Why you should make broker avail to f2p

^^ This

The only gripe I have after being a very Loyal 12 year Paying Veteran along with my Better Half after us both being forced to accept poverty due to serious health issues and permanent disabilities is that dagnabit! Let everyone use the mail to send and receive mail. I totally understand about putting limits on the Broker and I am totally fine with that. But NO mailing\?! Seriously. Yes, in most areas of the Free-to-Play game is perfectly fine with me, I am one used to earning my own way in life anyhow. I still earn a side income through my Crafting ( In RL, too). But sometimes people just need someone to just listen to their heartaches in RL and the Mail System in Game is perfect for that so it does not tie up the chat system, just saying In the past I have prevented Suicides that way so, please, let every person use the mail. Perhaps just put a cap on how much money is mailed, but we all need comfort at one time or another in game and in RL.

DBG is a corporation, not a social services facility. It's not their responsibility to cut costs for people who can't afford the game. Since they've established that they don't want to attract new subscribers via advertising, and have said they're counting on an older bunch of folks returning to the game, being older and more settled often means these folks have pocket money to spend on micropurchases. That's the apparent strategy.

My spouse and I are both disabled and retired. We manage to pay for our indulgences. It's often an issue of tradeoffs: do I buy that beer, do I have that pizza delivered, or do I buy a month of EQ2?

HOWEVER, since you say you are forced to accept poverty, I'm guessing you aren't working. Which means you have the time to harvest a lot and sell rares, and to go collect shinies in older zones.

Rares that make CD weapons sell for at least 2500p on Maj'Dul, and usually more like 3500. If all you did was sell rares, you could get the cash to buy a Krono every month by harvesting about 1000 rares and selling them (for me, that's a couple of hours of harvesting for about three days, same as getting the rares for levelling a weapon to planar 10)... but add selling shinies to selling rares and you can easily buy that Krono (not all shinies sell for tons, but a surprising number fly out of my broker boxes at 9990p).

The smart people save up, buy Krono at the lowest prices possible then reprice them a couple of hundred thousand plat higher, and make even MORE money by flipping Krono. To do this from a cash-poor starting point, you'd have to suck up F2P limitations and restrain impulse purchasing until you made enough money to buy TWO cheap Kronos, then flip one and play for your membership with the other. Continue the process and eventually you are flipping dozens of Krono.

If you are actually poor, you don't get good meals... no, you get whatever they're calling food stamps these days, which means you eat a lot of beans and rice because that's what's cheap and still will feed you for a month (been there, done that!). I made ends meet then by scavenging cans for recycling, I got a paper route, I planted a vegetable garden, and I did house- and pet-sitting. In EQ2, if you are poor, you scavenge shinies and collect rares to make ends meet, or you can do the Norrathian equivalent of beans and rice and accept the limitations of F2P.

I hope things get better for you. If you find a friend that subs, you can ask them to mail stuff for you.

When you long time sub and come off, the game sets you to silver which is very nice. Silver gets in game chat access, buying from broker access and 2 more slots than ftp.

When my family started playing this game, we had to unlock classes. We spent hundreds of dollars doing it on my son's account along with race unlocks. This game has since made ftp a lot more convenient. I unlocked fury on day 1 of playing and paladin later. My son's account has paid for every race and class unlock there ever was.

Anyway biggest poor tip I can give is the public library. Most people think it's just books but you can get WiFi there for your phone, tablet or laptop and rent free movies. You can also print anything you need and use their computers if you don't have any. Can't play EQ2 on theirs though. You need a laptop for that.

I hope you adjust fairly quickly. It's a huge adjustment to change income. Atm I had to do the same and have a job bringing home literally half of what I was bringing home just last November. It's an adjustment for sure. My heart goes out to you and your family.

Hi, Sigrdrifa. I am actually poor. I have a job. My husband used to have a better one, but now he is going through health issues and cannot work. We have two children. We get food stamps. We do Not just eat beans and rice, thanks. It's great that you were able to make ends meet in those ways, but you must realize everyone's situation is different. Depending on a person's issues or disability, they may not physically be able to scavenge for cans, etc. You have to have somewhere to plant a garden. Paper routes and pet-sitting are jobs that generate income, which you have to report to the state. That gets counted when they are figuring out your amount, so it's not like that is extra side money.
Whitewolf6969 only said they would like everyone to be able to send and receive mail. They didn't ask to "cut costs for people who can't afford the game." They did make a suggestion regarding a change they felt would be beneficial to all.
It's like you are coming up with answers to two different equations by saying, ok these constants are all the same, so i'm gonna ignore all these other variables, and assume they are both equal.
Oh, and not that it's anyone's business, but i buy a yearly subscription at tax time, if you're wondering how I, as a member of the poor, can afford it.
Yes, i get it ... beggars can't be choosers...but i counter with you know what happens when we assume things...
and also 'the World is chaos; be Kind'

Elyria,
who thinks "corporation" and "social responsibility" should Not be mutually exclusive

I have subbed only one and a half years total out of 9 on any account. They all have enough money spent on them though to cover a sub every year, I just rather have the micro transaction things then sub most of the time. I don't like when people assume no sub = no money spent. It's just not true for some people. Sure I can't afford my microtransactions and a sub on my accounts plus expansions, but if there is an amount people HAVE to spend, I haven't seen it.

