Georgeson: EQII won't be going free-to-play

His quote should have an added footnote saying: *However, if WoW were to go f2p, we'd be right behind them the week after with the exact same model.

I love how the elitists come out of the woodwork and start trumpeting on about how Free to Play is the work of the devil or some such. Woo, instead of paying what you want to for the items you think you want, you instead just pay wholesale per month. There is no superior choice.

Is pay per month keeping the trolls out? If they did, World of Warcraft would be the most intelligent and peaceful place on the planet, a haven against griefers, or perhaps Eve, are people avoiding the eleven year old twits who make it their duty to ruin someone else's game? Sorry, doesn't work that way.

Or the store idea...sure, there are things that offer you better characters or items for a specific amount of money. A little bit unfair? Sometimes, sure. Game breaking? Not exactly. The money the pay per month types are paying just end up going into the store anyways. One just lets you get more specific where you're putting your cash.

Good for Sony, doing what they want, but they just come across as the guy trying to be the rebel by going against what's considered 'the thing' nowadays. The announcement just feels like them trying to court the people who figure Free to Play means a terrible game.

Darn, Haha. I wished they'd go F2P and a cash shop. I'd buy those xp potions like crazy and all the phat loots it would normally take those old school players years to farm XD.

More power to the almighty dollar

SOE were one of the first to introduce the Station Store to EQ2, not listening to the fans at that time. And now they brag "We've heard you folks loud"... ridiculous, if you ask me :P

We'll see how they are talking when, in time, their gaming subs start dropping off. F2P the Turbine way is a strategy to breathe new life into an already matured game. Why spend the tens of millions to make a new game when you can still eek out some life and revenue from your current, less buggy game? This new "pay as you go" model, if done right can truly revitalize a floundering IP.

Really I wish they stop with all that free to play crap EQII/Age of Conan/Warcraft never will go free to play like they doing just fine on there subs!

Wow, lots of EQII um, fans, ready to respond to every question with a Sony can do no wrong attitude?

If these guys would at all look at the most recent games that are going F2P, there is no "buying your way to power". Turbine has very effectively changed their games into F2P while somehow not changing much. The people who pay still get the full normal game. Those that don't have to purchase various things to be able to access parts of the game. They have done a GREAT job of making it so you don't buy your way to power at all. Anybody who is familiar with DDO knows this. The rest of you fear mongers who never played it just make out like it's the way some of the worst "Free" games ended up being.

Another thing as it is even in a lot of the other F2P games, if you already are paying monthly, and switch to using that money for Item Shop stuff instead, you advance along the normal rate that you are supposed to. It's those that can't afford to that are gimped, not the people who can pay buying their way to power. There are a few examples where that isn't true, but in many of them it's just the leeches who don't want to pay anything complaining that those who pay can advance faster/better. If you already pay, and just switch that money to using the Item Shop, you won't have anything to worry about.

There are a few bad F2P games that don't follow this formula. But the newer and better ones absolutely do not let you buy your way to power or anything at all like it. It seems neither the majority of the EQII player base nor the Devs have any clue about this for some reason. I guess it comes from walking around in your own fantasy land too long :D

It always gives me a good chuckle to see how elitist the MMO community at large suddenly becomes whenever 'Free' is mentionned. No doubt the majority of them have their parents pay for them to play every month or are lucky enough to have great jobs, and in the age of entitlement they obviously don't even think about people who can't afford a monthly subscription.

Free to play, or at least the option to play the game for free, seems to be the future of the MMO industry whether you like it or not. And giving people more options on how to pay for their playtime so anyone can participate in something they enjoy is not a bad thing in the slightest. As has been said many times Everquest 2 (I adore the game by the way and am an on-off subscriber in the past) has a cash shop as well as a mandatory subscription, so anyone from SOE can PR talk however much they want it won't change the truth.

The days of hardcore players who can play nine hours a day getting everything in an MMO and proudly flaunting it in front of the players who can't play for as long are coming to an end. The reason they complain is that they can no longer have all this exclusive stuff. I for one welcome our Free to Play overlords, as a former hardcore raider/pvper in multiple MMOs who was made redundant and really can't afford a monthly subscription anymore.

I seriously wish they would go f2p, cause when I started playing a few months ago, I couldn't find anyone to play with cause everyone was at the highest lvl. Someone even power lvl'd me to the 20's just because I heard I would be able to find people to group with, and still found nobody. The only EQ game I ever liked was the one on PS2.

Smedley also said EQ and EQ2 would never have cash shops. As you can see, SOE has an awesome track record of telling the truth about these things.;)

Well they could easily go free to play without selling gear like that.

They could make the basic game free but only have 1 bank slot and allow one character with limited races and classes. Then change £1 per month for extra character slots, £1 for more bank spaces. And then sell adventure packs which provide access to higher level zones and raids where you could pay a small monthly fee to rent access to specific areas or just buy them for a slightly higher fee. They could sell things like nicer houses, and cosmetic wear items for a small fee.

Anyway they could certainly make the game free to play without letting people just buy sucess and gear by getting people to pay for content.

Not for a moment suggesting they should, just they could :)

It's a cop out by George, and lol at the people jumping on microtransactions. How many microtransaction games sell items with stats on them? Not many. Mounts maybe, experience potions, its mostly cosmetic stuff or experience potions. It should be noted veterans already get free exp potions in eq 2.

Sony don't want to go free because:

A) Station Exchange, it would lower the value of the products on there if they started going free (Some games such as Vanguard could really use it though). B) Right now they already charge a subscription and offer the same stuff you get normally in a free to play IN ADDITION to the microtransactions. They feel that the microtransactions gained from new players would not outweigh the subscription cost lost from old players.

That's the reality folks. Anything that the other games are selling through microtransactions, for the most part Sony is already selling. Using items with stats as an example. I'm trying to find a good analogy for this and the best (albeit controversial) one I can find would be gay marriage. The argument against Gay Marriage is often "if you let them get married, what's next can someone marry a dog?". Now I could care less about gay marriage or making a political statement here. But i find that statement to be very similar to what Sony just stated. You go to a far extreme that noone is seriously considering to validate why you did something. And you realize that there are a section of people who do not want microtransactions will jump at and repeat that same statement again and again, without even thinking of how ridiculous it is.

What circular reasoning! To paraphrase: "EQ II's smallish playerbase of diehard fans likes the game as it is." Well, duuuuh! Hint to Sony: If you want to attract *new* players, you have to *change* something.

If upsetting existing players is the issue, why not simply make separate F2P servers (and disallow character transfers from F2P to P2P)?