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Sunday, August 29, 2010

The Evolving EQ2 Extended - Smokejumper's Latest

Although EQ2 Extended, the free-to-play version of EverQuest 2, is in "Soft Launch", the beta tag really still applies.  EQ2 Executive Producer "Smokejumper" has released a couple of tidbits to keep players interested, or at least meet some of their demands.

One item I'm happy to hear about is the ability to purchase classes.  Smokejumper gave this tidbit on the EQ2 Extended forums Thursday.
Well, I was going to announce it later, but we'll be making classes available for sale to Bronze and Silver members soon. I don't have an ETA yet because the work for that is not completed or tested yet...but soon.

So that will change the matrix somewhat. (No more details for now. We'll launch full details when the work is completed.)

We'll probably make other tweaks as we go along. Extended is like a retail store in some respects. Changes will occur as we figure out what's right for the game and the business...but that's going to take time for us to watch and evaluate before deciding any further changes.
An issue near and dear to my heart concerns Station Access users.  I've been looking at what I would get if I reactivated my SA account.  Smokejumper wrote this on Thursday.

Station Access is for players that like to play more than one game. If you don't appreciate the current stable of games, there are a slew of new ones coming soon. (Chief among them is DCUO, which looks to be pretty playworthy.)
SA is for players that like playing more than one game. The fact that many EQII players are using it primarily for extra character slots is not lost on us. We're discussing making some changes in the near future to allow other options for folks that want more slots, instead of having to be an SA subscriber.

However, as far as SA players feeling betrayed somehow that SA doesn't offer more perks in EQ2X? Well...it does give you Gold membership. That's a perk over and above what an SA was previously offering, so it's definitely providing value to the SA subscriber.

Essentially, if SA was worth your money before, then it's still worth it now. We're not planning on any additional perks for SA subscribers.
Part of the reason I don't play on the EQ2 Live servers right now is that paying $30 a month so I can have access to all 9 of my characters (that's two extra character slots) on the live servers just doesn't make sense.  But if I can purchase extra character slots on the EQ2 Live servers, I might go back.  Then again, if EQ2 Extended really draws me in, I might reactivate my SA account to also get the Gold membership so I can sell items on the broker.  Of course, if DCUO comes out and I like it, then a Station Access account really would make sense.

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