What Are You Complaining About? It Flies, Doesn't It?

With a truly ridiculous number of highly tempting choices vying for my attention all across summer and right into autumn this year, some of the old stand-bys have all but dropped off my gaming radar. I don't believe I logged into EverQuest II even once last month and if it hadn't been for my EQ25 series of posts, I doubt I'd have set foot in Norrath at all.

I've been so lax in attendance during this Year of Darkpaw that I haven't really noticed most of the special events, let alone taken part in any of them. I visited that big tower in EverQuest back in the spring and did one of the floors but I think I have to accept that I no longer play EQ with any real intent and most likely never will again. (Cue whole new series of posts where I suddenly start playing nothing but EQ for a month...)

Perhaps most surprisingly, I haven't even been bothering to check the marketplace to see what's being given away in EQII each month. I had actually forgotten that was going to be a thing for the whole year. It's not like me to miss free stuff. I must be slipping.

Neither had I pre-ordered the forthcoming expansion, even though I believe I said I had. I meant to, after I last posted about it, but then I just forgot. It shows how far down my list of priorities the game has fallen. I have now pre-ordered. For real this time.

At least my annual subscription has renewed. That's automatic, for which I'm very grateful because I would have forgotten otherwise. With the expansion, I've paid almost exactly a hundred pounds up front for my sporadic enjoyment of the two EverQuest titles (And DCUO, I guess.) going into late 2025. It seems like a pretty good deal to me, even though I could actually play all of them for nothing, since they're Free To Play.

This post was going to be all about the current giveaways and holiday events in EverQuest II but I can already feel it lurching off the rails so why fight it? If you want to skip a lengthy digression on spending money and the associated mental health issues you're welcome to drop out now and pick things up below, with the paragraph that starts "Getting back to the original point ..."

Anyone still with me? Okay, on we go. As I wrote that last paragraph, it occurred to me to wonder why it might be that I'd be willing to pay for enhanced access to one set of F2P games even though I play them only rarely or in fits and starts, while at the same time categorically refusing to pay anything at all for games I play far more often, sometimes almost obsessively.

I play a lot of F2P games that offer some kind of extra benefits you can pay for. The exact names and mechanics vary - Seasons, Membership, Bonus, whatever - but they all work much the same. Usually there's a monthly package of perks, sometimes with differing Tiers of cost and content. Always there's a cash shop for ad hoc, individual purchases. I never use any of them. 

I think that's literally true. I can't recall a single instance where I ever paid money for anything in any one of these games. The only money any of them ever got from me was for the game itself, if it was Buy To Play. Why is that? And does it make any sense?

Thinking about it, I believe I can pare the reasons down to three: miserliness, paranoia and inertia.

#1. Firstly, I really don't like spending money. If I don't have to, I don't and that doesn't apply only to games. I find it very easy to say no to anything that I don't feel I need. Just wanting something is no reason to buy it. What's more, I get considerable pleasure from being abstemious. Not buying things gives me almost as much pleasure as buying them. Possibly more. 

#2. Secondly, I have an irrational distrust of giving my credit card details to any company that doesn't have a physical presence in my local area. Somewhere, if necessary, I could go in and yell at someone if anything went wrong. Not that I ever do that but I like to imagine I could, if I needed to. As for my debit card details, I give those to no-one other than major utilities and financial institutions. I don't trust most businesses, even offline, and the smaller they are, the less I trust them. Not saying it's rational.

#3. Thirdly, I'm lazy and I hate filling in forms. Especially online forms. I force myself to make new accounts to see new games but I hate doing it more and more as time goes on and the least awkwardness or difficulty these days is enough to make me give up on the whole idea. Signing up for free to play access to some new game is generally just simple enough that I push through but the extra effort involved in setting up a paid account is too much to even think about.

#s 2 and 3 are alleviated considerably by Steam and PayPal. Having made the decision to trust them years ago and having taken the trouble to fill out all the paperwork already, I'm far more likely to try a game that can be purchased using one or the other than anything that requires a separate set-up.

