Today, Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson, EQ2’s Senior Producer announced EverQuest 2 Extended, a version of EQ2, that is rather limited but free to play.
The FAQ on it is located here. To me, it seems like a unlimited trial, very similar to Age of Conan, limited in what classes/races you can pick, and not being able to chat in certain channels. Obviously SOE want a piece of the very lucrative F2P pie, and call my cynical, but I personally think this is ridiculous.
Payment options etc. after the break.
Worth noting that this is separate from the main game servers, but it looks like bad shareware, and I can’t see the community liking it.
Any thoughts on it? Not currently playing EQ2, looks like I dropped my subscription at the right time…
Fortunately it won't affect the normal "live" servers. I'd have been a great deal less friendly in my assessment otherwise.
A bloody stupid idea if you ask me.
It may affect the live servers as it's going to take people who don't play often enough to pay for a sub away from the live servers to the extended servers. So population could drop a lot.
@Ysharros – Actually, it will have an indirect effect on the Live servers. Once Extended is in place, there will be no more 14 day trial on the Live side of things.
New players will sign up for Extended and will stay there. You can pay $35 to transfer you characters from Live to Extended, but they aren't offering transfers the other direction.
The Live servers were not getting a lot of new players, but soon they will be getting none. The classic subscription model will be in a little box over in a dark corner waiting to wither and die.
Meanwhile, on the Extended side of things, you can give SOE $200 a year and still have to buy things that you took for granted on the Live side.
Not playing EQ2 Wodge? You were online 2 days ago
Talking to Yetian last night, said that they if they feel the need to do this they should keep it on the same servers. Makes sense to me. Rather they didn't do it at all, but that's the way things are going, (many) people want to be spoon fed throughout life not just in MMOs.
Wasn't me mate, gave account details to the womenfolk. Sub doesn't run out until September 9th, so she's using El Wodger Magnifico to power level her alts, until FF XIV comes out, by the way, did I mention I'll be forming a guild over there at release?
Come on over before EQ2 falls on it's arse!
Lol, even if we did try the game we'd be a neXus branch.
Not sure I could get over the graphics style a lot of these far east MMO's use, too cartoony for me.
*edit*
Just had a look at the site a bit more, not as cartoony as I was expecting but there are plenty of elements still in a comical style. I mean those short races (halflings/gnomes?), just look ridiculous, lol.
All the faces look the same, no lines or marks, obviously you can buy plenty of skin products in the game.
Oh and WeFlySpitfires has a good post about EQ2 Extended too.
http://blog.weflyspitfires.com/2010/07/28/everque…
one thing to point out yeti; theres more variations in armour models/clothes/textures in the tutorial, than in the entirety of eq2! Not really had a go on crafting, but from what I've read, the games economy is more player driven than EQ2s. CAN'T WAIT!!!