Zsazsa

CCP Soundwave knew Alexander "The Mittani" Gianturco was going to try and get Eve's player base at large to commit suicide at CCP's Fan Faire and yet they did nothing. Goonswarm has been in bed with CCP for years (certain GMs and devs are Goons).

It's not surprising that pathetic lowlife Gianturco would be using Goons out-of-game to threaten and harass a Massively Staffer and Massively itself after what else he's done. It *is* surprising, however, that Massively chose to recant, when its article did nothing wrong.

I think the problem that Gianturco really has is that he cannot threaten and squelch Massively readers who don't play Eve but see him for the sleazebag he really is. He's stuck being known across the internet as a cyber-bully-- and now so is the whole of Goon, as he is using them to continually bully and threaten even more people.

And waiting for CCP to do anything of note about this to either Gianturco or Goonswarm is futile. They're all in bed together so Goon has carte blanche. CCP is a sleazy company to begin with and this is just the latest in the dirt pile for them.

Speak with your wallets and your time: Don't play this game.

Every time I see something like this, I realize not only Mittani's total disregard for human life but CCP's as well (all they specify that is wrong is that you can't use their forums to try and get the masses to push someone into real-life suicide, not that you just shouldn't do it at all).

And once again I am glad I shut all my Eve accounts down a year ago and never looked back.

Thanks for reminding me what an awful company you really are, CCP! :) *bounds back off to much more pleasant MMO gaming*

I would also like to add a post script for Karen Bryan:

Dear Karen,

Much as you are entitled to your opinion of "exactly what it would take for *you* to accept a merger into the Extended service for live," please remember that Extended is not some idea on a drawing board table. It is (as you know in reality from being on it) a server that has been in operation for over a year now, and there are in fact people on it that like some of the things in the cash shop that you do not. They do not deserve any less consideration than you, or than anyone else that agrees with you.

Personally, I do not buy anything but cosmetic items from the cash shop on both live and Extended, but I know some on the Extended forums that buy rares for example (even for L90 crafting) because they do not want to spend weeks harvesting for them, etc. This just means more money to develop our favorite game with! No one is God of All Gamers that should mandate how everyone else around should play. ;) None of it really affects your game play to any degree if you are honest. And even the injection of some store-bought rares into the greed and inflation that make up seven years of life on the live brokers across all live servers could hardly make a dent in any of their world economies, let's be real. ;)

SOE and the Extended players are not the only ones here who are going to have to accept certain things.

Extended is a mad crazy populated server because it WORKS. Why mess with success, really? You already know the server, broker and teams/guilds are hardly falling apart over things exactly the way they are now. Remember what you said: They're not like us -- they *are* us.

And I firmly believe that if SOE advertises (preferably flipping the Extended switch before Nights of the Dead and Frostfell to maximize impact) then there will be more than enough players to fill the existing servers. Even after a tiny banner ad campaign last February for Extended/DoV, Freeport server boomed til there were literally 8-10 instances up of the popular cities and zones on peak US times during Erollisi. Subsequently Extended became a 3-week burning ball of flame, crashing multiple times daily, with zone loading times of 30 minutes to 4 hours even to get from one offbeat locale like, say, Forest Ruins with hardly anyone in it, to another off-the-beaten-path place like Willow Wood. It was nuts. Luckily or unluckily, Rift's early start launched Feb. 24th and took with it lots of Freeport players (we went down instantly to 2-4 instances).

We've been creeping steadily back up to 6 instances at times since this past summer and I'd much rather the crashing and zoning problems don't happen again come TOR's launch this December 20th.

CoH is a madhouse already-- and it has what, 11-15 servers? LoTRO and DDO have many servers and they're still cranking along quite nicely even a year/2 years after their respective F2P conversions. Heck, even total crap Korean grind-fest F2Ps are still populated years after their launches. And EQ2 is a much better game than any of those, and its F2P version gives a lot more to players than any of those, too.

@Seffrid

J. Smedley himself has said in Massively interviews that not only is Planetside 2 launching as F2P, but that TOR will be the last MMO to launch with a sub. This, by extension, says that Everquest Next is also launching as F2P. And those are the ONLY TWO MMO franchises SOE is going forward with. DCUO is going F2P this month as well.

EQ2x is obviously the most successful way to do business and makes much more money than live. SOE would not be doing all this otherwise.

