Since people are whining about "quote wars"....I've eliminated the quotes.
First of all Mr. Daffy, I'm not hiding behind a new screenname. I deleted my old account because I got sick of the bullshit on this site. I was gone for months with no intention of returning. But then one day I just thought I'd come back and have a peek at what was going on and lo and behold....more crap talk about EQ2. I understand how the WoW players must feel, so I don't bash their game any more. Yup...I used to. But what difference does it really make to ME...what someone else enjoys and wants to play, that is, unless I just get off on insulting people for a preference. If I was "hiding," I certainly wouldn't be saying what my prior screenname was, now would I? That isn't very good "hiding." People who make intentional sock accounts don't come out and tell you who they are.
Secondly....I'm glad to see you admit that you're not Nostradamus. Neither am I. But I am absolutely damn sick of all the pitiful negativity and doomsayers on this site, and certain people are major contributors to that nasty flavor here on MMORPG.com Those people find it necessary to say SOMETHING negative every single time anything changes in MMOland. And yes...that is personal to me because it's offensive to have to constantly wade through that crap to find actual facts about a hobby you happen to actually care about and enjoy.
Like I said before.....if you would read all the fine print on the pay matrix for EQ2X, you would easily see why I doubt that many veterans (if any) will be jumping servers. But instead of reading that and thinking logically about the time invested in obtaining all the things they will lose, some people would rather continue to run another SoE smear campaign just because they're butt hurt by something SoE did to "them" in the past. Not a shred of fact....just negative assumptions based on conjecture and speculation with the attached cloud of doom used as punctuation to try to persuade others to agree that any changes MUST be baaaaaad. Even more so since it's SoE that's making them...o m g....heaven forbid. After all...there's no chance it could possibly turn out to be a good thing.
Since people are whining about "quote wars"....I've eliminated the quotes.
[1] First of all Mr. Daffy, I'm not hiding behind a new screenname. I deleted my old account because I got sick of the bullshit on this site. I was gone for months with no intention of returning. But then one day I just thought I'd come back and have a peek at what was going on and lo and behold....more crap talk about EQ2. I understand how the WoW players must feel, so I don't bash their game any more. Yup...I used to. But what difference does it really make to ME...what someone else enjoys and wants to play, that is, unless I just get off on insulting people for a preference. If I was "hiding," I certainly wouldn't be saying what my prior screenname was, now would I? That isn't very good "hiding." People who make intentional sock accounts don't come out and tell you who they are.
[2] Secondly....I'm glad to see you admit that you're not Nostradamus. Neither am I. But I am absolutely damn sick of all the pitiful negativity and doomsayers on this site, and certain people are major contributors to that nasty flavor here on MMORPG.com Those people find it necessary to say SOMETHING negative every single time anything changes in MMOland. And yes...that is personal to me because it's offensive to have to constantly wade through that crap to find actual facts about a hobby you happen to actually care about and enjoy.
[3] Like I said before.....if you would read all the fine print on the pay matrix for EQ2X, you would easily see why I doubt that many veterans (if any) will be jumping servers. But instead of reading that and thinking logically about the time invested in obtaining all the things they will lose, some people would rather continue to run another SoE smear campaign just because they're butt hurt by something SoE did to "them" in the past. Not a shred of fact....just negative assumptions based on conjecture and speculation with the attached cloud of doom used as punctuation to try to persuade others to agree that any changes MUST be baaaaaad. Even more so since it's SoE that's making them...o m g....heaven forbid. After all...there's no chance it could possibly turn out to be a good thing.
[1]
Perhaps hiding was a bad choice of words on my part, sorry. As I said, I had no idea who you were, why you have a new name or anything beyond you just being a new poster here.
[2]
I find it very ... odd ... that you have complaints about the negativity level of others on this site. I'll just leave it at that.
[3]
Here is where I have a big disagreement with you. The entire premise of your complaint is that no one is reading anything, they are not logical, butt hurt from past actions or various other personal flaws that you have diagnosed them with. You seem to ignore the information being presented in favor of critiquing the people who are posting that information.
Has it ever occured to you that maybe people have read the fine print. That people have made these types of migrations before as has pointed out already. You want to paint everyone who doesn't agree with you as some aimless know nothings who want to be mean just for the sake of being mean, but maybe there is more to it than you choose to see.
I've seen the fine print and I have personally seen people give everything up on their characters just so they can move to a server that actually has players on it. Try asking warhammer online players how many times they have rolled on a new server, or swg players who started fresh on bria when it was the only high population server or how much they lost when the transfer service killed most of their belongings right now. People were doing it in EQ2 before the transfer service. I see no reason to believe they will not do it again if facing the same situations.
See the difference in viewpoints? You say that those who don't view this the way you do have no information to point to, but there is. You making this discussion personal and attacking those who don't agree with you doesn't make your opinion valid.
To answer your last question, is this possibly a good thing? For new servers I'm guessing it will be. However I can not find a way to view this as a good thing for old servers. They are effectively being denied access to new players. The barrier to join an old server was raised and there is no way to turn that into a positive. Don't believe me? Go read some forums and see what other players are saying and tell me if you think it is a smear campaign.
This change is nothing more than an end around move to put a full blown cash shop into the subscription game. Call it doomsaying if you want to, but the same thing was said during station exchange, legends of norath, station cash, etc etc.
I see it as a revised attempt in the same vein as the NGE. This time it is designed to play it safe though. They want to access a new playerbase. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater this time - they will run both and see which does better. At that time though, I expect there to be subtle (and some not so much) changes in the favor of the winning version. The other will receive less and less attention. Until finally, it goes to life support.
This is the SOE way as demonstrated by several of their earliest endeavors. And EQ2 was the perfect pick to try out their new F2P battleplan. By heading in this direction, they assume that they will be pioneers in the F2P market and strike gold. There is a chance that it is possible to do so. It depends on their level of support, the soundness of their planning and code and the complete lack of eratic decision making on the system itself. The ball is in SOE's hands.
