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Truth about heroic characters AAsFollow

#1 May 30 2014 at 6:07 PM Rating: Default
I've read enough posts on various threads to know that heroic character hate is in. It's cool. It's what the cool people do!! Well here's the truth....I got a heroic character. (No it's not my main!) I have 2 accounts. One in gold all access and the other in silver. I had a chance to get a heroic character for free so I grabbed it, not because I needed it but because I was curious. This is what I found...

It may be that heroic characters are playable in an a gold all access account with about 4000 AAs you're auto-granted, however at about 1000 AAs for a heroic character in a silver account and at 250 AAs in a Free to Play (f2p) account those heroic characters are permanently (more or less) handicapped and no one should be jealous of their existence. Yes, you can buy 2000 AAs in cap increase through the marketplace with station cash (which is the maximum amount) but you can't do anything with them. You can't auto-grant heroic AAs into them because you're not in all access gold. You can't earn any AAs to put into them because you're capped already at either 1000 AAs in silver or 250 AAs in free to play which begs the question...what exactly is it that you've spent your money on? The truth is Sony won't tell us and NOBODY knows the answer to this outside the Sony EQ development team. You can't get this info reliably from any source. The best you can hope for is player speculation because nobody knows. Sony doesn't want us to know which begs the question....why? Some people in my guild have theorized the only way to get AAs into it is go gold all access for 1 month and apply for the AA auto-grant, get about 4000 AAs that would normally be assigned to the heroic character and then after you're gold all access membership expires next month and you're capped at 1000AAs for silver, plus any cap increases you bought ahead of time (before you went all access gold). Same thing for free to play accounts and you have to hope that they will cap you at the increased level of AAs that you purchased previously wherein Sony limits you in such a purchase to 2000 AAs maximum with 250 station cash per 100 AAs cap increase.

It looks to me like you are buying AA cap increases that can't be auto-granted (or used at all) and that you will be prevented from earning AAs in the usual way to put into the cap increase. Some people think this is a bug and Sony will fix it. Well...again nobody knows. What we know is nearly after a month of gold all access Sony hasn't fixed it. Most of the people I know who bought these things are asking for refunds. Whoops...did I say the word REFUND. well yes I did! Problem is generally things bought with station cash can't be refunded. What is the answer, well...nobody knows. Having said that of course people will post on this thread telling us they know. Nobody knows outside the game development team and they aren't telling. If you doubt that, go look at official sony soe sites and find the source and give the link below. What? You say there's no takers! Ah...yes there are no links. This means while we all give ourselves permission to hate heroic characters and the people who played them, we should at least limit that hate to people in all access because the people on heroic characters in silver or f2p accounts are getting screwed.

After a dozen years of playing EQ on and off, I'm here to tell you EQ is dying and probably heroic characters aren't going to save the game either. We had a good run for 15 years. I have been on board for 12 of them and its been a good ride but its nearly done. If you want to get on your secret heroic character and hide from your guildies and go out and have some stupid fun, I say go for it and enjoy the time that's left in the game because its winding down. I'm into marketing and sales, I understand bundling. If you can't sell something on its own because not enough people want to buy it anymore, bundle a bunch of things together that not enough people want to buy anymore for the same price you use to sale for one of them individually. Thats really what All Access membership is. I just know I really do that somebody is going to get on this thread and give us their pearls of wisdom by first announcing how many lvl 100 characters they have and how many AAs they have and we should therefore listen to them because their EQ uber gear gods. Truth is nobody knows where this is going. Therefore I hope we can respect the opinions of everyone that posts here mere mortals and EQ uber gear gods alike so no flaming please and no bumper stickers about let's "let the hate flow" either please. I therefore invite everyone in a mutual atmosphere of respect, ideas, thoughts, speculation and questions. Surely I don't have the answers that's why I am here. Hopefully to ask some good questions. Not necessarily to get answers because there may not be any but what there can be is an informed discussion. For anyone willing to extend themselves to participate in such a discussion I say thank you in advance. Please post away!


#2 May 30 2014 at 7:44 PM Rating: Excellent
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Yes SOE is not up to standard imho, regards communicating with the player base a lot too often..I too took up the option for the free heroic characters but haven't really got the time to put them into battle as yet due to grinding on my main these days. But with regards to the caps for silver status accounts, I think they intended it to be so, but as usual did not communicate with player base well.

I believe that SOE's sales strategy is to funnel or encourage their FTP players to Silver players to Gold/All Access eventually, so they may be intending it to be that only gold/all access gets the max AA grant with the heroics as they alone get the free heroic character from SOE.

EQ sites Heroic Character FAQ news bulletin says in relation to this Question (below) :

Are there limitations on AA's?

Their Answer- Quote : "Heroic Characters will have full access to thousands of alternate advancement abilities (AA's). Players that don't currently have a subscription will need a membership or need to purchase individual AA unlockers to continue to earn AA points after they have a cap on FTP characters." - End Quote.

Link to the news bulletin : https://www.everquest.com/news/heroic-character-faq

My guess is it is intended and they forgot to mention "silver status" in the answer above.

Good luck.





Edited, May 30th 2014 9:46pm by hexeez
#3 May 30 2014 at 7:54 PM Rating: Excellent
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I have several heroic toons that are silver and they have all their AA. You just can't earn any more AA until you either buy 3k or so of AA cap or pay for gold.

Considering how long eqmac held on we should have a few good years left of eq1. They are still releasing new content for the game and making expansion. I would guess before they would just shut the game down due to too few subscriptions they would prob combine all the servers into one and stop adding content and then eventually just shut it down (like they did with eqmac.)
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#4 May 31 2014 at 7:29 AM Rating: Default
fronglo, great post. You might be right in your overall analysis I honestly can't say you're not. Heres the deal though. I think its a little bit nuance. If you have a heroic character in f2p or silver and if you go to the AA window and you try to click Auto-Grant Enabled - it won't let you.

Instead you get a message that says: Your auto-grant AAs have been disabled because you do not have an All Access membership.

