Grandfathering Characters Created Before F2P

Hi folks,

We've been listening to you since we launched the Free-to-Play service across all servers. One of the most frequent issues is from folks that used to play EQII Live and are now coming back to the Silver membership level and becoming very confused because they've never played under those restrictions. "Why can't I play my characters? Why are they locked?"

Of course, the reason is because those players are returning to a Silver membership (which is free of charge) and those older characters are often locked behind the Silver membership race/class restrictions. There are two easy ways to get around those restrictions: Upgrade to Gold, or buy the race/class packs.

But, we don't really want to force those decisions on returning players. It's not a fun experience to come back to something that seemed exciting (F2P) and then get hit with a bill as soon as you arrive, just for the privelege of using your current characters.

So here's what we're going to do.

*Every* character that was created before 12/06/2011 at 12:01 AM PST will be grandfathered in without race or class restriction. This means that regardless of your membership level, you will be able to play any character created before 12/6 without paying for race- or class-pack unlocks.

For any player that previously subscribed to EQII Live servers, or as a Gold or Platinum member on EQ2X, we will also refund all the class/race pack purchases made after 12/06/2011 at 12:01 AM PST and before the time of this posting (12/08/2011, 4:30 PM PST) so that no one loses any SC due to this change.

Of course, this doesn't affect new characters created from now onward. If you are playing at Silver or Free membership levels and want to create a *new* character, you'll still be subject to the regular membership class and race restrictions.

We think this should make a lot of folks happy and we'll get this done as soon as humanly possible, either today, or first thing tomorrow.

See you in-game! Enjoy!