Everquest Offers Weak Free To Play Options

WMDogma

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Everquest Offers Weak Free To Play Options


One of the first major MMOs, Everquest is going (mostly) free-to-play.

Popular MMORPG Everquest is joining the ranks of other free-to-play MMOs this coming March, just in time for its 13th birthday. But in this case, its free-to-play options aren't particularly impressive.

Much like its younger sibling Everquest 2, which went free-to-play three separate tiers. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115159-Everquest-2-Finds-New-Life-as-Free-to-Play-MMO] Players can sign up to subscribe to the MMO for the standard $15 USD a month fee for unlimited access to everything the game has to offer, or check out the surprisingly limited low-cost and free options.

Free-to-play users are restricted to just four races and classes (out of 16 races and 16 classes), can't form their own guilds, and don't even have the ability to send in-game emails or make full use of the chat system. If you drop $5.00 USD on a one-time Silver membership, you won't fare much better, other than doubling the amount of player character slots you can have per server and increasing the amount of currency your character can hold at one time. It's only by signing up for the standard monthly subscription can you gain access to the whole kit and kaboodle.

It's a little surprising that a game that's over 13 years old and probably doesn't compare as well to current subscription or free-to-play MMOs on the market that EQ isn't going to be a bit more flexible with its subscription options, especially considering that other free-to-play MMOs, like jump 300% [http://www.startrekonline.com/f2p_features] once it went free to play, so we'll have to see if Everquest will experience the same success.

Source: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5880579/the-original-everquest-goes-free+to+play-for-its-13th-birthday]


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spasicle

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Maybe it's just more cost effective for them this way. Their subscriptions probably wouldn't jump too much from going free to play compared to EQ2 and star trek online. Plus they would have to add a micromanagement store and a host of other features to make it the "true" free to play model. That would require a lot of investment for a 13 year old MMO.

This seems like the cheapest and easiest way for them to introduce free to play. Perhaps they'll implement it fully if there is a bigger than expected increase in players. They seem to be testing the waters before jumping in, so to say.
 

Qitz

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So it's not so much a Free-To-Play movement as a Unlimited Time Trial.

Wasn't going to try this before but it's games like this that give other Free-To-Play MMO's a bad name.
 

Olrod

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Star Trek Online is F2P? I don't even remember hearing about a Star Trek MMO.

Wow, I feel like a n00b.
 

viranimus

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Nov 20, 2009
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Wel I cannot help but to wonder if this is not two fold. For one EQ still has a long standing loyal subscription base. Its not that large but its large enough that its staved off the F2P bug this long. So they do not need to offer much in the way of F2P access. Secondly, it may be an attempt to open the game up to more people while not using F2P access to alienate the faithful playerbase (IE: TF2 syndrome)

What I cannot help but to wonder about is if I try to open my existing EQ account that literally has years worth of subscription fees paid & like 13 out of 16 expansions, what would I be able to access, and if it would adversely effect my full of char slot server (whatever server Ayonae Ro is today)


Buuut.. if I can access my DE/SK then yeah Ill reactivate under F2P, though the game is dead enough to me that I cant see justifying paying full sub costs anymore.
 

oppp7

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Which response do you choose?

Sounds awesome! We should make a user group!
I'll probably try it, since I'm a fan of EQ2 and hear about this all the time.
I'll try it, but probably won't put any money into it, since I'm already playing EQ2
Who would actually go for EQ1 when the second is out already?

I choose green.

Edit: Also, the plan isn't that bad if it's similar to EQ2's setup.
 

Nexxis

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I saw that the population numbers jumped, but I don't think that necessarily means people are playing it. I created in an account (for EQ2) with the intention of giving it a shot, but once I saw how limited the F2P account was, I didn't bother to play. I never got beyond character creation. 4 races? Really? And all of them Neutral. You have to pay to use any of the good or evil races. they should've at least had a race available from each group (or faction or whatever they're called). As old as the game is, I'm surprised they're asking for money on such a level. Maybe thy should reduce their subscription price or go full on F2P with micro-transactions on the side.
 

SinisterDeath

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Sweet! About time!
Now if only they don't pull an age of conan BS with it, and open its F2P up alot more.
 

antipunt

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Yeah, I remember the old thread that first introduced this news. I was excited at first. Then researched more into it

Came back underwhelmed. -very-

it's a bait and switch basically. Damn thing isn't free at all. Much better alternatives out there...
 

SinisterDeath

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antipunt said:
Yeah, I remember the old thread that first introduced this news. I was excited at first. Then researched more into it

Came back underwhelmed. -very-

it's a bait and switch basically. Damn thing isn't free at all. Much better alternatives out there...
Heres a simple thing they can do.

