they'll squeeze more money out of people by getting them to buy a character slot, but I don't believe that's going to be the case very often.
Sigh.... I broke down and bought the character slots on sale for $7.50. Made the "free" character on one account..... now I have buyers remorse. The current gaming philosophy for DB involves so much tedious repetition and frustration "traps" to encourage us to buy skill upgrades, buy and sell kronos for plat to infuse or buy gear, etc. That it's not much fun to play my main and I haven't had a lot of enjoyment from alts since the Tears of Veeshan expac. There are so many things that were kinda fun that are now tedious. My reward for paying to hire multiple mercs on multiple toons anywhere? A lot of wasted money on mercs that are no longer interchangeable because they all have to be leveled and geared. Even if you change out one set of gear, they all have to be leveled to use the gear. The upgrade skills for ascensions are by game design difficult to get and take a long time to research. Although my main character ran lots of zones in KA and has a backpack full of no trade pages for ascension skill upgrades in the bank vault and some of the binders to actually make them. However, getting a stack of 10 of the pages to make a master upgrade didn't happen often. New content didn't offer any help to upgrade the skills............ Ascensions, infusers, leveling mercs, chasing shinies for "must have" items, chasing gear in general ........................endless tedious repitition.................This is supposed to attract us? Once in a while they throw bonus goodies at us to make up for the HUGE chasym between the high end raiders and the basic level 110 toon................ The free newly created 100 character is clearly a marketing device for folks just starting or returning to the game. It would have been a nice perk to let faithful customers boost a character that we have invested hours of time doing stuff for fun (like trade skill timelines.) The only reason I see for NOT allowing us to boost existing toons is that it gives them the opportunity to sell more boosters............ like the trade skill bauble..................... Many players are leaving in frustration. I suppose as long as they can sell a lot to a few players the management will be happy.
Sorry for the delay. I went to Discord and sent a tell to Caith. I really hoped it was an oversight.........
I was pretty taken by surprise by the limitations to this promotion as well. I posted to a group I belong to about the free 100 (trying to entice some of them to come back an play with me) which initially was working, until I came back with the info that it was only for a brand new character, couldn't be used on any existing ones. That kind of extinguished the interest I'd gotten. =( Especially when one of the folks found the only new class he could make he'd have to buy as well (channeller).
Ah, no worries, I found out my error in time. Unfortunately, it wasn't terribly good news for folks who knew what was going on (as opposed to me... ). :-/ Uwk
Okay, I'm going to take the plunge on this and try it myself... ;-> I've tried to do this on Test, and got an "All servers are busy. Get lost." error message... :-/ EDIT: Whew! It actually meant what it said, and I was able to get in after a few! Uwk
Okay! Made my level 100 gal on Test ('cause I actually did have an available slot there. Who knew? I usually go in from the drop-down list on the login screen...); my question is this: even if I don't get her above level 100 before June 7th, will I still be able to access her, as long as I don't mind I can't get into the PoP yet? Did I basically, literally, just get a free level 100(+, once I get the expac) toon? Uwk actually getting happier about the idea...
Okay, not quite so happy about the "nag window" that keeps popping up, but at least it isn't as often as the Free to Play->Full Membership one. :-/ Uwk
I am an optimist and I always look for the positive side of things, so maybe my opinion doesn't count, but for me as a subscriber (and casual player) this was a nice offer. With the 25% discount I paid the char slot 750DB and I got a lovely mercenary (Personal Avatar is awesome, I'm literary in love with it! <3 ) that alone costs 1000DB. BTW I understand the point of view of those who criticize this promotion, because maybe if I were a FP I would not have spent real money to buy the char slot.
So,I created a new LV100 toon...without tradeskill,without story,without background life...a plain "nothing" toon... I would have been so happy to boost one of my low level tradeskill toons,I'm just frustrated by now /: This 18th toon is certainly the last one,It's no fun to play with alts today. I'm on the verge of uninstall *sad*
Actually this time the free level 100 toon worked for me! I have lower level alts but classes that I didn't want to use a bauble on to play but I can't erase because they are level 100 tradeskillers. I am happy with this promotion but next time there should be a bauble for sure so it works for other players too! I also love, love, love the avatar mercenary !!!!!
Just to clarify, I am not FP. Never have been on the main accounts. I'm sure a lot of the other people who were disappointed with the promotion are in a similar boat. I even have plenty of DBC sitting there waiting for me to find something I want to spend it on (these days it's usually wardrobe slots, boy I love those). I'm a member, I've just been a member for a LONG time and have spent a rather substantial portion of the SC/DBC that I've gotten over the years already on character slots, which I've filled up with every single class and every single race the game offers. I have zero desire to make another new alt as I already don't have time to get the ones I already have to max with the bells & whistles. I even already have multiples of my favorite classes/races. A bauble would have been appreciated to boost an alt higher with some fun stuff added.
What Finora said. I'm not F2P either, and never have been. I have a couple of F2P accounts, but I also have a couple of member accounts. Those two are the ones that I'm most unhappy about; one of them doesn't have any slots open (and I'm not about to delete a character), and one account has open slots, but I have way too many characters as it is. I have no interest in creating another. I would have liked to have boosted one of my lower level characters, and gotten the new pretty stuff on it. I don't need PoP access; I already have the expansion. But I would have liked to have had the boost and the pretties for a character I already have.
This is an issue, I think, where both sides are pretty much equally valid, and there are "advantages and disadvantages to everything," as they say. I can definitely see where both sides are coming from, and if I hadn't had a slot available on Test (omg, character slots are 25% off right now? Be right back...), I probably wouldn't have done it, but that was the server I needed a level 100 toon on for harvesting purposes, and the sooner the better (the sooner we could get rares for the equipment for my other toons to get over their level blockage). On the other hand, she started with 100 Necromancer! Lovely everything (except I had issue with the auto-AA trees, which I always do...made the mistake of changing them to suit me and lost a number of cool titles, which had nothing to do with the AA trees... /shrug), but 01 level crafter/05 level Harvesting! Lol... ;-> And it's hysterical; just getting online with Test right now, looking at the "Select a Character" drop-down in the login page, everyone else's portrait is like a mug shot: head down to the shoulders. Hers? One big half of her face at extreme close range. "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." LOL! Uwk torn between cranking up her harvesting and testing Oceansfull... ;->
Yeah; happens every time I zone...there's a little breather while the F11 stats catch up, then boom! "Buy the expac now! You know you want to! " "No, thank you, I will in late November, but not now. I only have to put up with you cluttering up my screen until early June. " Uwk
Early June may not be soon enough for me. Bad enough I got the nag screen on the free level 100 character I actually got, but now it's affecting all of the toons on the server, and I shudder to think what it might be doing to the rest of my ACCOUNT. If this keeps up (and I've had zoning issues as a direct result of this thing), I'll see what just deleting the character will do. >:-/ And this is me saying this. :-/ Uwk who usually would not slay his Horde children...
