Question RE: account up- and downgrading

[amrudnick]

I have never subscribed to a MMORPG before, and recently checked out DDO F2P for the past week or two in order to determine if it was worth the investment. I go through periods frequently where I have little free time and I am wondering how much of a commitment going VIP really is. How important is it to maintain your VIP account status? Specifically, my questions are as follows:

1) If I am VIP and want to go back to a free account, will I automatically be Premium (i.e. 4 character slots) or Free (2 slots)?

2) If I decide I don't have a lot of time and don't want to pay for VIP for a while, do I get to choose which characters I keep or is it the ones in the first two (or four?) slots?

3) If I have a character with an item that is only available in a certain adventure pack and I lose access to that adventure as a free member, does the item disappear?

4) How long after downgrading to a free account do I have to reinitiate my VIP status before I lose some of my characters permanently? Do they disappear right away? Is there a set time period during which the server saves them? If I restart VIP during that time period, does everything go back to the way it was?

Answers to these questions will help me tremendously in determining whether or not I want to purchase a VIP account. I know that F2P with purchasable content was made for people like me with limited time who play in bursts, but part of the draw for me is wanting to explore and I don't want to be limited by trying to figure out which adventure packs are worth buying and which are not. Nothing kills immersion quicker than going to the store and whipping out a credit card to buy an adventure.

Oh... one more question, on a somewhat unrelated note:
5) Do the adventures ever use other mechanisms for progression than pulling levers to light up different color crystals? It's already starting to get old and I'm only level 4 :P

[Victorie]

1) Premium.
2) You chose. But chose wisely, because you can't change your mind unless you re-subscribe and downgrade a second time.
3) The items don't behave any differently, regardless of your VIP/Premium status.
4) There's no limit. We don't delete characters. Yes, you can upgrade and get all your characters/access back.
5) I'll let the players give feedback on this...

[amrudnick]

Thanks for the response.
I did find most of it in a sticky after I posted (oops).
I had tried to access the knowledge base from this forum, but it just dumps me back to the main page.
Thanks again!

I think I will try buying a VIP account.