Currently I have two DDO accounts: one free to play account and VIP account. My VIP account is the same account I have had since I started playing this great game back in April 2006, while my FTP account is at most a couple years old. Originally, my FTP account was supposed to be used for our guild bank, just a couple of characters to stash away some lower level twink or nice gear overall. Well, I knew this would happened, I wound up getting “attached” to those characters as well and eventually that FTP account was upgraded to a Premium account with the use of a gift card. So now I have the unique perspective of playing from both sides of coin :).
I recently just put my main character, Erdrique, through another true reincarnation. He has racked up a paladin, fighter, ranger, and cleric life and is currently now working on a barbarian life. Needless to say, over the years, he has racked up a substantial amount of platinum (although he isn’t plat capped yet) which allows me to stock him up with cure potions, lesser restoration potions, remove blindess potions, etc. Not to mention, Erdrique is my main Cannith Crafter as well, so he can easily twink out gear as he levels up.
Erdrique fighting in the Catacombs.
Well on my FTP account, I had just recently rolled up a cleric named Containment. And I couldn’t help but notice how dramatically different the resources were between my two level 1 characters (Erdrique is actually level 4 now but Containment is still level 1). While Erdrique had a plethora of in-game funds to purchase potions, potential gear, and hirelings…Containment literally had nothing. For right now, Containment needs to earn everything he has from scratch and can’t rely on past adventuring to sustain him through his current campaigns.
This type of thing just helps me understand the perspective that newer players are going through and how well off many of the “vets” are. Which, I hope, makes me more sympathetic to players who are obviously new to the game and to help them out when I can.
Containment in Heyton’s Rest with his starter gear, although not as well supplied as Erdrique, still just as fun :).
It also makes me smile when I remember the days I couldn’t even afford a cure serious potion with Erdrique….those days are long gone now for him. And even after a few runs in Korthos, Containment quickly accumulated enough wealth to start buying hirelings and some wands but it will still be a while before he can find something other than his starter heavy mace to take on his incoming foes. But that is what makes adventuring fun!!
Erdrique's Blog 
🙂 I also have vip and f2p account. But my f2p account isn’t even premium and only has one toon, a lvl 4 fighter/ cleric. I got my main account suspended for a few hours and created the f2p account, and played the cleric for 2-3h. What can I say about it? Being f2p soloing Korthos.. was the most boring experience I’ve had in a long while. As f2p I had to run every quest on normal, and a fighter cleric with cleave… well, I didn’t even need any form of heals and buffs, as everything just died. I ran Korthos town quests on norm and hard without ever even having to heal myself, then the island quests on normal. Not even the protect quest offered any challenge. (note: I’ve since I went vip been keeping elite streak on heroic level, so except for xp farm I don’t usually run normal).
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“As f2p I had to run every quest on normal, and a fighter cleric with cleave… well, I didn’t even need any form of heals and buffs, as everything just died.”
It’s worse than that. While I was still f2p I ran across the “100 favor dash” post on the forums, and did that. You run Korthos quests on N/H/E and a few in Stormreach. Even the Elites are not a challenge on a brand new, no twink character on a fresh server. Except for The Cannith Crystal where I had to use a hireling in order to keep the crystal from being broken and fail the quest.
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I have 1 account only and that’s a Premium. And on that account i have 7 chars on my main server Argo, most of them don’t get enough playtime because i only have a few hours to play per week. But a F2P account to stash away some gear…..that sounds tasty indeed.
And oh boy, do i remember my first days in DDO still very well! A noob to the bone with no gear, no wealth and no knowledge about the game. Fun were those days 😉
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Yeah, playing a FTP and VIP account does put things in perspective for me at times, at least a VIP account with plenty of resources compared to a FTP account with little resources. Although I do enjoy my characters on that account, they original purpose was to be a holding tank or mule for our guild bank, but I just couldn’t leave them like that, lol.
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I follow an eat what you kill methodology with any new characters – that said I can now start them at level 7 with a bit of gear that gets handed to them by the game but other than that I start clean…..it always reminds me how hard it was to start out……I do use the ship buffs so its not all that bad but still building up gear is such a main and reminds of those days hunting for a devotion shield on the AH for my cleric all those long days ago.
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Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
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i remember Lana’s first life, being a fleshy wizard (fail!) and not having any money for healing potions and also the spell inscription materials and spell components were so damn expensive, i tried to avoid high level spells since i couldn’t afford to blow through materials.
now i’m sitting on 4 plat capped toons and a currently lvl 27 hagglebard with a ~40 second long haggle of 129
money in da bank! 😉
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