EQ2 is epic again, and what happens to your characters?

This trailer makes me wanna smash Vox in the head with a giant stick. One thing I do wish they would have done in the trailer is say something like "customize your character your way" and show character creation for a few seconds and show how you can switch to SOGA models because if I was a new player seeing that trailer I'd think the character models were out of date as I'm partial to SOGA for many of the races. But in any case I feel revitalized and I hope it does the same for new players and brings them to the wonderful world of Norrath.

On a side note many are concerned about what will happen to their character slots when the F2P model goes live if they choose to not resubscribe and take advantage of the FREE.  Smokejumper has addressed this and ZAM has the write up. It says something to the effect of...

Character slots. There are several situations that people have asked about. Here are all the answers at once:

• Do I keep my character slots after the changeover?

The answer is "yes". If you paid for it on the marketplace, we don't take it away. You keep all character slots.

• If I was grandfathered in with the Station Access extra character slots when Station Access was changed last year, do I still keep those extra (grandfathered) slots?

The answer is "yes"

• If I was playing on EQII Live *and* on EQ2X, and have tons of characters on both servers, what happens when the conversion occurs and all my characters are visible on the character selection screen all at once?

This answer is a bit more complicated, and I'll explain, but the answer is "We're giving you extra character slots to compensate." Here are the details on this. Please read them carefully.

1. Everything you read below pertains *only* to characters that existed on your accounts on 11/10/2011. Characters created later than that date are *not* included in this solution.
2. This solution *only* pertains to players that have characters on *both* a Live server *and* EQ2X.
3. That being said, here's how it works: You have a number of characters on Live. You have a number of characters on EQ2X. Total those two numbers together. This is your total number of characters. Now subtract from that value, the total number of character slots that purchased for your account on both EQII Live and EQ2X. Now, further subtract seven from that value. (Seven is the base number of slots that a Gold membership grants you by default.) The resulting value is the number of character slots that we will grant you for free so that you can still access and play all of your characters. Make sense? (There's an example below, in #4, for clarity).
4. Example of #3 : Bob has 11 characters on Antonia Bayle (purchased four character slots) and 8 characters on Freeport (purchased one character slot). The total number of characters is 19. The total character slots purchased is 5. (19 - 5 - 7 = 7) So Bob will receive seven new character slots on his account on the day of conversion so that he can access all 19 of his characters without further purchase.

The ZAM article also addresses a few other things like Platinum subscribers getting "Age of Discovery" for free and the Freeport server becoming a normal server eligible for veteran rewards. 

Oh and did I mention... FREE STATION CASH! That's for players who continue to subscribe to the game after the switch over. 500/month. *kermit flail*. You can read all the details over at ZAM