first of all, i would like to thank everyone for the thoughtful replies to this discussion. it has been interesting and informative to read your thoughts regarding the SK payment model and how it stands as a game compared to other popular online services.

@stabystab: you raise a good point about the CE vs. subscription payment model, and it's true that the CE model doesn't punish you for taking a week off (though for periods of a month or longer you can deactivate your WoW subscription and renew it at a later date). as for being able to access all of the SK content for free, that's true in the same way that you can swap a cell phone for a porsche over two years like this fine fellow (http://jalopnik.com/5591644/how-a-17+year+old-craigslist+swapped-an-old-...). your progress in SK is limited by how much money or time you are willing to put into it. if you don't want to put in any money, it can take hundreds of hours to amass a decent 5* armory, or tens of hours over months of playing as time-efficiently as possible. if you don't want to put in the time, it can still take dozens of hours and a $20 or more investment.

i think the $ cost of CE and the CE cost of crafting makes it take too much time and money to advance in the game. why? because of your last point: it is exactly because SK is a young game with limited content, slow response to in-game issues and significant technical problems that i wonder why OOO believes it is worth that many hours, or that many dollars. as i said, for the price of one month of WoW or several great games on steam you get enough CE to get your foot in the door to the deepest levels of a comparatively shallow pond. i sincerely hope they continue to add more and more interesting content to this game as time goes by (and i don't mean bomberlag :P) because i do plan on keeping this game on the back burner.

@alfaomega1: to me, having to play 180 hours to reach the endgame content is the bad part of SK. you don't *need* 5* gear to play on tier 3, but you DO need 4* gear, which is still a huge investment of time, a huge investment of money, or a significant investment of time and money. i think your point on how it's not hard to go infinite misses my point, since i mentioned several easy ways to go infinite. the problem is not in going infinite, it's that doing so takes up a huge amount of time if you don't pay, and a significant amount of time even if you do pay. i could grind away arenas or basil runs for "profit," and i would be forsaking other important parts of my life. i could buy CE to avoid the grind, but the price is high enough that i don't feel it is worth my money, and i don't want to continue to financially support OOO as long as they keep certain things i disagree with.

@volebamus: you raise a fair point in that having a full 5* arsenal is not required to reach the core or beat vanaduke. however, like many MMOs, SK is a game with many "addictive loops of frustration and gratification," and has "the need to make progress with points or collect things." most players naturally see getting 5* equipment as a goal, especially those with 4* equipment who are so close but, considering the cost of moving from 4* to 5*, actually quite far away. i acknowledge this even in myself: i have reached the point where the levels and enemy patterns are no longer surprising and challenging, and i still find it enjoyable to play for a half hour a day because it satisfies my need to make progress and get sweet weapons, but then i have other things to do in life and am comfortable knowing it will take me a while at this rate.

@xiax: i can sort of agree with you--fighting monsters and trading items are certainly part of the reason people play spiral knights, but the fact remains that the primary measure of progress in this game is the level of your equipment, and i think you underestimate how badly people want to level it up. higher-level equipment makes the dungeon crawling more fun, looks cooler, and enables you to access areas with better items to sell, so even people who mainly enjoy other parts of the game have strong reasons and rewards for leveling up their equipment. that is the way this game has been designed. as far as WoW not being "unlimited" that's just arguing semantics, since nobody would play for all 744 hours in a month. i would argue that $15 spent on WoW is worth more than $15 spent on spiral knights: you get access to a huge, beautiful world full of lore and backstory, a thriving player base and a staggering amount of levels, enemies, classes, races, skills and equipment, and you don't have to spend your time playing to earn in-game money to spend on more time to play the game. $15 spent on spiral knights gets you 70% to the endgame in a tiny world with limited combat, no unique skills, a small variety of bosses, levels and enemies, gameplay you've seen before in any arcade, and a grind just as punishing as WoW if not more so, because at least when you level up in WoW you do it in a bunch of different locations.

you're also misinterpreting my comparisons to other games. if you're going to play SK f2p, TF2 offers a much smoother, dynamic f2p multiplayer experience with no grind and way fewer technical issues. if you're going to spend money and dozens of hours on SK, you could spend the same amount of time and money on games with incredible stories or revolutionary gameplay and, again, no grind.

@starlinvf: then you're spending ~20 hours to afford one piece of equipment, which is exactly the kind of slog that will convince someone to shell out some cash. i mentioned better ways to make quick money, anyway: if you want to spend as little time as possible, craft a 3* item a day using 100 mist and 50 CE and sell it in auction. if you like fighting monsters and want to make more money, use your mist to get to basil in t3, buy some popular 4* and 5* recipes and sell them at a profit. i don't know about you, but i find the prospect of grinding 20 hours for a single item horrifying.

as for the cash shops in the games and platforms you mentioned, i am completely okay with those! i don't have to buy hats for my portal robots to enjoy the full gameplay and story experience of portal 2, and if people want to buy emotes and other silly crap they are welcome to do so. but with SK, the money and the gameplay are intertwined at every point.

@ariblue: as i mentioned earlier, the comparison to WoW and TF2 is why i find the cost in time or $ to progress in SK off-putting. for less than the price of a starter pack that will help you get a 5* item or two and dozens of hours of playtime in a comparatively shallow game, you could play in a carefully crafted world that has had a huge development team and years of refinement behind it. if you are an f2p player, you could either grind away at SK and deal with lag and frame-skipping to reach the challenging portions of the game and earn sweet weapons, or you could play a refined, smooth multiplayer experience and focus less on getting good gear and more on getting good at the game. in either case, SK is the worse deal, so i find it disappointing that OOO has set the $ price of CE and the CE price of crafting at the levels that they have. you raise a fair point about some people disliking subscription models, though.