In the beginning I apologize for the length of this post and I hope that you'll stick with it until its end.
I've played Allods since the start of open beta, I'm 25 years old now so in a way I grew up with it. I've been with it from the start so I know what I'm talking about. I was there when there were no cash shop items when we fought in Asee and all that was needed was some gear and skill to be successful in PvP. I was there when the Gipat patch hit and the servers were deserted because the population rebelled against the need for the cash shop to be able to play. I was there when we started killing Nogrom with weapons from Warkaz. I was there when people ragequit because of Kazul and when Sarn went down. I was there when the Zak server went live and even played there for a while in the hope of avoiding major cash shop users. I was there when DC was cleared and people payed large sums of gold to the top guilds to get the ruby from it. I got my lvl 47 before most people did ignoring gearing in favor of getting the lvl because I didn't have enough gold for both.
Then I quit for almost a year because I was sick of grinding for gold for countless hours to be able to compete with people who payed large sums of money, played only for a few hours every day and were still able to kill me in PvP because of the difference in rune levels. But as one does with Allods I couldn't stay away forever. I returned to the game, as did a lot of my friends, but not all. I made new friends, and continued the grind.
We had fun in Tep, but even tho we had the gear for it a lot of us didn't have the runes and had to wait for the new patch to be able to kill it. During all of this time I participated in all of the other aspects of the game regularly. With the time spent playing the game I managed to gather a decent set of runes and most of the basic cash shop items without which the game would be a lot harder with only an investment of a couple of hundred of euros. But when I heard of what would be needed for the patron 5 patch I couldn't take it anymore.
During all of this time I was active in only 3 guilds on the League side. In them I was a member, a Domi party leader, a raid leader for DC/Tep, and in my first guild the guild leader. But even with all of my love for this game I couldn't take the p2w aspect of it anymore and decided that I'd quit for sure this time.
But then I remembered that there was a subscription server. During all of my playtime I never really thought about it. For me it was a place where people went to disappear. And as a last ditch effort I decided to pay a months sub to see what it was like there. In the beginning I thought that the server wasn't populated at all, but then I joined a friendly guild and started to notice that there were people playing there.
I managed to lvl up to max lvl a few weeks before the new patch came. At that time I was among the worst geared people on the server and got killed in battlegrounds easily. But I saw that when I fought an enemy who had the same gear lvl or even a higher gear lvl with some skill I could beat them. So I started preparing for the new patch.
When the Wild shore hit I was among the first that got a blue item made. Now when everyone was on the same gear level I finally saw what the sub server had to offer. After so long in the f2p server I forgot how fun battlegrounds could be. Our guild was the first on the server that succeeded in clearing Tep and we were the sovereign rulers in Domi.
But with all of that success a lot of our members felt like there were no challenges left for them to do in the game. The Eclipse raid still wasn't scaled for our server so we couldn't progress there and we beat all other elements of the game. So with the summer coming most of the guild, me among them, decided that we'd quit and leave for other games. It was a sad time for all of us.
After more than half a year as one does with Allods I was curious what was going on and I saw that there were 3 weeks of free sub coming up for the winter holidays so I decided to test it out. I returned to the game, as did a lot of my friends, but not all. I made new friends. As there were a lot of new players coming to see what the p2p server was about we managed to form a guild with a solid core of active players and pushed forward.
The people that wanted to be active in the end game decided to organize in one guild and selected me as their guild leader. Since then we clear the DC raid once a month for new players to get their ruby, we clear Tep every week, we have 2 raids that clear the Ancient Mound and we killed the first 4 bosses in Eclipse and are aiming to progress further.
In the beginning the Empire was geared much more than us and had more active players, but with persistence we managed to catch up and overtake them. We're preparing for the new patch and planing our next raids. With our success and the coming of the new patch there has been a steady trickle of new and old players coming to the sub server.
And this leads us to right now.
The reason I wrote all of this is because I don't want what happened last year to happen again. The reason why I wrote all of this is because I wanted you to know that I know what the situation on f2p is and how hard it is for people that try to play for free or with small amounts of money. The reason I wrote this is because I can't understand why some people would want to stay on f2p when all they get is facerolled by the top cash shop users. The reason I wrote this is because I've lost contact with so many good people and players that quit playing because they couldn't compete with the cash shop and I don't want to lose any more of my friends.
If only a few of the smaller/medium active guilds that play on f2p on both sides would join p2p I promise you you'd have a much better experience of the game because p2p is really the way this game is supposed to be played. And the amount of money needed to play is so low that it's funny.
You can pay 21 euros or dollars and have 6 months of sub. Imagine being competitive for 6 months on f2p for only 21 euros or dollars. You don't even have to pay real money. A lot of my guild mates have chars on f2p and they use them to buy their sub for p2p. All you need to do is get 2100 crystals and you're set for 6 months, or 1k if you want to try it out for 1 month. Imagine if someone offered you a 6 month membership in any club you wanted for only 21 euros or dollars. You'd get that immediately and maybe go once a week. But I know that people who play Allods don't play only once a week, you play all the time and you know it.
And there is no better time than now to join the p2p server. With the patch coming in 2 weeks you have the time to get to max lvl and get the starter items ready for the new patch. You can even come close to finishing the reincarnation quests so you can test out the new Priden race.
So please come and try out the sub server. If you're an active player I promise that you won't regret it.
Don't let this great server die.
Fid
This post has been edited 4 times, last edit by "Mamojebac" (Feb 20th 2015, 11:38am)