"Grandfathered" characters (more free stuff!) Official Discussion Thread

OK. I'm out

Did this get done? I have exactly TWO characters on this account. One created after F2P that is in the free choices. and one created LONG ago that was supposed to get grandfathered and my station cash refunded for the unlocks I had to buy to make him playable before they decided to grandfather. But I have not yet seen the SC go back into my account.

Sagart wrote:

You have to petition them to get it taken care of. Whether or not they will honor their word is entirely up in the air. They have honored it for me, but not for my ex gf. Presumably, as you have only one character to grandfather, they will, based on previous perfomance, take care of you. Their word is apparently not their bond, however, so don't hold your breath, unless you prefer to have the complexion of a smurf 8).

I'm not complaining at all, simply because I haven't logged into this game since 2006 and still had mail from a guild I barely remember. I don't remember how to play a Brigand, but hopefully I'll figure that out soon.

The only question I have is how I'm supposed to play my Kerra Druid...*dead silence*. I can't change her class because none of them are compatible, and her class doesn't exist anymore? I don't want to delete it if there's someway to fix it.

I'm thinking I'll just have to delete her.

Absolutely shocked and overjoyed!!! Right now I am on the silver membership because I just can't afford the gold. When I can afford the gold I pay for it. Thank you so much for a great Christmas present!

WhillowDivchyna wrote:

All you have to do is finish her quests.

rwolfen wrote:

Glad for you! It would be nice is Sony were to grandfather my ex gf's characters.

BWLeeEllison wrote:

I don't think I made that post clear - I can't log in using her. She is completely unplayable because the class I chose for her is no longer an option. When I click on her, it prompts the character creation screen. The classes for my subscription level are unavailable, and I'm quite certain I wouldn't be able to click on the premium classes if I paid for them. She's completely unplayable, but still in my character screen.

Back in the old days, you had to play through one class to level 10, and another to level 20 where you got your final class.
It was fighter, mage, priest, and rogue from 1 to 10. Each of those classes had a couple of choices to 20 at which point you became one of the classes we have now. The reason I say finish up her quests is that the quest givers should still be in the game and so you should be able to get her to her final form which would be fury or warden.
If they grandfathered her, which means she is playable, then she can reach her final state, and is worth saving.

BWLeeEllison wrote:

So their Kerra is a Druid. This places it somewhere between level 11 and 19. These days you choose Fury or Warden from start of the character, it's unlikely the earlier steps are still a part of the game anymore. Unfortunately, quests do get removed from EQ2 as development progresses. I recommend /petition may be necessary to get the issue into a GM queue. I suspect with the holidays unfolding it may take a few weeks for a GM to sort out that specific character.

Be that as it may, I am heartened by the fact that the character got grandfathered.

BWLeeEllison wrote:

So am I, which is why I don't want to delete her. I do plan on purchases in the future, but wasn't thinking of the race packs. My main is a Dark Elf Brigand that I stopped leveling in '06 - I'll be occupied with learning how to play that again, lol.

/petition may be the way to go. Until then - she'll just be hanging out on the character screen. Thanks for the advice, guys!

This is great for us returning folks.... but I do have a question? My live account was on a European server. I would love to transfer my main character to the US server that I am playing on now but have found that splitpaw is the only European server listed. I played on Runnyeye. I found an article on transferring characters but it was dated 2009. Is this the current practice $25 for character transfer or has that changed since then? Can we even transfer our characters anymore? I would really love to get her back as she has items that were discontinued and you can't get anymore not to mention she was the only character that I got to level 80....
Any information on this would be greatly appreciated....


Zokissa

I'm returning. I was forced not to play after 4 years of paying for membership due to monetary situation. I'm now trying to log in for the first time (busy holiday) and I'm so excited my heart is racing. I get to keep my characters? That's thrilling to me. I did pay for one class race pack after trying F2P before merge, so this could all be great news for me. I'm not yet sure what the differences will be in logging in. Fingers are crossed. I was on Nagafen. Just hope that nothing messed up the character names I've had for close to 4 years.

So let me get this straight. I log in to my level 90. I have full slots of toons, most with masters and good gear that I've earned in Raiding. It's 150 station cash for 5 slots to unlock. It's $10 for 1000 station cash. So for $20 I get around 66 slots/spells to unlock. I have at least around 17 slots worth of different types of gear to unlock just on one toon. Plus her masters (I'm assuming, I haven't tried them to know what I can and can't use.) It's all adept and I know they were masters, so yeah, all of those. How much money do they expect someone to pay just to unlock gear and spells? Isn't 150 for 5 slots a bit ridiculous to get the gear we had before? I started to pay for station cash, did the math and just want my money back. I was excited, but why bother? LOTRO is far easier to deal with, and with LOTRO they DO get my money when I have money to give because they give more for what you are doing on the game. I paid for 4 years, bought expansions, all that. Not that excited anymore. It's been a very rough year and an even rougher holiday month. We didn't have Christmas like a lot of people did. Just couldn't afford that. LOTRO doesn't take away what you've already earned and paid for and I'm fine with paying to unlock NEW stuff. Just unlock on one character is hard enough, once more on my two main toons? We won't even go into that we have 7 character slots.

Basically, until they do better with their grandfathered, once I'm past this bad patch, I'll go pay to play LOTRO and won't pay for Everquest II. If they can't do a bit better with their F2P set up, then another company deserves my money more. I won't bother.

Serelinde wrote:

Bye.

