EQ2 verses LotRO Free to Play

As the days go by, more and more games seem to be jumping on the (what I will term) “Freemium” band wagon. They’re not exactly Free to Play because you can barely play them without spending *something* but certain aspects of the game are free, and you can get by paying a lot less then the regular monthly subscription fee if you want (especially if you’re a casual gamer, and wait for deals).

Surprisingly enough I have NOT been playing the Lord of the Rings Online as a free to play member. I’ve got VIP access until February because I purchased a bunch of 60 day time cards for cheap before the game went F2P. I have been reading up on everything though, and I’ve got a few friends who are playing as cheaply as they can as a test. We’ll call it our online roulette games experiment for the time being, my money is on LotRO being the ‘cheaper’ way of playing compared to EverQuest 2.

I am far more likely to play LotRO as a ‘free’ game then lets say, EQ2, and I’m going to explain why with a few points that really stand out to me as being winners.

• – Turbine points can be obtained in game for completing deeds. This is a great selling point to me. If you enjoy completing every single deed and title you can get your hands on then you’re going to earn yourself turbine points that you can spend in their store. You may even be more willing to spend a few dollars here and there to round out the points you have earned when you make purchases. After all, if they can entice you to spend a little when you would have spent nothing, that’s good. You don’t feel like you’re spending that much because after all, you’ve EARNED points, you just want a few extra to pick up that <whatever> from the store. I am far more likely to spend a smaller amount numerous times, then one large amount.
• – Items in the store are pretty cheap. A piece of cosmetic gear could be as low as 100 turbine points, or as much as 295. Each 100 turbine points is $1 which means you’re not even paying $3 for a nice piece of cosmetic gear. I’ve seen some stores that sell appearance gear for as much as $25 – the smaller your prices SEEM (even if you’re selling each piece individually) the better. I don’t want to buy an entire set, some times I just want a chest piece, or a back piece. I’m far more likely to spend $2 then $25. The most expensive items are the shared vault, and mounts and even those are a far more reasonable price then a lot of games I’ve peeked in at.
• – Sales. If you’re patient, you can purchase what you “need” over the course of time at a very reduced price. For example the riding skill was 75% off a few weeks ago. I picked it up for my characters for less then $1. Three adventure packs were also on sale for 75% off, less then $1 per adventure pack (three were for sale) which is fantastic. Wait long enough and I have no doubt that even more items will go on sale, enticing players to spend just a little bit here and there. If you get a large number of people purchasing a little bit here and there you more then make up for the few who would have paid the $15 subscription fee.
• – VIP perks. As a VIP I have access to everything in game AND I earn myself 500 “free” points a month. Why is this great? Because when my account finally lapses from VIP I’ll have stored up enough points to continue playing on as a free to play customer – an idea that I absolutely love. I also get accustomed to their store as I purchase a few items (mostly appearance so far) here and there with my points.

That doesn’t mean I love everything about this new model, there are a lot of restrictions that I don’t enjoy. Skirmishes, channels, etc. that are locked without making purchases or being VIP etc. I’ve never been against F2P, or Freemium, or any other idea that follows, call it what you will. What I do have issues with is how some games have implemented these ideas, namely EQ2 (as of late). I was a fan of Wizard 101 for a good while, loving the idea of unlocking content as I came to it rather then purchasing $15/m for something I may only play twice.

My issue with EQ2X is as follows:

• – Separate servers from the main player base. I think this was an incredibly poor idea, no matter how many times the red names on forums say that they had the best interest of the players at heart. It turned into an us (regular live servers) vs. them (freemium players) model instead of trying to merge all of your players into one happy family.
• – The cost of items. Things are expensive. Cosmetic gear especially. I am not going to be buying a handful of things in EQ2X for the same price that I would in LotRO, which makes me less likely to spend anything at all as I have to hum and haw over what I’m going to spend my money on.
• – The confusing tiers of subscription plans and what they all unlock. It is not needed. In order to get the “full” subscription to EQ2X you’re paying $18/m on an EQ2X server vs. $15/m on a ‘live’ server. Wha? That also STILL does not unlock everything, as races require further payment.
• – The cost to copy a character from a live server to the EQ2X server. It’s $25 to MOVE a character between live servers. It’s $35 to copy your character to an EQ2X server. I don’t understand the need for that cost, either make it the same amount or simply don’t allow it at all and have everyone start from scratch. Is this an attempt to discourage the current player base from moving over to EQ2X? If so it’s a poor attempt.

Those are my main issues. As you can see it’s nothing to do with what is in the shops, but how the basic designs are set up. With LotRO I don’t feel as though I am being pressured to spending a lot of cash. In EQ2X I feel as though they’re trying to milk players for all they’re worth and then some. Perhaps this is unfair of me, after all you CAN play EQ2X completely free IF you are satisfied with what you will get. That means incredibly limited everything. Gear, spells, classes, and races. Now for some, this is not an issue, but I hardly go to a free to play game expecting it to actually be free, I’m always going to spend *something* – I just think that turbine did a far better job setting their games up.

