Originally posted by JeroKane

 You cannot transfer from an EQ2:Extended server to a Live server!  Only the other way around.

Coupled with that the trial for EQ2Live is going to be terminated.

And you won't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what they are trying to do here.

If they sell items that matters on one server and not the other that actually makes sense to me.

It sucks if someone just can transfer his char with bought gear and become one of the best geared tones of a server, that would be the final straw for many players.

I am not saying that I support this, I am not but I can understand it at least.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by JeroKane

 You cannot transfer from an EQ2:Extended server to a Live server!  Only the other way around.

Coupled with that the trial for EQ2Live is going to be terminated.

And you won't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what they are trying to do here.

If they sell items that matters on one server and not the other that actually makes sense to me.

It sucks if someone just can transfer his char with bought gear and become one of the best geared tones of a server, that would be the final straw for many players.

I am not saying that I support this, I am not but I can understand it at least.

 It's not that.  You cannot compare it with Live Gamer on the Station Exchange servers.

There you can litterly buy everything on the Store. Including fully geared characters. Even sell them yourself.

That kind of stuff you indeed do not want to have ending up on the Live Servers.

Station Exchange is a true RMT abomination on itself.  Cannot get any worse than that.

John Smedly would have commited corporate suicide if he had allowed transfers from Station Exchange to regular Live Servers.

It would have instantly been the end of Everquest 2 and probably SOE itself shortly after.

All I can say is almost every vet I know hates the idea.  For instance taking out the 14 day trial, and locking it down to where nobody can transfer up.  This means and a lot of folks believe it other than me, that the current servers are going to die a slow death.

Honestly I don't know but about 20 to 30 folks that even post in the eq2 forums that like it.  Most of them hate it. I think its going to backfire.  Gosh knows I actually seen folks who have canceled over this, just not idle threats.

I for one want nothing to do with it, not even the beta.

"Characters will be allowed to be copied from the Live servers onto the Extended servers, but the option does not exist in the reverse. Extended characters will not be able to move to the Live service."

What sense does this make. They claim that the idea is to attract "Extended" player to the "Live" version, but the "Extended" players will not be able to transfer characters to the "Live" version? That seems totally backwards. If you want them to join Live then let them transfer their character. I for one would not make the move if it meant starting over. 

I'm not going to play this.  The way it's set up isn't fun at all.

I can't copy my 72 Fae Warden over to extended because it's a locked class and if I subscribed I would just play the old Everfrost server.  I can't play with any of my guild unless they too want to ditch their characters and start over or pay idiotic fees to transfer.

I can only play the classes I like if I subscribe.  I can't wear decent gear unless I subscribe.  The game isn'tthat fun and the Marketplace, like all SoE stuff, is really expensive.  Even with the performance improvements the game engine is still a dinosaur and the graphics are dated.

This could be a fun game if they made the actual game have a hybrid model and sell off content and not core game functionality.

I'll stick with LotRO and Guild Wars for now.

What would you do, if you ran SOE and EQ2? 

Your sat watching your subscription numbers drop, due to the age of the game. You know 14 million MMO players are playing Warcraft. You know that F2P brings in alot of money, and keeps your game alive. You know that a few thousand loyal fans may quit, but a few thousand more would quit if you made the existing servers F2P. You know that possibly a few million will play if you go F2P. You are trying to develop multiple new games and need the money to do this.

If I were running it, I would be doing so to make money, pay my bills, pay my developers, pay my shareholders. I would not be doing it so a few thousand players can continue to play until I ran out of cash and the game closed! 

The biggest argument from fans is that the live servers will slowly empty. They are empty anyway! I play EQ2 everyday, and theres about 10 people chatting in General, and I never see anyone running about. I spent all evening looking for a group. Do I mind starting again on a new server with a huge population? It would take me a week or two to get up to a high level, I know all the grinding tricks, I know how to make alot of plat quickly, I know how to do all the good quests to get the gear. And I could play with lots of people, and help them out. The fun would be back for me.