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All that being said, my money is on it launching, them getting a good wiff of a cash flow and then going overboard creating an inbalance for those who play. The original EQ sees less support and small bits of the new concepts filter into the old servers. At some point, the old servers are brought on board out of the reasoning that they cannot (and see the historical context for this statement elsewhere) support 2 code bases on their programming staff.
At best they may leave like 2 servers then in old school mode for a fee and with the expectation of no additional upgrades or technical support.
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The enclosed text above is my opinion based upon previosu acts by SOE. You will note that in the 2nd paragraph of this post - I do give the bright side of the move and that their is a chance that SOE won't screw its existing players. That though is up to SOE and I will gladly return to this post if they actually change established patterns of behavior and have learned from their mistakes.
This change is nothing more than an end around move to put a full blown cash shop into the subscription game. Call it doomsaying if you want to, but the same thing was said during station exchange, legends of norath, station cash, etc etc.
Well I guess time will tell then. In my opinion, which, regardless of what you believe, is just as "valid" as yours, particularly since I've been actually playing the game for five years.....Station Exchange, LoN, and SC....while vehemently bitched about when each of them began.....have not been a bad thing. As a matter of fact, myself and a lot of others happen to enjoy LoN and the SC options we have on the paid servers. Station Exchange, just as SoE said, affected no one other than the people that wanted an optional pay to win system. Station Exchange has been around for years and it STILL affects no one on the paid servers, just as SoE said it wouldn't.
From my viewpoint....from IN the game....SoE continues to provide a larger variety of OPTIONS than any other game on the market. Whether it's race options, class options, quest options, crafting options, collection options, housing options, or subscription options. One thing that EQ2 players are not short on, in comparison to other games, is OPTIONS. For me....I have found that to end up being a GOOD THING every single time. Yes, even after all the whining people have done each and every single time there has been a change.
As far as the rest of your response....you and I just really don't have much to talk about, but that's certainly not from us not trying to talk about things anyway, and for that consideration....I thank you. But it really boils down to the fact that you think what you think and I think what I think, and never the twain shall meet. We don't even interpret the very same words we READ the same way. So....there's really not any point in me continuing to butt heads with you. You will continue to project gloom and doom, and I will continue to think otherwise UNLESS....I see ACTUAL doom and gloom come to pass. Honestly....for it to be "doom and gloom" for the game, in my opinion, it would require a complete shutting down of the entire game. I don't foresee that happening any time soon.
I apologize to you for being very zealous and maybe somewhat hyper-sensitive in our conversations about all this. However, I think that's pretty much a trademark of a gamer that has found a game they really truly enjoy and constantly having to contend with the game being maligned from every single angle by other people. It just begins to grate on the nerves after a while. I suspect people that enjoy and play WoW can probably relate to my feelings about that, as they deal with it constantly.
Oh and on the negativity thing....I tend to respond to negativity with a certain amount of vitriol. I think that maybe makes me appear to BE negative a lot of the time, however....I'm never the one STARTING the rolling thunder of negative and mean-spirited banter, but I AM usually not one to just blow it off and let someone continue without getting my two words (or 500) in on the topic. And for that....I don't apologize. My interpretations, thoughts, and ideas about things are just as valid as the next persons. And that...applies to all of us on these boards...you, me, and everyone else.
So....I'm just going to kick back now and ride out this storm of SoE hate...won't be the first time I've heard it all....and go back to playing the game I've spent two days arguing about HERE. The game is a LOT more fun than reading what every Tom, Dick, and Harry THINKS about it, when half (or more) of them don't even play it.
Some things I wanted to touch on. First, you say the LON, Station Cash/exchange have not been bad things. That might be true from your personal experiences . They might be enjoyable aspects of the game for your playtime and thats fine.
However, seeing the overall condition the game is in, the companies revenue situation forcing layoffs again, merging servers across the board and highly questionable reputation I think is has caused harm. All of those changes have caused people to leave. They have caused players to distrust the company and leave more and more promises being broken by the company. Content releases are getting smaller, more unfinished and farther apart when it was said that these new revenues from cash shops would help increase development. In the end everything has declined since their inception. While you personally might enjoy it, the overall effect has not been positive.
One thing about station exchange. It doesn't effect the other servers not due to an soe promise, but because players protested so much soe had to change it to new servers only. Yes it was originally announced to go live onto all the existing servers. Soe only changed that in response to player outcry. This has significance, because it marks the last time soe ever went to players first while developing these systems to look for their input.
As for your enjoyment of the game, cool, but hat doesn't change the realities of the situations. Enjoying a game doesn't have any effect on the current servers being stripped of their ability to attract new players with free trials or needing mergers. Loving a game doesn't negate the choice a company has made to only allow players to only to move away from the servers and not migrate to those servers.
You seem to be "arguing" from the emotional standpoint of your enjoyment as if that can somehow alter what is being done or change the facts of the situation. Bringing up how many quests and options the game has doesn't alter what is being removed from the live servers. This isn't a discussion of how fun the game is.
I used to play it on my HP laptop and it ain't all that great almost 4 yrs old now. You must have one shitty computer from the early 90's...
I played EQ2 in open beta, bought the game and played in a guild of about 10 for well over a year and had a lot of great fun but just got bored of it after a while, it always seemed to grindy for me, but then our guild more or less broke up and I decided to go to WOW with a bunch of my friends instead ofp laying by myself on eq2.
I ended up staying a year over there too and got stuck grinding by myself there too after most of my friends had already maxed leveled out and quit. I've been back now and then resubbed here and there to check out new expansions and such but I always end up grinding alone and don't know anyone who plays it so I get bored with it and quit again. same thing happened with my 500 man guild in swg and the 100man guild in wow. I play these games to play with family and friends and if no one i know plays them I don't stay for the most part.