Making Money in EQ2

I figure that title is bound to get me the most spam comments I can possibly get, aside from maybe “how to level from 1-80 in an hour” or something similar. When you get down to the nitty gritty of EQ2 you really don’t need money for a whole lot. If you’re used to running instances your master spells will drop and there are quite a few zones that have masters on smart loot, in both RoK and TSO – although I don’t believe SF has any smart loot options. Then there are the research assistants and their monthly (or less if they’re lower level) masters available to players, gear that comes from questing (a la shard runs) and if you’re a raider you’re taken care of pretty well too. There are repair bills but then there are also raids that pay a nice amount, and if your guild sells gear at all chances are you’re used to a guild split every so often.

If you don’t have a plethora of alts chances are you can see some fairly good coin from doing quests and selling items – of course alts are expensive, to gear them out and purchase their masters (or expert skills) on top of the ones you’re trying to gain for your main can be a little annoying. Multiply this by 10+ (yes, some of us have that many alts) and it’s a very expensive hobby. So how do you off set that cost? After all there are no top rated online casinos in Norrath.

One of my main methods of making coin is to craft. On most servers this would not be a good form of income, in fact on most other (non rp servers I’m talking here) servers it’s better to actually sell the rare components rather then to craft something from it and try to sell that. Whether it is due to the number of people per server who harvest or some other factor I’m not quite sure – anyhow – on Antonia Bayle most of my coin comes from selling items in the 20-60 level range. It seems like everyone has an alt, and everyone wants to twink them out.

I can buy severed fir for 12g a shot (some times lower) create a bow or club from it and put it for sale for anywhere between 25-50g (as noted on my sales log) and it will typically sell on the same day that I’ve put it for sale. The problem is knowing the market, and figuring it out. It takes some time. I’ve always known lower level items sell exceptionally well on the roleplay servers since I’ve played there, there’s simply more people between those levels then end game.

Cloth is another good seller (or leather I suppose) there’s lots of druids and brawlers leveling through the ranks, and I always find a short supply of woven gear for my own characters, so I figured putting some up for sale would be a good thing. Furniture also sells pretty well, there are a lot of avid house decorators out there who run out of this item or that and when budget isn’t a huge issue they don’t mind purchasing that last item from the broker.

I’ve never found it that hard to make money in EQ2, I have had over 2500p at one point in time and I don’t really try to make coin or at least I haven’t in quite some time. It wasn’t until I was looking over my reserves yesterday that I noticed I was well below 20p between both my accounts, and that had to change. Now if only I’d stop creating all these alts who seem to take coin from me before I make it to the bank..

What Ever Happened To the Gigglegibber Goblin Gamblin’ Game?

Big Winner!

Remember when these friendly goblins were put into the game? The first “winner” on server won an enormous amount of platinum, over 3,000. Of course these days I hardly see anyone standing around the machines and with fast travel there’s no one waiting on any boats. The goblins could first be found at the end of various docks; Antonica, Commonlands, even Enchanted lands. Sure, it was a blatant money sink but these NPC seemed quite amusing and at the time a lot of players got excited over them.  With the addition of guild hall amenities we’ve seen a return of our green friends and it becomes easier and easier to spend 10 silver here and there as we wait for groups and form up for raids. It’s not exactly the same as a top online casino, but it’s a great way to pass the time.

My question is have you ever known anyone to actually win this game or is it just as elusive as the real life versions? I’ve gotten a match of five before and that gives you 25 gold, but it always seems like that sixth number is just slightly out of reach.

These days the “big jackpot” is a mere 323 platinum (at the time of writing this) which doesn’t seem like that much. The previous winner walked away with 361 – have the chances of winning increased and thus much less money is put into the pot before being won? I wonder what the statistics are, how many people actually play. Too bad there’s no real way to tell.

EQ1 also had a type of gambling game where you would keep trying to win a golden ticket for some fantastic prizes that you could choose. World of Warcraft has their mysterious fortune cards where players have a chance at winning an in-game cash value by “scratching” the card and once their fortunes are revealed the card can be sold to vendor for as little as 1 silver and as much as 5,000 gold.

What do you think of this type of money sink in video games, where you can at least walk away with some sort of reward?