F2P?
Unlock every expansion up to The Serpent's Spine.
Make All content up to that point.
Free.

All Races, All Classes = Free.
To access new content?
1 time expansion fee of $5.
(note you can BUY the latest expansion for.. $30, which includes ALL of that, so this puts it exactly on that level)

People who have Existing accounts?
Should get all that content Free.

Simply lock End-Game Raiding, with Pass, $5? Unlock it forever.

What about races/classes?
Easy!

With their new revenue stream...
Actually make New Models that they've been wanting to for along time!
Make people pay for that!

Classes?
Make them pay a 1 time fee to access new levels of AAs!

Combine all of that with what they already have for there in-game store?
Win.
 

weirdee

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Apr 11, 2011
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This will only serve to fill servers up with what are basically cardboard cutouts of players that cannot talk just like real cardboard cutouts in order to simulate the appearance of being populated.

I do not think this will really convince anybody.
 

shintakie10

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Ugh...the absolute worst part about Star Trek Online when I started it a couple weeks ago was the absolutely asinine "You cant use the forums, send mail, or use zone chat at all until you hit 20 hours of gameplay." If I hadn't been playin with my girlfriend and had someone to talk to while playin, I woulda quit in a heartbeat. It was an awful awful experience to not be able to ask for help about anythin and made me blindly wander around to figure absolutely everythin out on my own.

No MMO should ever, ever restrict the chat of its players. Its not a reward for a player to finally be able to actually chat with others in an mmo after x amount of time or x amount of dollars spent. Its a frustratin time that makes you wonder what the fuck is the point of an mmo if its so hostile to new people.
 

viranimus

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Nov 20, 2009
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oppp7 said:
Which response do you choose?


Who would actually go for EQ1 when the second is out already?
I sincerely found this humorous considering how downright bad EQ2 is compared to EQ1. Well its not really that EQ2 is bad. More that EQ2 essentially bastardized the lore of EQ further than SoE taking EQ over from Verant did.(even if it IS an alternate time line or what ever half ass excuse they used to justify it)and left it as something much more bland and infinitely less interesting.

There are some disadvantages where EQ came before WoW in that the game does not have some of the advents that the WoW generation of MMOs introduced. Things such as the easy quest system from EQ2 and Wow would be nice in the game.

However, comparatively, EQs AI system for NPCS blows every other MMO out of the water even to this day. Wow and its clones essentially destroyed one of the most satisfying "roles" ever created in MMOs. that of the puller. There is nothing like walking up to an enemy encampment, circling around the perimeter to assess the various mobs in the camp then finding the right angle to pull one mob out of the camp without the others noticing, then dragging it back to your party to destroy. Or behaving like a hunter out in the field and silently stalking your prey, waiting for the perfect time in their patrols to tag your target so it does not socially link with all the other mobs around it. I REALLY wish a modern MMO would actually emulate that sort of experience.

Then there are the mobs themselves. There is no simply running 10 feet to get away from a mob that clearly has you outclassed. If you do not have a spell to snare/root, or get the hell out of the zone, you had better find a zone line quick and learn how to use local geography to help put distance between you and what is chasing you because its not just going to give up.

Or when your trying like hell to save your ass and evacuate with gate or the like and having to watch the mobs attack pattern and learn its rhythm so you can time your spell perfectly in the hopes that you can get the whole thing cast without being interrupted my the mob attacking you again. These are things you simply dont see in modern MMOs anymore.

But, the problem is, a lot of the good qualities in the game are now lost because they have been nullified for the desire to make the game more like WoW over the years. I remember in 2000 spending right around 2 hours getting lost in Timorous deep looking for the "fire pot room" that would allow you to quickly zone into any of the starting cities at the time. The only problem was that there was always a chance that once you got down there you might have to contend with a gigantic dragon waiting for you in this semi secret room. (Dependant on if the group that summoned it wiped in trying to kill it or not) Since then there was the Nexus and Plane of Knowledge that basically both destroyed any sort of sensation of travel.


