I've been taking a break from EQ2 for a few months to try out a few other MMOs.  And this afternoon got a mail from  SOE letting me know that I could come check out their Free To Play on my old server.  Im already paying for Rift,  Star Trek Online and WOW.  I jumped on the chance to just drop in and say Hi to friends and let them know I would be back in January.  However, even though I have purchased every EQ2 expansion, several packs and paid 15 bucks a month since 2004. I could not log into a single one of my 8 characters. It seems that SOE has locked out all of my Races, Classes etc.  unless I pay for them.  So, I couldnt hop on and say hi to friends and guildies.

       Having also played Lord of The Rings Online, and having also purchased the expansions. I was a bit suprised that SOE had not taken the LOTRO model of Free To PLay and allow me as a purchaser of several hundreds of dollars worth of  Collector Edition Expansions to play even one of my previously made characters.  I understand that SOE nees to make money, and F2P isnt really Free.  But I've also played several of Perfect Worls MMOs and have yet to need to purchase anything, much less the ability to play old characters.   So, for you EQ2 vets out there, just know you will not have access to your characters should you want to jump in and check it out. And you cant create a new F2P character on your old account either, unless you delete all but one old character.  The folks over at EQ2 Forums are not much help either, they will tell you to create a new account, Which is fine if you dont have 7 years of stuff you collected or 100s of dollars worth of expansions.  So, Vets beware!

PS Heh, I thought that Cryptic was screwing the pooch with  Star Trek Onlines new F2P model.  At least you dont need to purchase what you already bought.

What?

That they wont allow you to create new characters of the race or class unless you buy them is one thing, but not allowing you to play one you already have is the cheapest thing I heard in my life.

Thanks, I was just considering logging on myself, I wont now.

Just add that to the laundry list of issues with SOE.

Yea, I wasn't a long term player or anything, but I bought the game and played it very casually for about three months a couple of years back.  It was fun, but I was primarily playing another game and didn't want to have two subscriptions going at once.  So I figured I'd drop back in and play a little on an old character since it just went free to play ... only to find every character I made was locked because I needed to purchase every single race and class separately.

$7.50 for each class and another $7.50 for each set of a couple races.  Sheesh, and people complained when CoH made a small portion of their classes limited.  To be honest I'm really hoping this is some sort of bug actually.

I'm 10 gig too far in to back out now.  I was figuring it'd end up like this.  I didn't think SOE would make this F2P out of the kindness of their hearts seeing as EQ1 is still P2P only.  A catch, as always, it seems.

I want to see how it compares to other games that have succesfully made the switch and I guess I'll just have to see for myself.

Let me get this right, though: if each slot you have is locked, you cannot create a new character?  So for a returning player, it's not free-to-play at all (as a misnomer or literally, really).

could you play all of your characters if you re-subbed?

How should they choose what inventory items to drop so that your old characters fall beneath the bag limit?

Are your old characters beneath the F2P magic ceiling?

Add this with my already crappy experince with there CS. Then i think im going to stay away for a while .  Back a few months ago when SOE got hacked i gave upo n the game and tried out a few other mmos. Come back to find my account locked up and wont let me reset pass or do jack squat. So i said screw it got CS and basicly got told to make a new account and start over. Eh another thing to tag on as the person above stated to the list.

Apparently not all races/classes need to be unlocked, just the majority of them (including every single class I'd made a character for in the past).

All I wanted to do was log in, pay to unlock the new beastlord class and dink around with it for a while.  I'll probably still do that at some point, but having all your old characters locked is never a fun thing.  It was a bad idea for CoH and it's a bad idea in EQ2.

Originally posted by Loke666

What?

That they wont allow you to create new characters of the race or class unless you buy them is one thing, but not allowing you to play one you already have is the cheapest thing I heard in my life.

Thanks, I was just considering logging on myself, I wont now.

You do realize this is no different then, say, having a level 30 character in LOTRO, coming back to him with the f2p, and not being able to quest anywhere.  LOTRO locks content, EQ2 locks classes/races.  If you make a new character (or unlock the particular class you want) you have access to all the content.

The issue people have is they fail to look at the big picture, only what effects them.  F2p isnt meant to be the prime way to play, its meant as an unlimited trial with the hopes people sub.  However for the people that do want to play for free, there is an insane amount of content they dont have to pay a cent for.  Just have to go with one of the 8 classes.

Its amazing how closed minded people are though.  Everything is a big scam and SoE sucks, because everyone either wants everything catered to THEM, or doesnt take the time to actually look at the full picture.  In the end you may still prefer the pay for content method, but if you think SoE's system is bad or greedy or anything like that then you have major lack of analytical skills, or blindly hate SoE.  Sadly, 95% of the users on this site seem to fall into one of those two groups.

They should do at least the same what AoC did at their F2P launch - you could unlock two of your characters for free.

Originally posted by Flirt

They should do at least the same what AoC did at their F2P launch - you could unlock two of your characters for free.

But AoC is far more restrictive overall than EQ2.  EQ2 gives more for free than any other freemium game out there.  Is it the most vet friendly system?  no, but you dont design a f2p for your vets to stop paying.

---

Originally posted by Cyberdeck7
could you play all of your characters if you re-subbed?
How should they choose what inventory items to drop so that your old characters fall beneath the bag limit?
Are your old characters beneath the F2P magic ceiling?

---

You can play all of your characters.. If you've paid for their race and class unlocks, or made them all human wizards or such.

Your bags still have the goods when you last played, but you can't use any items without going and dropping the bag in your bank and moving the items into one of your useable bag slots. THEN you can't add them back tot he bag.

Old characters are all F2P members until you upgrade.

Originally posted by uohaloran

 

Let me get this right, though: if each slot you have is locked, you cannot create a new character?  So for a returning player, it's not free-to-play at all (as a misnomer or literally, really).

