Free to Play?Follow

The day EQ1 goes free to play is the real start of EQ1's true deathbed in my opinion. This would be an acknowledgement by SOE that they will be relocating EQ's human resources elsewhere. I would be expecting the developers team to shrink significantly and bugs etc will not be fixed at all. Far less for new expansions and raids every year or at all.

Just like how EQ players site has been left for dead since they made it free...Only the forum function on EQ players works nowadays and any posts on EQ players re: fixing the site is met with a "policy statement"(EQ players is now free so we do not intend/know when it will be fixed) and an immediate locked thread by the Moderators.

It will bring more players in but as you said it might be the wrong demographic...Only there while the water is nice and warm but quick to leave once they encounter any difficulties in game.

Just my 2 cents on the issue.

This is a topic that has been hotly debated for years on SecondLife. For those of you not familiar with SL, it is not a game, but a virtual community where one can be or do almost anything imaginable. Besides socializing, building and buying/selling real estate are the two biggest forms of "working" within SL. The lindens (SL's form of plat) can be converted to RL $USD and some people actually have a rather lucrative part-time and, in rarer cases, full-time income from SL.

There are two types of accounts in SL: bacic (free) and premium. The premium service, which is in a price range of $9.95/mo-$6.00/mo depending on the choice of paying monthly, 3 months, 6 months, or yearly, offers the following benefits not afforded to free players: a weekly stipend of 300L (if one opts to pay for the yearly premium subscription, the stipend basically makes the account "free" as the stipend offsets the payment), the ability to purchase "mainland" (as opposed to estate land which is privately owned and is rented from the estate owner), a free home in one of the SL-built communities (as opposed to buying or renting land and buying or building ones own home), access to phone and live chat customer support, premium member-only "sandboxes" where people can build if they don't own enough land. Public sandboxes are the equivalent of pick up joints, so this is a decent feature. A few other things here and there are included throughout the year.

The SL debate is much like one or two posts in this thread - one side thinks SL should be totally subscription-only to weed out griefers, etc. The other side expresses that even though they don't pay a monthly subscription fee, they purchase a lot within SL, thus keeping the economy vibrant. The middle group likes the two choices, citing people who may be disabled, out of work in our current economy, etc. and who cannot afford another luxury item in their budget but are contributing residents within SL. Others think the premium service should include more things to make this option more attractive.

During the 3 1/2 years I've been in SL, nothing has changed; the basic & premium accounts are still offered and the forum debate continues.

My personal view is similar to the middle ground of the SL debate - I personally think more people would return to EQ and stay consistently if it was free. One of the reasons I quit was not being able to justify the $14.95/mo when I didn't play regularly and now my financial situation has changed which results in my purchasing game cards and playing sporadically here and there. (I also went from a premium to basic SL subscription as well.) I do like the idea of offering both paid and free access to EQ with the paid subscriptions having more benefits, features, etc. Only offering content to a certain expansion, for example, I think is a wonderful idea.

The flip side of F2P is that it generally involves a cash shop for purchasing items, expansions, etc. So it's in a F2P game's best interests to have a steady stream of development for new cash shop items otherwise people stop buying. So a conversion to a F2P model could potentially result in more (paid) zones, classes, races, spells, special effects, cosmetic alterations, and so on.

This isn't to promote the idea of F2P. A game I played recently went F2P and I don't like where they're going with it. Just to say that F2P doesn't necessarily equal the death of development.

Marketplace hasn't sucked me in yet, but being able to roll a "taboo" class would (Ogre mage or troll ranger = win EQ!). I don't think that particular offering has to be just for a F2P model though --to bring my post back to the original topic. Though it could be limited to a single server I guess to keep the lore "sacred" (hard case to make with PoK and all the "all races cooperate" stuff that has been done in the last 8 years but I digress.)

As a soloer, the times I actually enjoyed and looked forward to grouping were playing in the LDoN instances. It was a specific block of time, only one group was in the area, etc. I would LOVE to see more people interested in doing the LDoN content again.

I believe a F2P model could work for EQ. There is so much to do in this game, I bet they could make 95% of the zones and expansions free and the subscribers would hardly notice.

They could funnel the free players into old zones and old content. Give them some updated newbie armor quests in starting cities, and let them experience EQ. I like the idea of it being free up to TSS or maybe even TBS, and having to buy stuff like more character slots, more bank space (think if we had to pay for each unlocking of bank space like we pretty much did with LoY lol), and maybe even access to 1.0 epics (sold as a quest pack or some such).

The way I see it: EQ has been around so long with (now) so much unused content, why not give it away? If SoE followed the same basic microtransaction model that Turbine did with DDO and LOTRO, they could do very well; some might say even better than they are doing now.

And the thing is: it worked.

It worked for DDO. It was on its last legs when they decided to implement the F2P model, and now they have more subscribers than they had before. Solely on the premise that players could get a feel for what the game was about and would decide to "opt-in", even if was only $5 to unlock the intermediate tier of subscriber status (which, in turn, gives a few more account perks than the F2P player).

I hope somebody at SoE has at least brought this topic to the board meeting for a discussion. I think it's worth considering. It could be mutually beneficial for players and developers alike.

I didn't think so many would respond. ~smile~

I think F2P could work, if Sony does it right. I'm not sure how it could work, but it could bring in a lot of people. I'm hoping in my heart that they don't get greedy with the cash shops.