By Adam Smith on November 14th, 2011 at 9:30 am.
Another day, another gobbet of news about pricing options in an MMO. This time it’s Everquest II, which has been running two parallel worlds, one for subscribers and a lesser world for those who want their fantasy for free. Confusingly, the slimline free world is called Everquest II Extended, presumably because Everquest II Shrivelled didn’t focus test well. Soon, that world shall be no more and subscribers will find themselves playing alongside all manner of freeloaders as the playerbase is merged. Non-subscribers will find some features limited, including access to the new Age of Discovery expansion. More details and a trailer below.
See, it used to be enough just to say “free to play”. That was quite an exciting proposition. Not anymore. People are often scandalised by the very idea of playing a game for free, collapsing to the ground, struck down by the vapours at the very idea. After all, what did that game ever do for them?
That’s why Everquest II is “Free to play. Your Way.™” They really have trademarked that, which makes me wish other less flexible free play systems were forced to use the phrase: “Free to play but don’t get any big ideas, poverty-face.”
‘Your way’ refers to the option of purchasing additional content and opting for a one-off payment to activate a silver membership, which allows the forming of guilds, four character slots as opposed to two and extra inventory slots, among other bits and bobs. The full details are all here, but a swift bullet point list of the limitations that jump out is below for those who don’t ever like to leave the warm halls of RPS.
I’m not sure if this will be enough to tempt people (back) in but there is a huge amount of content to play, built up over the years. Maybe worth a dabble. It’ll be interesting to see how much impact these changes have on subscriber numbers in various games over the coming months.
14/11/2011 at 09:36 Valvarexart says:
Might check it out when I’m done with Skyrim. Actually, scratch that. I won’t be done with Skyrim until 2013, and everyone knows that the world ends 21/12/2012.
14/11/2011 at 18:38 Mac says:
I’m looking forward to the extra 9 days in your prediction, but isn’t the end of the World predicted as 12/12/2012?
14/11/2011 at 10:08 ho-g says:
that tiger’s scary
14/11/2011 at 16:17 archimandrite says:
EQ2′s art hits the Uncanny Valley Button in my brain hard.
14/11/2011 at 10:10 UnravThreads says:
Bloody hell, that’s one cut down game. Out of the ~19 races (I think?) you can have for EQ2, they give you four.
That’s a joke.
14/11/2011 at 10:33 TheApologist says:
Free jokes?! Sign me up!
14/11/2011 at 10:57 sneetch says:
You can buy access to the other races, I’d be interested in seeing how much they cost, but assuming it’s not extortionate the F2P deal seems quite reasonable to me.
14/11/2011 at 13:55 edrick says:
$7.50 for 3 races.
14/11/2011 at 10:15 JackDandy says:
Anyone wanna wager on how long it lasts before they close down shop?
14/11/2011 at 11:00 sneetch says:
I’d say it’ll add several years to the lifetime of the game. I’m personally waiting for Warhammer Online to go F2P, I’d love to play the game again, love to drop in and out every now and then and I wouldn’t mind spending cash on it but I can’t justify a subscription to it and I’m sure others feel the exact same about EQII.
14/11/2011 at 13:57 edrick says:
A very long ass time? EQ is at 12 years, F2P does not mean the game is dying, contrary to popular belief. DCUO saw a 1000% increase in activity after one week of F2P.
14/11/2011 at 16:19 archimandrite says:
Warhammer Online is already F2P in the way that Warcraft is F2P: You can create characters and level them up to 20, but no further.
14/11/2011 at 10:18 BrendanJB says:
Needs a “smiling tiger” tag.
14/11/2011 at 11:31 Carra says:
SW-TOR comes out in a month. Until then I can keep myself busy playing Skyrim & Anno 2070.
14/11/2011 at 12:11 Big Murray says:
I’m kinda amazed that Ultima Online hasn’t gone through any kind of FTP model yet.
14/11/2011 at 13:25 malkav11 says:
It’s a good game but their initial stab at F2P was horribly misguided and even now they seem to be crippling free players overmuch.
14/11/2011 at 20:19 zhangppp says:
http://50.gd/1k
http://50.gd/1k