When you turn on Exp to AA 100%, you get the message that says:
You gain experience!! Your AA experience has reached the membership-imposed cap. Your AA conversion rate of 100 percent will no longer be converted toward AA points. Upgrade to the All Access membership to remove the imposed cap.


What's interesting about this is you get these messages even after you went to the Sony Marketplace store and bought AA cap increases at 250 SC for 100 AAs so you cannot for the AA cap increase you just bought be allowed to earn AAs in the usual way up to the limit of your new purchased cap increase through fighting/exping. You also can't get 100AAs through Auto-Granted as you can't enable it. So what you've done is you spent 250 sony station cash on an AA cap increase that you cannot fill or use at all. The funny thing about this is most people even the ones who purchased the cap increase don't realize that the AA cap increase they just bought gives them nothing at all. This is a clearly a case where ignorance is bliss because they think they're now assigned those extra 100 AAs that they bought or that they'll be able to earn 100 extra AAs by exping at a further date when they have time to do so. The truth is Sony has published nothing nowhere to describe this problem and in fact this thread is probably the only written source that you are likely to find that ever addresses this problem simply because people don't understand that the AAs unlocks that they've bought is an empty bag that is to say an AA space that permanently has nothing in it. But worse, you can't earn anything to put in it either without signing up for gold/all access in which of course, logically doesn't the question have to be asked what is the point of Sony selling AA cap increases? The answer nobody knows the answer. That's where I think it gets interesting.

Myself, I thought when I purchased AA cap increases for the heroic character that I was now carrying around more AAs that were already assigned to me through Auto-Grant. Absolutely not true. I wasn't carrying around nothing more, not even a single increase in AA because you cannot use Auto-Granted AAs if you are not in gold/all access. I thought at least may be you could earn AAs in the usual way by exping, putting your exp into AAs but you can't do that either. Ok...so now you're carrying around a heroic character in silver or f2p that's a permanent cripple and you thought Sony was really giving you something for the first time in your player life. You thought you were being valued. Looks to me like you were being suckered. That is we were all suckered but hey...it's not a problem just go gold/all access then you can use Auto-Grant Enabled. Ergo my humble view that it was too good to be true and the heroic characters we love to hate if they're in silver or f2p shouldn't be the object of our hatred but rather the object of our pity for the poor player who thought "why buy gold/all access when you can just get AA cap increases to increase your AAs by up to 2k max." Which still isn't very much but does make the toon a bit more playable but hey...it's just my 2 cents worth. What do I know as Mr. Anonymous poster here. I'll tell you what I know, I know that my heroic character unless its in All Access Gold is crippled. That's what I know. Permanently crippled.

The sad part is most people walking around those characters don't realize it....they're suffering under the mistaken belief that the AA cap increases they just bought at the station store has helped their character. If that toon is in silver or f2p its done nothing for the character. Nothing. Zero. It's a deceptive illusion and nobody is talking about it. You can't find any information anywhere about the Heroic char AAs cap increase purchase rip offs. To repeat, this is likely the only written information resource discussing this issue that you'll find in print anywhere. So you can never go beyond 1000AAs in silver or 250AAs in f2p no matter how many AA cap increases you purchase for them in the sony marketplace. There' s no evidence you'll ever be allowed to use them unless you go gold/all access.

Hoo-ray for all access gold...after all if you're a hardcore EQ fan it would be heresy not to go gold anyway because you're not a serious player and you deserve to be crippled for being both stingy and stupid. Don't look now, all of the cool people... the really cool people are snickering behind your back. Clearly you can't talk about this in public without permanently embarrassing yourself. It becomes a conspiracy of silence because after all what high end player wants to out themselves of having a heroic character trapped at 1000AAs in silver (or worse 250AAs in f2p) FOREVER....no matter how many cap increases you buy at Sony Marketplace. To date there's no evidence that you'll ever be allowed to actually use those cap increases on your heroic character at which case somebody will say, boo-hoo!! you didn't EARN those AAs anyway. You can say I'll show them! I'll go gold every month and subscribe All Access and kiss the Sony SOE ring! Don't you love it when a Sony marketing strategy comes together. You thought you could just play for the love of the game!



Edited, May 31st 2014 9:37am by curiousjeff

Edited, May 31st 2014 9:40am by curiousjeff
#5 May 31 2014 at 8:12 AM Rating: Decent
Hey hexeez. Good post. From reading your post can I ask are you aware that if you go to the sony marketplace and purchase for your heroic character an AA unlock (cap increase) at the rate of 250 station cash per 100AAs cap increase that you will actually to date not be able to use that for your heroic character even though you spent money on its purchase. The truth is Sony isn't giving you or any of us straight information.

You cannot earn more AAs in any fashion at all in a heroic character by purchasing cap increases even though you have purchased a cap increase, your heroic character if in f2p account is still capped at 250AAs or 1000AAs in silver. May be in the future Sony will change this. Who knows but to date they have not. Nor is there any evidence they plan to do so in the future. In fact there's nothing Sony puts out in print to describe this problem. This thread is the only print source I'm able to find on the web anywhere that even discusses this.

People suffer under the mistaken impression they can buy up to 2K AA cap increases for their heroic characters. The truth is they cannot. Why that is I don't know. May be its bugged and they'll fix it next week or next month or maybe it's not a bug and they'll fix it never and simply tell you to go all access/gold. Here's the deal in my view. If you buy a cap increase for AAs and you can't use them, are y ou being ripped off? People who purchase cap increases believe mistakenly their cap increase allows them to have AAs auto-granted. it doesn't. They also believe mistakenly their cap increase they have bought with station cash affords them the opportunity to earn more AAs by putting their experience in AAs. It doesn't do that either because you're at already at the imposed cap for your membership which seems to override any AA cap increases you have purchased. Again is it a bug? Who knows! Sony won't even acknowledge the existence of the problem. Instead they play on the ignorance of players in this regard who believe something that in fact isn't true. Truth is buying the AA unlocks in a heroic char presently does nothing except cost you money for which you receive nothing. That is what I discovered. If you or any other reader don't believe this I invite you to test it out yourself during the weekend when most of us are off work and come to your own conclusion. Buy a AA cap increase at the Sony marketplace for 250 SC for 100 AAs cap increase for your heroic character and try to use auto-grant enabled. It won't work.