Now i'm unsubbed fm champions, trek and as of today only have a single wow acct where my sister/bro in law and son and few others play in a small guild. I might try out eq2 again on a f2p server but can't say i'll stay or not...
What we have is a new game. EQ2-Extended while its the same client it has a huge cash shop. Meanwhile any toons created on the Extended servers will not be allowed to change to current servers.
So saying that, the current servers will not get any new players, what do you think is going to happen. Yea the current servers are going to slowly die off and have to be merged.
This is another company who looking at one thing, cash. At the expense of its vet players.
What we have is a new game. EQ2-Extended while its the same client it has a huge cash shop. Meanwhile any toons created on the Extended servers will not be allowed to change to current servers.
So saying that, the current servers will not get any new players, what do you think is going to happen. Yea the current servers are going to slowly die off and have to be merged.
This is another company who looking at one thing, cash. At the expense of its vet players.
I'm still trying to figure out what makes people think that some players won't sign up on the f2p servers, decide they really LIKE the game, and want to start over on the paid servers, so as to not have a stats-based pay to win marketplace? If it were ME....and I started playing a free to play game that I could see I really ENJOYED....and let's say I got to level 20 or so and decided....you know, I really like this game...I think I'd like to play on more equal footing where people can't buy their way to the top....I would start over on the paid servers.
NO...you can't TRANSFER your character from the free to play server, BUT...you CAN reroll on the paid servers and get the REAL EQ2 experience. So....why is it people are just so sure that won't be a choice that some new players make? Particularly in the case of seasoned MMO players that might decide to TRY EQ2X, end up liking it, but NOT liking the marketplace options, the racial limitations, class limitations, gold earning limitations, etc.....THOSE people are likely going to want to come on over to a paid server and start a new character. As long as it takes to level to max level in EQ2, do you honestly THINK you won't know LONG before then if you like the game?
I think this will still bring new players to the game. But of course....my opinion isn't popular around here....so I'm sure I'll be dogged for it, yet again. ROFL....what the fuck EVER.
Its just a shame that the "free" classes are all, in my view anyway, the boring uninteresting ones. I love playing a ranger, and the warden or Fury were favourites too, yet they are all "pay".
What we have is a new game. EQ2-Extended while its the same client it has a huge cash shop. Meanwhile any toons created on the Extended servers will not be allowed to change to current servers.
So saying that, the current servers will not get any new players, what do you think is going to happen. Yea the current servers are going to slowly die off and have to be merged.
This is another company who looking at one thing, cash. At the expense of its vet players.
I'm still trying to figure out what makes people think that some players won't sign up on the f2p servers, decide they really LIKE the game, and want to start over on the paid servers, so as to not have a stats-based pay to win marketplace? If it were ME....and I started playing a free to play game that I could see I really ENJOYED....and let's say I got to level 20 or so and decided....you know, I really like this game...I think I'd like to play on more equal footing where people can't buy their way to the top....I would start over on the paid servers.
Because SOE has already merged standard servers into the exchange servers and left players stranded. Dealing with SOE is a fool me once shame on you, but fool me twice shame on me situation.
What we have is a new game. EQ2-Extended while its the same client it has a huge cash shop. Meanwhile any toons created on the Extended servers will not be allowed to change to current servers.
So saying that, the current servers will not get any new players, what do you think is going to happen. Yea the current servers are going to slowly die off and have to be merged.
This is another company who looking at one thing, cash. At the expense of its vet players.
I'm still trying to figure out what makes people think that some players won't sign up on the f2p servers, decide they really LIKE the game, and want to start over on the paid servers, so as to not have a stats-based pay to win marketplace? If it were ME....and I started playing a free to play game that I could see I really ENJOYED....and let's say I got to level 20 or so and decided....you know, I really like this game...I think I'd like to play on more equal footing where people can't buy their way to the top....I would start over on the paid servers.
NO...you can't TRANSFER your character from the free to play server, BUT...you CAN reroll on the paid servers and get the REAL EQ2 experience. So....why is it people are just so sure that won't be a choice that some new players make? Particularly in the case of seasoned MMO players that might decide to TRY EQ2X, end up liking it, but NOT liking the marketplace options, the racial limitations, class limitations, gold earning limitations, etc.....THOSE people are likely going to want to come on over to a paid server and start a new character. As long as it takes to level to max level in EQ2, do you honestly THINK you won't know LONG before then if you like the game?
I think this will still bring new players to the game. But of course....my opinion isn't popular around here....so I'm sure I'll be dogged for it, yet again. ROFL....what the fuck EVER.
I still think it's a poor way to implement free to play. I've played EQ2 since launch and for most of the past 4 years I've had 2 subbed accounts, so I do like EQ2 and think it's a great game. I just think the "powers that be" at SOE make a LOT of bad calls and this is just another one of them.
Honestly I don't think that many will re-roll if they like the game, unless they really like it and have enough free time to dismiss their previous time investment and start again on a paid server.
This option just further segregates the EQ2 community and isolates the new players from the existing.
Honestly I agree with your mind set, I would be how I would react should a try a free to play game and enjoy it... but I feel I'm an exception, not the norm. I just don't see the justification of keeping the free to play section from the regular servers... the RMT/microtransaction I want kept well away from the regular server, I still resent the "marketplace".
Lets look at some of the reasons why players might not want to move from the free servers to the subscription servers.
Upfront cost: They would need to buy the game and pay a subscription fee. People can try the game for free right now and then buy the game if they want to continue, but that doesn't seem to be working.
Commitment: They can only access their characters when they pay the sub fee on the legacy servers. On the free servers they can log in anytime and play/chat. Even if it is just to check some things out, their characters are always available
Loss: they will lose access to everything they have done, including money spent in the cash shop.
Lower pops: They will be switching to servers that have no way to attract new players and most likely will have lower populations. They are already having population problems now, which isn't a very good incentive or reputation to attract players.
