fist of all 80000 rich nerds addicted to eq will join legends.then verant opens new server WOOOHOOOO more rich nerds!!! 3rd server half nerds half normal people being pushed into it.....then NOOOOO THEY DELEATED MY SERVER AHHHHHHHHHHH i hafta go to legends now NOOOOOOOOOOOO:( and then theres like 1 10 dollors server full of slobs that cant afford anything and still live with there parents then bill gates sneaks into the building hits deleat key and everyone scream NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MY LVL60 SK!! lol jk bill gates wont hit the deleat key VERANT WILL!!! and all they have are they legends server and huge piles of money..... o yeah like 300k rich nerds arguing about lvl 60 chars and who has the bigest pile of cash..... NOOOOOOO ATTACK OF THE NERDS!!!!!ahhhhhh there gona kill us all GET THE HACKERS OR SOMETHIN BEFORE THEY DELEATE US AHHHHHH jk dont get hackers inless you wana do 10 years in prison instead of 40 bucks a month...... well thats my 2cp i sugest everyone gets some anti nerd spray before they mind controll us all with huge piles of cash or just play another game...... well i better stop talking lol bye.

I love E.Q., as does most people that decide to play it, but I am in no sense an addict. I play maybe 10 - 15 hours a week, so for me 10 bucks is a pretty cheap for ~50 hours or so a month worth of entertainment. A movie ticket is almost 10 bucks, and that entertainment lasts 3 hours at most. But 10 - 15 bucks a month will be my limit. The fact is that as much as I love it, I know that I can have just as much fun playing a newer title that's out there on the market for the 10 bucks I pay now. I am not in the game for the social aspect, I am not in a guild and I solo almost everytime I am on, so friends and guildmates are not a factor for me staying on E.Q. I know I represent a minority of players, most people do make E.Q. friends and enjoy the social aspect, but there are going to be people just like me that will just find a different game to pass the night hours away when there is nothing else better to do. I personaly have nothing against the Legends server or the fact that it is $40. My only fear is that if they get all 8000 spots taken up (like we all know they will) than the casual gamer like me CAN look forward to seeing a major price hike in the near future as well. This is obviously nothing more than a test for SONY/Verant, to see if people would be willing to pay $40 a month. If you really look at it, it's not much different from regular servers, the additions are minimal and nothing exceptional, it's not like this server allows for newer races or classes, it's just a test. The way they probably see it is if they can give players such minor little additions and they jump on it and pay $40 bucks... then they can definitly boost the price for everyone else without fear. For the casual gamer like me, $40 bucks is too steep and I'll end up on DAoC or something similar. And that's my 2cp worth.

Personally, I hink the legend servers is a great idea. this offers the chance to play everquest in a better view, as it should be played. although, charging 40 bucks a month is a slap in the face. I am not going to play 40 bucks a month to play everquest how it SHOULD be played.

I would gladly pay 20 bucks a month to play on this server, its worth it. I think it would be good to have his in the game, and would like to see verant run all servers this way. before verant implements this; however, they need to fix EVERYTHING on the other servers. I am talking about class equality. they need to force the gm's to play from 1 to 50 instead of the insta 50 they get, this will show them what WE as consumers have to do, and why we get pissy when they can't get their head from their ***. also. we need more spell slots, I would love to see another bank of em, but would be happy with 2, not too much to ask seeing as I have to PAY to play. also, new iksar model could use some revamping, most the people I know are using the old one, including me. hmm.. interactive support tho... thats an idea.. although, isn't that SUPPOSED to be what a gm does? support with problems in game? (someone was REALLY thinking here, as gms rarely do ANYTHING to help most people, there have been some nice ones tho)

Things such as these, the little things that nag players... (game is overall good)need to be fixed before anything like this comes into existance.

just my 2cp worth. my prediction is this will get some ppl, perhaps 8000,but even at that I am not going over.

I mean come on... This is stupid... The only ones who are gonna pay this are the snot-nosed little kids who bought their level 60 character off of ebay and now want daddy to pay for this so that they can have more to sit and whine about. Maybe take it down to like $15-$20 and it might be worth it. As cool as it would be to get an item named after you, its not worth $40 of real money to have a bit of electronic text with your characters name on it. If I really wanted my own weapon in a game I would just hex-edit a text based mub and get the same effect. Well thats my 2 copper. Guess I will just never be a legend...