Try to go out and exp and earn AAs in the usual way. You can't do that it either because you're already at the imposed cap level for your membership. You can complain about this but the likely answer will be, go all access/gold. Now wait a minute....let me clear about my sarcasm. I'm not telling anyone to throw away their money by buying a AA cap increase that won't work. Particularly as sony is famous for not refunding items bought in the station store. I'm just saying if you buy a cap increase for AAs your experience will likely be the same as mine. Of course most of us are too busy with our mains to go to play our heroic chars to check it out which means sony is going to continue to get away with this ripoff for a long time until people figure out.... unless they go all access/gold from appearances to date at this moment in time its difficult to believe this is the only course of action that will cause your heroic character not be crippled permanently. I think its pretty sad because I know a lot of us who got free heroic chars thought sony was treating us as valued customers by giving us something for free which now turns out you can't really use unless you go all access/gold all the time, especially now that Sony has gotten rid of the silver membership which means you can't buy silver memberships anymore or be grandfathered into it as the silver membership product no longer exists for new accounts (now all that's left is either you go All Access or free to play only)

I mean...what are you going to do with a heroic character in a free to play account with 250AAs?! If you're a really really good player, you might be able to find some weak mobs to kill without becoming a serial dier as a soloists. Clearly no high end group will touch you because who needs a mana sponge sucking exp and not pulling their weight! (humor)

I say the reason Sony has published no info on this issue is because they don't want you to know. Fact is almost nobody knows. That's why this thread is probably to date the only written piece of info on the subject. I say let's get the word out to people because they deserve to know. That's my 2 cents worth.

A lot of people felt like yourself, they have one gold/all access account and one silver account with a heroic character in the silver account. Now they're discovering they must permanently have 2 all access gold accounts so they can play their heroic characters they got for free. It's a great way for sony to double their gold accounts not by bringing new players but by convincing existing players to buy and pay for a monthly all access/gold account permanently. :) Great sony marketing strategy. You gotta to love it!

PS: On my 2 EQ accounts in the past dozen years I think I've spent over 3000 dollars. When I tell people I spent that on a video game I don't even own, they shake their head. Little wonder why people like myself love silver membership accounts because we know from our own experience that EQ gold/all access can really add up. The good news is EQ in the next dozen years probably won't be here so you're unlikely to spend as much money on the recurring monthly expenses of 2 gold accounts that I have. If I had to do it again, I think I would never pay for more than one gold account at a time. At least then my expenses would have been cut in half. I say that now as the game in the foreseeable future looks like it will be going away anyway. So I thought why pay for gold recurring membership when you get silver grandfathered in, pay to have AA cap increases unlocked with silver membership and still have 3K in AAs total...only to find that unlocking AAs caps in silver doesn't really work as previously described. :-(



Edited, May 31st 2014 10:41am by curiousjeff

Edited, May 31st 2014 11:07am by curiousjeff
#6 May 31 2014 at 10:39 AM Rating: Excellent
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curiousjeff wrote:
From reading your post can I ask are you aware that if you go to the sony marketplace and purchase for your heroic character an AA unlock (cap increase) at the rate of 250 station cash per 100AAs cap increase that you will actually to date not be able to use that for your heroic character even though you spent money on its purchase. The truth is Sony isn't giving you or any of us straight information.



No, I was not aware of that as I my three heroic characters are all on gold accounts and hardly even played as yet other than the odd loggin to change appearance and colour etc via ornamentations, new weapons to remove the "green heroic stigma" on my heroic characters.

But I am not surprised at all re SOE's poor communication. As over the years I have seen this type of thing where important info is not conspicuously noted and instead is either lost in the fine print or not there at all.. Even the answer in their heroic news bulletin that I quoted is also vague and not concise (runs and ducks for cover from EQ forum staff) Smiley: eek


curiousjeff wrote:
PS: On my 2 EQ accounts in the past dozen years I think I've spent over 3000 dollars. When I tell people I spent that on a video game I don't even own, they shake their head.


Yes no doubt! I don't even want to think of how many thousands of dollars I have spent in this game over the years ..Waay to many, but EQ is still my cyber Shangri-La which has no limits measurable with my money lol. But SOE knows this re many players and will milk us for every last cent. I'm sure this marketplace, F2P/Silver, Heroic Characters/Kronos etc makes them much more money than just the subscriptions. SOE even got in the plat selling business with Kronos and I think they are a success for their bottom line.



Edited, May 31st 2014 12:42pm by hexeez
#7 May 31 2014 at 2:29 PM Rating: Default
hexeez, thanks for the interesting and indeed thoughtful post. Your thoughtful and indeed attentive remarks show that you gave a close reading to official sony materials and found the same dark plot hole that I and some other silver account holders have fallen into. You know its quite interesting. I found a light at the end of the tunnel and after just over a dozen years i think i found my final quest before leaving the game because I want to leave the game on a high end. I don't still want to be here when they start shutting down and merging too many servers. That would be too sad. I'd rather remember the game just as it was. If I leave in the foreseeable future I can still do that. Let me give you and anybody else that's still reading this thread your mission impossible quest should you decide to take it. Obviously this is a quest only for those of us who are on our way out of the game and that is stop paying Sony money and find a way on low AAs to solo to lvl 100 if you want a challenge and really tough quest, there it is. I say solo because no high end group is going to want you.

