Producer's Letter: AoD Expansion & Membership update!

" Assuming the extra 20 AA are going to be inlcuded now for F2P "

Free 2 Play :
LVL 95
320 AA
NO Restrictions to Gear
Need 30ish Spell Unlockers " 750SC "
Find a friend to sell/buy for you.

Gold:
LvL 95
320 AA
NO Restrictions to Gear
AA Slider
Broker Access
500 SC Free <---- FLUFF
5 LON Boosters <---- FLUFF
3 Goblin Tickets <---- FLUFF
15% Coin / 10% Run Speed <---- FLUFF

I dont think I am missing anything regarding Gold Accounts am I ? So, if you spend 40$ on the game, another 40$ for SC, you can buy a Heroic Character "lvl 85 280 AA". Level the character to 95/320. Spend 500 SC More on Unlocking your Primary Spells and viola you have a Max lvl character that you can essentialy play for free, on a seperate acct or new acct. untill you get more new spells.

A few restrictions you could impose and still achieve what there going for :

Take away the Shared Bank - This would be an annoyance that I would pay to remove.
Disable Voice Chat - I dont always use VC as we have a Vent Server but I know a few people who use VC all the time.
Disable Run Speed on F2P Characters " constant 0% " - I would pay to remove this restriction completely. Not being able to run would keep anyone from playing the game but oh boy would it be SLOW lol. For fights that require some run speed, put a 10% in-combat run speed buff on uhm.
Silver Cannot Receive SC Gifts - Not a big deal to some but another non game breaking restriction.

Anyways, I could probably come up with a few more but... regardless, the way it sits. I see a severe decline in Subs and revenue intake for SOE. I will probably still sub to game just becaues but aside from the few out there like me, I can see half my guild going silver.

This ^^^

The gear changes will probably bring more players to the game, which is great! But how does it help SOE if none of those new players are paying for anything? The boosts to gold membership are a freakin' joke. Coin loot is pathetic as is. We'd need to see a ~300% increase to coin loot for it to be worth the sub fee. 10% mount speed? Whoop dee doo, like we can't already get everywhere fast.

Really don't see any reason to re-up my accounts once their existing subs run out.

One thing they could give the Gold Members would be a permanent bonus on earning experience. I'd think that getting a 15%-25% bonus to any & all experience might make a Gold account more attractive.

If you use Mozilla Firefox, right click on edit and open it in a new tab. That should let you edit.

Leveling is already so fast anyway. Not worth $15 to level faster then argueably too fast already.

I am currently playing EQ and I have absolutely no problem with the monetizing structure there. I am trying out EQ 2 because I am trying to attract others to play with me. I got my brother to try (who is a little skeptical to start) and the monetization scheme is really putting him off.

I am not here to complain, I just want to present my views as a total newb to EQ 2 and its pricing structure. First, I think the membership tiers need to be less restrictive.

- I am fine with the FTP tier and its limitations, except the popups and the chat. Take it easy on those popups, you are putting people off. Do it once and leave it be. EQ did the popup once and brought up the browser when you log out. Don't ever lock people out of chat channels, because they are likely learning and want to ask questions. Bad, bad move.

- Silver: You need to be able to buy from the broker. Locking silver out of the broker is crazy. I am having great difficulty keeping my brother from quitting. You need to realize- people want to try the game. From what I have seen so far, the game looks deep and fun, but putting up some of these silly hurdles are going to cause people to quit before they really know what the game is about.

Which brings me to mercs- make them available to all. If you do that, you can break their quality into tiers. FTP get the worst, Silver gets the normal, and Gold gets the best. Mercs are going to allow new players to experience the great content available in the game sooner. You can't put up so many hurdles that your asking new players (who you are trying to convince to play) to fork over $50 on a free to play game, just to experience a fair amount of content.

Draw players in with cool content and get them to spend money on shiny things and a gold sub (when they are convinced the game is worth it). I think the EQ 2 pricing structure jumps the gun. You have good stuff- draw people in slowly. Make them spend $5 on a Silver. Let them see how much cool stuff is in the game, then tempt them with Gold benefits. Then tempt them with marketplace items.

-Gold: Gold members should get the best mercs, loyalty rewards, free SC, full use of the broker, and whatever else is currently offered.

