Can we please release SL to froobs? I have a pay account but this would really revitalize the game. Keep AI and eden if you want as pay but SL is the extra content free people need to continue.
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yeah, Funcom can do that, let’s see if they ever will though.
Froobs having access to SL would be nice but Never Gonna Get It.
I necro because I’m always popping into the forums late and infrequently.
But I totally agree, I think Free SL would bring back old paid players and eventually new players would try the game and once the game had a decent population in SL people would reactivate thier old paid accounts if they had fun playing sloob for free.
Tencent could make SL free but stop xp gains in SL at like level 125 or 150 or 200 until a one time fee is paid for. They could charge a fee to unlock access to GMI too. Or/And they could give a debuff to to xp from 1-150 in SL too if they felt the need.
There is so much they “could” do. And Funcom could of done this crap years ago too… best time would have been right before Lost eden or between Lost Eden and Xan.
They let the froobs disappear because they kept increasing the gap in content between Free and Paid.
They could release free SL, no LE, Lox, AI for the 20th anniversary next year.
Even announcing it now, would be a massive holiday boost for the game.
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Yeah there is so much content after SL that if SL attracted a lot of free players some of them would have motivation to upgrade to a subscription and I think I might come back…but Froob to SL alone adds a lot of stuff too.
The only thing keeping me for playing my paid accounts is the low population. What keeps me from playing my froobs is low population and a disinterest for Rubi-Ka, I really feel like RK and SL are two different games.
Some RK now and again was fun but playing as a froob never felt fun for me past like lvl 100
In RKs defense, a fair amount of content has been added to RK in recent years which made much of SL kinda redundant. Content available to Froobs.
Miy Armors are better than most things you can get from SL bar a few, Reck weapons are better than most anything you can get in SL.
Dailies and Reck dailies made SL leveling redundant. If you aren’t paying Kite hill, the fastest way to level 1 to 170 by far is just sticking to RK.
RK today has waaaaay more content to do then it had back in 2003.
Still SL would fill the gaps and provide variety and add the Symbiants and Perks to professions, which change how the professions are played.
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@Alezander (The following is from the perspective of a Paid player with toons from level 100-200 (but focusing mainly on level 100-150) who basically quit about AO around 2010 )
If my memory serves me right Shadowlands didn’t have much Armor. SL wasn’t about armor, other then tier and the dyna drops. we were using AI armor or whatever we could get from RK.
I remember when I first played in Shadowlands the enemies hit harder but the worst thing was they had a lot higher armor and resistance so it promoted teamwork and we needed new weapons.
I feel like Miy’s armor was more for SL players who have a way easier time putting them on and they either decided to throw froobs a bone or felt it was easier to add the content to rubika mobs rather than Shadowlands. (maybe for lore purposes or something?)
And not only did these additions come after the froob population was pretty much gone they didn’t really do much to narrow the gap between free and paid. I had already quit by the time Reck came out so I haven’t done it or know much about it.
When talking about the gap between free vs paid you don’t just look at the gap between froob and SL… it’s more about froob vs players with ALL expansions and content available to them.
A free sl would just have narrowed that large gap a lot with new map/areas and everything else that comes with Shadowlands.
There is no hope of Tencent doing anything and I predict they will shut the game down not too long after the 20th anniversary so maybe 12 or 18 months from now at most.
So I think about "what if "a lot. And the Truth is even if they did make SL free today there are obstacles to it being a success such as…
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Some people claim there are still credit exploits and it ruined RK2019, I didn’t re-sub to try RK2019 so I have no idea what the economy was like on RK2019 but I heard bad things and if that is true it wouldn’t be good.
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Low level shadowland areas like Nasc and Ely are not instanced so areas would get overcrowded like they originally did. But there are Doja Chips and RK daily quests now so it would be easier to deal with.
3)Tencent might need to start interacting with the Community in-game and on the forums again , with the state of the game today just making SL free probably wouldn’t be enough. So they need to be all in and motivated to support AO.
Right before or after Lost Eden would have been the best time to make SL Free or at least right after Xan in 2009.
EDIT: And Armor options for froobs wasn’t a huge problem on Rubi-ka… I mean Miy’s was a nice addition for froobs but for a lot of players it wasn’t some major thing, RK players armor was suitable for RK content…I would think when miy’s first came out SL players appreciated it more considering how hard SL enemies hit under geared players or whatever.
Paid players needed to pay a lot of credits for armor and upgrades while getting new gear wasn’t a major concern for a lot of froobs, froobs were doing so much RK missions and whatever to level that they got the gear they needed easily. SL players didn’t have much options for gear in SL other then buying it from players or farming/earning it themselves.
But Lost Eden took care of that for a lot of people… I hated AO PvP so getting Lost Eden armor was not an option for me because I wasn’t going to do the Battlestation grind.
I dont mind froobs getting SL.
But all this talk about closing the gap between payed and froob is nonsense.