I think that, when it all comes down to it, this will not be the beginning of the end for EQ as some have predicted here. I think there are far too many of us that are addicted to the game for the social aspect of it more than the hack, slash, cast, etc. of it. This game is primarily a social game and past lvl 30, unless you are on a raid, fighting in a group involves alot of idle chit-chat. Otherwise this game would hold my attention for an hour, maybe two at the most. I have a bunch of friends on EQ that i talk and qroup with on a regular basis. It's big part of the fun of playing rather than beating down everything in sight and complaining when you see someone with better stuff.

You know, I've heard all of this before, back about five years ago when Simutronics took Gemstone and DragonRealms (and their smaller games,) and made them web-based so anyone could log in and play, not just people who were on a specific ISP. "I won't pay them, I already pay for my service through my ISP.... $9.95 a month is too much for a text based game.... I won't pay for something that should be perfect now and isn't." But by and large, people kept playing, and more people joined in, and Simutronics made money.

Then came the "Premium Service." You could have more than one character per account (up to ten,) you were first in line for certain GM run events and your locker (think bank) was slightly bigger than normal players. All for $25 a month. And again people screamed and shouted about how it was unfair, and how they should be getting that stuff for their $10 a month, and how greed would be the downfall of Simutronics. But 30% of the population decided they *liked* extra characters, special events and more storage. Some people really did quit, even though the cost to them went up not a single dime, but Simutronics made more money with fewer customers because the quitters were outweighed by the takers by about four to one.

Then came Gemstone Platinum. A separate server, with a limited population size allowed, more GM interaction, and many special quests would get un on that server first, before the main one. Sure, it cost $10 a month more than Premium, but you got all the premium goodies on the main server, too, effectively letting you hop back and forth between the two servers (you had different characters on each server, but you could still play in both, depending on your mood.) And again, there were loud complaints about gouging of prices, how Simutronics didn't care for the little guy, and how if we all only quit playing for a little bit, we would "show them" and get things back the way they were before the crazy idea was proposed. AND again, a small number of people left, vastly offset by the number of people who subscribed to the higher service; and Simutronics made more money with fewer customers.

Like I said, I've seen this before. In fact, I was a player the first two changes and a Simutronics gamemaster the third. Like Verant, Simutronics prefers to hire GMs from within the player base; and they hired me after my long time as a player, longwinded postings, and helpful pointing out of problems (read, I submitted lots of bug reports.) Why am I putting all this up front in a post call "Some Economic Realities"? So you folks who aren't blinded by your own vision of what "should be" will understand I've been through this before, and I can tell you "what it really is."

First, let us assume the 500,000 player figure is correct, even though I believe it is a bit smaller. Yes, we come up with Sony/Verant making $5,000,000 a month. How much do you suppose the fifty or so massive computers that house the servers cost them? How about the huge number of internet connections of varying speed, but mostly superfast (a single T3 line ain't cutting it folks, trust me.) How about the rent on the building hosing them? Electric bill for all of it9Really high considering CA's electric rates and the number of cooling systems needed to keep scores of computers from overheating?) Oh wait, then we have salaries for IT people, phone folks, programmers, marketing folks, artists, secretaries, janitors, you name it. Then you have the online GMs and guides, who are probably all like I was, part time workers who loved the game and got paid fairly little; but with all the servers, it adds up.

Folks, I won't give exact numbers, because I don't know them; and others would argue about the veracity of them no matter how right I am about the facts. Suffice it to say that after all of that is done, you STILL have to split any tiny profits left over up amongst the several companies that help make EQ. If Verant sees more than about $250,000 a year in profits when all is said and done, I'd be amazed. And in CA, that's chump change.

The facts are, a very vocal minority always threatens to boycott the game if change is made; a much smaller minority actually leaves the game. A much larger group usually signs on the second they can, and the extra cash they spend invariably is higher than what was lost by the dissenter's departure. In the middle is the vast majority of the player base, and they could care less about the change as long as it doesn't cost them more. I've seen this happen three times in the last five years, and it'll happen this time as well.

What it comes down to is that probably 90-95% of the compliants about anything come from about 5% of the player base; you either hire them if they have talent (and help them fix the stuff they complained about) or you watch them quit and move on to the "Game that is soooooo much better, it'll bury your lame game..." where they start whining about everything that is wrong over there within a few months.