And I've heard that "They never put up another F2P server so obviously it's a fail" nonsense used as a defense for keeping live going before. However, new servers (and server contracts) are VERY expensive to launch and maintain. No business on earth would do that when they already have too many servers running already-- especially when you can just flip the switch on all the already-running ones and make them F2P instead and get the same result!

And as for you speaking for all of live-- you need to educate yourself better and actually read the live forums. There is a multiple-week-long thread of 22 pages and well over 300 posts right on the front page of general you should read: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=507030

Most people on live are in fact ready for a merger into EQ2x as one unified service, and for the most part the entire thread is quite civil and level headed to boot, with rational discussion coming from all corners.

I am a 7-year vet who started on Lavastorm (shut down in early 2006), jumped ship to Najena, then was force-merged into Unrest almost a year back. Unrest typically had 3-5 second lag for almost a year after that. Even harvesting simple nodes had a 2-3 second delay for each node (and it was hard to find more than 5 or 6 peeps in any zone there, and many zones were completely empty). Open PvP server Nagafen, my other main server, had been deteriorating steadily in population for years, AAs/level locking having killed off all the new blood long ago. By last Frostfell, I was ready to quit EQ2.

I didn't like the idea of starting over on Freeport and losing all my vet rewards, but trying it and being surrounded by tons of players in every level range brought the game back to life for me like it hadn't been in years. And Freeport ran so well! So I copied three of my mains over so I'd at least be able to continue on in a way (with vet rewards) and I haven't looked back since.

Unlike Karen, I actually resent not Extended or SOE but the vocal minority on live who forced SOE to make Extended a separate service. If it had been merged with live from the start (as all other AAA MMORPGs gone/going F2P have done/are doing), I'd still have my 7 years' worth of vet rewards for every character, I wouldn't have to buy races as a gold, and I'd have tons of people to team with-- and all without having to leave live or having had to pay a small fortune to "copy" a few mains anywhere to boot! (Not to mention that I wouldn't have had to level yet another guild all over again from scratch.) There's no way SOE would have done anything but make Extended's "gold" sub ($15 a month) give out exactly the same benefits that live's $15 a month sub gives if they had merged the services right up front-- they'd be one and the same.

So thanks for all the loathing of Extended, Karen, lol. This is one case where SOE should have ignored the whiners and done what was best for the game, no offense-- all the empty servers (the two Livegamer ones and Nagafen especially, not to mention Unrest, and others like Permafrost and Oasis that I also see many live forum complaints about concerning lack of population) would be full instead, and so would SOE's coffers.

Sure, they finally upgraded Unrest (somewhat anyway) a few weeks ago...but it's way too little, way too late for me. And it still doesn't run as flawlessly as Freeport does to be honest. I know because I have had two All- Access Station Accounts for seven years and I still do check in there every once in a while, much to my dismay (it's also deader than ever population-wise).

And it's obvious that Extended is making SOE a ton of money-- much moreso than the "live" servers are-- or else SOE would not be launching Planetside 2 as a F2P (reported right here on Massively). Not to mention that as John Smedley also pronounced TOR to be the last MMORPG to launch with a subscription-only model, this obviously means that Everquest Next will launch as Free-to-Play as well!

So for a recap: SOE is launching both impending sequels to the only two franchises that it is going forward with (Planetside and Everquest) as Free-to-Play.

Well, Karen, you can always copy your mains over to Extended. Just thank all of live's anti-Extended whiners as you pay the fee of $24.50 a pop, and be grateful you didn't do it when Extended first launched, because it was $30 a pop then. ;)

I'm an Aion fan who would love those pets and the AoB expansion! The open PvP just keeps pulling me back in, along with the cool classes. (Spiritmasters FTW!)

My favorite part of AoC is playing on an open PvP server!

Massively RNG, don't let me down! ;)

EQ2 is one of my favorite all-time MMORPGs and I'm playing it now! Frostfell FTW!

Please consider me as a winner for this terrific prize. What a fine Christmas gift that would be.

I love your way with words, Sera, and you shall be missed, Miss!

I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors, and may this not signal the end of your writing career. Turbine might be in the market for another of those sooner or later too.... ;)

I would love to go crazy gearing up and playing a Shadowknight on extended, and then be able to sell all my loot unabated on the broker!