Now what I can agree with you is this: adding a tax for a service that was always free is definitely not nice, forcing your player base to pay for your survival / expansion / development is not nice; on the other hand, from a business point of view, it may be a wise decision and I really, really, really doubt that it will really cause so many people to quit and even less that it has even a remote chance to kill the game.
And here we have reached the point where you would actually understand the issue, if you had the amount of experience with MA that most of us have.
MindArk has a long history of actively screwing over the players whenever they decide that they can get away with it.
They were especially notorious for this when they were trying to issue an actual IPO. For several years, they managed to discover this new thing that really needed to be in the game, but which forced a lot of the players to deposit a whole lot of money.
In the early days, tailors had to skill up to a seriously high level to be able to craft clothes using animal leathers for texture. Colorers had to train up to very high levels to use specific colors. Then, one day, MA discovered that what we were really lacking were texturizer guns (whatever they're called) and texturizer bleaching attachments and texture BPs. So, of course the tailors who spent a crap ton of money skilling to a high level lost all ability to use textures unless they spent another huge amount of money and time to skill up texture manufacturing and texture applying. And of course the colorers got hosed, too. I mean, why bother to spend huge amounts of time and money to be able to apply high level paint if there are new textures that very closely duplicate them?
The benefit to the players? None. We now all have a storage unit full of a thousand types of looted extractors that we have to save up forever to get enough to sell and that people virtually never buy. Of course, some people will argue that we can now change the textures on things and that is good, but they could have simply added the tools and let the existing colorers and tailors use them. But that wouldn't have forced people to deposit.
Then there was the time where they claimed that there was a huge load on the servers from people equipping and unequipping clothes and armor. So, we needed to have a small fee charged for each time that someone equipped a piece of clothing or armor. Ok, so far not a problem. I mean, hell, this'll cut down on all of those bastards who are bogging down our game by constantly standing around changing their clothes in public. Of course, I can't say that I had ever personally seen anyone doing it, but why would MA lie about something like this? And, it was only 1 PEC, so who cares, right?
But wait- here is the rest of the story. How can they possibly enforce this fee? I mean wouldn't it be enough to simply not allow an item to be equipped if it's condition got too low? No, no, of course not. From here on out, clothes will only look good when they are at full TT, that'll teach those noobs who keep screwing up the server by taking off their OJs. Wow, really? now, I never had a great deal of clothing, but it still cost me enough to piss me off. I really feel sorry for people who had spent big money on nice clothes. Some of that stuff has stupidly high TT value. And of course, the tailors take another hit. Who wants to keep a shop full of fully repaired clothes in the hopes that people will still want to buy them?
Then there's my favorite-
the foot guards fiasco. Amazingly coincidental with a final quarter of a year before MA was planning an IPO, they suddenly realized that they had really screwed up the original armor design and what we really needed were foot guards to go,with each of our armor sets! Those creatures must've been wreaking havoc on our poor shoes! But for all of the damage they must've been sustaining, they still looked good and suffered no decay. Well, someone clearly screwed up there.
Now, they could've said that everyone who has a pair of shin guards will receive a free set of zero TT foot guards. That would have been bad enough because we all would have still had to deposit enough to repair them and buy extra plates for them. But nooooo, we had to buy them from people who looted them, meaning that we had to deposit a bunch of money to cover the MU and the people who actually looted them were just going to cycle the money back into the game. Of course, all of this bullshit only cost me a few hundred bucks. If I would've had some of the big-money armor, I would've been freaking pissed. Again, what did it add to the player experience? Absolutely nothing.
I can go on, but I'm tired of typing.
