While EverQuest has gone free to play, SOE has never made a secret of the fact that they really want you to invest in a regular subscription to the game.

Free to play is becoming so common that we need to start coming up with ways to differentiate the types of free to play models out there.

SOE has adopted an approach that I will call “Drive you to subscribe.” You can play the game for free, and all the content, minus the latest expansion, is available to you. But there are a lot of little things you have to pay to get. There is a whole matrix of what is available for free versus subscription.

And on that list are some things you simply cannot get unless you subscribe. Things like shared bank slots, additional bag slots, removal of the currency cap, and the ability to sell at the bazaar.

And just to prove this point, that SOE still wants you to subscribe, Thom Terrazas has a post up in the EverQuest forums about additional perks for subscribers who opt for a recurring membership.

I wanted to be the first to let you know that we’re giving everyone on a recurring Gold Membership some free items. We’ll have more information about this on Friday but when we release the news article and when the Email hits your inbox, it’s going to tell you that if you are on a recurring Gold Membership under the 1 month recurring plan, we’re giving you one of our Big Bags and some food and drink that gives some benefits. And if you are on a 3 month recurring plan or better, you’re going to get a Bigger Bag + XP potions + Consigned Armor + Mercenary Contract and a few other potions, food and drink. If you’re not signed up to receive emails, you might want to go into your account and click to receive the information. Also, if you are not currently on a recurring Gold Membership Plan, there will be some additional information on how you can take advantage of this offer as well this weekend, starting on Friday. A thank you from the EverQuest Team! (the items, not my leak of information…) -Thom Terrazas AKA “Phathom”

Big bags, bigger bags, and other stuff… if only you will just subscribe like you used to!

How do you define holdouts when subscriptions still seem to be the focus?

Addendum: In the EverQuest way of doing things, the perks can be claimed by a single character per account via the /claim command in game.