Finally, dwell on this: if Verant makes more money with fewer customers, they will be able to make more changes/fixes/patches etc. Any new event, item, quest, system that the "Legends" people get will work its way over to the normal servers within a few months as well, meaning people who aren't paying any extra WILL derive use of the new system; it'll just take longer. Don't worry about the costs, just don't pay it if you feel it isn't worth it. And don't panic and think that the low end fee will vanish. Last I checked, Simutronics still had a basic Gemstone III package you could get for under $10 a month; three years after they offered the $35 a month Platinum package. Verant won't do it any differently. They'll take the extra cash from folks who feel it is worth it, and keep the others.

And, in the long run, everyone will get something from it. Except the snivelling whiners who plan to quit the game. They'll be over at the next one finding new things to gripe about.

I just wanted to add my two cents worth on the new Legends Server. I for one am not against them creating this server. I just am annoyed that the original concept of EQ was supposed to include what Legends is now offering at a premium price. I love to roleplay and get into character, but that is virtually impossible the biggest share of the time. Most people I have met in the game have no concept of what true roleplaying is and just contribute it to the person playing as being wierd. If the Legends server would actually allow this to be a reality, it would be great. However I am afraid it will be populated with power gamers with big eggos and even bigger pocket books who want to see their name in lights. Thanks for listening.

My 2cp on this thing. First, let me say that I am a casual player. EQ is fun, but it is not my life. So what I'm saying may not be relevent to very many people. Anyway, I'm not sure what the big deal is here. If the quality of EQ (normal) declines because of increased traffice or lack of support that isonething. But this stuff about 'we should of had this all along..' is a stretch.
What are they offering? Character Page - nice, but not something that I thought I'd get. Dynamic server - well most GM events happen when I'm not on or are geared too high for my characters. The few that I have had a part of were fun. Legendary Items - having something named after me is unlikely and, well, not that important. Calendar - nice, but I'm not sure what it offers. A timing for GM events? I wouldn't want to see the crowd in that zone if an event were pre-announced way in advance. Maps - yeah maybe this should have been in as a feature in EQ. Tales - that should be be somethig you could put up on a fan site. Guild Hall - even though I'm not in a guild, I can see where they might find this useful,. But, a lot of the better guilds, I understand, have their own external pages. Besides, how much control over content would Verant want if you havethe page on their server?
I won't be using it but I have no qualms about it being available to others. Let's face it the current EQ cost is cheap in comparison to a lot of other entertainment. (But, don't be surprised to see it go up.) If 80K users switch, it wouldn't make business sense for Verant to **** off the larger cash cow subscriber base by reducing the service.

This is what I think EverQuest should have been in THE FIRST PLACE! I'd love to play this new legends, thing, but come on! why dont you just make it like that on all the servers, and 40 bucks? Jeez, 10 is okay to take advantage of people who get addicted, but 40 is asking way too much, sorry verant, I'd only do legends if its like that for 10 bucks, final answer!

When I first saw this and thought $40/mo? Are they out of their mind? When I read farther into it, then I realized what they had to offer for it.
Nothing.
Nothing new that is. New weapons, new armor, new quests... Bah. We have tons of that for $10 a month. Better yet, they get nerfed, or they don't work, or you need 80 players to fight a beast that drops a piece of a quest that is broken.
They also claim to include more dynamic quests and GM interaction. Just getting GM interaction would constitute as more. As for Dynamic quests, will these be 24hrs a day/7 days a week, or will you have to play all day, everyday to just to get the chance to see it.
Since they will allow people to move their level 60's to the server (all 8 of them), where do you think the challenges are going to be? More 80+ player events to take one big bad baddie down.
The events I have seen and experienced have been long, drawn out hours of waiting for something to happen.

These are all things that we have seen on the regular servers. Most of which was poorly done. SoL is a joke and thanks to this offer, it’s an even bigger joke. Better service? Better content? Better performance? Compared to what we have, that could be true. 2% is better than 1%. That's twice as good at 4 times the price.

It is probably the Future of EQ. Once Star Wars Galaxies, World of WarCraft, and the next truly revolutionary game that we have not seen come, they will have to consolidate to fewer servers and raise prices. They will be able to use all the left over equipment from the old, shutdown servers to replace/repair the ones that are left. They will, of course, have fewer GM's and customer service will be minimal to insure their bottom line and besides... they already know how little they can get by with.

I am actually considering paying $39.95 a month for this dynamic server. But I do wonder what kind of people would actually transfer to this server. I currently have a level 25 enchanter but what if I transfer to the Legends Server and find there are not many people my level around? And what if there are but they are super power gamers and pass me up fast? Then I might end up being the only level 25 character on the server...that would just suck *****