For everyone who quits, 100 new F2P people would join, and if you were running a business, that would look mighty attractive! This is how its going to be with MMO's from now on. Everyone is doing this. LOTRO, EQ2, Wow even has a disguised cash shop. And for those few thousands who dont play anymore there will be millions who will. 

Personally I do not like cash shops, but I'm certainly not going to stop playing games in this genre due to it, or claim companies like SOE, Turbine, Blizzard etc are evil and ruining my life!

There is a reason that the live servers are empty and it has nothing to do with the price tag. 

If I were soe I would have started listening to my customers a long time ago.  Stop putting out half finished expansions just to meet a revenue schedule.  Take a serious long look at class balance, broken skills and all the other complaints being made.

EQ2 mechanics panel

Go look at the answers the developers give players when they bring up bugs and concerns.  It is almost as if they don't understand the game and are just hearing what players are saying for the very first time.  The answer to almost every question is "we will have to look at that when we get back". 

 

The point is that simply changing the pricing of the game will not be a long term solution.  Just like merging servers doesn't solve the core problem.  Age isn't the reason that the game has declined so much.  As long as soe keeps half assing the game the end result will be the same. 

Originally posted by jayanti

What would you do, if you ran SOE and EQ2? 

Your sat watching your subscription numbers drop, due to the age of the game. You know 14 million MMO players are playing Warcraft. You know that F2P brings in alot of money, and keeps your game alive. You know that a few thousand loyal fans may quit, but a few thousand more would quit if you made the existing servers F2P. You know that possibly a few million will play if you go F2P. You are trying to develop multiple new games and need the money to do this.

If I were running it, I would be doing so to make money, pay my bills, pay my developers, pay my shareholders. I would not be doing it so a few thousand players can continue to play until I ran out of cash and the game closed! 

The biggest argument from fans is that the live servers will slowly empty. They are empty anyway! I play EQ2 everyday, and theres about 10 people chatting in General, and I never see anyone running about. I spent all evening looking for a group. Do I mind starting again on a new server with a huge population? It would take me a week or two to get up to a high level, I know all the grinding tricks, I know how to make alot of plat quickly, I know how to do all the good quests to get the gear. And I could play with lots of people, and help them out. The fun would be back for me.

For everyone who quits, 100 new F2P people would join, and if you were running a business, that would look mighty attractive! This is how its going to be with MMO's from now on. Everyone is doing this. LOTRO, EQ2, Wow even has a disguised cash shop. And for those few thousands who dont play anymore there will be millions who will. 

Personally I do not like cash shops, but I'm certainly not going to stop playing games in this genre due to it, or claim companies like SOE, Turbine, Blizzard etc are evil and ruining my life!

 Ahem!!!!

First of all how do we know that EQ2 extended is going to pull in 100 new subs for every person who quits. After all as you claim it is sever years old and getting older.  Most folks who have tried eq2 have moved on to other stuff, and frankly f2p is not going to appeal to those folks as they had valid reasons for leaving the game, and they are not coming back. Have you looked at the cost of transfering a toon, and most folks dont want to strart from scratch. What you have with eq2 currently is us eq2 die hards.  Just because ddo was a hit in getting a so called 500% increase in folks playing ddo does not mean every game that goes f2p will enjoy the same success.

Lets take a look at why so many folks have left eq2.  I would guess you cant even answer me that.  Can anybody say caster Nerf about 3.5 years back that drove off half the player base.  Then you had the past couple of expansions that were just about trash.  I was hoping SF would bring folks back, but its had the reverse effect and has chased more folks off than it has received.

Now with GU57 and rothgar giving us a direct Nerf because he plays a pimped out guardian and he cant stand the fame that some pallies gets, there going to nerf critical heals on other fighter classes.  When you have Dev's like that, who program stuff to benefit the class they play instead of trying to fix class balance issues than make more folks unhappy.