The new EQ2 "vision": The legacy servers no longer fit the future designs for where soe thinks eq2 is going. Everything is going to be designed with the cash shop and subsequently the free servers in mind. It is clear that soe is throwing all their support behind this idea. Everything they are doing is pushing players in that direction, both new and old.
Veteran players: most veteran players who wanted to try the game already have. They know about free trials and didn't find the game worthy of buying before. Again if the only reason for returning is free play, odds are they won't buy the game just to start fresh on another server. They could do that right now.
Exposure: there is going to be little to no exposure of the old servers. Soe certainly isn't going to promote them and I doubt many players are going to search them out to see if they are even worthy of starting over on.
If the current servers are not attacting quantities of new players right now with the free trial I don't see many reasons why raising the cost of moving there and decreasing the value of those servers will result in more players opting to do that.
I'm curious what incentives new players might find to give up everything and start over on the legacy servers. There doesn't seem to be many reasons to do so.
I have to admit my subscription just ran out for EQ2 and I'm hesitant to resubscribe knowing EQ2X arrives mid-August. I could just start a new character for free with all entitlements up through SF. I've been playing off and on since beta so it's no small thing to ditch my characters, but on the other hand I never have to pay SOE again if I start over. I'm just a casual player anyway so I don't care about what's offered on the cash shop and don't play to compete with others. Makes me think people are right on about the damage this will cause to the EQ2 servers. I imagine most casual players like me would prefer not to pay since having the latest gear, leveling the fastest, or raiding/grouping with important cash shop items just isn't my playstyle, eliminating the need for cash shop purchases or a subscription.
Lets look at some of the reasons why players might not want to move from the free servers to the subscription servers.
Upfront cost: They would need to buy the game and pay a subscription fee. People can try the game for free right now and then buy the game if they want to continue, but that doesn't seem to be working.
Commitment: They can only access their characters when they pay the sub fee on the legacy servers. On the free servers they can log in anytime and play/chat. Even if it is just to check some things out, their characters are always available
Loss: they will lose access to everything they have done, including money spent in the cash shop.
Lower pops: They will be switching to servers that have no way to attract new players and most likely will have lower populations. They are already having population problems now, which isn't a very good incentive or reputation to attract players.
The new EQ2 "vision": The legacy servers no longer fit the future designs for where soe thinks eq2 is going. Everything is going to be designed with the cash shop and subsequently the free servers in mind. It is clear that soe is throwing all their support behind this idea. Everything they are doing is pushing players in that direction, both new and old.
Veteran players: most veteran players who wanted to try the game already have. They know about free trials and didn't find the game worthy of buying before. Again if the only reason for returning is free play, odds are they won't buy the game just to start fresh on another server. They could do that right now.
Exposure: there is going to be little to no exposure of the old servers. Soe certainly isn't going to promote them and I doubt many players are going to search them out to see if they are even worthy of starting over on.
If the current servers are not attacting quantities of new players right now with the free trial I don't see many reasons why raising the cost of moving there and decreasing the value of those servers will result in more players opting to do that.
I'm curious what incentives new players might find to give up everything and start over on the legacy servers. There doesn't seem to be many reasons to do so.
This is all assuming far too much into why someone might or might not do something.
If someone isn't into cash shops why would they play on a free server?
Why not go ahead and make a few assumptions on that as well?
In the end it really doesn't matter, if they fail in offering this F2P service, they fail. IF they succeed, they succeed. We'll have to wait and see.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The graphics engine in EQII blows though. Need a crazy good computer to max settings and even then it doesn't look that good at all.
Reason for the "Crazy" computer is the way the engine was written. Back then... processor speeds were still climbing. Graphics cards had just started getting "Beefy" and the EQ devs assumed that processors would continue to get faster and faster, so they built the game around that princple.
Sadly, processors didnt continue to grow, instead the number of processors did. So instead of having one big monster processor, we have a bunch of smaller ones.
Funny thing is, you get an old school 4ghz P4 and a Geforce 3 and EQ2 runs badass. Get a quad core I7 and it will run... its just not going to take advantage of all your system has to offer.
The graphics engine in EQII blows though. Need a crazy good computer to max settings and even then it doesn't look that good at all.
Reason for the "Crazy" computer is the way the engine was written. Back then... processor speeds were still climbing. Graphics cards had just started getting "Beefy" and the EQ devs assumed that processors would continue to get faster and faster, so they built the game around that princple.
Sadly, processors didnt continue to grow, instead the number of processors did. So instead of having one big monster processor, we have a bunch of smaller ones.
Funny thing is, you get an old school 4ghz P4 and a Geforce 3 and EQ2 runs badass. Get a quad core I7 and it will run... its just not going to take advantage of all your system has to offer.
The engine was specifically designed at release not to use video cards, so soe's specualtion about CPUs getting bigger is really a moot point. That alone ensured that the game would never benefit from video card advances which is a dumb choice for a game that was aiming for cutting edge graphics. All these choices were done in an attempt to make the game playable on low end budget machines, which at the time lacked decent video cards.
Making a game with cutting edge graphics for people with budget computers isn't very smart. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.
I've been playing EQ2 off and on since release. I'm very casual about my play. I love EQ2. I like the stories and different dungeons. I recently just canceled and was pretty much done b/c I wand to play DCUO and TOR later so the money would be tapped out. This news actually made me jump for joy (in a manly way) cause I could keep playing. The only thing I plan on picking up is the Dark Elf race pack. None of the classes are truely my type but I can live with a warlock since its free. (I actually have 750SC on my account already.) So I'm pretty positive. And reading SOE forums, looks like once the shock was over people are starting to see some benefits. Even some vets are thinking of switching to platinum...so in the end, looks like SOE plan is working.
I would probably be mad about the spell level cap but I never remember what the new rank names mean so I'll save that anger for when I get killed by a rabid bunny.
And as a note...There are some ticked off Vanguard people. They want their game to go F2P.
