Just curious.
Also, my two cents.
The update was $3.95USD. I was going to not get it if it was $10 or more, but it was $4. I paid it and started playing immediately, and was pleasantly surprised with the levels and gear.
I have to ask...
To the kids playing...how much do you spend on soda in a day? For that matter, how many of you use the vendor machine at school? Switch from soda to water for a week and pay for the DLC by going to your local minimart and picking up a game card or pay as you go visa/mastercard/whatever. This is the 21st century, and there's MANY ways to make your money count everywhere. If you want to pout about the f2p thing...maybe you should return to your studies.
To the adults.
please PLEASE don't try to play the "f2pf2pf2p" thing. Nothing in this world is f2_, and if it is, it's not worth your time. A business puts out free samples to entice customers to pay for a better quality service/item/etc. OOO has been content to let the layabouts live in relative splendor in comparison to other MMOs by making most everything CE based. Now...it seems that you f2pers lose a lot in the equation because you have to grind FSC 3 times a day to earn enough cr + CE to get anything accomplished. Turns out having that CE on-hand didn't help much in this situation, did it.
I have suggestions to the ragequitters. Take your CE and sell it all. Leave for real, and ruin the game economy while you're at it. Don't go into hibernation mode, because you won't be back. You'll log on in a month and find out that...not only did they NOT UNDO THE PAY-ONLY, BUT THEY MADE ANOTHER ONE!!!!!!! AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!! so you should just quit for good. Hit that sell button while you're drinking that $5 Starbucks and think about which horse you're backing.
Since we're having these cathartic death-rattle moments, I'll draft mine as well, as I'm not long for this game either.
I started playing right after Alpha hit. I didn't have enough friends online to farm JK, I had never even BEEN to FSC, and Snarb and RT didn't exist. When I decided to start buying CE, I spent as wisely as possible and used the purchases to open up new alts, who...since being paid for, had their own mist. I stopped this process after 8 or them. They made me plenty of money before the AH market fell through in all aspects.
I joined a few guilds, all of which were nice until the leaders had real-life issues to deal with.
Now I'm a GM, along with a couple other players. I'm close to cashing my chips in, as I have crafted 90%+ of the weapons in the game. I don't think I have the wherewithal to make the armors, unfortunately.
I had a lot of fun on SK. I thought it had more replay factor than Everquest, which I walked away from at lvl 38 + the equipment and skill to level to 60 (the cap at the time). It took too long to farm xp. It's more fun that WoW, which I gave 5 characters runs up to lvl 10. In-game interactions bordered on insane, they were so moronic, and again...grind took too long. I didn't even give the DDO game a week, as it just wasn't put together well. I tried La Tale and that other one it's based on...but boy are there stupid people there.
I think that's my problem. Stupid people. Reactionaries, pouters, l33tspeakers....the whole line of annoying gamer archetypes. I leave when I'm outnumbered, or when the grind takes longer than an hour chunk.
This game used to have neither problems. Now it only has one of the problems since Steam was connected. Those are going to be the reasons I quit, not that they asked me for 4 bucks in exchange for a lot of neat levels, a few brand new gremlin enemies, 2 awesome weapons for gratis, and a REALLY NICE helmet for shooters.
I completely agree with the drop in player quality after steam was introduced. Before june, it seemed like the player community was much more mature, with more people typing using passable grammar.
I'm going to stick around for longer though. If you want to, you could donate to me before you quit :P make somebody happy before you leave~