At last weekend's Sony Online Entertainment Fan Faire, MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood sat in on what was probably the most controversial panel during the convention: The panel dealing with the recently announced Everquest II Extended and its free-to-play option. Developers David Georgeson, Rich Waters, Greg Spence and Tony Royce spent time discussing what EQ II Extended is and isn't as well as giving fans time to ask their questions.

The Extended version of the game is instead to be seen as a F2P “attract mode”, meant to bring it to the attention of a generation of gamers that hadn’t necessarily had a chance to try EverQuest II. Being a game of six years old, EQ II isn’t attracting a lot of attention from either the gaming media or players, both of whom are naturally prone to look toward the newest and shiniest new thing that’s being talked about and not into the past.

Read Jon's full report on Everquest II Extended.