BWLeeEllison wrote:

I have a level 90 Troubador. Naked she's toast. My current gear is mostly fabled that I earned through Raiding, Class questing, my fabled weapon, my PVP writs. Even had to pay for the harvesting cloak to be unlocke and I spent hours and days on that quest. It's a PVP server, so it's not like I can run out and quest anywhere without gear. I'll just get ganked constantly. So whereas I'd happily pay when I'm able to to unlock new gear, unlocking what I've earned in time is expensive on 7 toons. So I unlocked 2 toons and I really don't feel like bothering to quest, to play, or do anything after having to do so at a time when it's tight financially. Why do I have to? You can ask? I have friends I made over 4 years. I talk to them in game. To even log in, I had to pay $5 for 3 days when I could. I did so. I pay any month that I can afford it. Unfortunately, that's not right now. So it's like saying, "Here, have your toons, but just kidding, you can't actually play." I can at least talk to my friends for free now.
I mention the other game, which is PVE mind you, because when you pay each time they don't take away the gear you earned. They just have you pay to unlock new areas or quest packs, gear etc after you stopped paying. Then when you're able to pay again, you can get those things included. It creates loyalty. As a business model, loyalty is necessity. Sony has made so many decisions over the years that overall they have a bad name. I love EQ2 because I built friendships, was in the same guild for 4 years, worked hard on the toon. With LOTRO, I haven't had as much time into the game, but I can see that their model seems to keep a lot more people coming back. We loyally do pay for it on the months we can afford to do so. We know that when we can't pay for a month, we're locked on quests and areas, but the character isn't naked in battle.
I had no gear, no ability to GET gear because I couldn't quest for that level of gear without gear on me, couldn't use the broker to buy gear either. Those are a lot of limitations that force someone to have to pay in a supposedly (but not really) free to play environment. To make a new toon under restrictions and start from scratch, I'd have to delete a beloved toon. Sorry, won't do that. I could play the new one for free, but I didn't want to give up something else to have to do that. I no longer had the option of just free to play. I had too many toons as the accounts were merged with no available slots and overflow. So I was pretty much stuck having to pay to unlock gear so I wouldn't only be stuck in my Guild Hall until someday when I can play. So basically, it went F2P and became merely a teaser I could log in to and remember what it was like to see my guild, but not play with them still without paying. That's really not free to play. That's false marketing.
And I was in one of the oldest standing, largest guilds on Venekor, went through the merge to Nagafen, and now this merge. It's a PVP server. I have no choice but have gear. I do recurrently pay for the game and pay to play. I just don't like what feels like dishonesty when a business does whatever it can to get money out of people in ways that are...as stated, not entirely fair or honest.
"You are correct when you say nothing is free. I paid for the expansion packs that gave me access to get the gear I have, and I also put forth the time and effort to get that gear. I earned it. It belongs to me. It is mine. I did not take that gear to a pawn shop, so why should I have to pay to get it back? That gear is part of my character. No high end character is playable without the gear they quested for, raided for, raised money for and purchased. "
Agreed! I did pay a LOT into this game and for gear and a lot of time, and got a lot of people into this game to begin with. It would be awesome if life circumstances were different, but a character allowed to still be played...without gear, is useless. They'll get their money either way. It just means instead of paying for future monthly subscriptions, new expansions, new gear unlocks, lots more money they could easily have out of me as a paying customer if they had my loyalty...I'll pay the one time fee for the gear unlocks for the gear I already have so I can just talk to friends and I'll take money elsewhere. It's how consumerism works. You BUY loyalty just as much as customers pay you for services. It's give and take. Without give, you don't make money. I'm not in the boat of people able to defend SOE or pay for the game when I'm fighting to have a place to live month to month.
All this said, (and loved the 'bye' as it contributed so much to the conversation) I'll probably just request a refund of the money for the unlocks and not play again ever. I thought it would be great to return. I really don't think the game is what it used to be.

First of all excuse my english.

Well since i know that EverQuest 2 is "FTP" y decided to come back, but surprise, all the items for ur lvl 85 guardian (full fabled and what about the epic weapon? ridiculous since all the work i had to do to get it.) cant be used and not only my guardian so how am i going to kill anything nude? mastercrafteds are so expensive at broker and all i can get is a handcrafted / treasured stuff that turns me from MeatShield to PaperShield (i dont mean that u cant kill anything with that kind of stuff, but u all know that gear is half way to be good at ur class or atleast thats what i think).

Gold/silver membership, whats that? really? so you mean that if i get my toon to lvl 90 i will not be able to raid or make normal/hard instances if i dont pay the 14$ - 15$? o well wait... u can buy tokens to unlock stuff, is this serious? 100SC each unlock that means that u need tons of unlockers to be something, and what if a piece u unlock today is gonna be upgraded tomorrow and you dont know or you are not sure? 100sc to the garbage

Im sure that theres ppl that thinks they have to pay something to get quality and thats true, but making something free to force u pay to play the characters u have and u payed month by month to develop them and be able to use ur current stuff is not the best idea to keep returning players i rather prefer to play from 0 in a full EQ2 "FTP" (with its market) instead a False FTP that to be something u have to pay the same money each month.

And after all this complain, all i want to know is when gonna SoE decide to grandfather characters instead of waiting the longer they can to grab all the money they can. Not a very kind comment i know but thats what i feel from SoE since i left the game.

PD: I used to love this game, i would buy expansions if needed but dont make this such of things that make us feel robbed.
PD2: Remove that Gold/Silver membership that all we know is something to force u pay to be able to do something at high lvl. Yeah that would make me feel robbed too, and thats me.
PD3: make something free or not but dont play with ppls money like that.
PD4: I like the idea to grandfather old toons but maybe not great idea to keep new players.

Thanks for the good laugh here. I would think you would be happy that you can actually play the game again and it is not costing you anything. The cost to unlock all your gear is prob $20.00 so don't know what the complaint is. Especailly when you consider that 1 month of gold is $15.00. So you can pay 20 and be set. Give it a break. they have give n you tons already.