You either pay for the game, and get all the benefits. Or you mooch and stay in your lane.
You cant have it both ways.
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“You either pay for the game, and get all the benefits. Or you mooch and stay in your lane.”
I have so many responses to that…
When there isn’t a dedicated player base for these free players to play with they don’t have fun.
In Anarchy online froobs only really played with paid players until about level 60 as a lot went to SL after lvl 12-25 and might come back to RK once and awhile.
If you want a steady influx of new players you need to keep dangling the carrot… if you give paid players a crap ton of new content and gear then people who for whatever reason can’t or won’t pay to play might stop playing for free and just move on. The more content paid got the less they interacted with Froobs.
If SL had been open to froobs with restrictions then froobs would have had a lot more interactions with paid players and got a feel for both worlds.
Anarchy Online has a lot of content after SL so they could of offered more to froobs. And Froobs and Paid interacting helps a lot of new players and even paid players enjoy the game.
I hope you aren’t disrespecting froobs by calling them “Mooches”, I personally believe if it wasn’t for those “mooches” AO would have died a lot sooner and I might have never gotten into the game.
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The froob system is to give new players a taste of the game, and hopefully get them to subscribe.
Like i said, i dont mind froobs getting SL. Infact i think its a good idea. Like you say, so they can experience more of both worlds.
But people that purely play as froob for a very long period of time, i do considder mooches. And if someone find my opinion disrespectful, they are welcome to do so. Even if it isnt meant as such.
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They should just bring back SLOOB accounts. No idea why they canceled that back in the days.
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What you call Mooching I call fair trade, it was Advertisement and Social marketing for the game. Froobs gave back 100 fold because if it wasn’t from them in the early days so many people wouldn’t have been pulled into the Game. If the game could have maintained a froob population after 2006 that would of been helpful.
The froob program was the smartest thing Funcom did and they ignored it and let it die, they seem to have become really good at that.
But hindsight is 20/20.
You have no idea, me too, I suggested it on the forums and to my surprise a year later they did it.
When I suggested it I really thought it would be more popular.
But I also got a lot of hate on the forums and people kept talking crap about froobs and how stupid of an idea it was… so I was also surprised the see Funcom create the sloob program in the first place.
Anarchy Online has been a crazy ride for me. I have dealt with so much crap outside the game and I only had 2004-2009 of great fun in the game.
I had such an addiction that even though I quit playing in 2010 I am still thinking of Anarchy online all the time. 2011-2013 I felt like a drug addict staying away from the game and I would have literal dreams about AO the first year of not playing.
By 2014 I made peace with the fact AO was pretty much dead to me and would never be the game I once loved. I have a lot of resentment for Funcom and the Elitists vets who loved to crap on everyone and only care about getting what they want at the expense of the new players and everyone else.
The Old forums were so damn hateful in my opinion and anything I said was met with accusation of me being a crybaby, or someone who wants everything handed to them. I’ve tried not to talk on the forums because people seem to think everything I say is whining/crying or that I repeat myself too much.
I totally understand that and I can see how I come off as a crybaby to people who don’t have patience for what others have to say about certain things and I do repeat myself a lot. So it is what it is I guess.
I am guessing they ended the sloob program because it didn’t do too well, but who knows maybe it was a billing problem or something I can’t imagine what made it not worth it to them.
Maybe it would of took off eventually if it had been kept, I don’t know. I upgraded a few of my sloob accounts and only have 1 left but I don’t play it for the same reasons I don’t play my full accounts… the game population is way too low for me.
for me personally sloob wouldn’t be a thing. but i think many actual froobs might have some fun for a while sloobing for 5€/month
Well I’d play froob/sloob/all expansions if I could constantly find teams for stuff like in the old days.
I tried paying a month or two every year from 2010-2016 and I found there were only 3 hours a day when the game was populated and I’d have to play those 3 hours everyday which was too hard to manage, so I’d end up playing off hours and being unable to find teams in SL or anywhere.
So then I tried playing a froob occasionally from 2017-2019 with a lvl 25 doctor twink soloing abby in subway or totow cultists. And I leveled a bunch of froobs to lvl 80-120 doing daily missions.
Then rk2019 came out and I resubbed my $5 sloob account and I still had a hard time finding teams for anything so that lasted like 2-3 weeks and I think I quit right before or after AI was released on Rk2019 server.
I think that giving froobs SL would be great, it would immensively help people who pay for the game as well, since there would be a ton of new players to play with in the currently dead ranges of the game. Players who currently pay for the game would still do so even if SL was free 
When they decided to sell power in the cash shop is when the entire game should have been made free to play. Expecting people to buy expansions, a subscription, AND buy from the cash shop to keep up? For a 20 year old game? Fawk no. And insane business decisions like these are why all of Funcom’s games are either dead or dying and they had to sell the company to the bottom feeder of online gaming Tencent.
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The cash shop sells a lot of convenience items, but no actual gear you’ll ever be using for actual game play.
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