That and the various hundreds of different factions the player has to be wary of (though after PoP factions pretty much went by the way side of relevance and simply turned into a time sink which is truly regrettable) Nothing quite like going to a new outpost to see NPCs who look like you but are really on the fence about if they should kill you or not. Or the joy to be had to be hated by every NPCs in the world if you decided to roll an iksar, essentially having 1 home city you could safely enter without being KoS.Or how at one time Iksar were prevented from wearing plate gear because it was illogical to put metal plates on a species that possessed biological scaled plates anyway. Or how the world seemed more like a world than a video game setting, with zones that interlinked to each other in multiple places, or getting lost deep in woodlands and trying to use real world survival skills like following water till you find civilization. Or to have this extensive hidden lore and hidden meaning behind even the most mundane of things. To have GMs come in and "Act out" historic events such as being able to witness the battle of Bloody Kithicor first hand. Or watching GMs play as Lanys T`Val trying to open the dragon gate in Skyfire mountains as she tries to enact her plan to wake Kerafyrm and fulfill the prophecy of Trakanon,or watching powerful druids saying prayers to their god that bestowed to them the ability for players to summon rain for all players to see on the fields of Karana. Or going up Stonebrunt mountains to find an empty tunnel with a rock that moves like a hidden passage way that allowed you to get behind it only to find the rest of the tunnel caved in and left to wonder would this be a pathway to a new land? Could this allow you access to the far side of the planet that is not on traditional maps? Or the notion of there being a dragon that exists that could defy the mechanics of normal NPCs and had the ability to zone. Also on Kerafyrm, having what was practically invincible dragon that an entire server had only one opportunity to go up against because once the beast was summoned it would go on a rampage and be perma removed from the game, Or for that matter the notion of having a mob in an MMO that it took 3 years, hundreds of dollars in sever switch fees, hundreds of players, many lost levels worth of exp and hours worth of fighting to use the last possible chance to bring down the sleeper and for players to beat. Or doing extensive in game lore research to realize that all the traditional maps of Norrath place Velious in the wrong locale as it is actually closer to the northern pole than the southern pole, but that fact was never put into place because SoE bought out Verant before they could progress that far with "The vision".

The game was far from perfect, but honestly many modern MMOs need to go back and relearn some of the things that made EQ truly awesome.(not the least of which would be allowing the players to craft the narrative of the game, instead of force feeding it in instances, quest dialogs, cutscenes, etc. In some ways it was better than any MMO that has been created since. However, making the game F2P is really not going to help. You simply cant play EQ now, because EQ is barely a shadow of its former glory. From the mines of gloomingdeep to mercs and monster missions many of the charms and challenges simply dont exist now, even if the content is still there its simply never able to be the same. That content eroded with the passage of time and wore down to the point of irrelevance. Why spend hundreds of hours working on gaining cabilis faction, to do a 7 tiered quest line to gain the glorious Blade of Greenmist, when you can simply go to the Bazaar and pick up something for 100 plat that has 10x the stats of greenmist. Even if you miss out on one of the most compelling story arcs in the game, to most people that level of effort for a useless trinket is simply not worth it. No. it wouldnt matter of EQ was made 100% completely free, A player today can never experience EQ, because it is impossible to play it today and get the same experience one got from it back when it was still a relevant force on the landscape.

Anyway.. getting back on my train of thought.. Just because its newer, does NOT mean its better. Not by a long shot.
 

viranimus

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Nov 20, 2009
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Sober Thal said:
Everquest II is free to play? (my ignorance is massive)

What the hell better is there to be playing?!?!?

Time to join the party... really, really fashionably late...

EDIT: Fuck. I still fail with my single core processor....

Damn it all to HEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Honestly? EQ2 as I recall at least at one point really struggled to understand multi core processors. So I think you would likely be ok with a single core. I remember running the game off of a 16 gb flash drive on work PCs that had 125mb video cards and single cores. You should be fine.(unless of course your talking about a processor below 1ghz, then you might have some difficulty

As for better.. Honestly? I found DDO much more entertaining than EQ2 and that was before EQ2 went F2P
 

Batsu-sama

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oppp7 said:
Which response do you choose?

Sounds awesome! We should make a user group!
I'll probably try it, since I'm a fan of EQ2 and hear about this all the time.
I'll try it, but probably won't put any money into it, since I'm already playing EQ2
Who would actually go for EQ1 when the second is out already?

I choose green.

Edit: Also, the plan isn't that bad if it's similar to EQ2's setup.
Where is the "I refuse to so much as touch it because I am already a recovering MMO addict" option? >_>
 

viranimus

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Nov 20, 2009
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Sober Thal said:
This is what SYStem Req gave me... I know for a fact that PC gaming can be shit if you don't meet recommended requirements... So I will show you my listings.

I also am not sure what DDO is. I wouldn't be surprised if it was mentioned 10 times already in this thread... I have a few guesses, but to be honest.... I'm a bit drunk right now ; P

Recommended: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or greater
You Have: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
Upgrade Suggested: Unfortunately, your CPU does not meet this requirement. Click here to see some recommendations. Click here for the latest CPU drivers.

RAM
Recommended: 2GB RAM (XP) 4GB (Vista/Windows 7)
You Have: 2.1 GB
PASS

OS
Recommended: Windows XP/Vista/7
You Have: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3 (build 2600)
PASS Click here for the latest Windows drivers.

