Producer's Letter: AoD Expansion & Membership update!

If you purchased an expansion you do not lose it just because they change the way they are selling it to new customers, yer fine.

Just a guess, but the logical thing to do is convert them to spell unlockers. Not sure quite how that would work but it's what seems most appropriate.

There may be some, as example

- you could have restriction on level 95 fabled and 90+ masters (that would not apply to existing gear and spell for returning players.

- you could keep racial/class restrictions.

- you could prevent/limit the status gained for free players.

On the positive side gold could have the possibility to log two toons from the same account (as example).

Wait and see, i m not furious at all about the annoucement, i don't think i wasted money because i paid for a deal and this deal was ok (i got fun, they got revenues).

Depending on the new deal i will keep paying or not, so wait and see.

Not having played as Silver, how long would it take to go through 175 unlockers?

Yes

you would probably never go through that many unlockers... really need to only unlock the highest level of gear or spells anyways. the only real advantage to having a subscription is the spell research benefit... the broker credits and the spell and item unlockers would just never equal $15 a month on a silver account, so the subscription just never made sense to me. I looked at it this way; as long as I don't spend more then the cost of a subscription fee per month, I was ok... and $15 can buy as much as 6000 SC... I buy one of those walmart 2000 SC cards on a triple day, and ill go 6 months without needing more.. I have never had to compromise too much on gear. I mean, I wouldn't be unlocking a full set of fabled gear every 10 levels, but even that would only be 7920 SC for the life of a maxed level character.. I just always stuck with mastercrafted and treasured gear till I got to higher levels... maybe a sprinkle of a fabled piece here and there. then once I maxed out, I would spend the 880SC to gear up.. I think they will have to add more benefits to the gold accounts, like the ability to research grandmasters or something.

I am reporting what is on live now, my accounts all lapsed as I am taking a break from the game till the ToV launches, I just logged in to see if the master situation is true, it is not, unlike what people have been saying that it is, they are not speaking from experience they are speaking from theory.

I could see that being the case for certain CA's, but not practically all of them. I know this can not be correct as there is tons of content in specific epochs of the game where the game frequently disarms you and you can use all your CA's or close to all of them in that situation.

If your sin's CA's are mastered and available then I guess my accounts are bugged, the CA's do not even work from the spell/ca book. The only ones that worked were the debuffs and self buffs. I always go through launcher so its not likely a UI update issue.

Not sure what you mean by that... I mean the character isn't going to suddenly lose 85 lvls and 280 AA cuz you betray, it'll remain the same except the class will change, and any armor that is class specific will no longer be able to be worn, just like any other character that betrays.

A guildie tested for me because I asked. He logged in a mage (I don't remember what class) and was able to use all his spells against a training dummy with no issue.

Edit to add: I went ahead and logged in my husband's silver account which had a character with some masters scribed while it was still a paid account, and had no problem casting any of them. This was on a necro character.

No. The only sense of "winning" at this game is end game. This is paying to catch up in a game where it's a solo grind now til lvl 90. Don't know why anyone would care if people catch up in lvls and aas at this point. Especially when there has been a lack of groups lately.

An MMO of this nature has no "end". Winning means different things to different people.

The fundamental nature of an MMO is to invest effort, to achieve reward.

Pulling out the wallet, and paying cash to allow receiving a reward sooner, is paying for advantage, What is the difference between paying for advantage, and paying to win? Your may hold different standards, but I view it as the exact same thing.

While I'm all for SOE making changes like this to the free account, I do worry that they are going to lose a significant amount of gold subs to free play accounts. On the surface of things that's not really my concern as it is their game to monetize as they wish, however, I worry that if too many drop paid subs it would reduced the quality of the game over time.

IMHO, they should be encouraging gold subs as much as possible with incentives. 500 SC, Broker access, tech support and a buff that's more or less fluff in game really isn't enough to justify a $15 a month expense.

I'd like to make a couple of suggestions that would make the expense more worthwhile to players.

1. Increase the monthly station cash reward to 1000
2. Include access to all current expansion content as a part of the monthly fee. ie, as long as you have a paid sub, you do not need to buy the expansion. If you lapse the account you revert access to the expansions you purchased.
3. Offer the usual "special edition" upgrade options to gold account holders allowing them the extra perks without needing to buy the expansion. (active accounts still needed to access content that wasn't purchased separately)
4. Add an extra in game item or two for Gold accounts when expansions are released that are not available to F2P accounts. Mounts, housing, appearance gear, that sort of stuff. Nothing that would give an in game advantage over F2P..

Doing something like this would provide huge incentive to run Gold Subscriptions while making F2P still a very attractive option.

Haven't seen this one mentioned... let Gold accounts regen vitality faster. As an altoholic, I hate running out of vitality in 20 minutes when playing a lower level alt.

Let's just all hope that this works out because I'd hate to see my fav game go down the toilet.

I'm staying Gold because I think the game is worth what I pay for it and I'd like to see it succeed and grow.

My Gold Rush seems to be unusable.Is that because that ahead of the Oct1 time of change the bonuses are already in place?

No, that will be because the gold rush bonus was only to last until the 21st of September.

I use to play Shaiya(the most expensive free game around). With the advent of easier access to coin things that use to cost a million went to a billion.Sure would hate the see that on EQ2.

For people that decide Gold doesn't offer them the value anymore but still want to contribute to the game you can always go silver and just buy $15 worth of station cash a month to spend on marketplace stuffs.

How about gold sub being able to server hop anytime, if you have a favorite toon they can go play game wide !

Just thought of another reason to have a gold account, so you can level-lock a toon and still gain AA points. A silver/bronze account can disable xp, but then you are stuck with no AA gain either.

Another question - is it possible to purchase the silver account while you have an active gold account? Don't see it on the marketplace anywhere, and if it ever goes on sale I'd buy it for use when I did decide to drop the gold.

I don't believe you can while you're gold, but if your account was created prior to F2P coming to all servers, you automatically get silver when your sub runs out.