EZ Server

Hey guys, just coming through to let you know that I saw on EQ's facebook that they are going free to play. It sounds like they will have quite a bit of limitations for FTP, but I haven't taken the time to read it as I am almost completely uninterested in Live anymore... what I have seen, though, is that accounts come with all expansions up to HoT, and you have to buy VoA still..

Anyways, just figured I'd come here and post it for anyone interested to check out EQ live again. Visit the website if you have any questions, I'm sure they'll have answers. Like I said, I did not read much of it at all as I am uninterested in going back to live since I just recently quit. Haha.

EverQuest is Going Free to Play!

EverQuest

/Tell Norrathians INCOMING BUFFS!

Hello everyone - I hope you all are doing well early on in the New Year! With an exciting Veil of Alaris expansion just released in November, we're thrilled to announce the next big adventure for EverQuest®. After listening to your feedback and suggestions over the past few years, I'm happy to announce that in early March 2012, EverQuest will be going free-to-play.

We're excited to be expanding the EverQuest experience by making the game more accessible to every type of player so that you can choose to play the game in a way that suits you best. Anyone who wishes to start, return or continue to play one of the "Best Games of All-Time" can simply download and play EverQuest on their terms – think of it as Free to Play, Your Way. Recurring subscriptions, non-recurring subscriptions, Silver or Free memberships, item unlockers, and more. The game will now be setup to be flexible so that *you* can decide how much to pay, based on how much fun you're having.

EverQuest players are some of the most loyal, long-standing players of any MMO in existence. With the gaming landscape changing every day, we want to ensure we continue to evolve the game to keep players engaged and bring in even more new players to further expand the community. With no up-front costs or required membership, we might see a new player or two along the way, and more people is always a good thing!

Once we go free-to-play, here are some of the upcoming features and events you can expect:

    On Friday, March 16th, EverQuest becomes a teenager: 13 years old!!! We will be having some extra added events in the game starting that week leading up to that Friday and we're introducing some new items within POK to let you know what's in store.
    With the free-to-play launch, a renovated everquest.com website will be unveiled and after that, we will bring you upgraded EQPlayers pages.
    We have improved the functionality of our Map system! Some improvements include being able to view appropriate level content for your character on the map, allowing you to find zone lines much easier; and also showing you your wisps on the map to help navigate to where you want to go!

Also at the free-to-play launch, all players will receive a Welcome Pack containing items to add to your gameplay experience. You'll be able to summon a unique Mercenary to fight by your side and we're including some Bayle Marks to help pay for the services of your newly summoned Mercenary. A couple of Experience Potions are also included to help you increase your experience gained while adventuring. For all the collectors that like to show off all the great wares to your friends, we're giving you an item to display in your home and add to your collection. And finally, you'll be able to customize the appearance of one of your weapons with a Weapon Ornamentation - also included in the Welcome Pack. So be sure to check the claim window for your free gifts.

We, the EverQuest dev team, are very excited about this new flexible system. Free-To-Play is the best fit for EverQuest and we are looking forward to supporting the game and our dedicated fans for years to come. This is a great year for everyone associated with EverQuest and SOE. We think you'll be pleasantly surprised at what's coming in 2012.

One last note, we will be doing a Community Webcast on Thursday February 2, 2012 covering all of the exciting free-to-play details. Please be sure to send in any questions you might have via the Facebook page or Twitter so we can respond with answers during the Webcast.

See you in game very soon!

Thom Terrazas

EverQuest Producer
AKA "Phathom"

For more information on the transition to free-to-play please visit the FAQ and free-to-play matrix.

Looks like they are going to have a free account system, a 5.00 and a 14.99.

http://www.everquest.com/free/

Best I can see it looks like you basically get your pay account and have have all the 'box' you could want.

The 5$ for the silver membership is a one time fee, unlike the Gold membership being 14.99 per month.