Of course its free to play.  You may have to create a new character, but its still free. If all your slots are full, no one says you cant delete a character.  If you dont want to delete a character, just open a new account, its free.

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by Loke666

What?

That they wont allow you to create new characters of the race or class unless you buy them is one thing, but not allowing you to play one you already have is the cheapest thing I heard in my life.

Thanks, I was just considering logging on myself, I wont now.

You do realize this is no different then, say, having a level 30 character in LOTRO, coming back to him with the f2p, and not being able to quest anywhere.  LOTRO locks content, EQ2 locks classes/races.  If you make a new character (or unlock the particular class you want) you have access to all the content.

The issue people have is they fail to look at the big picture, only what effects them.  F2p isnt meant to be the prime way to play, its meant as an unlimited trial with the hopes people sub.  However for the people that do want to play for free, there is an insane amount of content they dont have to pay a cent for.  Just have to go with one of the 8 classes.

Its amazing how closed minded people are though.  Everything is a big scam and SoE sucks, because everyone either wants everything catered to THEM, or doesnt take the time to actually look at the full picture.  In the end you may still prefer the pay for content method, but if you think SoE's system is bad or greedy or anything like that then you have major lack of analytical skills, or blindly hate SoE.  Sadly, 95% of the users on this site seem to fall into one of those two groups.

No, the LOTRO guy can log in with his character, I on the other hand needs to pay 15 bucks to unlock my race and class.

I already bought all expansions and played for 5 years, and they want me to pay for the same thing twice. You don't even want to count on how much money I put into the game .

They could at least let me keep my main character without paying for it.

Changing the payment model to get new players into the game is no issue, but screwing over their veterans is not a good idea. Anyone who already have bought the entire game should at least be able to unlock a few things for free, we are the reason that the game even exists anymore and the most likely type to actually buy new stuff as we play.

Originally posted by teakbois 

The issue people have is they fail to look at the big picture, only what effects them.  F2p isnt meant to be the prime way to play, its meant as an unlimited trial with the hopes people sub.  However for the people that do want to play for free, there is an insane amount of content they dont have to pay a cent for.  Just have to go with one of the 8 classes.

I don't really have a problem with classes being locked off, heck I expected the Beastlord class to be unavaliable to me since I haven't purchased the expansion yet.  I mean that just makes sense.

My problem is that I bought the game in the past when it wasn't free and I played the game for about 3 months (had the account active for longer thinking I'd get back to it), but not I can't access any of the characters I made without paing more money for them or deleting all but one of them since they take up playable character slots and I can't make a free character if they're there.

I'd be less annoyed if I could make a free character without deleting all my old characters, but I can't do that.  I'd much rather that they locked off content than locking off all the races and classes.  At least that way I'd have been able to log into the game and play through some content and then purchase what I wanted when I needed, but with this implementation I either need to spend a lot of money on classes and races to play any of my old characters and more money on character slots in order to make a new character.  I'd much rather pay more money over time unlocking content than this giant up-front fee I have to pay simply because I bought their product in the past ... something I wouldn't have had if I'd never given them money at all.

It's a fine implementation for new players, but it's a very poor one for returning players.  Very.

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by uohaloran

 

Let me get this right, though: if each slot you have is locked, you cannot create a new character?  So for a returning player, it's not free-to-play at all (as a misnomer or literally, really).

Of course its free to play.  You may have to create a new character, but its still free. If all your slots are full, no one says you cant delete a character.  If you dont want to delete a character, just open a new account, its free.

 You can only play the top two of each class archetype and just a few races.  Not worth it.

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by Flirt

They should do at least the same what AoC did at their F2P launch - you could unlock two of your characters for free.

But AoC is far more restrictive overall than EQ2.  EQ2 gives more for free than any other freemium game out there.  Is it the most vet friendly system?  no, but you dont design a f2p for your vets to stop paying.

And by giving the vets nothing, many of them will quit and they are the most likely people to pay a lot during the years.

Even FunCom knows this.

Originally posted by Cyberdeck7

could you play all of your characters if you re-subbed?

Eq2 is 100% unchanged if you sub, its the same as it was before.

With one non-gameplay related difference:

If you use a recurring sub (normal cc sub) you get 5 bucks of free currency each month.  So you could pay for a 3 month sub, then wait a month to renew and use that 15 bucks to pay for a one month sub.  OR you could stay subbed, save the station cash, and get the next expansion for free.  Or you could do what most will probably do, buy mounts and crap with it.

Originally posted by hehenep

 

It's a fine implementation for new players, but it's a very poor one for returning players.  Very.

I agree with this, it wasnt meant for returning players.  Its likely more meant for the 1 million people that left WoW, the 600k people that left rift, and the 1 million people that will leave SWTOR even if SWTOR is a huge success (3 million try it, 2 million sub long term, EA is ecstatic).  Yes there is obviously some overlap there and some of them have tried eq2 before, but its still hundreds of thousands of potential new people to try the game

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by uohaloran

 

Let me get this right, though: if each slot you have is locked, you cannot create a new character?  So for a returning player, it's not free-to-play at all (as a misnomer or literally, really).

Of course its free to play.  You may have to create a new character, but its still free. If all your slots are full, no one says you cant delete a character.  If you dont want to delete a character, just open a new account, its free.

The options to weigh are: delete characters that I've built up over the years or make a new account.  Doesn't really sound all that appealing to me on either front.

It's interesting to note that you'd scold us for not looking at this from all perspectives but then ignore that we've also our own view here and it's not a very welcoming one.

I'll be able to see for myself in the morning if this is the case -- I don't have any intentions of returning to a game that I've invested time in to start over, but we'll see how it shakes out.