EverQuest 2 Game Update Blog

Starseeker is another new contributor to EQ2Wire and wanted to share a viewpoint on the aftermath of EQ2’s F2P announcement.

This is my commentary on Free to Play.  I have to get it off my chest.

EverQuest 2 is an old game, 6 years, that is a long time for an MMO.  I have been playing this game since launch.  I remember the days when you would have spirit shards, and experience debt that would take away XP instead of just give you a % penalty.  I remember when your guild could lose levels, and when there was heroic content in overland zones.

Things change.  It is the way of life that nothing can stay the same forever.  EverQuest 2 is no exception. It has changed and morphed and gone through its trials and tribulations.

The rest of the article after the jump…

I started this game as a solo player with a friend.  We played that way up until the Echoes of Faydwer expansion pack, and then we got into raiding.  Our raid guild wasn’t that great — a casual guild with alot of problems — but it was always fun to log in on a raid night and joke around with 24 other people.  To banter in teamspeak, to have duels before the raids, in which some folks would get feared off the islands and we’d all have a good laugh.

Currently, I am in a different casual raid guild that I lead.  Being a guild leader gives you a different perspective on how things affect the servers, the game, and the community.

As the expansions went on, and the days went on, the game changed.  It became more about loot, more about stats, and min/ maxing.  The gear became inflated, but it was and still is a good game.  Just not the game it was originally.

They made leveling easier, they made raid mobs harder.  They came out with more instances, and less overland zones.

Now they have changed the game again, to free-to-play.  It is understandable why they have done it, they need subscriptions.  However, all of those memories I mentioned above, that are experienced by the new player when they first wander into EQ2 will be experienced on a new server.  With new support, new people, and a different rule set.  A server that tells them that they do not have to work for their game play experience.  They only have to spend a few dollars, and they’ll have everything at their fingertips.

One of my best memories of the game, is when I finally earned 4 platinum, to buy myself a horse.  Even though it was ugly, and looked like a blob, I rode that thing everywhere.  It took me nearly a year of saving.   Now for $12.50 you can buy a mount at level 1.  Have I bought the station cash mounts?  Yes.  I like the look of them, but for a new player, who doesn’t have 3 accounts, and 8 toons over level 80…perhaps earning things would make them stay in the game longer, like it did for all of us.

It saddens me that the game has been reduced to this level.  When free-to-play was announced, the outcry from players like me — veteran players — was like a death scream of an era that only we remember.  The outcry was loud, fierce, and largely unheard.  Our words are twisted.  We now have a gun to our heads that basically is “accept the SC marketplace or watch the game that has gotten you through 6 years of your life die slowly.”

What choice do we have? Quit?

I imagine that is the route a lot of people are going, several people I have known for a long time have gone this route.  I have also canceled my extra accounts.  I’m holding on to that last one with hope that something will save us, but I think the boat has left the harbor.  We are now in a “conform or die” stage of this game.

The veterans remember what the old game was about, and what it has become.  This knowledge, this “lore” so to speak, will be lost on the new servers.  It will be lost with more and more people canceling.  Eventually, perhaps no one will remember the plague that took over Norrath, or when the gods came to us, or when avatars were present.  It makes me sad and disappointed.

It will be a different world, one where you can buy your way through.  One where you can purchase access to the things you want.

EverQuest was supposed to be an escape from real life. A fantasy game with no limits. Now the limit is your wallet. A lot of us are wondering — where will our next escape come from?