Something else to think about are the classes and races that you'll be able to play. for both ftp and silver these 2 rules apply:

The four free races included with FREE and Silver Memberships are: Human, Erudite, Barbarian and Gnome.
The four free classes included with FREE and Silver Memberships are: Warrior, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue.

for ftp you can only have 2 toons per server, 100PP per lvl and 4 bags on your person.
for silver you can only have 4 toons per server, 500pp per lvl and 6 bags on your person.

you can't use shared bankslot or the bazaar and you are restricted in spell use.

All of a sudden i'm a lot less enthusiastic about trying out Live again after a 5+ year break.

Danjal
"If I need you I'll give you a signal."
"What signal?"
"I'll imitate the scream of a terrified little girl"
— Jim Butcher

Considering all you have to do is create an account I think the limit of toons per server is kind of a non point. Unless I am mistaken and they are making it an ip limit. I am guessing the bazaar is the broker system. It shows limited on both free and silver. I am not sure what those limitations are. The plat would be a huge issue considering the most you would be able to have is 47.5k if you bought the expansion and were max level. If I try it out I will have one gold client and the rest silver so I can just keep all the plat on the gold toon. Shared bank slots are for alts on the same account, with multiple accounts again this is circumvented. The warrior and cleric would be the core of my group anyway. I have a monk that would be on my gold account. You can buy access to classes so any other classes you might want to grab shouldn't be that hard to pay a one time fee for.

If I do try it out I will be doing monk on gold, then for the rest, war, clr, clr, wiz, bard. I will have to buy one class. My main concern would be about if they can tell I am using an extremely stripped down version of mq2.

I'll almost guarantee they catch you using it. One of my friends was using a pretty stripped down version and got banned. Also, no need to run 2 clerics in the group. Would just be a waste of space. I am not sure how long ago you played EQ, but with mercenaries nowadays, 1 cleric would suffice, and if you should need two, you could just hire the mercenary.

Also another point, mercenaries take up spots in group and suck XP like a group member would. When I quit (6 months ago or more.), they had rogue, wizard, warrior, and cleric mercenaries. Not sure what they have added/taken/nerfed since then. Just giving you a little bit of info to maybe redecide what you would put in your group. DPS is a pretty big factor, or it was when I quit during HoT... Mobs had a fair amount of HP and good DPS was required to make an XP group efficient.

All in all, if I ever went back to live, I would just pay for it as I always have, until eventually they strip it down even more, I suppose.

Yeah, I thought about having a cleric a merc but wondered how efficient it would be when compared to an actual character. My thoughts on running 2 clerics would be to set one up to heal if my warrior was below 70% unless the cleric is below 30% mana. The second cleric would be set up to heal if the warrior is below 60%. When I last played mana was a big issue on longer fights. That would be the only mac that I would use and if I had to I suppose I could do without that. Other than that, I can do without the rest of mq2 but for eqbc. EQBC as far as I know is not detectable through the game mechanics, except by looking at someone to see if they are using it. If I can do without the cleric though I would add either another wizard or a rogue. Bard obviously for slow and haste and all that jazz. If I am mistaken on any information by all means say so. It has been a long time since I have played live.

If you go back make a mage.
Mages are OP out the ass.
If they dont take down test server /testcopy and see if you like it there.
Lower population and not much in terms of raid guilds but faster exp gain.
Not like it really matters as you could lvl the mage to a good lvl for any awesome aa spot and grind 400aa in a week the way you play.
There is discussion on MQ2's vip forums about mq2 detection and recent bans.
Might be worth reading up on it there.

Right before I quit I made a mage.. Got him 1-90 and T4 access/geared (highest zone at the time for groups), and about 1k AA's in a week's time. You can do some serious advancing very quickly when you get the feel of live back. On the same account I had 3 90s... all over 1k AA's, and all done with about a week of playtime for each character.. (maybe 6-8 hours per day. Some days more, some days less.) The mana was the whole reason I said lots of DPS.. Mana regen during fights isn't great, so not being in a fight for a very long time is key... You won't have much problems with mana during groups, and on raids you'll have other clerics... Mercenaries are very efficient for grouping if you get the Journeyman T5 mercs... (Which IDK if they come with that now as part of the promotional deal or if you need to do the quest.).

It's going to take you some getting used to, regardless, but EQ live is very easy nowadays.. Some may argue, but really, I quit because it wasn't challenging anymore.