On a side note, I think Sigrdrifa made good suggestions on how to make plat.
Also I worry about our game life line when they don't want new customers.
With all of this said though, mail, chat channels, and the broker are not why I sub when I sub. The summer quests, AA slider, double exp or status is enough to make me sub here and there. I don't see any reason the little stuff can't get unlocked.

I think one pack, no more than 12 slot, would be fine for f2p. They want more, they have to sub.

Too late for me to edit it, but that would also get me to game more. I am on social security and this is the only gaming I do. Not getting me in shape to go hiking and camping though.

So you want them to take away your bag slots?

I don't understand why that would make you game more

Sorry I understand now, you mean to mail.

/Who all ghostdragons and I can give you more when I am online. I went ftp so can't mail it quite yet atm but will be back to sub if everything goes well with my paycheck on the 3rd. New job and all. Lol

I meant 12 slot bag in broker for f2p. I have 5 accounts on EQ and 3 of them here. But I can only afford to have one on all access at a time and not all months of the year. So one bag in broker would help my characters. Of course, I would have to be able to buy gear to.

One of the original reasons people were not able to mail on a FTP account is because of the Plat seller spam that was generated. This was quite annoying and with the ability to start a new account as soon as one got banned, there were no real consequences. This has largely gone away the last several years. I'm not sure if it is because they finally nailed the filtering, or the plat services moved to more lucrative games.

And so begins the slippery slope. It sure would be nice if F2P could just have 12 slots of free vendor space. Well, once I've sold enough, I'll want gear, so it would be nice if F2P had the ability to buy off the broker. Gee, selling stuff sure would be a lot easier if F2P could just use the world chat channels to advertise. You know, now that I have all this plat to buy nice stuff, it sure would be great if I could...

I don't see it as anything more than an incentive to go all access.

The incentive to go all access exists. If you want to buy and sell on the broker without restriction, go all access.

I disagree. So I'll opt out of this discussion.

Hey, good tips thank you. You said "older zones" What zones are you referring to? I hope I'm not trashing some valuable stuff, although for player sub level 40 probably there is no worry about that I hope?

Would anyone here be so kind and list few most desirable shinies and "rares that makes CD weapons", so I can save them when I run into them

You can make Chaos Descending weapons out of the Chaos Descending rare harvests. Arborian Wedges (maces), Azure Sapphire (symbols), Golden Fleck (edged weapons), Needlescale Hide (ranged satchels and the like). They stay in demand because you need 1,000 of them to make 500 weapons, which you then crush to make Greater Weapons Essences, and this is the number you need to get a weapon from Planar Level 0 to Planar Level 10.

Older Zones is *everything*. People will pay plat for Shattered Lands shinies, like ants and bones. Lots of people pick up the current expansion shinies, so they glut the market, but go back one or more expansions and there are fewer of any given shiny on the broker usually. The Return to Guk shinies go for very high prices.

At 110, my warlock can solo Kunark Ascending Heroic zones (not heroic Guk, haven't tried PoP heroic yet) and the heroic zone shinies tend to be less common on the broker than overland shinies. You will need to mentor down for anything lower level than that, but we're so overpowered when mentored that my 'lock can solo the Sleeper's Tomb level 95 raid, for example, and the heroics are super easy. Shop the broker and look at collection prices. EQ2U has a nice collections page that will give you the specific info on collections and the shinies in them.

1st paragraph made me quit. I'm out. Good luck y'all

Paragraph 1 made you quit? Really? All you are doing is using harvested rares ( I never buy rares on the broker. Harvesting is a breeze) to make weapons to break down & use to upgrade your weapons. In a production build, one craft can make up to 100 weapons at a time providing you have enough rares.

Thing is though, it is difficult to define "fun" for anyone but yourself.

New, returning & just plain stubborn players are going to have a solo trek to get up to T1/T2 group levels. In previous xpacs, you could just pass gear from your main down to alts to keep them current. Not anymore. This xpac finally broke me of my raging alt-a-holism in favor of maintaining a single main.