Old EverQuest II Expansions Will No Longer Be Offered For Free

As part of their continuing efforts to kill off the EverQuest franchise, Daybreak Game Company will no longer make old EverQuest II expansions available for free.

That was the news from the EQ2 forums over the weekend, when a player asked when the expansion Terrors of Thalumbra, which was released in 2015, would be made free. That was the policy for old EQ2 expansions, but that seems to have changed, based on the response that question got from developer Kander:

We will not be adding anything further to the F2P line-up.

To be honest, I always thought handing out the old expansions for free was overly generous of SOE/Daybreak. It was something I was unaccustomed to from other free-to-play MMORPGs, which typically still charge -- though sometimes at a discount -- for old content.

That said, why change this now? Does Daybreak think it will provide a huge new revenue stream for the game, which at least one usually-optimistic columnist thinks is on a near-irreversible downward spiral? More likely, it will just irritate players and drive some of them away. And neither EverQuest game can afford to lose players at this time.