New expansion is beyond challenging. Some say , meh its easy -- I mean a group of T4 HoT raid geared toons can do it -- but group geared toons will have a rough time -- can take up to 2 groups to do a single target in even the lowest tiers because of some of the "raid feel" to group content they did.

Part of the reason I left live is because of the LFG issues. You log in and unless someone is your guild is looking to do something you spend 2 hours looking for a group. And then its like playing the lottery, most of the time there is going to be an idiot loser in your group. I hated looking for groups and most of the time when I got into a group it was a huge waste of time. Then you go on raids and once every 2 weeks you might get a chance to roll/bid on an item. Honestly I spent more of my time farming plat so I could buy stuff off the bazaar.

Going free to play means I can bring my own group. Hell if I want to I can bring my own raid. In a couple of days I am buying a new system that I should be able to box 3 groups if I chose to, and that is in addition to this pc that can handle about 10. The only thing I foresee being a downfall is the amount of time invested vs reward. So in that way I will need to have some strong dps.

Last I knew monks were a solid form of dps on live, plus they were resilient. I enjoy playing a monk so I will probably go with that even if they are a little bit less. A warrior and cleric are certainly going to be needed to get the tanking and healing out of the way. If I can get away with not having a second cleric then I might just go with the mage suggestion for more dps. I need something for slow and I figure a bard would be easier to manage and would give me haste at that. I figure the bard could also help out with mana regen. I am hoping that wizards are still the solid form of dps that they always where.

The whole thing might be foiled by mq2 though. I am not going to waste my time playing if I can't at minimum use eqbc. Even if I can't use a mac to manage my cleric and have to tell my cleric when and who to heal at what time I would be fine. But not being able to do so from my monk, nor not being able to have my guys directed from my monk just wouldn't be fun to me.

Hi guys,

Can someone figure out WHY Sony is giving free accounts ?  Do they miss something ?   Perhaps emu-server getting to popular and now they're feeling the heat in their neck !

I have a friend who's play EQ now for 11 years.  He's once was ranked very high in a top 20.  And yeah, he confirmed me that the challege is no more there.  In the beginning he played, it took people about 2-3 years to level which you can do on EZ in a couple of months.  Now, from time to time he's helps me with some chars on EZ.

On EZ we are used to raid with small box-groups, but on EQlive you need sometimes 50 to 100 people to kill a mob or accomplish a raid.  This is not the way I want to do this and that's why I stick to EZ !  I hope a lot of people will follow this idea.  Perhaps we can make an poll on this question.


Kind regards,

Alrazor.

Hmm.  EQLive is giving free accounts out eh?

How very interesting.

(http://i.imgur.com/ruVZp.gif)

Think I will stick with EZ (when I put Skyrim / Minecraft / Books back down).

oh, btw guys - "Hi"

+1 for the post +99999999999999 for the image lmfao

free account isn't even worth it even if you have a gold / premium account....250 aa's on live isn't crap compared to what you need / have to have in order to even be useful there....if you were a healer class that MIGHT complete your healing advancement aa's but not much more then that maybe a few here and there but meh nothing worth mentioning...

so it's probably just a ploy to get people to actually play on the dead servers again so the game doesn't die out....

but ehhh i'm not wasting my money there ever again...i have no reason to go back....

Anyone on Bertox wanna trade Plat here for Plat there? Think I had 3 mill when I quit back in 2007 lol.

Wizards and Zerks... were the DPS kings up through UF.  I haven't played since HoT was released.  Mages and Rogues push them for the title in some fights, but there is a lot of button mashing involved toward getting top numbers no matter the class.  And realize also that those numbers are based on fully geared top raid guild toons.  A top raid guild Ranger might easily out DPS a group geared Zerk or Wiz.

Xiggie (and Tom Petty) reminded me very much of why I no longer play live....; the waiting is the hardest part.

nope actually rangers in every raid from UF + topped the parses in every raid i was in...actually wizzies and rangers....zerkers weren't far behind the 2 though....rogues got the short end of the stick....monks were in there somewhere just not sure as i didn't raid with many monks....

