EQ2 suffers from both being an old game, and a lack of advertising. I've said this a lot, but steam easily reaches 10 million potential players. But EQ2 doesn't get much attention, so doing something that gets it involved in a steam sale would. Offer a complete starter pack. A normal looking horse available for claim, retail price: zero dollars. Lets call it $5 just for the promotion and add it to the in-game market for 500 DB. Just something like a choice of any of the regular horses from the Qeynos/Freeport stable. Now lets add in a merc package. Ability to use mercs, retail value $15. Starter merc (does a little healing, decent DPS, not actually as good as normal mercs but also doesn't charge upkeep), retail value: $8 like the other marketplace mercs. Starter pack of support supplies. 5-6 slot bags, 1 set of bandages (clicky first aid racial ability), 1 set of incents (clicky power recovery item similar to first aid). A full set of "commoner" appearance armor. Put "commoner" on marketplace for 200 DB, retail value of pack: $2. Now total value of the pack is $30, but offer it at a steep discount so its in the $5 price range. I'd even suggest $3 so you lure in a lot of new players at 90% off. Free advertising, quick revenue generation, and not much people can complain about. As a follow up I'd suggest setting up an automated system to make an offer to the new players 3-6 months later to buy the newest expansion at half price.
Sounds like a great idea to me. We need to get everyone involved in thinking up ways to get inexpensive advertising for EQII. I know we have the best minds playing so how about it folks. What are your suggestions?
YouTube has LOTS of people who look through all of the videos there, even of how to play a game. Perhaps someone could make some good EQ2 videos and post them? Either telling the lore of the game, or showing off some of the very interesting zones. Yes, our graphics are not the best, but they aren't the worse either. And you get so much of the game for free to play to try it out!
