Upcoming Changes for Free and Silver Members

im agreeing with lempo. I've paid for a sub since I picked up Echoes of Faydwer many years ago, been purchasing the collectors editions every time they came out, and I had no issues with the changes to make f2p easier for people.

I have no issues with the good fortune of others

Thank you! I just came back to the game this past weekend (as a silver, 5 year vet) and have been having fun, these changes will make it even more enjoyable.

Go one step further and make ALL classes neutral on PvE servers!

This is a great move. The race and class restrictions alone were a huge stumbling block for anyone looking to try the game out. Anything to make it easier for people to try the game out is good. There are still enough restrictions to encourage a move to gold.

I agree. Still the whole 'not able to send mail' thing is a pain if you need to reach someone who is offline. I don't care about sending parcels with it, but to not be able to send text....? Guilds require people to let them know if you'll be away for any length of time and there isn't always an officer on to speak to, or if you're trying to get hold of an offline friend to meet later...how then? I'm just saying.

Still...I have one question: WHEN?! when is this going to happen?! EDIT: nvm. I just missed what it said "mid-next week"

It is in the OP, and was quoted to someone else in big colored text. All the interest in this but no one will even read the details in the OP and next week there will be people starting threads saying HEY! I can't ... whatever.
In game mail for FTP would only cause problems with SPAM from plat farmers.

A hint: in your guild you can set your tag under yourname in the guild window and write a message a GL can look at who was online today, yesterday etc.
Or your guild could use any of the available free services for guilds.

that was unnecessary Lempo -.-

also, thank you for the ideas. I didn't know you could edit anything unless you were an officer

Good grief its about time. This should have been done from day one. Period. SOE pissed a LOT of people off by restricting gameplay. Hopefully, we see the return of some of our Veterans because of this.

Place a notebook in your guild hall and edit it whenever you need to leave someone a message. Each member who can't send out mail would need their own notebook and temporary trustee access to place it, but it should work. Lempo's suggestion of modifying the notes on the guild roster (there's two notes, member and officer, members can modify their own member notes and officers can modify both) would work fine as well for short messages.

I paid to unlock quite a few classes and races on several accounts early this year. And even so, am happy they are doing this change now. I do not expect any sort of refund at all. It will get more people to play. And will help this game grow some more.

Silly how some people just have to complain even when this much is being added to free players' options.

I think the over all problem is that SOE's model of free to play is offering a "****" version of the game for free, and if you want to play the "really" full version you have to pay, which is kind of setting things up to strong arm you into paying for the gold membership. They took something away from the game that you have to keep paying for to keep. What I think people would prefer, and what this is a step towards, is setting things up so that you get the "real" game for free, and you get some very nice perks for a gold sub, while at the same time offering things people would really want to buy off the SC store to make money on selling things besides forcing me to pay to unlock things like my Coldain Prayer Shawl so that I can use it.

The Broker and gear rescritions can be hisheartening for newer players. I could understand needing to unlock fabled and mythical items, but legendary items being restricted seems a bit overkill.Opening that up could turn the legendary gear into something worthwhile for peopel to buy and sell in the game's economy. I have a silver account and my main charactor is currently only lvl 86, and I honestly just vendor all legedary items I obtain because they are not worth buying the broker tokens to sell, and not worth unlocking them to replace them 3 days from now.

Good to see the class restrictions go, should help boost numbers of currently underplayed classes.

Tbh I kind of like the gear restrictions for legen and fabled, simply put, it keeps crafting alive.

First off, seven years of content isn't a garbage version of the game. There's plenty to do with all that content and people will have enough time to decide if they want to go all the way to 95.

I wouldn't consider the broker restriction disheartening. At best, it's an inconvenience. All it means is you have to get on the auction channel and ask for something. You can still use the broker to find something and see if any of the people listing said item will do a live trade.

With legendary gear, you might consider taking up transmuting / adorning. Converting everything to manas will give you more bang for your broker token than legendary gear, which would likely sit there for a while.

In the end, they still need enough restrictions on free play to keep the gold members happy and still paying. What you propose borders on causing some really bad feelings and an eventual shutdown from loss of revenue.

The one thing I would observe for SOE is that, while I'm OK with the legendary and fabled restrictions, you were very foolish to apply it retroactively to already equipped gear. When I logged in and couldn't functionally do anything in the game without replacing much of my equipment, I did nothing. Are you afraid people will gear up in a month of gold and then go silver? Here's an idea: continue to release new content. Then that's less of a problem than turning off returning players by imposing hardship before they can even try to remember why they played. I'm actually shocked that you botched this so badly.

The retroactive unlock was only for gear that was on the player before the change to F2P. Since then anyone going from gold to silver still has to unlock their gear. Ya lost me after that. They just released some new content in the last week.

why defending? If someone does not read the entire printed text - including all the *, **, *** pointed statements then they get what they deserve, the covered two games with the announcement - eq and eq2. Since 1999 EQ has never had special release races or classes, the footnoted text specficly references EQ2, that is the difference, nothing "fanboish" (or is it "fanboyish" have never seen the acceptable spelling of this word in any validated dictionary) about it, just contractual disclaimers.

If they would have included inline it would have caused more confusion to the readers. There is absolutely no difference between this announcement and the advertising for cell phones telling you that you can get a 800.00 cell phone for 1 penny*, the * in this case points down to the fine print of 2 year agreement required and etf fees will apply.

to cover another topic in this thread - the "credit card theft" - must have been pretty poor since have never seen any validated posting that anyone had ID theft or credit card fraud because of it. Have used the exact same credit card since 1999 to pay for the SOE subscriptions - the card is used for absolutely nothing else, it is locked in the safe at home - never seen any questionalbe charges on the account at all, nor have I seen any unknown pings to my credit rating since it happened - and I have it monitored so that any ping or change I am notified by mail, email, text and phone call. I agree with Lempo - provide validated information about what you claim happened to SOE because of the issue

This has nothing to do with "defending a company" it has all to do with taking personal responsibity.

don;t recall gear being retro-unlocked, just the race and classes that where created before it went F2P, logged in an account that I let lapse and the character that was a race and class that had to be purchased was loadable, every piece of gear that above the restrictions was placed in his bags and he was nekked

No, what they need to do is time limit exiled on PVE servers

That post was a bit confusing. I really should've skipped it. Honestly, I didn't think gear was retro-unlocked. Maybe that person was confused by the fact that gear doesn't fall off and go into bags now. It's simply marked red and you get a message reminding you of that.