On guest passes: Anyone who owns the content, whether VIP or F2P, will be able to purchase them for the content they own.

On items from the store: All items will either be bound the the character, or to the account.

On resurrection items and shrines: They will not be usable in raids.

On LFMs and Pugging: When F2P players are looking at an LFM for a quest they do not own (presuming the party leader has chosen a quest for the LFM) the LFM will appear as ineligable, just as if the player was in the incorrect level range. In addition, a button will appear on the LFM which will take that player directly to the page in the store where they can purchase the apropriate adventure pack to gain access.

On viewing F2P players in game: The cast was correct that there will be no way to look at a F2P player and identify them as such.

On to business. In our coverage of the Dungeons & Dragons Online Unlimited (DDOU) story last week, we noted that DDO will be going "freemium" with purchasable content areas and an item store. I intimated that one dark spot on this otherwise sunny notion was that Codemasters had no plans to bring a free-to-play version of DDOU to Europe at present. Codemasters in turn wrote us a note saying that should pry a little deeper, that the decision wasn't entirely their call. So we brought the matter to Turbine's Adam Mersky, and he responded with this:

"As in the past, we run our Closed Beta tests on our servers here in North America. As we progress through beta, we are continuing to work with our European partner to localize the content as we prepare to make it available to players in that territory. Players in Europe will get access to all of the new content including the new levels, class and dungeons and the service will continue to operate the way it does today. We will announce our plans to roll out the new business model globally at a later date."

So rest assured DDO Europe, whether or not you'll have a free-to-play option, neither Turbine nor Codemasters will leave you behind, and more news is coming soon. It's good news for us, too, our European viewers are some of the most active folks on our dev chats and hosted Q&A sessions and often come up with some great questions for the ever engaging Kate Paiz and company.

Crispy Gamer: So what I was getting at with that last question was what other benefits would paid subscribers get beyond what other players get.. like do they get early access to upcoming content?

Fernado Paiz: Oh yeah. Thank you, that’s a good question. We do have in our plans to give VIP’s priority access to new content. When we release our first big update after launch there will be a content pack called Dreaming Dark. And when the Dreaming Dark Content Pack goes live it will first go live to subscribers and it won’t show up in the DDO store right away. We haven’t quite figured out the specifics on how long that will last.  That is one extra benefit; you’ll get a first peek at new content and then a little later it’ll appear in the DDO store. And, as we are doing now with our beta, our subscribers always get priority access to testing new features, access to our test server – and in particular for this beta (which is a closed beta) they all got invites into this beta as part of the announcement.

Adam Mersky: They are the first wave in.

Paiz: With this new release, the hirelings are a bit smarter, and you’re able to hire more than one of them at a time if you buy a special kind of contract called Gold Seals that are in the DDO Store.

Crispy Gamer: So let me ask you, when this launches roughly how many adventure packs will there be available in the DDO store?

Fernando Paiz: I have to check, but I think roughly around 16. (Jerry's note: Turbine's Adam Mersky later corrected him in the article, saying it's actually about 20.)  Some of those are brand new and some of those are things we’ve built out as premium updates to the game. There are quite a few things you can play up to level 11 or 12. Then after you play we also give you Turbine Points as a reward for play, so if you reach a certain level of Favor (which is a measure of how many different quests you’ve completed) you’ll get back Turbine Points to spend in the store. And so, a player can, if they choose to, save up those Turbine Points, keep playing with multiple characters and amass enough points to buy the additional content.

Re: VIP vs Free features

- Any content or features you unlock with Turbine Points as a Free person are yours, you don't have to keep "re-unlocking" it. If you're switching back and forth, the things you unlocked with your Turbine Points stay unlocked.

- The difference in being a VIP vs a Free player is kind of like the difference between leasing or owning a car. Leasing lets you drive, but if you stop paying the lease, you don't get the car. Metaphorically speaking, we only had the option to lease before. Some people like leasing a car more than owning a car, and vice versa, but there is a choice. However, the money used to lease the vehicle doesn't get automatically applied towards the ownership of it, and ultimately over time you may end up spending more trying to own a leased car, so to speak. That's going to be a decision that is ultimately up to the individual driver, and depends a lot on the way and frequency you like to drive.