What in the world is so great about EQ2 going free to play.
The new servers will have limited racial selection, limited class selection. They will also have a gold cap. Nothing above treasured can they ever equip. You no mythical for them. And least but last even if you want to you can no, and I repeat can not transfer to the current live servers. It will cost you more a month or multi month than our current live servers.
So saying that, how is this supposed to help the current servers. Having two separate set of servers. Nobody can explain to me how this helps the current legacy sets of servers?
Somebody come up with a good reason as to how this helps eq2, and its current server set?
The graphics engine in EQII blows though. Need a crazy good computer to max settings and even then it doesn't look that good at all.
Reason for the "Crazy" computer is the way the engine was written. Back then... processor speeds were still climbing. Graphics cards had just started getting "Beefy" and the EQ devs assumed that processors would continue to get faster and faster, so they built the game around that princple.
Sadly, processors didnt continue to grow, instead the number of processors did. So instead of having one big monster processor, we have a bunch of smaller ones.
Funny thing is, you get an old school 4ghz P4 and a Geforce 3 and EQ2 runs badass. Get a quad core I7 and it will run... its just not going to take advantage of all your system has to offer.
The engine was specifically designed at release not to use video cards, so soe's specualtion about CPUs getting bigger is really a moot point. That alone ensured that the game would never benefit from video card advances which is a dumb choice for a game that was aiming for cutting edge graphics. All these choices were done in an attempt to make the game playable on low end budget machines, which at the time lacked decent video cards.
Making a game with cutting edge graphics for people with budget computers isn't very smart. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.
That is a lot of nonsense. You can't design a game to not use the graphics card. You can of course rely on the cpu to do more work which is what they did. When EQ II came out it only ran on the high end computers to start with. They lost a lot of subscribers to Wow mainly because many of them could not run EQ II acceptably on their computers. It was just like Vanguard at release, you needed a powerful PC just to run it. Then it took them over a year to get the bugs out and get decent performance.
Leave it to SOE to completely fubar the introduction of f2p servers. All they had to do was look at how Turbine did it with DDO and do something similar. What they are introducing is just messed up and they will lose a lot of subscribers because of it.
Smedley's hand is all over this. The man can turn gold into lead like no one else.
The graphics engine in EQII blows though. Need a crazy good computer to max settings and even then it doesn't look that good at all.
Reason for the "Crazy" computer is the way the engine was written. Back then... processor speeds were still climbing. Graphics cards had just started getting "Beefy" and the EQ devs assumed that processors would continue to get faster and faster, so they built the game around that princple.
Sadly, processors didnt continue to grow, instead the number of processors did. So instead of having one big monster processor, we have a bunch of smaller ones.
Funny thing is, you get an old school 4ghz P4 and a Geforce 3 and EQ2 runs badass. Get a quad core I7 and it will run... its just not going to take advantage of all your system has to offer.
The engine was specifically designed at release not to use video cards, so soe's specualtion about CPUs getting bigger is really a moot point. That alone ensured that the game would never benefit from video card advances which is a dumb choice for a game that was aiming for cutting edge graphics. All these choices were done in an attempt to make the game playable on low end budget machines, which at the time lacked decent video cards.
Making a game with cutting edge graphics for people with budget computers isn't very smart. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.
That is a lot of nonsense. You can't design a game to not use the graphics card. You can of course rely on the cpu to do more work which is what they did. When EQ II came out it only ran on the high end computers to start with. They lost a lot of subscribers to Wow mainly because many of them could not run EQ II acceptably on their computers. It was just like Vanguard at release, you needed a powerful PC just to run it. Then it took them over a year to get the bugs out and get decent performance.
Leave it to SOE to completely fubar the introduction of f2p servers. All they had to do was look at how Turbine did it with DDO and do something similar. What they are introducing is just messed up and they will lose a lot of subscribers because of it.
Smedley's hand is all over this. The man can turn gold into lead like no one else.
SOE couldnt very well allow the freebs on the legacy servers. The vets have made it pretty clear they will not accept game breaking items in their cash shop. SOE has chosen instead to slowy kill the legacy servers and keep collecting sub fees for as long as they can and by the time the original servers are dead they are hopefull that the F2P servers will be making some money. No crystal ball, no inside information its just the only thing that makes any sense as to why the are doing it the way they are.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
The graphics engine in EQII blows though. Need a crazy good computer to max settings and even then it doesn't look that good at all.
Reason for the "Crazy" computer is the way the engine was written. Back then... processor speeds were still climbing. Graphics cards had just started getting "Beefy" and the EQ devs assumed that processors would continue to get faster and faster, so they built the game around that princple.
Sadly, processors didnt continue to grow, instead the number of processors did. So instead of having one big monster processor, we have a bunch of smaller ones.
Funny thing is, you get an old school 4ghz P4 and a Geforce 3 and EQ2 runs badass. Get a quad core I7 and it will run... its just not going to take advantage of all your system has to offer.
The engine was specifically designed at release not to use video cards, so soe's specualtion about CPUs getting bigger is really a moot point. That alone ensured that the game would never benefit from video card advances which is a dumb choice for a game that was aiming for cutting edge graphics. All these choices were done in an attempt to make the game playable on low end budget machines, which at the time lacked decent video cards.
Making a game with cutting edge graphics for people with budget computers isn't very smart. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.
That is a lot of nonsense. You can't design a game to not use the graphics card. You can of course rely on the cpu to do more work which is what they did. When EQ II came out it only ran on the high end computers to start with. They lost a lot of subscribers to Wow mainly because many of them could not run EQ II acceptably on their computers. It was just like Vanguard at release, you needed a powerful PC just to run it. Then it took them over a year to get the bugs out and get decent performance.
Leave it to SOE to completely fubar the introduction of f2p servers. All they had to do was look at how Turbine did it with DDO and do something similar. What they are introducing is just messed up and they will lose a lot of subscribers because of it.
