Freedom is now live!

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

So anyone you know who wants a free account may now have one.

Enjoy!

[BlueBard]

I finally got in on my old, new account last night.

I have to say, I'm pleased.  I activated a few server slots (wasn't expecting to get five, that was nice) and ran one of my old characters on Guardian for awhile.  Nothing of consequence was missing, and all of my Vet rewards and bonus pack items were available.  It seems that the free accounts have considerably fewer enhancement storage slots than I had as a subscriber, but it's not a great hardship.

I'm glad that the Paragon Transit system is no longer divided between the Green and Yellow lines... BIG difference!

I also started a new character just to get a feel for it.  The new tutorial feels far less grindy and more dynamic than the old one.     But I suspect dumping everybody into Atlas Park is going to be a problem... it's very busy.  I lost the mapserver almost immediately after I zoned in and before I could talk to the first contact.

Not sure how I feel about the new character creation UI.  It's good for new players who aren't familiar with how to set up a character to match their playstyle.  But selecting the powersets you want seems less straightforward than before.  I'll have to get used to it.

My biggest problem is making the adjustment back to CoH's UI after playing Star Trek Online for so long.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Note that you can skip the playstyle selection screen entirely when setting up a new character.  Just select the AT selection tab at the top and you can select from all ATs again.

[BlueBard]

I'll tell you what else I like.  Your character is your character is your character.  No conversion process involved that I could see and if there is one it's seamless going free.  I'm guessing there would be no problem going back and forth between free and VIP?

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Nope, no conversion.  Free characters are the same as VIP characters.  Certain ATs and powesets are locked out, however, so those characters are locked out, and IOs are also locked out, requiring you to do some reslotting, but other than that, your toons are untouched.

And yes, you can freely transit between VIP and free and the game will lock and unlock things for you automatically.  Note that you will only be able to place your free character slots once.

[BlueBard]

Yeah, I did notice my IO's were "deactivated".  I don't think I'm going to plan to worry about it.  More than likely I will never go VIP.