Well, Blizzard has a great game going. 8 Million subscriptions or so, and probably 1/4 of those paying monthly fees are gold farmers and another 1/4 are gold buyers who would stop playing if their easy access to equipment upgrades is cut off. They pay lipservice to getting rid of these aspects, but as they say, customer security is the real goal for them, as it should be. As for whether or not some people buy gold or not, there will always be inflation, as a server ages, so too does it's population of high level characters with an ever growing number of alternate lowbies that must be equipped with the most ultimate of limited items. I am not even sure why i quit playing WoW, guess it got boring after a bit. Not enough side things to do maybe.
I have played Online RPGs since Ultima Online, and one thing has remained through all of them, developers who listen to a loud vocal minority and implement their demands. The game starts off awesome, a few people complain about fringe elements are character balance, the developers listen to this voal minority, and start tweaking things until all that remains of the population are the vocal minority.
Ultima Online succumed to the need to get rid of Player Killing, and instead of handling it properly, they care bear'd the game out of 85% of it subscribers in three months time. It hired corrupt game masters that went from house to house stealing from players and even desroying houses to allow their friends to build on that lot, or more likely ebay payers. In the end, only the hardcore ebayers played/play ultima Online.
Everquest decided the only players that matter are those hardcore guilds, and started tailoring 99% of all new content to keep them happy. They spent months and millions in developing ever increasingly hard dungeons to conquer, feeling it would be months before those guilds conquered them and started demanding more, only to have the uber guilds crush the new dungeon 3 to 5 days later and start demanding something more. Everquest, at least up til the point I got tired and left never stopped trying to satisfy those people, and continued to ignore the small guild people like me. I quit after I realized that after getting to the highest level I had no hope of ever getting my epic items unless I joined some uber guild.
Dark Age of Camelot listened to the crafting community to that factions demise. They demanded changes that would make their wares more valuable, and in the end their wares became worthless. Thus ended my gaming there, as I was a crafter in that game.
Starwars started off great, once again I was a crafter, and once again the developers listened to a fringe group and made sweeping changes, and overnight starwars became a hasbeen and never recovered. They screwed with crafting, combat, classes, equipment, pretty much every aspect of the game got screwed 9 ways to wednesday on a regular basis. The game started off AWESOME and had HUGE numbers of players. The only thing they needed to do was add content, and yet...
Dungeons and Dragons Online just plain sucked, although it had huge potential, the designer's desire to FORCE players to group in order to do anything killed that games population within a few months. The first update only tailored to the uber guildies and super levelers, while leaving out every lower level. Eventually they catered to solo players, but it was too late by then, as the new next thing was already out, Lord Of the Rings.
Lord of the Rings lost me when they did the same thing that Dark Ages of Camelot did. They listened to retarded people about how to make crafting more profitable. They instituted a bind on equip on all crafted gear, thus making that gear worthless to the people who buy it. I sure as hell am not going to pay massive amounts of money to gear up for level 35 when in three levels I have to throw that gear away because it is not sellable due to being bound. I go back and check out my lifetime membership, and when i go to the auction house, there is no crafted equipment for sale, the reason is that it is completely pointless to buy the stuff if it is only good for a couple levels. No point in crafting it, as the materials are worth a fortune, and even if you did craft it, putting up for sale is not worth is, as the auction requires a fee, so your out the fee and still have the crappy item.
Now I am into the free to play games. I tried a couple, but I like Atlantica Online for now. The one thing i like most about the free to play games is that the developers seem to listen to the fringe players demands alot less than the rejects over at the pay to play games I mentioned above. If I have learned one thing from all my years of playing games online, the last thing a developer should ever do is listen to the most vocal people in their forums. There are always going to be ways to change things and make them better, but just remember, when you have 25 people out of thousands screaming loudly that things must change, that leaves thousands of people who are not complaining, and likely are not complaining because the way it is right now suits them just fine.
I buy gold, and I have even paid for powerleveling services and when pwoerleveling is too expensive, i just plain out buy someone elses account. If this company is wanting to protect the customers, I would say that they should have an account login/PW for the webpage where all personal information is and a seperate and required to be different login/PW for the game client.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram