Editor-in-Chief Chris "Pwyff" Tom sat down at a roundtable interview with SOE's Dave Georgeson to talk about what this Free-to-Play transition means to loyal players.

In other details, Dave notes that SOE is being "as generous as humanly possible" for all existing players. For example, one of the big differences between Gold players on EQ2 Live versus EQ2 Extended was the fact that EQ2 Extended players only had access to 4 races, while EQ2 Live subscribers had all races unlocked. With this new shift, SOE plans to refund any race purchases made by any EQ2 Extended Gold players within the past 60 days. EQ2 Extended's "Silver" Tier will still remain, although its price has been reduced from $10 to $5, so anyone who made the upgrade to Silver tier in the past 60 days will also receive a refund for the $5 difference. When asked about server transfers, Dave said that "all shackles are off!" which I took to mean that players on the EQ2 Extended server will now be able to transfer to any former EQ2 Live server. 

In a follow-up question after the interview, I inquired about EverQuest II's RMT-sanctioned Live Gamer servers and how they would fit into this shift in terms of server transfers. Dave Georgeson's response was that the Live Gamer servers would be discontinued soon after the launch of Age of Discovery and Freeport Reborn. But don't fret! SOE is planning to merge the Live Gamer servers near mid December - Vox will merge with Nagafen and The Bazaar will merge with Freeport - and players will be able to freely transfer servers after that.

New transaction models also typically mean new development cycles for most developers as they work to keep their microtransaction stores updated and fresh. In this regard, however, Dave says that the EQ2 team won't be changing its ways too much. For example, even if SOE was to get rid of expansion packs entirely for EverQuest II, he argues that they still wouldn't do less work. Without expansion packs, the team will simply pop out their changes a la carte, offering players the opportunity to pick and choose their features as they are introduced.

Ultimately, this new free-to-play transition seems to be focused on the players of the game. By closely monitoring and polling their players as to what new purchases they want available in the Station Cash Store, SOE hopes to have a stronger read of their core audience. Dave Georgeson also noted that this new shift has done great things to boost the morale of the EverQuest II team. In his closing remarks, he states that they "haven't been this excited in a long time. The fact that we've stepped up to be leaders in the industry has everyone really motivated. Morale on a development team is everything to the quality of the product. If morale is up… well… you can expect good things from that." It sounds like good things are certainly ahead for the EverQuest II community.

EverQuest II's shift to free-to-play is expected to launch in early December along with EQ2's highly anticipated Age of Discovery expansion and the Freeport Reborn update (which will come with a lot of revamps to Freeport, including dynamically scaling multi-level quest hubs). Be sure to stay tuned to EQ2 ZAM for more information when it becomes available, as well as new guides for EQ2's Age of Discovery expansion!

For more information on this Free-to-Play Transition, you can read the Free-to-Play Player FAQ here. As well, be sure to check out the new Membership Matrix and, finally, SOE's Producer's Letter!

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom, Editor-in-Chief.