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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"

Knarlz wrote:Although I haven't played in years, I kept the account open since I signed up for the 5th aniversery special of $100 per year.
I wonder if I could drop that and still be used as a rez bot by the old guild.
Also they probebly can use the old cleric up to semi current content. If someone wanted to level knarlz up some 10 or 25 times

A lot of the augs were mistakenly flagged as Prestige. It's something I'm going to bring up in our weekly systems meeting.

Bagar- wrote:I hopped on last night. I can't use any of my gear. I could deal with not having all of the bag slots, shared bank, etc., but I functionally can't play without my gear and I'm sure as tits not going to farm new non-raid gear just to be able to kill mobs.

OK.. so I'm going to be updating the AA XP bonus for the June patch. The bonus will now end at 4000 AA instead of the current 2500. Additionally, the initial bonus for the bottom end will be significantly increased. I haven't decided the actual bonus amount changes yet, but it will be larger than the current 500%.

Aslanna wrote:Triple station cash today only. So if you buy the $15 cards at Wal-Mart you can get a year of Gold membership for $30. That's $2.50 a month!

Sony Online Entertainment will change free-to-play restrictions for its MMORPGs EverQuest and EverQuest 2 next week, offering more content to players with free-to-play and limited subscription accounts.

Sony currently offers two paid subscriptions, Silver and Gold, and a free-to-play option for both titles. Silver level members have restricted character customization choices, while Gold members have instant access to all content.

Beginning next week, EverQuest and EverQuest 2 Free and Silver account holders will have unobstructed access to all classes and races when building avatars — currently, the bottom two subscription options only grant access to four of the game's 16 races and four of its 16 classes (there are 20 total races and 25 total classes in EverQuest 2). Characters will also be given more bag slots for carrying items and can deliver items to other players for free, whereas previously that service was for paid members only.

In EverQuest 2, the only remaining restricted class in the Beastlord, accessible only by purchasing the Age of Discovery expansion pack. The Freeblood race is also still purchase-only.

According to EverQuest franchise director of development David Georgesen, after 14 years of service it was time to give players more free stuff.

"We felt we went in the right direction with free to play, but [in the beginning we were] paranoid about the results," he explained. "We made really a restrictive subscription matrix that was built to encourage people to upgrade. We wanted to make Silver and Free [accounts] much more attractive packages for people that wanted to just check out game. They can play for a longer period of time before making any purchase decisions.

"Silver and Free players are legitimate kinds of players and we don't want to make them do different things or change the way they are playing," he added.

Restrictions have also been lifted on shared bank slots, which allow players to share items between a user's characters, and journals will display all active quests instead of only a finite number.

"I don't remember the logic behind this, but we have been restricting the number of quests people can have displayed in their journal," Georgesen said. "We look back at that now and I don't know what we were thinking, that was just dumb. We're taking the cap off of that too."

Georgesen said that SOE has no plans to lift more restrictions in the future, as the company wants to keep certain features exclusive for Gold account holders. When asked if the new subscription changes would be implemented in upcoming title EverQuest Next, Georgesen said that discussion hasn't happened yet.