News came out yesterday that Everquest II was going free to play. That is, on select opt-in servers. My take on this is that it will be an overwhelmingly positive thing for EQ2. The game is bleeding subscribers slowly, as it has been for quite some time. This is not at the game’s fault, this is the natural lifecycle of a game of its nature. This is the best (and cheapest) way for SOE to bring new life to the game and allow more people to take advantage of what is actually one of the deepest (and best) MMOs on the market. This can only be good for SOE and the game.
Many people are calling it a colossal rip-off. Mainly, because you can upgrade on the F2P servers to a monthly $14.99 subscription without getting access to the full game. You don’t get all the races, or all the character slots. People who are upset by this have clearly never put a retail box in a store before. Retail sales have been crucial to EQ2, because it has been the one way people find out about the game aside from word of mouth. They have been driving players to buy retail boxes for the last 6 years, giving extra perks and rewards and bonuses for people who do.
The EQ2 community is a dedicated and engaged low-churn community who have been buying expansions and adventure packs for the last 6 years. That’s 6 expansions. Now a new F2P server opens up that allows anyone to start up with no initial cost. No boxes, no additional expansions. You better believe that SOE is going to give a benefit to the people who have been dedicated players for the last few years. If they didn’t, the same people who are complaining now about the $14.99/month not giving them the full experience would be complaining that old school players are completely screwed and were ripped off.
SOE is showing utmost loyalty here. It would have been easy (possibly even EASIER) for them to just give subscribers on the new F2P servers everything that subscribers have who have bought expansion after expansion. This would have been a major slap-in-the-face and I’m surprised no one is talking about this.
SOE is doing F2P right:
- Giving multiple subscription levels, including completely free to one time fees to full monthly sub fees
- Putting F2P players on their own server, not affecting the gameplay of the longtime subscribers
- Giving a bonus benefit to their longtime customers who play on regular servers
Sounds good to me.
Tami Baribeau is the Senior Community Manager for ZipZapPlay. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and a blogger at Games.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
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Excellent post. Unfortunately there are those who are not waiting for more info to come out before they sound the death knell for SOE and EQ2.
*Giving a bonus benefit to their longtime customers who play on regular servers
May I ask how this is? So far, nothing I’ve read about this (though I admit I have not read much) indicates any change to the “normal” servers. What benefit is there to a long-term player like you describe in your article?
Found this on the FAQ page:
SOE will be providing a new subscription rewards package for active users who purchase multi-month subscriptions. The rewards, based on the user’s subscription, may include Station Cash and items such as the new Cloak of the Storm, Nizaran Assassin Armor Crate and Steed of the Blazing Sun. All exclusive to EQ II live! SOEwill unveil the full details of the program when we launch Extended.
My guess is that players will still receive vet rewards on live, but not on the extended servers at the very least.
EQ isn’t in many retail stores at all though. I’ve only seen it in Best Buy, and Gamestop stores will only get PC titles if you preorder them.
I don’t think though that box price rage is an issue. If you read the feedback post, a lot of live players are even suggesting making all the servers F2P would be a better choice.
I see your points though not sure I agree with them all.
Do you not think people will leave the live servers to play on the free ones if they don’t play often enough for a full sub? I would have preferred all of this on the same servers to be honest.
If you move from live to free then you have to pay to transfer, pay to access races you may already have and more, but people will still do it rather than leave the game.
Sure you could say this keeps people in EQ2, but it would reduce live server pops.
If they do away with the trial for the live servers then new players will be less likely to join them. In time it may turn out that the live servers are phased out in favour of the F2P servers with subs to make SOE more money.
If it really is about bringing in new players they should allow people to transfer characters to the live server and maybe a package via station cash to purchase the expansions.
“SOE will be providing a new subscription rewards package for active users who purchase multi-month subscriptions. The rewards, based on the user’s subscription, may include Station Cash and items such as the new Cloak of the Storm, Nizaran Assassin Armor Crate and Steed of the Blazing Sun..”
So the bonus benefit ONLY benefits those legacy players who can afford to pay upfront for a multi-monthly subscription AND that unknown benefit will be based on which subscription (3mon, 6mon, 12mon) package a legacy player can afford.
Its a tough economy and budgets are tight for many including singles, couples and families who play EQ2 together.
A rather positive take on it, unfortunately they are preventing the extended players from ever transferring to the live servers.
And they are stopping the free trial on the live servers and redirecting all new players to the extended servers.
That feels more like a good solid punch in the face, the RMT they are implementing on extended is just too heinous to contemplate for live so they cannot be merged (the items they sell would allow people to trivialise raiding and dungeons), its for the RMT reasons that I believe they had to segregate the server populations.
But with the mass cancellations I’ve seen in the game the past 3 days I think its looking like an NGE. Even the hardcore fans of the game going to Fanfaire are looking at EQ2 as dead if this goes ahead.
Great post Tami, but I can’t say that I agree
Price wise, neither the Gold nor Platinum plans are anywhere near as cost efficient as just going out and buying the retail box and subscribing to Live. If a EQ2X player wants to access the full content, they are going to pay more than a normal subscription (initial retail purchase cost included) and that’s just plain unfair. Plus, they also have no choice but to pay the higher rates because they cannot even transfer onto Live if they like the game!