Everquest hit the nail on the head, at least to me. I never felt like they were beating me over the head to spend money. I WANTED to spend money. I got GOLD because of the loyalty rewards and the awesome mercs. I bought marketplace items because they tempted me beyond what my feeble willpower could take.

With EQ 2, I think I like what I see, but you guys want me to spend $65 out of the gate (Age of Discovery and Gold). I just cant do that. If I can't do that (out of the gate at least), I sure as heck can't convince other people to do that.

To be fair, you are changing policy. That entry gate to get gold and mercs is now $35 in SOE currency. Better, but that is still too high. EQ really did it right- you get a good taste of what is offered without spending more than $5. That is something I can sell to my friends. Unfortunately for EQ, my friends won't play a game with graphics from 1999-2000.

That doesn't help once all your toons are 95 and your guild is too. Meantime all the vet bonuses and free potions and vitality resets.....you really need an xp boost?

The popups happen once per logon if you pay the one time fee of $5 to upgrade to silver. Same for the chat restrictions. The chat restrictions are there because gold farmers liked making f2p accounts and spamming all channels for customers.

Edit: Silver CAN buy from the broker. Unlimited. Just can't go visit the seller's house to avoid the broker fee. Also cannot SELL on the broker without buying a broker token for Station Cash.

With people dropping from gold to silver. That makes the broker market place better for me.
Less competition.
But seriously Gold needs to be worth it.
Add a quest speak with Blah DeBlah the adventure supporter. Once per day to receive your loyal adventure rewards from your city representative..
Silver gets 1 silver piece Gold receives 1 GP and 1 loyalty point.

Add an golden aura buff that add your adventure level to your str,int,wis dex and sta.
and additional 5% to crit chance and crit severity.

That should be enough to make people to go Gold. Once they have everything from silver.

The chat restriction is to prevent spammers from just creating free account after free account to spam channels. It's annoying but necessary!

Silver CAN buy from the broker. Just not sell.

Fair enough, but the in-game information is in error. It speaks of Gold and Platinum members can only access the broker.

With the chat restrictions, I still cannot agree, though I do understand. Some other solution needs to be implemented, because I had questions but was locked out from asking them in-game. From the perspective of the newb, that is harsh.

Still, I don't care about the popups being less frequent on Silver. I am trying to convince people to play, the popups only make that harder <---- First-hand experience.

Make sure Silver accounts can't raid and maybe even putting an instance limit for heroics on Silver would be excellent in making people subscribe for gold while getting those players with those cheating bot armies flooding the market with raid loot still paying for their gold subs as well.

Profit all around and you still get the average player back to the game.

We already went through Shared Bank limitations when F2P first launched. 2 slots were open and there was no unlocker for it. They saw no point to limiting inventory space like that.

VC shouldn't be restricted. It simply shouldn't matter what level you are. If you're grouped or raiding, VC is important and people shouldn't have to go out of their way to accomodate those at the silver level.

Run speed disabling = ridiculous

If Silver players are typically the recipients of SC gifts, then you're killing the cash flow to SOE as people won't buy as much SC.

The point would be to essentially disable the Heirloom tag for F2P players. It would be a good incentive to upgrade to Gold, but removing it may be too heavy handed at this point.

I have to agree with some of the others.. locking silvers out of content splits the community and makes grouping for everybody harder.

You can send a /tell to anyone and ask. Unless they are a total @$%$#% they'll be nice and answer your question. Also, guild channel is not restricted for bronze members, so joining a guild is a good thing.

Is Voice Chat restricted for bronze? I thought it was only the text chats that were restricted.

Yep, we see posts frequently about how awful it is to get a group & how servers need to be merged again & cross server dungeon finder as it is. Limiting silver players limits the pool of players who can even have the ability to group. Keeping the gear restrictions would be better for silver players than adding limits to content. Other games do this and it's far more discouraging as a free player to run up on some content you will never access unless you pay monthly than to have to unlock your boots for 40cents. I stopped playing several games for those very reasons. I'm sure I'm not alone.

Text is limited to bronze and VC is open to all, as you generally have to be invited to participate.

Then restrict it to raiding which you need gold for anyhow, It also helps mitigate SLR and power to silver players since you can't buy loot when you can't access the raid zones.