Video Card
Recommended: DirectX 9 compatible video card, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS, Pixel shader and Vertex shader compatible hardware with 512 MB of texture memory or grreater
You Have: GeForce GT 440
PASS Click here for the latest Video drivers.
Features: Recommended attributes of your Video Card
Required You Have
Video RAM 512 MB 1.5 GB
3D Yes Yes
Hardware T&L Yes Yes
Pixel Shader version 3.0 5.0
Vertex Shader version 3.0 5.0

DirectX version
Recommended: 9.0 (included)
You Have: 9.0c
PASS

Sound Card
Recommended: Yes
You Have: NVIDIA High Definition Audio
PASS Click here for the latest Sound Card drivers.

Free Disk Space
Recommended: 6 GB
You Have: 86.2 GB
PASS

Sucks that I don't have a real gaming rig.

Oh well.
Well your right, PC gaming can be bad if you dont have recommended specs. However it also depends on the type of game and the type of activities. If your playing a FPS, yeah prolly you want to meed recommended. but RPGs that are typically less graphic intense, and the fact that you dont typically have to have lightning reflexes to survive in RPGs, there is definitely room to deal with lag.

HOWEVER.. I still feel that rig would be more than ample to run EQ2. Granted you would likely have to tweak some settings, but thing is your rig meets on all counts except the processor. Yes the processor does not meet recommended, but it meets and exceeds required.. by a lot. (Req is 1.5ghz single core) Another thing to consider is that there is a series of Intel Pentium R chipsets that are actually dual core chipsets. They are simply not referred to as Dual core, or anything that refers to multiple cores because the series was not exclusively multi core, much like the Pentium D processor I have in my Optiplex for my HDTV technically has a virtualized secondary core. If you wish to confirm DirectX diagnostic would tell you instantly (Window Button + R > type DXDIAG> Hit OK> on main tab it will tell you if you have a multi core system (will say processor speed and then 2x, 4x, or if it says nothng its single core)Though the CURI report does look like it may well be a single core.

Anyway... the way cores work is you typically get less effective performance than adding the total of ghz x number of cores. IE 2.5 dual core would equal effective processing speed of a wee bit under 5.0, likely about 4.7ghz. So.. if the game recommends 2,4 what it is desiring is roughly equivilent to round about 4.5 ghz or so. So essentially the speed if your processor is in fact single core would be effectively 3.0 ghz. Now consider that the required spec is 1.5ghz, and the recommended spec is roughly 4.5 ghz... then you can see a 3.0 ghz is well above the halfway mark of 2.25ghz. Given also that the rest of the specs more than pass recommended level.. they can help ease the burden of any strain the processor might encounter. So again, you might have to use the lower res textures the game provides, and tweak a few in game settings but I feel pretty confident you could get a solid 30-40fps to play the game and realistically thats fast enough to play the game solo, or in a group. You might lag if you try to do end game raid content, but isnt F2P limiting that anyway? Not entirely sure, never looked at EQ2s model for F2P, just basing that off of what EQs f2P structure indicates.

TL;DR

Anyway, heres the way I see it. If its F2P... download and install it.. test it out for yourself. Its not as if your paying for anything to do so. So its not going to hurt to give it a whirl and see how well your rig can run it. If its tolerable to you, then congratulations. If not.. well, all you really lost is a few hours of time dealing with download and installation. Nothing ventured, nothing gained right? But I still feel pretty confident that sort of rig should handle it pretty well.

EDIT: Sorry.. forgot. DDO = Dungeons and Dragons Online. I personally found it more enjoyable than EQ2 because it simply had a better system for narrative, and a GUI that was not entirely reminiscent of WoW
 

viranimus

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Nov 20, 2009
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Sober Thal said:
Fuck yeah, you're right. Free to play leaves me with no excuse! I should try this out and see if I can run it. Just cause The Witcher failed me miserable and was not playable doesn't mean that I shouldn't continue to try other PC exclusive high end titles! (EQ II Isn't even high end!)

Thanks for helping me to get interested in PC gaming again! I may sound like a twat presenting myself as I have (again), but all that really matters is being able to play some good games.

It just pisses me off that I can't run a fucking New Grounds game like The Binding of Issac smoothly with a computer that cost more than my 360... lol/sigh

Downloading EQ II now for the lols, or for the great experience that I hope it can be ; )
Well best of luck to you on it. Hope it works out for you. I would add, the witcher EE was always a resource whore.(became quite problematic if you got more than a dozen save files too) and I cannot speak on the newgrounds incarnation of the binding of issac because I had no idea it was on NG,(admittedly I might be misreading that, Sorry if I am) but I know my steam version will occasionally hiccup and lag on my rig, and Im running an I5 quad core 3.1, with 16gb of system ram and 4gb of VCram in a overclocked GTX 560. So both of those examples might be examples of poor optimization.