You are really going to have to work hard and smart to find mobs that you can kill with your low AAs soloing with all the restrictions, lack of prestige gear, etc, etc. It will require all of your skill to complete that final quest. You see I know what you're talking about, paying sony thousands of dollars for a game in the end you never owned. So for me it was a case of been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. Errr... turns out I only rented the t-shirt. Smiley: disappointed As I say no matter how much you pay, you can never own the game. All of my old friends that i started with a dozen years ago are gone. I have been in several big guilds, all gone. I have outlasted them all. I figure I am now going to take my last quest and get my silver account character to lvl 100 and slip away like a gentleman into the night and wish those I leave behind safe travels. I never expected in taking up my last quest to find a Sony scandal where basically they're ripping people off in my humble view and opinion, but hey that's only one guy's opinion in the big scheme of things so what does it matter.

Sony has tried to recapture the same magic that Verant did in the early 2000s and in a ground breaking fashion Sony created several new games, they have all failed to capture the imagination of the gaming public. But for those of us who were there at the beginning, we remember it all. It's been a great ride. This new crew at Sony Online Entertainment is nothing like what it was like in the beginning. The Verant magic is gone and so is the honest good customer service. Quite by accident I found my last quest. Though I am not your quest NPC, I invite our readers to take up that last quest. At least its not going to cost you any real money. It will sure challenge your gaming metal. You'll have to be more inventive that you've ever been before to survive. When you make it, the only person who will ever know you made it was you!

What Sony has done to silver account holders with their heroic characters I think is sad. Same thing with f2p heroic character account holders, but you can fight back by taking the challenge with this quest and resisting Sony's last minute desperate money grab for not Everquest but EverPay. Obviously I hope I'm wrong about all of this but I fear I am not. Having said that only time will tell. These thoughts and this thread and this post will all slip into the ether and with time fade from memory. In the big scheme of things it doesn't matter. I was never here to be Sony's profit center. Although it turned out they took a couple thousand dollars off of me. I was only ever here for the love of the game and with my last quest that's how I want to go out. I am hoping that before it dies, we will on this thread get some silver and free to play heroic account character owners telling us what their experience has been in paying to unlock AAs in the sony marketplace. I will really be surprised if its any different than what my experience has been which has left me with a real sense of betrayal. Its kinda sad but that's how I feel about it. I think its odd in the extreme that so many people are at odds with heroic characters. Particularly as so many of them are going to be in silver accounts and f2p accounts in that push to the wall money grab that has nothing to do with playing for the love of the game. In the new sony marketing strategy that now seems to be gone along with the days of the old magic of Verant. Just gone!



Edited, May 31st 2014 4:33pm by curiousjeff
#8 May 31 2014 at 3:04 PM Rating: Excellent
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In the past I have thought about quitting or taking a break when frustrated with nerfs or changes to EQ..or just plain bored in general, but could never actually do it as something about EQ keeps my interest in this game.. Maybe its the depth of the game and vastness of Norrath. That is despite the poor developer issues, like not fixing broken quests ,missions and other content, especially if older content it seems to be on their backburner.. amongst other things.

Examples of SOE incompetence ..

When their forums went from the old to new system. My forum handle was lost including all its post history and forum status.. I had petitioned but they could not retrieve it, so after months of nothing I lost interest and rarely post there for a few years now.

Another fiasco...A few months back my cc expired and their accounts system would not accept the new cards date and security code no matter what I did. I opened a petition/ticket and they answered me within 24 hours but nothing was fixed for almost 2 months. The problem was indeed on their end and if it wasn't for Kronos (which could be purchased via Paypal) all three of my accounts would have lapsed to silver status. That is extremely slow service especially when dealing with accounts..SOE's bottom line. So imagine other areas may even have less human resources.

So that's why I have become comfortably cynical re SOE in many areas and still love the game EQ.. And despite the odd rant have come to expect poor customer service sometimes from them...Some of their TSR's are really good and fast though. I have to give a few of them credit.


So wait do not think about quitting over that as yet !

I was just reading over the thread and Fronglo (post #3) says that he has Silver and got the grant.

This is a long shot but : I was wondering if maybe you did not turn on "accept AA grant" button in game in the AA window (top right corner ) iirc ?

Then zone or log out and back in to see the grant in the AA window.

Just a long shot.

Good luck.. Hope you get through.
#9 May 31 2014 at 6:16 PM Rating: Default
I just wanted to reply and thank you for posting. Certainly I want to validate the experiences that you had with sony's SOE staff. It's very understandable and also I wanted to let you know it's not possible to auto-grant AAs while in silver for a heroic character because auto-grant has been disabled in silver. Same thing for f2p. It was a good suggestion though thanks for making it. Also I wanted to give a link below to a discussion on this issue that some people were having on the official sony forum and its really apparent from the fact that essentially everything they say is not correct. They are really suffering from a lack of information and confusion. For example they think the price point is the real point with the AA unlocks in the sony marketplace. Depending on your view that price point may not reflect good value but I think their discussion misses the real point in my humble opinion which is the AA unlocks don't work on heroic characters at all no matter what the price. The people in that discussion seem to be completely oblivious to that fact. I also note that no sony staff member posted on that thread to try to help end the confusion. Personally I see these actions as a real disappointment. Here's the link to that discussion.

https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/station-cash-aa-unlockers-any-changes.210572/


Edited, May 31st 2014 8:18pm by curiousjeff
#10 May 31 2014 at 10:49 PM Rating: Good
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I didn't have to autogrant the heroic toons. When I rolled them they had all there AA's autofilled. I have 7 total and only one of them has ever been a gold account (I know that is alot of accounts). While they can't earn any more AA they still have max aa for a lvl 85 toon.

I agree the aa unlockers is pretty much a waste of time there is no way they should expect someone to use that! A person would have to buy 40 to 60 of them which is absurd. Now if they let you unlock your AA after the autogrant it would be a useful purchase I think.
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#11 Jun 01 2014 at 1:56 AM Rating: Excellent
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Reading this thread makes me damn happy I did'nt upgrade one of my old toons to HA, but a new one...
#12 Jun 01 2014 at 5:24 AM Rating: Excellent
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I didn't read all the above in detail cuz it made my head hurt. And I read all the time everything from fiction to nonfiction to technical manuals.

But I do have a solution. Forego 4 beers a month, or 4 lattes from Starbucks, and sub up your account. Problems over! Sure, you'll still have the Sony CS problems we all share. The solution to that is run your accounts in such a way as to minimize any need to deal with CS reps! That's the way of the world eBay just announced that their 75 million accounts have all been (potentially) hacked and everyone should change their password. "Just to be safe" Smiley: lol At first then they said their linked company Paypal was safe since those passwords were stored separately. Yet at one point a "mysterious" warning on Paypal's home page advised to change passwords---and then just as mysteriously went away. But now when you log into your Paypal account you get an impressive display saying

"Your Paypal account IS secure... BUT change your password"

with a big link button to go to the dialogue to change your password.

But... I thought my password was safe??

Way of the world, my friends. Customer service sucks all over with the super-rare exceptions of companies like LL Bean.

But consider the good:

You get an unlimited amount of gameplay each month (except for downtimes, of course!) for $15, and as low as under $10 if you pay annually.

You get 500 SC free back, as long as you click the claim button once a month. (Yeah I've seen people griping about having to click that button. Sheesh!) And I've seen people gripe about nothing to buy with the 500SC. XP pots, illusions, bags, delivery vouchers... there's always something.

You get regular expansions, yes even if the game is 15 years old. Sure, the xpacs seem to come in pieces and they never EVER satisfy everybody, especially those who think that every expac shouls include content across the spectrum from cutting-edge end-game to epic 3.0's and entre sets of new quests for the "below level 20" set. The xpacs can now be had for 10% off also, btw, through the Sony store, a nice little perk nobody mentions.

Plus you can pay your monthly tariff with in-game coin, essentially, by pharming plat or making it thru tradeskill sales, and then buying kronos. OR, alternately, if you need plat and hate to pharm you can buy kronos and sell them for plat.

I'm the last person ever to be labeled an apologist for Sony and their EQ devs crew. But, cmon, give us all a break with the choruses (chorii??) of complaints. Surely you never expected a F2P or silver account to come even close to the benefits of a fully-paid gold account? Why would those of us who spend $10-15 per month for each of multiple accounts keep doing that if we could "go F2P" and keep substantially all of the goodies we pay for?

F2P is to let people check out the game. It's to let very casual people continue to play the game in a very casual way as a "past-time." When you get serious about playing EQ, if such time ever comes, you start paying a monthly fee. THAT'S THE SINISTER CONSPIRATORIAL PLOT, my friends! Just in case you didn't get it!

And THIS post is nothing about HATE, which has become the default buzz-word now whenever anyone talks in any way "non-positively" about a person playing a heroic toon. That's the mindless knee-jerk response. Frankly, this is more about UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS. Hey, Sony would LOVE to sell you this game in little bits at individual prices which seem "pretty good" but add up to far more than the package price You know when they steal a fancy car the thieves often break it up into parts? Because the market value of the individual parts add up to far more than the market value of the stolen car. No offense but it's a fool's game literally to pay RL$ for AA's in batches of 100 or 500 or however they sell them. It's foolish to buy the crappy gear they sell for SC in the Marketplace. But all this is a smart move probably enacted by Sony's marketing and accounting departments who reason that players willing to undergo "the death of the thousand cuts" will cough up a lot more money than their wiser brethren who suffer once---but eventually the "thousand cuts players" get fed up, declare EQ "a game all over and done with" and move on to games that in their dev's wildest dreams won't last close to 15 years and 20 xpacs.

It's a monthly sub game folks. If you can't afford $10-15 a month for at least one sub, it's probably not going to make you happy in the long run.



Edited, Jun 1st 2014 7:39am by Sippin
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#13 Jun 01 2014 at 5:35 AM Rating: Default
fronglo, again great post. I don't think anyone can disagree with your logic as its obviously sound. I can't say that I necessarily find the AA unlockers be good value for the money. I mean...whether or not that's good value for the money obviously should be up to each person to decide for themselves. My only point on that issue was that if you spend the money to buy AAs unlocks for your heroic toon they should at least work.

If the AAs don't work with auto-grant I guess that is what it is, but when the AA unlock cap increase wouldn't work at all and you cannot because of the cap increase that you've just bought and paid money for use that purchase product of the cap increase to earn AAs for your heroic character by exping either then I think you're being defrauded. The only question is are you being intentionally defrauded or is it through the accident of a bug? If its through the accident of a bug, how many more months will it take to fix it? Will it ever be fixed?

If sony never intends to fix it then fair enough. They should at least inform people that the AA cap unlocks may not be purchased for heroic characters because they don't work to unlock the AA caps at all. Therefore it should be withdrawn from the sony marketplace. At least in the case of heroic toons because they don't work for them and the money you spend on an AA cap unlock for a heroic toon is simply from appearances to date...lost without so much of an explanation from sony.
#14 Jun 01 2014 at 12:54 PM Rating: Default
Sippin, I did read your post quite carefully. In the spirit of intellectual freedom I certainly don’t want to criticize the position as you have laid it out. It’s just not for people like me. I’ve seen over a dozen years how a couple of gold accounts can add up to thousands of dollars in a game that you never own. It sounds like you enjoy playing the way you do. I say, good for you. That’s the great thing about tolerance and variety in life… we don’t all have to be the same and we should therefore be tolerant of others who are different.

For me this thread was about a simple issue without branching out throughout the entire umbrage of the EQ tree. Why can’t EQ simply in their AA cap unlocks fix the bug so as to allow heroic toons to make it work for them? If they won’t fix it, then the position is they should stop selling it or at least reasonably put on a warning that says that heroic toons can’t use this product even if purchased. Whether or not the purchase of such a product is good value or not in the spirit of intellectual freedom is something that should be left in my view to the decision process of each customer. They should feel free to buy the product or not based on their own valuation attendant upon the same. As for Sony to reiterate, they simply shouldn’t be selling a product that they know to be bugged for heroic characters wherein the product advertises a cap increase and that cap increase if purchased on a heroic toon cannot be employed to increase the AA cap. As in issue in equity that narrow point I think speaks for itself as a stand alone issue unto itself. Of course there are lots of other issues that one could elegantly discuss, however the pertinence of a discussion where everything gets talked about and nothing is ever addressed seems to go along the lines of diminishing returns and probably isn’t the most efficacious use of time. The simple and straight forward position in equity is if a product is sold as a AA cap increase that may be purchased by heroic toons and it cannot work to increase the AA cap of heroic toons, then it would seem to me there’s a product liability issue here that ought best be rectified for the benefit of customers who put their faith in Sony that their product will work as advertised.


Edited, Jun 1st 2014 3:00pm by curiousjeff
#15 Jun 01 2014 at 3:07 PM Rating: Good
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Jeff, if you didn't get what you paid for, you have a legitimate gripe and I back you all the way. I wish you the best of luck getting made whole by Sony CS reps if indeed they charged you money for services and products they failed to provide. Fair is fair!
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#16 Jun 01 2014 at 3:35 PM Rating: Default
Sippin, thanks for your well wishes.
#17 Jun 02 2014 at 2:34 PM Rating: Excellent
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Jeff. You kinda ramble a bit ( a lot actually), so it's actually hard to understand what exactly you're talking about in your complaint. Less "This is unfair!" and more "here's the exact problem I'm experiencing" would be helpful.

What I *think* you're saying is that an HC in a f2p or silver account is capped by the level of the account and buying AA expansions doesn't help. I agree that this is likely a bug and maybe if you expressed it more clearly to SOE they might be able to address it. As it is, your post comes off more like a wild eyed rant than a bug report. I would assume that the problem is that HCs by default are granted a full set of AAs and *then* are capped by the subscription.

I would assume that even prior to HCs if you had a character on a gold account on which you'd earned say 4000 AA, then dropped the sub to silver and then attempted to purchase an AA expansion, you'd probably have gotten the same outcome you're seeing with the HC. I agree that it should simply not allow you to purchase the AA cap extension in those circumstances, but I've also got to kinda parrot other people's points that maybe you're picking the wrong approach anyway. Why not just gold sub at that point? I kinda assume that SOE hasn't addressed this bug because the AA cap extensions long ago were considered such a waste of cash that they just assumed no one would actually bother to try doing this.


Unless I'm totally missing the bug you're seeing? Can you provide a step by step description of what you're doing, explain what you expect to happen, and then what actually happens? Because I've read all your posts in this thread and I'm still not really 100% sure.

Edited, Jun 2nd 2014 1:35pm by gbaji
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#18 Jun 03 2014 at 3:33 AM Rating: Default
gbaji, thanks for the invitation to post my bug report to you, but no thanks. Forgive me but this isn’t an in-game situation. It’s just a social forum and I think posting a bug report is boring so if you don’t mind I will say politely no thanks to your invitation to that. However as time permits I will provide you with a more extensive reply for you or anyone else interested in reading that. In the meantime I invite people to keep posting and sharing their social experiences at the computer/human interface with the game because that’s what this thread is supposed to be about which is not a bug report.

Having said that I accept you have to have tolerance for a certain amount of thread drift where we can drift off topic from time to time. None of us are GMs. We don’t really have any power in the game as such. Yet we have a need to be heard so this thread tries to give voice to the voiceless and validate their experiences. I hope people will keep posting and reading. Thanks.

#19 Jun 03 2014 at 4:06 AM Rating: Default
gbaji....not to be rude or anything like that but its all well and fine for you to parachute in mid-thread and say "I don't get it". Please let me invite you to go back and read the remarks on this thread.

The purpose of this thread isn't actually for you to "get" anything. It's not a rant or bug report/gm complaint. It's a social experience that says, “I’m having a problem and I think others are as well” and that kind of acts as an ice breaker to get people to share what their experiences have been on this or other problems because really, none of us really have the power to do anything other than share what our experiences have been as players both now and in the past so as to validate our readers position (with similar experiences on this or other issues).

My copying and pasting my bug report and/or bug reports of my friends isn't going to make interesting reading because it doesn't reflect the complexity of the human interaction at the keyboard. Really what this is about is Sony taking away game choices from people. For example they've taken away the choice for silver membership . That's gone. They're entitled to do that because after all its their game and not ours. They own it -- we don't. We merely buy access to the game they own. No matter how much money you pay (in my case I paid thousands of dollars), you will never own this game. When we sign up for membership, we kind of sign up for that proposition. Hoo-ray! Now that's been said and out of the way we can see to Sony's credit when they took away the silver membership product at least they stopped selling it. Otherwise you would have bought a membership which no longer exists. That is precisely the case with the EverQuest AA cap increases. If you buy this product in (a f2p or silver account) as a character specific unlock it will not work for that heroic character you have specifically bought it for; so why sell an AA cap increases to f2p and silver account holders that don’t unlock AAs?

That has been my experience and in the experience of my friends and guildies. Because products bought in the sony marketplace are not refundable, no one I know has been able to get their money either back to date. This is obviously a problem with the Platform Team and they can take a couple of months to address these types of issues (if history is a guide).

For anyone like myself that's unhappy about that we're entitled to complain about this or any other issue and we're entitled to do so without being trolled and without having somebody parachute in and tell us we're stupid and/or illiterate for having invested ourselves in such a discussion which doesn't meet the troll's gold standard for descriptive writing. This strikes one as being rather intolerant. Some people want to play in keeping with the Sony mantra which is "Go Gold/All Access all the time!!" turning EverQuest into EverPay until one day it all goes away. Because the EverQuest ride has to come to an end some time, of course there are some people who actually believe EverQuest will last forever! I can't say they're wrong but I don't agree with them.

What I can say is some of my friends and I simply don't want to spend thousands of dollars *more* in subscriptions for multiple gold/all access accounts for a video game that's a decade and a half old that we will *never* be allowed to own and only ever be allowed access to. For us and I know this seems heresy to the UBER crowd, but the lower cost EQ option seems to make better sense and for the people who don't agree with that....they're free to keep paying for gold/all access all the time. Of course we're not allowed to really criticize that, are we? Because it would show we're not really serious players, how could we be playing crippled heroic characters in silver accounts.....or worse yet....free to play.

Surely this couldn't be seen as a new type of challenge or dare I say, the last quest for anyone's hardcore gaming mettle.

It's pretty straight forward to get to level 100 (with many thousands of AAs) while playing....just be group dependent and start exp sucking. It's another thing to be a dedicated soloist playing on a silver account with a character with just 1000AAs maximum, or in f2p account with 250AAs maximum and get to level 100 with no possibility of ever buying any AA cap increase…that actually takes skill. It's a good quest that will cost you zero dollars. That's not something just anybody can do. The idea that you could take on that quest and beat Sony's game without paying them a monthly sub forever....well as the English would say, that's just not cricket is it?

Let's be honest about it. I mean....I am in marketing but you don't have to be a marketing MBA to understand bundling. SOE is now selling every game bundled in all access for the same price they were selling each game before individually because the games are dying. All of them. I haven't read any of Sony's confidential marketing research in terms of market segmentation and their focus group data sets, etc but it seems clear that if you bundled a bunch of things that weren't selling well individually by tying them together in one all access bundle; you hope to boost sales. Now everyone is being pushed rightly or wrongly into All Access membership.

The problem is this is a proposition that’s in fact at tension with itself because Sony Online Entertainment has developed competing products that compete directly head to head with All Access which is.... you can buy AA cap unlocks up to 2,000 points.

Now someone like yourself may argue that these AA cap unlocks aren't good value for the money and whose to say, maybe you're right in speaking for yourself. The AA cap unlocks aren't good value for you, but the great thing about intellectual freedom is we all get to be a bit different. That means people like you should be tolerant of us wanting to play our game differently. Likewise we should be tolerant of you, otherwise we become you. While you are entitled to be you and play your game the way you want to play it, so are we! Rather than fighting about it we should celebrate our differences because that is what makes life and the world interesting. As for speaking for myself, I think its obvious that sony has disabled the AA cap unlock in the sony marketplace that is a character specific unlock when purchased for heroic characters in silver accounts or f2p accounts. Let's remember that in a dying game there's not going to be a large staff of SOE programmers available -- they're going to be behind. (Obviously I am just a player and not a GM) my guess is with the new All Access membership roll out, that's where the bulk of their programming effort went into. Probably I'm guessing that they will now cancel at some point in the future and remove from the marketplace the AA cap increases entirely because it competes in part to the All Access membership plan (just like the now removed silver membership did). Of course there's no hurry in fixing this because after all....they already have our money! The only bit of speculation left is, will they refund people for the AA cap unlocks on heroic characters or will they grant the AA unlock for people who already bought them and simply remove the product from the marketplace so in the future no one else can buy it?

gbaji, I hope you'll forgive me for not giving a succinct bug report but you can't help me anyway. Bro, this is just a social forum but you're welcomed to please post again and give us your 2 cents worth. After all none of us have a crystal ball. All that we ask is that our posters keep it classy here please. (It's a social forum). Thanks for everyone who keeps posting and continuing to read.

PS: Here’s a final thought or perhaps better put a question. Has Sony flooded EQ with thousands of AAs the majority of which are useless (or outdated) or at least unnecessary to push people into buying Gold/All Access all the time? I mean….I’ve been playing EQ on and off for about a dozen years. I have friends that have played for even longer. None of us have had time to seriously study and understand 6 or 7,000 or more AAs. Sony knows this because it’s a huge investment in time. Who has time for that? Just go all gold/All Access and STOP THINKING and apply for the auto-grant of thousands of AAs where you really have *no idea* what most of them even do. They’re in the background there somewhere and you think they’re helping you as an article in faith. Kind of like the existence of the Holy Ghost, you can’t actually see it or touch it but you know it’s “there”. The only problem is this article of faith is costing you money. So along comes somebody who says, hmmm I want to have some character specific AA unlocks and *I* want to control exactly what I want to have on my heroic character. After having bought the AA unlocks, you find they don’t work to unlock anything. What does that have to say for the trust relationship with Sony Online Entertainment? Of course we can give them the benefit of that doubt which is, it was all a BUG! A mistake, an oversight, except it’s been going on for months. Sony is making money on it selling AA cap increases they know don’t work (for heroics). Here's another question: Is Sony trying to squeeze the last few dollars it can out of a dying game? The cool days of Verant are gone and instead we now have this....

Edited, Jun 3rd 2014 7:03am by curiousjeff
#20 Jun 03 2014 at 5:40 AM Rating: Excellent
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curiousjeff wrote:
gbaji....not to be rude or anything like that but its all well and fine for you to parachute in mid-thread and say "I don't get it". Please let me invite you to go back and read the remarks on this thread.



The cool days of Verant are gone and instead we now have this....

Edited, Jun 3rd 2014 7:03am by curiousjeff


I got some news for you Verant hasnt had control of EQ since what about 2001 i think? Maybe 2002, and you have played for about 12 years? hmmmm.(not sure you would know the the cool days of Verant) Not to mention but Verant was a Sony company from the start. They just reorganized Verant into SOE we know now and some of the originals left by 2002.
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#21REDACTED, Posted: Jun 03 2014 at 6:42 AM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Rukkuss, ordinarily I would say welcome to the thread as I've never communicated with you before. As you have wrongly accused me of lying in our first ever communication about how long I've been playing EQ for and quizzing me on it in your ad hominen attack -- I guess fair is fair. I should therefore be able to rightly accuse you of being an uninformed azz. The press article quote below makes it clear that Verant interactive was purchased by Sony back in the early 2000s where it was ordinarily located in New York and later moved to San Diego. This is something gbaji may know something about as he by some strange coincidence (according to his profile) is located in San Diego as well. Yes, yes everybody knows that the founding Verant people have long since been pushed out of SOE and that's probably why Sony have tried to recapture but failed to find the original EverQuest magic in new launches of many other games. I guess the Verant founding team of EverQuest were New Yorkers and just didn't quite fit in to the San Diego scene so it seems there were from the beginning a clash of cultures that San Diego won and the New Yorkers lost but the real losers since then have been the players.
#22 Jun 03 2014 at 9:39 AM Rating: Excellent
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I like pie... does that count as a human/computer interface social observation?

Smiley: sly
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#23 Jun 03 2014 at 11:05 AM Rating: Excellent
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CuriousJeff,
From the outset of this thread, I and others thought you genuinely had an issue re heroic characters and wanted an answer or ideas re the heroic AA unlocker/cap issue you were having on a non Gold account. That in itself is indeed a genuine and relevant concern re SOE customer service. But you have to admit the post is indeed long and those who want to respond to the issue itself (or come late to the thread) have to look hard to find exactly what is your prime issue that is bothering you. I am still trying to find out about the "final quest" you mentioned a few times in your post (#7). Maybe it is purposely done as satire? I am not sure.

So I and others offered what we thought were possible solutions including going gold/all access and in the spirit and precedence set by your opening post as OP, we all drifted off topic at times including myself. I even gave you some personal experiences (I drifted off topic also) to bolster my point to you that I have experienced their poor service, but my love and passion (and addiction) for the game EQ will make it so that I would not quit EQ even in the face of poor and slow service from their accounts dept. Yes I will go and whine on the Forums and send a ticket in their support section if the problem deserves that option but to quit EQ over this...Never !

You have to admit some things get lost in the long posts (which is also okay, it happens at times) !

Every single person who answered the thread has offered advice. We EQ players(yourself included) are of many backgrounds and player types: Groupers/Boxers/Solo-Moloers/Raiders/Trade skillers and Farmers and no one person fits exclusively in one group. You're best served to take which option is best for your situation (or take none if applicable) but not to take options your not in favor with as a personal attack.

No regular contributor here is like that unless provoked..and all who posted to this point are regulars. Believe me this is not the politically charged EQ Forums..Yes at times we may even sometimes say it as it is... but no one was disrespectful.

I rather the right info and constructive criticism than the politically correct wrong answer. Eleven times out of ten !

Good luck and I hope SOE sorts out their quagmire !





#24 Jun 03 2014 at 11:12 AM Rating: Good
you should jsut /bug it any AA unblocker should take incideration your current AA's and lift the limit.
#25 Jun 03 2014 at 12:28 PM Rating: Default
I invite you and any others who may be interested to consider the quote below from the SOE knowledge base.

Quote:
https://help.soe.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/32163/kw/aa%20unlock
[EQ] Raising Your Alternate Ability Cap - How to raise your Alternate Ability cap - Frequently Asked Questions

How to Raise Your Alternate Ability (AA) Cap
A character's assigned AA cap can be increased (in increments of 100 points) up to 2000 points, using Station Cash, on accounts with Free or Silver membership. Simply follow these steps to raise the AA cap for your character:

Login to EverQuest on the character whose AA cap you wish to increase , and open the Marketplace from your EQ button or by typing /marketplace.

Select the "Services" category, or type "alternate ability" in the search field and click, "Find". Click on the icon for "Alternate Ability Cap Increase". If your account doesn't have any Station Cash, you can add some at this point by clicking the "Add Funds" button, and following the prompts to enter your Credit Card information.

Once you have the necessary Station Cash to cover your purchase, click "Buy Now!" to complete your purchase and raise your character's AA cap!


Hex, I have to confess as a new guy here I am a bit disappointed by your conduct, as I thought you were a standup guy, now I see you bend at the knee to someone named gbaji, who has over 30,000 posts here. As such probably has been posting with you for a long time in the matter of your voluminous posts here. So he gets to parachute in mid-thread and insult both of us, and you pretend not to notice, because he said my writing was so bad that no one could understand it, and that insults not only the intelligence of myself but everyone who responded to it, in terms of providing a social outlet for communication, who obviously did understand it. As I can see where this is going for 17 posts on the thread were fine, he parachutes in and then it is dogpile on the new guy. As such I'm just going to close out this thread as it is not a good use of my further time, or I suspect yours in the continuation of playing the suck up game. The idea that I would post on the issue of needing help on this forum is really preposterous, unless there are some lurking GM's reading these posts, I thought this was a social outlet for players to discuss and yes gripe about the issues of the day to share experiences and to talk. This is the impression I had of being a long time lurker at this site for many years, and now first time thread starter.

I am new enough here that I'm not emotionally or socially invested with any of these people including you, so I will say that to personalize this thread to me is a wrongful feat of engineering. You can't help me, nor can Rukkuss. Despite his pretense to the contrary, this is strictly in the hands of the GM's and out of ours. The only thing we can do is to help get the word out to the player community until the problem has been addressed not to purchase AA unlocks for their heroic characters.

Now I'm at this forum I will stay here. There are however some people that in the future I will know to ignore. Now I know who 3 of them are. As for the other people reading this well, having read the quote from the SOE knowledge base above with a link to the same, they can make up their own minds about the truth of matters. People have innate good intelligence and for the most part a good heart. They know what the facts are, and I wish safe travels to all. Ta ta for now.

(PS: Please note that abuse is always a poor substitute of intellectual content.)




Edited, Jun 3rd 2014 2:30pm by curiousjeff
#26 Jun 03 2014 at 1:07 PM Rating: Excellent
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Curiousjeff wrote:
Hex, I have to confess as a new guy here I am a bit disappointed by your conduct, as I thought you were a standup guy, now I see you bend at the knee to someone named gbaji, who has over 30,000 posts here. As such probably has been posting with you for a long time in the matter of your voluminous posts here. So he gets to parachute in mid-thread and insult both of us,


Firstly, I am not in the least insulted, because there is nothing to be insulted about .Except maybe your attempt to insult me which failed = A classic case of : Pot calling kettle black.


Have a good day.
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