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

Turbine are simply money wolves...FREE to PLAY (what a laugh).

PAY extra for having .... a bag with more than 2 Gold (wtf !!!)

PAY extra for having.... mail....

PAY extra for having ... a bag with more than 5 Gold (wtf !!)

PAY extra for having ... more space bags...

PAY extra for having ... access to content...

PAY extra to even see quest givers in that content ....

PAY extra to have more than .... ONE (sic) character on your complete account.


If Turbine gets away with this .. the only one being screwed is YOU the player.

What I'd love to see SOE try with EQ2 is a kind of hybrid model with a cash shop based on content and zones rather than items. A subscription would unlock everything as it currently does, while other players could play for free and purchase access to some zones, instances, raids and maybe some quests via a micro-transaction system. It seems SOE are under the impression that a free-to-play game's cash shop has to offer items with stats to be viable and that they'd have to screw over their existing subscribers to make free-to-play an option. They should seriously consider a hybrid sub model.

Umm...yah. You people bashing Turbine should go play DDO first before you get on your "holier than thou" horse!

And ummm shame on those defending SOE's promise to not go to F2P! Remember Smedley's promise to EQ2 and EQ players back in early 2005 to never have microtransactions on their servers? Ummm yah right. Credibility in anything SOE says has gone LONG ago!

Quoted onlinegamingradio.com forums from a post by Leonai_art

Smed Said Don’t Worry Be Happy
December 9th, 2008
It’s interesting to see this posting from John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment from Dec 22, 2007:

I’ve been a regular lurker on this site for a while but I wanted to step in here and dispel something that’s just plain not true - I don’t have my name highlighted here, but anyone that doubts it’s me can email me at jsmedley@soe.sony.com and I’ll happily reply.

We aren’t going to be allowing RMT in any way, shape or form on the non-exchange enabled EQ II servers. Period. End of statement.

So, yah...Station Cash is not RMT?! Excuse me!?

Put in the http:// before this onlinegamingradio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2830

Something people should understand about the Turbine model, especially as it pertains to LotRO, is that the things you will be buying in the shop are things that are not as good as what you can get in the game or things you would have had to purchase with an expansion. Imagine if WoW went F2P. You don't think they would make access to Death Knights, Blood Elves, Draenei, Outlands, Northrend and whatever else I can't think of Premium Content?

Subscribers and Lifers have gotten so much out of LotRO. The switch to F2P is only going to get those who continue to sub more. Subscribers are getting free Turbine Points monthly. Any F2P advantage a free player can buy a subscriber will have access to without paying extra. Additionally, Free players will have to buy things that people with subs will have access to, such as higher virtue caps which are critical to endgame. Yes, there will be things like XP boosts, but if you're a long-time player and want to raise that RK you've had at 17 forever, you'll have just as much opportunity as someone spending cash at the shop.

The only real issue that most players have with the whole switch is, as Sera brought up in a previous article that you naysayers clearly haven't read, is the influx of hordes of griefers and spambots. Yeah, for the first month or three there will probably be that. I doubt it will last as any serious problem. Griefers will be shunned, get bored and move on. Spambots are the only real problem I see but with dwindling populations on some servers I think people will just have to see that as a fly in the ointment.

I'm fine with it staying subscription based as long as they take that money and use it to OVER HAUL THE GOD DAMNED ENGINE.

So sick of seeing Modern Gaming systems that run other modern games very well crawl to a freaking halt when running this bloated slow ass piece of crap engine.

You have probably one of the best PVE games on the market, but your engine is absoloutly craptacular. A quadcore system with 12gb of ram and dual 5870 cards should NOT be choking on 25-35 FPS and be forced to turn off all kinds of crap to get playable frame rates.

update your damn engine before worrying about F2P or not.. if you listen to your players you will hear them complain about the very poor performance.

so tired of EQ2 being the worst performing game on my system for the last 5years, no matter what hardware i buy, so tired of seeing it consume 2.5 GB of ram and STILL run like crap.

Revamp. Your. Engine.

" you don't want players buying their way to power, etc"

That's a bit of a straw man fallacy there Dave. It's like saying "We don't believe our game should kill babies and kittens".

This kind of thing only further cements my opinion that EQ2 is a game I'll never have any interest in.

Kinda funny but people overlook the whole Station Access thing. It's really the only thing that keeps 50% of SOEs games alive as far as the servers running anyways.

If they moved to a F2P model it would kill off the last remaining dead games on there platter and show that SOE really doesn't have much in terms of quality games on its plate.

Planetside has less then 2k active players and Vanguard well theres no telling but it sure can not be much more with them merging all the servers down to just one single server. They have already axed MXO.. You have SWG thats limping around with several thousand players.. There's really not much there to be honest.

The only really games SOE has on there plats thats actively doing anything is FreeRealms and EQ2 with a little active development on EQ.

You can grab Station Access for $30 / month and SOE knows that, its really the only sole source of there major income.

I don't see anything wrong in companys trying alternative buisness models .Free to Play does'nt really exsist and the term f2p encompasses many different models . I personally prefer the fair hybrid model we see in DDO . It works well and has led me to subscribe to that game which would never have happened under pay to play . Station Access isn't that popular and if SOE made all their mmos hyrbid/f2p they would easily boost their profits . The outdated overpriced subscription model isn't viable for most mmos . Sticking to it when its not working shows just how dogmatic some of the people that run these companys are .

IMO this is a move to pick up players leaving Lotro due to F2P. I know several in my kinship/friends list who have left and others who are leaving soon. Sure F2P will bring in tons of new people to lotro but it also has driven off many and someone has to try and pick up those customers looking for a new MMO.

I love how proably half the ppl talking crap havnt even played eq 2.

So let me inform you. The eq 2 store is amost the same as wow(only they offer more content not just in game pets and one mount) but non of these items have really any effect on your gamplay except the mounts with stats but you can get mounts withstats normally so why would you buy one without stats and there not even better then the mounts in game. Also I think this has to do with how loyal a fan based they have. Its not liek Lotr where its been out a few years. Eq 2 has been out a while now and most people came over from eq which was one of the games that started the whole mmo trend. So for the 95% that are bashing him and are liek lol if wow was free to paly so would they Well no sh*t sherlock it is a company and they need to make money but wow isnt nor proably ever be f2p and eq 2 will stay f2p.

look his post was to the eq2 community and addressed concerns the eq2 community ,as i am sure you would find in the forums, had about the direction of the game.Which had nothing to do with any other games out there. the writer at massively put these two things in that context.