The point of the Rivervale server is...?

However, many more people multibox when it's F2P than when it's sub only. I know, subbers do it too, but lots more are multiboxing when it's free to play all those accounts. Just sayin'.

when they came out with the free to play idea lots of people joined the game , bought expansions and helped with Beta
In the beginning it was really hard to play for free but many held on , buying keys so we could equip legendary gear , buy broker privileges. and so on
The idea to let people join in the game was a good one hundreds of new people to group with came into this tired game and gave it new live. I really don't understand why some people think free to play people destroy the game , and I agree we are not the only ones to keep EQ2 going .
Get real if I don't have the money to buy a subscription why would I have the money to buy myself to the top ,
what makes you think people will not try to get to endgame as fast as they can this time ? they will .
I'ts the king of the hill concept .
But I am happy for the people that think this will be better , I hope this will really work and if it does I am so there scrambling to catch up .

I'm sure you're a really nice person, and kudos to Daybreak for keeping those 4 F2P servers running for years now. If this was another publisher like NCsoft, they would have killed them off 6 months or a year after they didn't show a profit. Heck, SOE/Daybreak's Free Realms game ran in the red its entire lifespan and never even recouped its original investment back (Smedley had a post about it back when they shut it down). They're really tolerant here, and the F2P deal is super good-- you can easily get near end game without a problem despite never investing a dime.

The niggle I have is with the free players who make the pull-it-out-of-their-butts statement that "most free players are paying real life money through the cash shop (where we can't see it) to play EQ2." And I'm sure 5 or 10 players will stomp into this thread right now and state how they're subbers and play on the F2P servers, or say that they buy things in the shop, and that's great. I've been subbed since day 1 straight through to the present and buy tons of houses and fluff items and always have, too, and I have spent many years and been through many mergers on what is today the F2P servers. But it doesn't make up for the overhead costs of those other thousands of players who are grandfathered silvers on F2P and don't pay a dime to keep EQ2 running.

Merely the fact that Daybreak has made every single new type of server and new feature locked behind a subscription paywall is proof I'm right. Even the new live server, Rivervale, is sub only! Most of those free players aren't paying a dime, but just causing lag and extended overhead costs-- and Daybreak's having to pay for them all eats into profits that could and should be going into new development instead. I can't wait to play through Frostfell on Rivervale, because although it will have a bustling population like the TLs do, it won't be lagging to heck and the holiday zones won't be crashing off the map whenever I try and play like on F2P.

Sorry, but there are two sides to every story. I've been here since launch, even subbed through Freeport server and tested it for ages so I know all about the F2P troubles gone by, and I have characters on the free servers from long ago, too. I've just given them up between the horrible pay to win endgame there (*because the droves of non-paying players have forced Daybreak to bolt on a system to try and wrench money from free players to keep those servers afloat*) and all the lag. And now even Rivervale will likely launch with all that pay to win end game crap-- none of which was there when the game was sub only-- and it can't just all be yanked out again because drops and leveling have been balanced around all of it, ugh.

you must be on IoR then? it's been like that for a long time

Rivervale will be a race to 120 for the raiders who re-roll there. As far as transfers to the server goes, highly unlikely that DB will pass up all that revenue from people leveling new familiars, ascensions, mounts etc etc. Otherwise i agree with the other posters here that said this isn't anything new or different besides not allowing the FTP accounts.

It has nothing to do with whether or not I'm a nice person or not. My situation is the same as many other people. I live on SS therefore I have to budget myself. Since I have to budget myself there are many things that have to be put on the back burner. Gaming happens to be one of them. It is unfortunate but it is a fact of life. Being that EQ2 is F2P it gives me the chance to play while I save money to sub. If F2P was to go away right now so would I. I wouldn't bother trying to save the money. Why? Because to me that shows that DB has no interest in the players. I accept that you don't agree but it is true. You are correct there are two sides to every story but doesn't appear that some of you are looking at the otherside of the story. It seems there are players who want EQ2 there way and only their way.

why not just continue playing on the FTP servers? or is there some reason you feel the need to be on Rivervale as well?

Definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

Maybe it is time just to provide a member only server and see how it turns out? Just not something they've done to this point... can't really know till you try. Not comparing EQ2 to WoW but the classic server was a pretty good success and way different from their current offering (not comparing TLE's to WoW classic either just using it as a point of discussion). We've done FTP severs... and Time locked content severs... just time to see what this option does. At worst it doesn't pan out and they just have another Ghost sever like SH/FG/IoR. But... what if it worked...

Of course if I end up playing again then i'm also following the same definition as mentioned above .. yet I'm sure it will happen yet again.

I'm just curious about it is all. But the implication that F2P is the root of all the problems with EQ2 just doesn't set well with me.

first , if you are playing eq2 as a free to play player and you spend for unlock keys for anything at all you are cheating yourself .. a sub is 14.99 + your home states sales tax ( in my case a whopping 7%) its the price of a single fast food lunch, depending on where you are its possibly less.
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when free to play was introduced I looked at it real real hard as I'm most certainly not made of money by any stretch of any ones imagination.( had to charge the wolf on the doorstep rent for a while) when I added up spell unlocks, armor unlocks ,broker unlocks etc. it actually came to slightly more than a sub with far more annoyance added in the form of places you cant go and stuff you couldn't, at the time do .
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and to be clear , I would not move my account to a time locked server , I know perfectly well that every Time Locked server has a limited life span . I am having a great time playing kaladim and will continue to do so for as long as it lasts . how ever depending on Rivervales rule set and server type , I do find the idea of a server of all paid accounts with all the live perks to be Very Attractive. and I would move my entire account over to such a server if it were made possible for me to do so .
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any one else remember an old bumper sticker ? To all virgins thanks for nothing . I can't help but be reminded of it here.

My point is that most people who are serious about gaming will save up the money to pay the sub. I know $14.99 sounds like very little money but when one lives on SS there are times when $14.99 might as well be $1,499! I am working on getting the sub money but it just takes time.

If you can manage it, the yearly sub comes in at $9 or so a month. But I know all too well that it takes money to save money, which is why the poor can never get ahead

Right now I'm trying to save up the money so I can pay a years sub....it's just very difficult with the little bit of money I get on a monthly basis.

When people say unlocked, they mean you can go play it assuming you have the expacs.

As in the opposite to TLE, where even if you own it, it's locked and unavailable.

Forgive me for being dense, but on rivervale, what is the pay to win part? Is it exp potions?

I'm so confused why people hate on F2P players so much.

They are providing population
They are providing help to economies
They aren't stealing your jobs
They are gated by F2P requirements


If they are not there, what do you gain? Other than a sense of elitism that you pay $10 a month for additional benefits in a game.

Oh boy, the end game of EQ2 will cost you hundreds of real-life dollars per character if you want to be able to raid, etc. You're pretty much forced to buy spell research pots, deal with Ascension spell leveling, mount leveling and familiar leveling, plus you'll be forced to sub by then besides because you can't equip the best gear if you don't. It's an ugly mess that was bolted onto the four F2P servers post-free-to-play (that was never there when the game was sub only) and there's no way to make your character strong enough to continue on without paying big money.

I mostly play on the Progression servers that don't have all the expansions unlocked (they usually shut down and merge into live somewhere around DoV) so I avoid this pay to win fiasco, but we'll be stuck with it on Rivervale (even though I personally feel it should be yanked out on a sub-only live server, even if it takes Daybreak a lot of time to rebalance the game, spell drops and mats so we don't need that pay to win junk anymore....but I seriously doubt they would ever do that).

The posts in this thread already explain a lot. Clearly you aren't reading any of it.

This thread is complaining about P2Win features. They are not caused by people being F2P.

Are you of the believe they will disappear if the sub-only model returns? Because that's delusional. P2Win will exist alongside subscriptions. If people will buy it, they will sell it.

That's one of the reasons I don't play as often as I would like to because I grow weary of the complaining hoards. Most of us who are F2P don't want to be. We'd love to sub but it's a matter of economics. As I have stated many times F2P players aren't necessarily not contributing money to this game. We just can't sub for various reasons. I guess these same individuals want the quests that can be done solo done away with too.