Smedley's hand is all over this. The man can turn gold into lead like no one else.
1st...You can write code so that it does not use the graphics card to render graphics. Google it cause its basic programming...well, more like junior college level.
The F2P program will do well. The only negative is broker access which I think they will change soon after it goes live if the playerbase groans enough.
Comments
QFT!
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
What about > > EVERQUEST I < < ? Will it take the same system?
[1]
Perhaps hiding was a bad choice of words on my part, sorry. As I said, I had no idea who you were, why you have a new name or anything beyond you just being a new poster here.
[2]
I find it very ... odd ... that you have complaints about the negativity level of others on this site. I'll just leave it at that.
[3]
Here is where I have a big disagreement with you. The entire premise of your complaint is that no one is reading anything, they are not logical, butt hurt from past actions or various other personal flaws that you have diagnosed them with. You seem to ignore the information being presented in favor of critiquing the people who are posting that information.
Has it ever occured to you that maybe people have read the fine print. That people have made these types of migrations before as has pointed out already. You want to paint everyone who doesn't agree with you as some aimless know nothings who want to be mean just for the sake of being mean, but maybe there is more to it than you choose to see.
I've seen the fine print and I have personally seen people give everything up on their characters just so they can move to a server that actually has players on it. Try asking warhammer online players how many times they have rolled on a new server, or swg players who started fresh on bria when it was the only high population server or how much they lost when the transfer service killed most of their belongings right now. People were doing it in EQ2 before the transfer service. I see no reason to believe they will not do it again if facing the same situations.
See the difference in viewpoints? You say that those who don't view this the way you do have no information to point to, but there is. You making this discussion personal and attacking those who don't agree with you doesn't make your opinion valid.
To answer your last question, is this possibly a good thing? For new servers I'm guessing it will be. However I can not find a way to view this as a good thing for old servers. They are effectively being denied access to new players. The barrier to join an old server was raised and there is no way to turn that into a positive. Don't believe me? Go read some forums and see what other players are saying and tell me if you think it is a smear campaign.
This change is nothing more than an end around move to put a full blown cash shop into the subscription game. Call it doomsaying if you want to, but the same thing was said during station exchange, legends of norath, station cash, etc etc.
I see it as a revised attempt in the same vein as the NGE. This time it is designed to play it safe though. They want to access a new playerbase. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater this time - they will run both and see which does better. At that time though, I expect there to be subtle (and some not so much) changes in the favor of the winning version. The other will receive less and less attention. Until finally, it goes to life support.
This is the SOE way as demonstrated by several of their earliest endeavors. And EQ2 was the perfect pick to try out their new F2P battleplan. By heading in this direction, they assume that they will be pioneers in the F2P market and strike gold. There is a chance that it is possible to do so. It depends on their level of support, the soundness of their planning and code and the complete lack of eratic decision making on the system itself. The ball is in SOE's hands.
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All that being said, my money is on it launching, them getting a good wiff of a cash flow and then going overboard creating an inbalance for those who play. The original EQ sees less support and small bits of the new concepts filter into the old servers. At some point, the old servers are brought on board out of the reasoning that they cannot (and see the historical context for this statement elsewhere) support 2 code bases on their programming staff.
At best they may leave like 2 servers then in old school mode for a fee and with the expectation of no additional upgrades or technical support.
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The enclosed text above is my opinion based upon previosu acts by SOE. You will note that in the 2nd paragraph of this post - I do give the bright side of the move and that their is a chance that SOE won't screw its existing players. That though is up to SOE and I will gladly return to this post if they actually change established patterns of behavior and have learned from their mistakes.
Well I guess time will tell then. In my opinion, which, regardless of what you believe, is just as "valid" as yours, particularly since I've been actually playing the game for five years.....Station Exchange, LoN, and SC....while vehemently bitched about when each of them began.....have not been a bad thing. As a matter of fact, myself and a lot of others happen to enjoy LoN and the SC options we have on the paid servers. Station Exchange, just as SoE said, affected no one other than the people that wanted an optional pay to win system. Station Exchange has been around for years and it STILL affects no one on the paid servers, just as SoE said it wouldn't.
From my viewpoint....from IN the game....SoE continues to provide a larger variety of OPTIONS than any other game on the market. Whether it's race options, class options, quest options, crafting options, collection options, housing options, or subscription options. One thing that EQ2 players are not short on, in comparison to other games, is OPTIONS. For me....I have found that to end up being a GOOD THING every single time. Yes, even after all the whining people have done each and every single time there has been a change.
As far as the rest of your response....you and I just really don't have much to talk about, but that's certainly not from us not trying to talk about things anyway, and for that consideration....I thank you. But it really boils down to the fact that you think what you think and I think what I think, and never the twain shall meet. We don't even interpret the very same words we READ the same way. So....there's really not any point in me continuing to butt heads with you. You will continue to project gloom and doom, and I will continue to think otherwise UNLESS....I see ACTUAL doom and gloom come to pass. Honestly....for it to be "doom and gloom" for the game, in my opinion, it would require a complete shutting down of the entire game. I don't foresee that happening any time soon.
I apologize to you for being very zealous and maybe somewhat hyper-sensitive in our conversations about all this. However, I think that's pretty much a trademark of a gamer that has found a game they really truly enjoy and constantly having to contend with the game being maligned from every single angle by other people. It just begins to grate on the nerves after a while. I suspect people that enjoy and play WoW can probably relate to my feelings about that, as they deal with it constantly.
Oh and on the negativity thing....I tend to respond to negativity with a certain amount of vitriol. I think that maybe makes me appear to BE negative a lot of the time, however....I'm never the one STARTING the rolling thunder of negative and mean-spirited banter, but I AM usually not one to just blow it off and let someone continue without getting my two words (or 500) in on the topic. And for that....I don't apologize. My interpretations, thoughts, and ideas about things are just as valid as the next persons. And that...applies to all of us on these boards...you, me, and everyone else.