Point being, some people will like subscribing and some will prefer to unlock everything with Turbine Points for the long haul (baring in mind that whenever something "new" comes out, it could be something that needs to be unlocked with Turbine Points too). The beauty of the new system is customization for everyone's budget and play style, but the choice is still yours in how you want to proceed. If you like everything you have now, staying a VIP means you're really not going to notice anything other than some Turbine Points appearing for you for free every month, and more choices of things to get on top of what you already had.

Re: Favor

- Favor won't be reset, you're likely going to want it for times if and when we offer new favor unlocks

- Saw a question asking about if the normal favor system will still be around (i.e. the dragonmarked houses etc offering rewards for achieving tiers of their favor). Yes, you'll still be able to earn the normal favor rewards that you see today, plus whatever you can earn from new factions or new tiers of favor within factions beyond what's in there now

- At this time there are no plans for "retroactive" favor, but we are still actively monitoring feedback on how Turbine Points interact with the favor system. I encourage everyone to participate in the beta to keep abreast of the details and offer feedback as we go! (now if you're having beta key issues, that's an issue for another discussion)

- On Drow, yes you can use Turbine Points to unlock it instead of favor if you want, even if you're a VIP. If you're a Free player and want drow, you can unlock it via the favor system or Turbine Points.

Re: VIPs and Level Sigils vs Free

- If you're a VIP you don't ever deal with the level sigils. Level sigils are for Free players only, allowing them to gradually raise their cap.

- If you're Free, periodically you'll need to find or use Turbine Points to acquire sigils to progress in level i.e. your Trainer will need to see a sigil before they allow you to achieve above a certain threshold of levels.

- If you are a Former VIP, any characters you leveled as a VIP will retain their progress, but depending on how high level the characters are, they may need a sigil (or sigils) to progress once you become Free. Example: If you were level 16 and become Free, you'll still need a sigil to reach level 20, but you don't need to go back and find lower level sigils for the levels you already completed.

Re: Slots

- If you're a VIP who has more than 10 characters, whether due to server merger or a bug or character transfers or what have you, you will still be able to play those over-flow characters. You won't be able to make a NEW character though until you either delete down to the next available slot, or unlock enough slots to go past the characters you had.

- If you're a VIP who downgrades, you'll be able to pick which 4 characters you want to occupy your 4 slots, but to play over-flow characters or to make a NEW character, you'll need to do the same thing a VIP would do: either delete down, or unlock up (or some combo of the two)

- If you're a brand spanking new free person, you get 2 slots, and if you want to make characters beyond that, you'll need to unlock more slots.

- You can unlock more than 10 slots as a VIP, and as a Free player you can also unlock beyond 4 and even beyond 10 using Turbine Points. So if you're someone who loves to make alts, have fun!

- Any slots you unlock with your Turbine Points remain open. So if you're a VIP who unlocks 5 slots in addition to your 10, and then you downgrade, you'd have your 4 slots available from downgrading, plus the 5 you unlocked for a total of 9.

Re: Inaccessible Characters

- If you're downloading the game and it tells you your character is inaccessible because you haven't finished downloading, you'll need to let the TDM download the portions of the game where your character is before you can log them in. TDM was intended for brand new people, so if you're a returning player you might find some characters hanging out in places that are further in the tiered downloading.

- If your character happens to be parked in a content pack you didn't unlock with Turbine Points (example: you're in the public zone of a content pack that you didn't unlock), you'll be able to log into the character, but you won't be able to enter any of the quests associated with that area. You'll also be able to take the character to other free parts of the game so that you're not "stuck" there.

- If you downgrade to Free, some of your characters may be inaccessible because you don't have enough character slots to house them. You can unlock more slots and pick which characters go in those slots.