f2p vs gold

[Birdy]

what do u get for paying?

[Poyzo]

F2P the AA (Alternate Advancements) are capped at either 200 or 250. With pay, you get unlimited (12,000 is where you'll want to be at if you're a raider, currently).

You get access to general chat, Journeyman mercs (better than the alternate, although you probably won't notice until level 65 or so).

You get loyalty points and Daybreak cash each month. Nothing to write home about, but meh...

The most important thing is, like I said, the Alternate Advancements. 200/250 is NOTHING once you get to 70+. It's sad. They should bump it up to at least 2500 for F2P folks.

[Birdy]

what exactly are Alternate Advancements?

[captain_video]

AAs are essentially skill-ups which vary by class. Once your character hits level 51, you begin to earn AA points alongside XP. A subscriber can control the % of XP diverted to AA points, for a free player I believe it's locked at 50%. You spend your AA points on the class skill tree as you see fit. A free player is capped at 250 AA points to spend in total. Some legacy accounts, called "Silver", have a 1,000 AA cap. Subscribers have no limit, which makes a huge difference at the highest character levels, since there are well over 10,000 AA points worth of skills now for each class. Once you purchase a skill, it belongs to the character forever, even if you stop your subscription and return to F2P.

Also, free players are limited to a simpler spell set, known in-game as Rank I. There are Rank II and III spells available to subscribers. Access to Rank II spells can be unlocked per-character in the Marketplace (cash shop) for a one-time purchase.

The F2P model of EQ is basically designed in such a way as to let you level any new character to somewhere in the 65-75 range for free, and then you're going to hit a wall. However, you can then subscribe for one month, concentrate on getting AA points and new spells, and then go back to F2P and level some more, since you keep what you earned while your account is Gold. Rinse and repeat. If you want to jump to endgame content right away, you're going to be maintaining a sub no matter what.

[Birdy]

thx

[m[A]n!k]

eq is fubar

[Cattywumpus]

Another important differnce is that with paid subscriptions you can auto-grant AA and get many older ones without earning them. By clicking a button you will be given almost all of the AAs available to your level up to around level 90ish (not sure).

There are also items called "prestige" which cannot be used by F2P players. Many useful items fall into this category but the most obvious are augments (small additions to armor stats). You will find they stunt your player growth almost as effectively as AA limits. especially for tank classes.

A third difference is the ability to choose to play on special servers that have rule sets more like playing in the nostalgic old days.

You can bypass many of these restrictions by playing on the test server. Test is a very small population server that is used to pre-test certain changes to the game so the Devs can take it down for patches and/or maintenece with little or no warning. Occaisionally you get a nasty bug or stability issues but it's rare. Test server players are given most benefits of a gold membership without cost.

[emK]

1000 AA if you are "Silver member".