No desire to do Live ever again...

The limitations on FTP is a carrot to dangle so people start sending SOE their hard earned cash

It depends on gear/play skill.. I played a zerker in Fire and Fury on Firiona Vie and topped the parse every fight in raids. 2nd to me was a wizard, third was another zerker.. and then after that it was just whoever had the better gear.

Rangers on live are swordsman now.. So if you go back, don't expect to be able to just /autofire and not get griped at in the group for crappy DPS.

All in all, I wouldn't recommend going back. This server is 100x better. The servers/raid guilds nowadays recruit people that they already are friends with, or people that have devoted so many hours of time to get to the top of the leaderboards (funny the high end raid guilds won't recruit you unless you are high end, but how can you be high end without the guilds???! FUUUUUUUU).

Just stick with this server. If you feel the need to spend $15 or more per month, just do it here. It'll be better used, undoubtedly.

It's the way lots of games are going, and will probly be the new thing for almost all MMO's. EQ2 has been F2P for awhile now, Aion went F2P in Europe and will soon follow in America. With it comes the whole pay as you play BS. If you want to enjoy it, pay the full subscription, or don't bother.

If I do go back it will be to see how far I can get doing what I always wanted to do on live... box. There is absolutely no way I am going to pay $90 a month to box, hell I would not even pay 45 a month to box. As far as being limited to 250 aa, just pay a one time $5 fee and you can get 1000 aa. I know that wouldn't cover all the aa on live but it will get at minimum your core needed aa's. I don't figure eqlive will hold my interest like it did before but I will be able to get some unfinished business out of the way that was always locked away from me because of the whole lfg thing.

True, LFG does suck... but don't expect to get into any guilds with only 1k AA's.. (I know you said you only wanted to go for unfinished business, but there's always that temptation.).. I mean, your main obviously could get in if you got him some AA's.. but for most guilds with HIGH need classes, you had to have around 1500 AA's to get accepted into the guild. As a not needed class... and monks are usually not very needed.. You're looking at top end gear AND prob 2k+ AA's required to get considered.

To go back for nostalgia, this is a great thing they did... But to go back and for them to expect you to be full-fledged into the game... No way...


To further explain... My mage at level 90 had 1k AA's and I was still missing a lot of the important AA's.. It's not just important to get the AA's, it's important to max them out.. (and some of them have 20+ ranks.. the Defensives for example, are probably over 30 ranks at 3-6-9AA's per 3 rank ups...) this is all rough information as it's been awhile since I've been on... But I know with 1k AA's I did not have all of my major AA's as a mage... and especially not all of them maxed.

Yeah, if I do go back I am sure it would take a while before I really reached a point where I would not really benefit from just my group set up. At that point if I am really into it I might sign up for a second account and have my warrior upgraded, but honestly I doubt it will ever come to that. I suspect there will probably be some froob guilds running around and if not, I am sure creating one would find a large demand.

Yeah, and creating one nowadays is very easy... Alt + G, make up a name, and click create!! Wah-la!

I used to play a shaman, do I have to pay to unlock the class just so I can access my old character?

I am guessing you would prolly have to pay to unlock the toon though I am not sure. If not it would be highly exploitable, (login right now for $15, create a toon not on the free list, deactivate account and wait for it to go free). I don't even think I would play it unless I could have at least one gold account, mostly because of the limitation on plat per level.

If you already had a toon, it is usable. But! If you exceed the character limit, some of them will be locked. Example: if you have 5 toons on your account, the first 3 or the last 3 will be locked since the limit is 2. If your main is one of those locked ones, yer fucked an have to buy extra character slots. You do not have to pay to unlock a race or class that you already had, but you cannot make a new one unless you pay to unlock it.

That is good to know. I wonder what the cost to unlock a class is? Also will this carry over from a trial account? As in if I make an account under the 14 day free trial and create a bard and tool around with it for the 14 days will it be unlocked when it goes f2p?

