Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Ten Ton Hammer: Do you feel the introduction of the Extended service will affect the population of the Live servers?

Dave: In many ways, it's a bit of an experiment. We know what our players have told us, and have told us repeatedly, is that they do not want the things offered in the Extended service on the Live servers. They don't want to have anything to do with that. They like the way they are playing and they want to continue playing in the game where they have to have earned the really cool stuff, and not have purchased it.

We believe them, and that's why we set up a completely separate service. Now we'll see. The fact of the matter is that on the subscription side people have a lot of friends already. They've got guilds, they've invested months of time making really great guild halls and ranking up their guilds. There are a lot of reasons for them not to be attracted to move over to the new service where that stuff wouldn't be in existence. I'm sure there will be some that will want to go over to the new service simply because it's a wild new world. I remember back in EverQuest 1 when they would open a new world and it would be a huge Oklahoma Land Rush trying to be the first kids on the block to reach the max level.

So I expect some of that to occur, but I also expect that after that initial rush and after those people get onto the leaderboards, I expect many will go back to the subscription service. Now will that happen? I don't know. But whatever does happen basically boils down to the fact that we are providing the opportunity that they want. If they end up flocking to the free-to-play, it will be because they like it better. If they want to stay on the subscription side, then that's great too.

The reason we're offering free-to-play is so that the people out there who are unaware of EverQuest II, or who are being dissuaded from even trying it because they don't want to pay for a box copy and commit to a subscription, this will let them get into it and try it for a while and realize that it kicks ass.


Ten Ton Hammer: Were there any other motivations to offer the game as a free-to-play service?

Dave: When I first took over the game, one of the first things I noticed was that this game kicks ass. But unfortunately gamers are of the attitude that if it's not the newest thing then they don't look at it. So what we're trying to do here is remove the obstacles to entry to reach the vast majority of gamers out there who are not even MMO players. I know they're interested in virtual worlds. I have set up worlds for free-to-play players in the past. I know that they want something rich. They want something deep. If we make it available to them, I hope they come check it out.

So in doing this we'll be the biggest, baddest free-to-play opportunity that exists in the world. There isn't anything better that's free-to-play than what we can offer right now. I'm hoping that this makes a big splash and a lot of people find out about it because it is a damn good game.

Ten Ton Hammer: So both services are exactly the same game, apart from some options in the marketplace?

Dave: Yes. Effectively [EverQuest II Extended] is a big bold free trial that doesn't have a limit with an item-based marketplace.

Ten Ton Hammer: How do you plan on reaching out with the word of EverQuest II Extended?

Dave: Right now we're in Alpha, and focused on getting into the Beta phase. The only people who can currently play it are existing subscribers. When we come out of Alpha some time after Fan Faire we'll make it available to the general public.

We think word-of-mouth will carry it quite a way, and then we'll spend a little bit of time tweaking it before we start spending any marketing money on it. But eventually you will see the marketing campaign.

Ten Ton Hammer: Will veteran rewards be available in EverQuest II Extended?

Dave: Not on Extended. We'll keep them on the subscription side and, in fact, we're adding a bunch of new incentives for multi-month subscriptions on the Live service so there will be exclusive items that you can't get anywhere else. We're also keeping the Recruit-a-Friend program going.

Ten Ton Hammer: Can you move your character from Live to Extended and back again?

Dave: There is no return trip right now. It's one of the things we're discussing for later but for right now we're only allowing copies, not transfers, from subscription to the Extended service.

The reason we're doing it that way is because we want people to be able to try it with their high level characters if they want to, or they can start a new character. But we don't want to totally sandbag the economy. We want the structure of the new service to grow in its own form.

One of the reasons we're setting it up as a separate service is so the free-to-play mentality doesn't change the way the subscription worlds are set up. I think the subscription players right now would have issues with characters getting copied over from the free-to-play service if they felt those characters have bought their way to success.

Ten Ton Hammer: One of the perks of silver and gold memberships is more chat options. What does that entail?

Dave: It sounds more mysterious than it really is. At free membership you basically don't have any access to the broadcast channels. Shout, auction, things like that you don't have access to. That's really just troll prevention. At silver and gold it opens back up so you have all those options again.

In fact, since you don't get the broker option until you're a gold member, we kind of think we might see a return to the market methods of EQ1 when people used the auction channel to sell to each other.  We like that idea, so we're anxious to see if it actually occurs. It was very social.

Ten Ton Hammer: This all sounds like great news--great news for new players to get a chance to try the game out, and great news for existing players because it won't affect their game at all. Is there anything else you'd like to tell the readers about?

Dave: I'm personally very excited about this. This is a new thing for SOE. Clearly free-to-play is the trend in which the industry is going. I think that we can be really successful with it.

We had a great year last year. Our numbers are solid. We're doing well. We still have great participation from the SOE community but if we can make a lot of people aware of the game again... well, it's still one of the best MMOGs in existence. It could be great. We'll see what happens.