 

The Way of the Public Quest

Lets Group

One of the more exciting bits of news we have actually heard about Destiny of Velious is the fact that there are public quests – or at least (from what we’ve gathered so far) one public quest area that involves the Coldain Ring quest. If you played EQ1 at all you are probably very familiar with this chain of quests along with the Coldain Prayer Shawl which is rumored to be the DoV crafting epic. I went back and looked up the old quest chain on Zam, re-reading comments that dated back to 2001.  The 10th quest in this chain (at the time at least, I’m sure it can be completed solo these days) required a group of people:

This is the 10th and final Coldain Ring Quest.

Overview: This is a large encounter that requires a fair amount of players to complete. It involves multiple waves of giants of different levels attempting to overrun Thurgadin. You must kill the giants and the final giant in the war, Narandi the Wretched.

I’m wondering how a public quest in EQ2 will work. Will it require all players to be at level 90+ (I assume it probably will), how will rewards (if there are any) work. Will you be required to have a certain number of players complete it? What will inspire those who have already completed the quest to partake in ones after because as we’re all aware, if there’s no reward for YOU it’s hard to get volunteers to come help out. Will it be like pulling teeth to try to get people to participate? I don’t have the faintest idea.

On one hand I’m pretty excited about this development, I have had some great experiences with public quests. WAR has them, STO, and Rift. On the other hand I’m also a little concerned. Is this the way all groups are headed where you don’t have to actually search for players or put groups together yourself at all (a-la WoW LFD tool) or even communicate and ‘meet’ those group members before you’ve all disbanded and gone about your way? It seems like we have more tools for grouping up at our disposal then we’ve had in the past – and yet I don’t actually see people grouping more. In fact these days I see more people upset about not having a group then anything else (at least in EQ2). As game populations decline and spread thinner between multiple games is it the developers job to find ways to compensate for lack of groups?

Let NomadicGamer know your thoughts in comments!

New Year, New Toon, New Guild (Well sort of)!!!

Well the Holidays are finally over and now its time to focus back on the important things in life…EVERQUEST 2!!!!!!!!

I have been tinkering around with my 3 main toons and getting them leveled and tradeskilled up, its been a long and sometimes boring process. I am more of a solo player vs the group aspect of the game, dont get me wrong i love the occasional group or raid to get the blood flowing, but 98% of the time i am solo. I feel that being solo i can work at my own pace, if i want to stare at a mob and work out some strategy before jumping in i can, in a group thats not so easy, espically if you have someone like i use to be they see a mob and RUN straight for it and pull everything in site…hehe (done that one too many time) !!

But since the New Year is here i have taken a break from my older toons and made room for a new toon on the same old server but in a different new but old guild for me, i know that sounds confusing, so i’ll explain.

See i was once part of the Looony Toons guild in Crushbone , one of the founding fathers so to speak, well after sometime i was growing boried with the role of a leader and wanted to be lead, had alot of things going on in my RL that was affecting my EQ2 life, so i made a decision to step down and leave the guild to look for a more raiding guild, at the time all i wanted to do was raid and get the uber gear and become a ledgend.

Yes, i made a new home and fell in love with my guildies who have been the best friends a person could ask for in game and out of game. i still felt like i have had a peice missing from me, so on Monday i made a deciosion to create a new toon and tag him back into the old guild that i came from and work with them for a while. Now for anyone who is in the guild i am in now, dont worry – Chubby, Cinder, Kuzab and the other 2 alts are not leaving the guild, i just needed a change of pace and visit some old friends for a while, i will still be on my older toons and getting them where they need to be but i will also be working on this new toon and guild to help get them to GL 90. Just spreading the love guys !!

I have been very impressed with Looony Toons the last couple nights, last night they had over 20 players on for a majority of the night, it was great i havent seen that in a guild in a long long time and felt proud that i was at one point in my life that i helped create this guild, they have done so much ove the last couple years and have built the guild into a strong force for the citizens of Norrath. Also i didn’t releize this till last night that i created and join this new / old guild on the guilds Anniversay, so ironically one of the Founding Fathers returns on the night that the guild was origionally created serveral years ago!! 🙂

Anyways, alot is going on and i am here to partake in the fun festivities and get a new toon off the ground and into a raiding guild as this is what they have developed into again another ironic thing i have found, i left to goto a raiding guild that fell from raiding to create a new toon to go to my old guild who is now Raiding!! Lost yet!!

So the next post i have with my update progress should not be so confusing, the new toon is a ShadowKnight, since i just love the pure raw abilities of the SK class,and he is sitting at lvl 16 with about 12 AA’s, i am in the process of becoming a citizen of Freeport as i feel that Neirek is just too confusing to be able to raise a new toon. So if your on Crushbone look for Chubbers the Kerra SK, i’m sure you’ll see me around, hit me up for a PUG or just to chat.

Until next time, Happy Hunting in Norrath or where ever you call home!!!

~Chubbylilbuddy / Cinderbella / Kuzab / Chubbers / Wonderboyz / Kryptonion / Chubetta~