So....I'm just going to kick back now and ride out this storm of SoE hate...won't be the first time I've heard it all....and go back to playing the game I've spent two days arguing about HERE. The game is a LOT more fun than reading what every Tom, Dick, and Harry THINKS about it, when half (or more) of them don't even play it.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Thanks for the reply J1O.
Some things I wanted to touch on. First, you say the LON, Station Cash/exchange have not been bad things. That might be true from your personal experiences . They might be enjoyable aspects of the game for your playtime and thats fine.
However, seeing the overall condition the game is in, the companies revenue situation forcing layoffs again, merging servers across the board and highly questionable reputation I think is has caused harm. All of those changes have caused people to leave. They have caused players to distrust the company and leave more and more promises being broken by the company. Content releases are getting smaller, more unfinished and farther apart when it was said that these new revenues from cash shops would help increase development. In the end everything has declined since their inception. While you personally might enjoy it, the overall effect has not been positive.
One thing about station exchange. It doesn't effect the other servers not due to an soe promise, but because players protested so much soe had to change it to new servers only. Yes it was originally announced to go live onto all the existing servers. Soe only changed that in response to player outcry. This has significance, because it marks the last time soe ever went to players first while developing these systems to look for their input.
As for your enjoyment of the game, cool, but hat doesn't change the realities of the situations. Enjoying a game doesn't have any effect on the current servers being stripped of their ability to attract new players with free trials or needing mergers. Loving a game doesn't negate the choice a company has made to only allow players to only to move away from the servers and not migrate to those servers.
You seem to be "arguing" from the emotional standpoint of your enjoyment as if that can somehow alter what is being done or change the facts of the situation. Bringing up how many quests and options the game has doesn't alter what is being removed from the live servers. This isn't a discussion of how fun the game is.
The graphics engine in EQII blows though. Need a crazy good computer to max settings and even then it doesn't look that good at all.
I used to play it on my HP laptop and it ain't all that great almost 4 yrs old now. You must have one shitty computer from the early 90's...
I played EQ2 in open beta, bought the game and played in a guild of about 10 for well over a year and had a lot of great fun but just got bored of it after a while, it always seemed to grindy for me, but then our guild more or less broke up and I decided to go to WOW with a bunch of my friends instead ofp laying by myself on eq2.
I ended up staying a year over there too and got stuck grinding by myself there too after most of my friends had already maxed leveled out and quit. I've been back now and then resubbed here and there to check out new expansions and such but I always end up grinding alone and don't know anyone who plays it so I get bored with it and quit again. same thing happened with my 500 man guild in swg and the 100man guild in wow. I play these games to play with family and friends and if no one i know plays them I don't stay for the most part.
Now i'm unsubbed fm champions, trek and as of today only have a single wow acct where my sister/bro in law and son and few others play in a small guild. I might try out eq2 again on a f2p server but can't say i'll stay or not...
http://www.forceofarms.com/index.php
What we have is a new game. EQ2-Extended while its the same client it has a huge cash shop. Meanwhile any toons created on the Extended servers will not be allowed to change to current servers.
So saying that, the current servers will not get any new players, what do you think is going to happen. Yea the current servers are going to slowly die off and have to be merged.
This is another company who looking at one thing, cash. At the expense of its vet players.
I'm still trying to figure out what makes people think that some players won't sign up on the f2p servers, decide they really LIKE the game, and want to start over on the paid servers, so as to not have a stats-based pay to win marketplace? If it were ME....and I started playing a free to play game that I could see I really ENJOYED....and let's say I got to level 20 or so and decided....you know, I really like this game...I think I'd like to play on more equal footing where people can't buy their way to the top....I would start over on the paid servers.
NO...you can't TRANSFER your character from the free to play server, BUT...you CAN reroll on the paid servers and get the REAL EQ2 experience. So....why is it people are just so sure that won't be a choice that some new players make? Particularly in the case of seasoned MMO players that might decide to TRY EQ2X, end up liking it, but NOT liking the marketplace options, the racial limitations, class limitations, gold earning limitations, etc.....THOSE people are likely going to want to come on over to a paid server and start a new character. As long as it takes to level to max level in EQ2, do you honestly THINK you won't know LONG before then if you like the game?
I think this will still bring new players to the game. But of course....my opinion isn't popular around here....so I'm sure I'll be dogged for it, yet again. ROFL....what the fuck EVER.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Its just a shame that the "free" classes are all, in my view anyway, the boring uninteresting ones. I love playing a ranger, and the warden or Fury were favourites too, yet they are all "pay".
Free Classes: Swashbuckler, Brigand, Wizard, Warlock, Guardian, Berserker, Templar, and Inquisitor.
http://www.arksark.org/blog/3691/everquest-2-reveals-eq2-extended/
Because SOE has already merged standard servers into the exchange servers and left players stranded. Dealing with SOE is a fool me once shame on you, but fool me twice shame on me situation.
I still think it's a poor way to implement free to play. I've played EQ2 since launch and for most of the past 4 years I've had 2 subbed accounts, so I do like EQ2 and think it's a great game. I just think the "powers that be" at SOE make a LOT of bad calls and this is just another one of them.
Honestly I don't think that many will re-roll if they like the game, unless they really like it and have enough free time to dismiss their previous time investment and start again on a paid server.
This option just further segregates the EQ2 community and isolates the new players from the existing.
Honestly I agree with your mind set, I would be how I would react should a try a free to play game and enjoy it... but I feel I'm an exception, not the norm. I just don't see the justification of keeping the free to play section from the regular servers... the RMT/microtransaction I want kept well away from the regular server, I still resent the "marketplace".
Lets look at some of the reasons why players might not want to move from the free servers to the subscription servers.
Upfront cost: They would need to buy the game and pay a subscription fee. People can try the game for free right now and then buy the game if they want to continue, but that doesn't seem to be working.
