New EQ Expansion, Free Tutorial

Mobhunter.com has details from the annual Everquest Fan Faire, where SOE regularly unveils new information about upcoming additions to the game. The next expansion is apparently "Depths of Darkhollow", an underdark-like expansion that will allow for new kinds of gameplay. The other major announcement was the revelation that the new 10 level tutorial will be available as a sort of EQ trial period. From the article: "New players can sign up for a station account and play the tutorial on a special server known as 'escape'. New players can play up to level 10 without having to put in a credit card. The tutorial has all new artwork, mostly from DON but some unique models such as the Kobolds. This lets player get a good taste of EQ without having to commit anything more than download time. This whole package will be known as 'Escape to Norrath'."

Comments

Now I know...

[MyLongNickName]

.. it really is "EverCrack". Just like a good drug dealer, they hook you with "free samples", then reel you in when you are hooked.

Brilliant!

Free works

[alvinrod]

If you look here you will notice a game called RuneScape, an mmo, can be played for free. Notice how it's beating the pants off EQ2, and looks like it will overtake EQ. Granted that the graphics aren't all that great and it's not the most in depth, but when you don't have to pay anything for it and it can be played nearly anywhere, it doesn't seem so bad.

Further proof that you don't need photorealistic graphics to make a good game that people will use.

Re:Free works

[Zeussy]

a lot of my friends work for Jagex (under customer service, gm'ing and so on), was talking to them about Runescape, they get something like a 80k-100k of accounts created a day.

They have 3.5million accounts that have logged in within the last 2 weeks and 370k subscribers.