This is not about the cash shops in eq2, we had SC for a wile, and LON.  Nobody Is buying much of anything in them.  Then they set up the bizzar servers, and that was supposed to be the cash fix and we were told that was the great experiment on how eq2 was going to survive.  Now were going to a separate eq2 extended program that has nothing to do with the live servers supposedly.  I have to ask how is a seperate eq2 extended servers going to benifit the already established game if they are totaly seperate, that right there I cant get an anser too even from smokejumper.

Going for a quick fix because ddo made it does not guarantee eq2 extended is going to be great, especially since a streaming client, i head stories of 15 minute load times into raid zones.

Badly written article that failed to mention they actually didn't answer any important questions that the fans have been asking since it was announced.

I know you guys are trying to just report the facts, but ignoring some of the facts doesn't help anything.

Originally posted by jayanti

What would you do, if you ran SOE and EQ2? 

Your sat watching your subscription numbers drop, due to the age of the game. You know 14 million MMO players are playing Warcraft. You know that F2P brings in alot of money, and keeps your game alive. You know that a few thousand loyal fans may quit, but a few thousand more would quit if you made the existing servers F2P. You know that possibly a few million will play if you go F2P. You are trying to develop multiple new games and need the money to do this.

If I were running it, I would be doing so to make money, pay my bills, pay my developers, pay my shareholders. I would not be doing it so a few thousand players can continue to play until I ran out of cash and the game closed! 

The biggest argument from fans is that the live servers will slowly empty. They are empty anyway! I play EQ2 everyday, and theres about 10 people chatting in General, and I never see anyone running about. I spent all evening looking for a group. Do I mind starting again on a new server with a huge population? It would take me a week or two to get up to a high level, I know all the grinding tricks, I know how to make alot of plat quickly, I know how to do all the good quests to get the gear. And I could play with lots of people, and help them out. The fun would be back for me.

For everyone who quits, 100 new F2P people would join, and if you were running a business, that would look mighty attractive! This is how its going to be with MMO's from now on. Everyone is doing this. LOTRO, EQ2, Wow even has a disguised cash shop. And for those few thousands who dont play anymore there will be millions who will. 

Personally I do not like cash shops, but I'm certainly not going to stop playing games in this genre due to it, or claim companies like SOE, Turbine, Blizzard etc are evil and ruining my life!

 

 Oh please! Give me a break.

You know why $OE sucks so bad? Why they can't keep subscriptions up in ANY of their games?

It's because they have an incompetent CEO who is sitting in that chair for far too long.

It's because they have no international distribution in place, that makes sure your products are on the shelves in all the major stores around the world.

It's because they have an incompetent and non-functional marketing department, that screws up more than doing any good. They sertainly hold the record for PR dissasters and blunders.

It doesn't matter what they do. If they can't fix the above. Everything they do will fail. And so will EQ2:Extended. And any new game they gonna release in the near future.

Originally posted by keglo

"Characters will be allowed to be copied from the Live servers onto the Extended servers, but the option does not exist in the reverse. Extended characters will not be able to move to the Live service."

What sense does this make. They claim that the idea is to attract "Extended" player to the "Live" version, but the "Extended" players will not be able to transfer characters to the "Live" version? That seems totally backwards. If you want them to join Live then let them transfer their character. I for one would not make the move if it meant starting over. 

Don't think this is a permanent thing. That rumor was already floating hours after the original announcment of the Extended servers:

 

Dave "Smokejumper" Georgeson said:

" The flow of players is one-way right now...but that's not necessarily permanent.

Here's the reasons:

1) We wanted players to be able to copy over and try out the new servers, but didn't want to force them to leave the subscription servers to do so. So we implemented the "copy" process instead of a "transfer".

2) We didn't implement a copy from Extended to subscription for two reasons:

a) We didn't feel that players would want to see characters that "bought their way up" showing up on the subscription servers, and;

b) The copy processes allow really nasty character dupe issues if you can copy both ways.

So, for now, we're only offering copy in one direction.

This is not necessarily permanent. But we'll have to discontinue the copy service first, *and* we'll need to feel that players won't get upset about characters coming from the Extended servers."