Buying things on Steam takes almost no effort and I've already trusted Valve and PayPal with my financial details. I figure if either of those get compromised it's going to be such a huge deal we're all screwed anyway so why not?

Even with paranoia and inertia out of the way, I'm still stymied by miserliness. No matter how amazing an outfit looks, it's very, very hard for me to convince myself to pay money for it. Not infrequently, I won't even be willing to spend in-game money on cosmetics so what chance is there for a cash shop to persuade me to open my wallet?

I might just possibly be able to convince myself that some practical function like inventory space or faster travel represented a justified expenditure in a game but that's a dangerous gamble for the developer to take. It's as likely I'll decide the game isn't worth playing at all, if you have to buy essentials to enjoy it. 

Kind of a Catch 22 from the developer's point of view. I won't buy cosmetics because I don't need them but I won't buy essentials because they ought to be included for free. How are they supposed to make money? Don't look at me. Not my problem.

In my more rational moments, I do see the logical flaws in most of these arguments. It's undeniable, even to me, that $5 or $10 spent on a really spiffy outfit for a character I may spend dozens of hours looking at and of whom I may take hundreds of screenshots I'll stare at as desktop backgrounds for months, would offer a much better return on investment than any number of similarly-priced real life purchases of supposedly practical items I think I need but then, having bought, never actually use. I could give examples but we'd be here all day. The house is full of them.

Given all of the above, why then do I not only feel it's fine to pay Daybreak almost £80 a year to play their F2P games but even thank them for taking my money without asking? That's... complicated.

For one thing, having an All Access account is part of my identity. I've had one since they were invented and before then I had an EverQuest account so in continuity terms I've been a member of that club for a quarter of a century. And everyone knows you pay your dues to be in a club so you can say you're in a club, not necessarily because you're going to use the facilities. That's such a widely-acknowledged experience, comedians base entire stand-up routines on it.

If I let my All Access account lapse it would suggest I'd become a different person and unless I was sure it was a kind of person I preferred to the old one, why would I want to do that? I know this isn't an outlying position among MMORPG players, either. I've read enough of people debating with themselves in public over whether or not to drop a subscription to World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV to recognize a common pattern.

Then there are the actual perks in All Access. I'm not going to go through them - I've done that before - but I will re-affirm that, when I'm playing EQII regularly, the benefits that come from being a member feel more than substantial and significant enough to justify the cost. I always thought it was a good offer and if anything I feel it may have gotten better still in recent years.

Of course, that only kicks in if I do, in fact, play the game(s). Which, as I said, right now I don't. But even when I'm not playing regularly, I'm still covered by the "it's part of my identity" clause so as you see it all makes perfect sense! 

I'm so glad we got that sorted out. I was worried for a moment there I was doing something crazy but now I see it was all perfectly rational all along...

Getting back to the original point of the post and in the unlikely event anyone's still reading after that lengthy and rather disturbing open-therapy session, we are now, at last, getting close to the EQII portion of the Year of Darkpaw, the part where we celebrate the junior game's twentieth anniversary. Twenty years is a one hell of a good run and it would be an even bigger deal if older sibling EverQuest hadn't just spent the last six months bigging up its twenty-fifth. 

You do have to feel a bit sorry for EQII, I guess, especially as it also has to share its 20th with its much better-known, more successful contemporary, WoW. It's not so much always the bridesmaid as always the usher...

Still, EQII is the one I play, when I'm playing any of them, which means free stuff in that game matters more, at least to me. And I do now wish I'd been paying more attention to the free stuff because it seems I might have missed quite a lot of it.

In that spirit, I'm pleased to say that this month's giveaway, which I am going to get, is a good one. Or it will be, when they've fixed it. This is really burying the lede but for what it's worth here it is anyway.