Commitment: They can only access their characters when they pay the sub fee on the legacy servers. On the free servers they can log in anytime and play/chat. Even if it is just to check some things out, their characters are always available
Loss: they will lose access to everything they have done, including money spent in the cash shop.
Lower pops: They will be switching to servers that have no way to attract new players and most likely will have lower populations. They are already having population problems now, which isn't a very good incentive or reputation to attract players.
The new EQ2 "vision": The legacy servers no longer fit the future designs for where soe thinks eq2 is going. Everything is going to be designed with the cash shop and subsequently the free servers in mind. It is clear that soe is throwing all their support behind this idea. Everything they are doing is pushing players in that direction, both new and old.
Veteran players: most veteran players who wanted to try the game already have. They know about free trials and didn't find the game worthy of buying before. Again if the only reason for returning is free play, odds are they won't buy the game just to start fresh on another server. They could do that right now.
Exposure: there is going to be little to no exposure of the old servers. Soe certainly isn't going to promote them and I doubt many players are going to search them out to see if they are even worthy of starting over on.
If the current servers are not attacting quantities of new players right now with the free trial I don't see many reasons why raising the cost of moving there and decreasing the value of those servers will result in more players opting to do that.
I'm curious what incentives new players might find to give up everything and start over on the legacy servers. There doesn't seem to be many reasons to do so.
I have to admit my subscription just ran out for EQ2 and I'm hesitant to resubscribe knowing EQ2X arrives mid-August. I could just start a new character for free with all entitlements up through SF. I've been playing off and on since beta so it's no small thing to ditch my characters, but on the other hand I never have to pay SOE again if I start over. I'm just a casual player anyway so I don't care about what's offered on the cash shop and don't play to compete with others. Makes me think people are right on about the damage this will cause to the EQ2 servers. I imagine most casual players like me would prefer not to pay since having the latest gear, leveling the fastest, or raiding/grouping with important cash shop items just isn't my playstyle, eliminating the need for cash shop purchases or a subscription.
This is all assuming far too much into why someone might or might not do something.
If someone isn't into cash shops why would they play on a free server?
Why not go ahead and make a few assumptions on that as well?
In the end it really doesn't matter, if they fail in offering this F2P service, they fail. IF they succeed, they succeed. We'll have to wait and see.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Edit: Nevermind, I misunderstood Daffid's post.
Reason for the "Crazy" computer is the way the engine was written. Back then... processor speeds were still climbing. Graphics cards had just started getting "Beefy" and the EQ devs assumed that processors would continue to get faster and faster, so they built the game around that princple.
Sadly, processors didnt continue to grow, instead the number of processors did. So instead of having one big monster processor, we have a bunch of smaller ones.
Funny thing is, you get an old school 4ghz P4 and a Geforce 3 and EQ2 runs badass. Get a quad core I7 and it will run... its just not going to take advantage of all your system has to offer.
The engine was specifically designed at release not to use video cards, so soe's specualtion about CPUs getting bigger is really a moot point. That alone ensured that the game would never benefit from video card advances which is a dumb choice for a game that was aiming for cutting edge graphics. All these choices were done in an attempt to make the game playable on low end budget machines, which at the time lacked decent video cards.
Making a game with cutting edge graphics for people with budget computers isn't very smart. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.
I've been playing EQ2 off and on since release. I'm very casual about my play. I love EQ2. I like the stories and different dungeons. I recently just canceled and was pretty much done b/c I wand to play DCUO and TOR later so the money would be tapped out. This news actually made me jump for joy (in a manly way) cause I could keep playing. The only thing I plan on picking up is the Dark Elf race pack. None of the classes are truely my type but I can live with a warlock since its free. (I actually have 750SC on my account already.) So I'm pretty positive. And reading SOE forums, looks like once the shock was over people are starting to see some benefits. Even some vets are thinking of switching to platinum...so in the end, looks like SOE plan is working.
I would probably be mad about the spell level cap but I never remember what the new rank names mean so I'll save that anger for when I get killed by a rabid bunny.
And as a note...There are some ticked off Vanguard people. They want their game to go F2P.
What in the world is so great about EQ2 going free to play.
The new servers will have limited racial selection, limited class selection. They will also have a gold cap. Nothing above treasured can they ever equip. You no mythical for them. And least but last even if you want to you can no, and I repeat can not transfer to the current live servers. It will cost you more a month or multi month than our current live servers.
So saying that, how is this supposed to help the current servers. Having two separate set of servers. Nobody can explain to me how this helps the current legacy sets of servers?
Somebody come up with a good reason as to how this helps eq2, and its current server set?
That is a lot of nonsense. You can't design a game to not use the graphics card. You can of course rely on the cpu to do more work which is what they did. When EQ II came out it only ran on the high end computers to start with. They lost a lot of subscribers to Wow mainly because many of them could not run EQ II acceptably on their computers. It was just like Vanguard at release, you needed a powerful PC just to run it. Then it took them over a year to get the bugs out and get decent performance.
Leave it to SOE to completely fubar the introduction of f2p servers. All they had to do was look at how Turbine did it with DDO and do something similar. What they are introducing is just messed up and they will lose a lot of subscribers because of it.
Smedley's hand is all over this. The man can turn gold into lead like no one else.
SOE couldnt very well allow the freebs on the legacy servers. The vets have made it pretty clear they will not accept game breaking items in their cash shop. SOE has chosen instead to slowy kill the legacy servers and keep collecting sub fees for as long as they can and by the time the original servers are dead they are hopefull that the F2P servers will be making some money. No crystal ball, no inside information its just the only thing that makes any sense as to why the are doing it the way they are.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
1st...You can write code so that it does not use the graphics card to render graphics. Google it cause its basic programming...well, more like junior college level.
The F2P program will do well. The only negative is broker access which I think they will change soon after it goes live if the playerbase groans enough.