It's been a while since I've actually played Spiral Knights properly, probably since a bit after Christmas. I started playing early 2011, and got my brother and 2 of my friends to play it as well. The main attraction for all of us was: We didn't have to pay anything in order to become the best we could be (Technically :P). We could EARN everything in the game, through time and effort. Our internet connection (Living in South Africa) was reliably unreliable, but we didn't care about the regular disconnections during the JK battles, because we knew we could make it up the next day, or the day after, with enough effort. The ability to EARN anything in the game and not being held back by "Premium-only" content, both in PvP and PvE, was a huge incentive for us to keep playing the game, with the added bonus that new content was always being released. My friends slowly left the game, saying it began to bore them and there were better things to play, but I stayed loyal to the only TRULY F2P game I had ever encountered. It literally became a friendship for me (Pathetic as it may sound). I loved the game, its art and soothing music always captivated me, and even once in a while I made awesome friends who would help me and allow me to join whatever run they were doing. The game was beautiful for me, always being the one game I could just lose myself in on boring days.
But then Iron lockboxes came along, followed by the malevolent Shadow keys. Under the guise of F2P content, the boxes sat there and convinced us, making us foolishly think that we could really, realistically, earn the CR and CE needed to open enough boxes in order to obtain the fabled and beautiful tails, wings and halo's we all wanted. One box was opened, then another, then another, till a few individuals had opened hundreds upon hundreds of Boxes worth tens of thousands of CE, and had not gotten the single item they wanted. Nothing. Absolutely zippo. Then OOO decided to introduce the Shadow Lairs, with their incredibly over-priced Shadow keys. This was when the seed set in deep within me: The feeling of betrayal. OOO had effectively and stealthily brought P2P content into the game. Immediately I joined the protests and wrote on the forums, denying that such a thing be allowed to exist in this pure F2P game, and weeks later OOO allowed the keys to be purchased via a vendor. Unfortunately, the damage to my trust in the company had been done, and slowly I started to play the game less and less. I played during Halloween and Christmas, and had quite alot of fun playing through those good old clockworks stages with real incentive to do so. My internet connection started degrading however and I was eventually unable to get the patches anymore, so I said to myself that one day, when my connection is good enough, I'll download the game again and play it to my hearts content, knowing that the game would stay true to its F2P promise and would be as beautiful then as it was when I first entered it. I guess I was wrong. Crimson Hammer appeared, P2P exclusive weapons were revealed, and my hopes were completely annihilated. Spiral Knights is no longer the game I once knew, and it's clear to all that OOO's greed has corrupted the soul of this game.
TL;DR:
Spiral Knights was the one and only F2P game I had ever encountered that allowed you to experience every shred of its content without having to pay a cent, and it has now betrayed me, and really, all of you. Because of this, I'm leaving Spiral Knights for good. I'll check into the forums every once in a while, just to see if OOO keeps on releasing its corruption into this game. Maybe one day I'll return, but at this rate, I doubt it.
Spiral Knights, you deserved better than this.
I'll miss you all, give that JK a good old Umbra Driver blast for me.
Farewell.
Spiral Knights was the one and only F2P game I had ever encountered that allowed you to experience every shred of its content without having to pay a cent
Look at OOO's other games. Puzzle Pirates allows you to do *everything* via the equivalent of CE, and there is a huge amount of content that you can play without even spending the equivalent of CE. It is getting harder to compare player numbers, but Puzzle Pirates has, since about last fall, had about as may players as SK. Puzzle Pirates is a far deeper game too. For example, it is quite possible for top ranked sword fighters in Puzzle Pirates to defeat easily over half the players with the equivalent of proto-sword (stick) vs 5* (falchion/skull dagger/katana), simply because the top ranked sword fighter has more skill in the game.
Actually, I'm almost certain OOO's Whirled and (now dead) Bang Howdy also allow all content to be played for free via the equivalents of the CE exchange. To the best of my knowledge, the elevator pass is the first ever departure from OOO's past.