The giveaway in the Cash Shop this month is supposed to be a Griffin mount called Arisata the Noble. It looks great and apparently griffin mounts are relatively scarce so a lot of people would like this one, especially since it's not only free but available for every character on the account.

I wanted one. I logged in to get one. I was ready to log all my characters in so they could have one each and that's quite a lot of work, let me tell you, especially if the freebie applies to all accounts not just to members, which I've just checked and it does. That's like fifty characters on seven accounts if I logged them all in. It'd take all day.

So far I've just tried with my Berserker on my main account and there is indeed a free mount in the Cash Shop waiting there for him. A really nice one. 

It's just not the one that was advertised. It's not Arisata the Noble, the griffin. It's Stratos Aralez Skyvoyager, a mount from the current Ballads of Zimara expansion who looks kinda griffinny to me but since the forum is full of people either saying they already have a griffin so they'd like to keep this mount even if it's the wrong one or that they don't want it because they've already got it and they'd rather have the griffin they were promised, I have to assume whatever Stratos' species might be it's not Griffin. Or Gryphon for that matter.

As it happens, I don't already have Stratos. I believe that requires more progress in the storyline than I've managed, or more research, or possibly both. I'm quite happy to take him (Her. Them. It. Where Stratos is concerned, the appropriate pronouns remain, like the species, uncertain. Also, it's really hard to construct an elegant sentence about not knowing what pronouns to use while also not using pronouns.) 

Whatever and whoever Stratos may be, one thing I do know is that there are other ways to get the mount. I just need to get on and finish the damn expansion. I'd rather have the Griffin, please and thank you, since that one's entirely new as far as I can tell, so I'm holding fire for now.

How long it will be until the issue is addressed is hard to say. There's a thread about it on the forums, to which the estimable Ttoby has replied, saying he'll bring the issue to the notice of the relevant people, so presumably it will get resolved eventually, but that was last Friday and no other dev has popped into the thread to confirm anything's being done as yet. Until I hear news, I am not claiming the mount on any of my characters, so that's a couple of hours of my time I'll get back today. I think I'll use it playing more Once Human.

I did take the trouble to log in one of my several unsubscribed accounts just to check if free players also get the giveaways and I'm happy to confirm that they do. I can also let anyone who might be thinking "Oh, I used to play EQII - maybe if I can remember my password I'll log in and grab that sweet free ride." (Because I know that's how you all talk...) know to give it a day or two. Your character needs to be level 126 before they can even equip Stratos Aralez Skyvoyager and if you haven't played for a while they're not going to qualify so if you take that one and they never swap it out you'll be lumbered with a duff mount you can't even sit on to pose for pictures.

Hopefully, the griffin, when it finally arrives, will have a much more lenient level requirement. In the meantime, we'll all have to content ourselves with the other freebie for November .Yes, there's another. Did I not say? It's a statue of Wuoshi, the infamous dragon from original EverQuest, the one who used to guard the portal to Wakening Lands and who I was at one time so scared of meeting I parked a character I didn't much care about at the druid ring so I could log him to check if Wuoshi was up before porting in someone who mattered.

Or rather it's a statue of Woushi, a Wuoshi tribute act who presumably had to spell her name differently after the real Wuoshi's legal team sent her a Cease and Desist notice. That has to be the explanation, right? It couldn't just be that whoever was given the job of designing the statue didn't know how to spell the name of one of the most iconic NPCs in the entire franchise? 

Nah. Couldn't be that.

Whover the statue is of, it looks great in my Berserker's Mara Village home. Goes beautifully with the architectural style. Even if it may not be such a great fit for a Qeynos inn room, I'll probably pick one up for everyone, all the same. 

I mean, I may as well. I'll be logging them all in for the mount anyway, so why not?

PS: It took me so long to finish this post (Started before nine this morning, typing this at just before seven in the evening.) that there have now been corrections to the announcement and the correct mount will be available after the weekly update tomorrow. So that was all a complete waste of time...