The only way a trial account can be used is if you upgrade it at some point to a paid account. Anything you use on trial will not work for live until paid for.
As far as prices, I would assume they will be similar to EQ2, a new race is like $2, while a race pack of 4 is like $5. Same deal with classes. You can almost quadruple your yield if you double your money in nearly everything, content, race/class, items, char slots, bank space, inventory space ect. You are also very limited on money and spells/AA's and the only way to fully unlock those is a gold membership. Even buying q silver membership doesn't help much.

... and if it works like EQ2 ftp did... you end up paying more to unlock spells/items/Abilities than if you had gone gold in the first place.

If memory serves... you get a certain amount of keys per/$5.  You purchase the keys to unlock things like mounts ($12?), spells ($5), abilities($5), special armor ($5).  Keys to unlock mounts do not unlock say... spells.  That's a separate item at $5.

I don't think I can log on to my old accounts at all - limitations or not... without paying for the normal Gold Member fee?  Right?  I mean the accounts already exceed all the choke points placed on ftp for AAs, spells, items etc...

not true read the FAQ section of the link Xiggie posted point 8 under Memberships.....basically i could go back to my 90 warr with 4k aa's and about 1.8m plat on the account i just would be able to gain any aa's or plat and be restricted in any class or char i made after Feb 29th BUT if i made a class and race that isn't one of the "unlocked" ones i could still play it if it was made before Feb29th blah blah blah....just read the FAQ section it explains alot  =P

Yea, I read where they are having grandfather clauses hehe... If you already have it, you keep it, sort of thing, and don't pay for it.

If you already have a toon over the AA cap, you keep them all, but you cannot earn any more.  If you are already over the money cap, you can keep it and spend it, but you cannot gain or deposit any more.
If you have say 2 mil plat, you can move it out of the bank and can spend it, but if you try to sell an item to a vendor, or loot a mob with money on it, you will not get credit for it.
In EQ2, all AA's are refunded and you are limited by how many and which ones you can spend, all items are also un-attuned and you have to agree to either re-attune everything up front, or if you say no, you cannot use a lot of it.
You don't unlock things by just paying money, you have to purchase Station Cash, which you use to buy lower things, and buying "keys" unlocks some of the higher stuff.

There's an undetectable version of ShowEQ out there that runs on windows btw (for those of you worried with MQ2 detection). I'm not exactly clear on how it's called, because I've only caught glimpse of it once during my Guide career, but I know it had mob spawns, maps and targetting. No loot showing or such like the ShowEQ had.

I think it was developped by a single guy from Serbia or Croatia and he was giving usable keys for the program out on a i-know-you basis.

ok was talking to one of the tech guys for everquest and he said that it is posible that we can use macroquest as long as we didnt use the auto functions or the cheat functions, that the map function should be fine

I could even do without the map. Stick and eqbc are the two main things that I would want to use. Anyway to get feedback on that?

My question to SOE.


SOE's response

Thank you for the input. Seems their policies are going to remain the same. I see a lot of bannings in their future or a shift in policy, be it on the up and up or quietly.

Provided I can find a copy of mq2 that will work with eqlive I will probably try it on some froob accounts. Of course I am going to strip it down as far as I can get it so that only stick and eqbc works. Prolly also check out membership at macroquest.

So I went to his link and read this:

LOL, I am not sure that provision is legally enforceable, but it clearly states (as far as Sony is concerned) you chose one or the other.  I am American enough to toss the finger up to any company that wants to tell my I can't do business with other vendors.  :D

Skeezy Ratty Troll

I used to deal with them for business and found that they have many unenforceable policies.  They ignored any advice to the contrary knowing that the bulk of their player base did not have the financial wherewithal to challenge those policies.  A few (Rogen and others...) challenged them and won, but there were tons of others who lost their accounts (and worse) who did not.

What I saw in the reply was just the canned answer.  That's a low level AGM  answering me, and he had no other option available.  I doubt we will ever see MQ2 allowed as they will just shut down before violating their own rules, but it can't hurt to push that sort of issue to the top of the Tuesday morning staff conference agenda.   Who knows, currently executive leadership might have less qualms about MQ2 than Smedley.  You just have to get it in front of them first.

Bumping for those wondering about SOE's MQ policy.