I am personally very excited. I have always wanted to get into EQ2 and have tried 2 different times but the low lvl pop just was not there and I quit. Now it should be booming and on brand new servers! SWEEEEET!

Its kind of funny that everyone in this thread seems to think EQ2 is in some state of decline in sub numbers and the servers are dead. And that this is going to somehow affect the live servers negatively.

First off, almost all the new players go to AB anyway, or maybe Nagafen. AB doesnt need new players AT ALL, and the effect on live servers will be minimal.

Secondly, they are merging the low and medium pop servers anyway, so youll have twice as many people to begin with on servers that werent exactly dead to begin with. You want a dead server check out Vanguard or a low pop PvP realm on WoW. Maybe there is a couple of low pop servers in eq2 but Ive tried ones listed as 'low' and there is still tons of life on them (3 months ago anyway).

People just have to bitch. If they allowed extended to live servers people would bitch they didnt earn their way up because its bought gear. They *should* allow a one character transfer over with a bought full version of eq2 with all marketplace GEAR removed, but its not the end of the world they dont allow that.

Basically, I think the people up in arms about this arent looking at it with their SoE hate goggles off. First off, if you say you cant get gear you either know ntohing about eq2 or are flat otu stupid. Mastercrated gear and expert spells is the equivalent of blue gear in WoW. Inmagine leveling in WoW wearing a full set of blue egar. Pretty easy and all you need, right?

But whatever, consumers are largely idiots. Anyone who has worked in retail can tell you this. the 'average' person is so blinded by the public perspective of a company they jump to conclusions. perfect example is Netflix and Blockbuster. People think BB is this big greedy corporation and Netflix is this customer loving indie company, when in reality Blockbuster has ALWAYS spelled out their policies for anyone who cared so much as to read their reciept and those policies have NEVER been unfair, yet Netflix purposely screwed their biggest customers by purposely taking longer to mail them movies and also giving new customers the big releases earlier. This comes from the Neutral perspective an ex-storemanager from both their competitions. I always played off peoples anti-blockbuster attitude, when in reality they are a very customer friendly company.

Not saying SoE is the most customer friendly company, but compared to their competition they come out ok.

Sounds to me like they are hedging their bets. If Extended is wildy successful, they can move the Live players to the extended servers and shut down the Live service. If Extended bombs, they can just do away with it and have no impact on Live at all. If both services do well and are profitable, keep them both going and that's just more revenue for them. From a business perspective, it seems to make pretty good sense.

@teakbois

People are upset, because soe just mislead the players about a change like this not happening.  It also compounds long standing issues, like server populations and the need for mergers.  Something many players have been asking to happen for quite a while.  As has been typical policy with soe, instead of just doing mergers they instead create a payment option to allow players to transfer and neglect the need for mergers for far longer than it is healthy.  Keep in mind soe wanted to do mergers over 6 months ago and admitted it had been a problem for a lot longer than that.  

That is what has caused the migration to a couple of servers and that doens't somehow make the loss of free trials to live servers unimportant as you want to make it out to be.

In players eyes, soe has been ignoring problems like lack of marketing, server populations, new player experience, UI, performance for a long time.  Now soe seems to have changed their mind and are almost exclusively doing that, but not for the benefit of their loyal subscribers.  Instead they are only doing this NOW in some effort to get people to come to their new cash shop servers.

 

There is a sense of betrayal that players are feeling and trying to mitigate that as if people just want to bitch is disingenious.  

I have that mount ><

Personally i never played EQ2 in its P2P version and that fact would unlikelly change.

 

Reason? I spent many years playing EQ and many others playing WoW... and since my playtime is limited (afteral i can only play 1 game at a time, no matter how many PCs i have) and more recently this world economic crisis that hit me personally, means i have to be very selective on which games i do play.

 

This F2P (which everyone knows is far from "free") allows me to play a very watered-down and limited version of the game... but alas, it requires a lesser economic and timelly commitment from my part.
 

I'm sorry that some regular EQ2 players see my entrance to the game as the end of their fun... but... that's life...