It's no surprise that those who spend more money on gaming will get better treatment. Blizzard is a commercial company, i.e. their primary goal is making as much money as possible. I don't like it as well, but I had enough time to either get used to it, to change it or to ensure that I'm on the side of those who benefit from such a system :azn:
Ah, but there's the last question/issue/problem: whoever said that the "Warcraft crowd" would spend more than the "Diablo crowd"? Yes, the Warcraft crowd is more willing to pay monthly fees, but the D2 crowd was - at least at one point - willing to spend
thousands in US dollars on eBay accounts and items. I acknowledge that Blizzard does not make any money off that eBay stuff directly, but that's their own damn fault - frankly, I think if they'd been smart enough to sell unique items on their own site instead of allowing 3rd party companies/players to do it, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
To answer my own question above, obviously some marketers or Blizz executives decided this, or perhaps they decided that it would be easier to deal with. In many ways, this is best summed up as "RenFair v. ComicCon" - it's not about the level of obsession, but rather, the perception is that RenFair types have a higher average income and less aggression, whereas the bottom end for comic/film geeks is very, very poor and far more willing to complain about little things (see; THIS THREAD, and that includes me).
So anyway, yeah, I hate it, I disagree with it, and it'll be interesting to see what the D2/Hellgate team does with the same conundrum - they announced a few weeks ago that Hellgate's server will be free to all, but you have to pay $10 a month in order to get the larger inventory, more characters per account, and to not have to wait for "queues" to get in pubby games (can you imagine that here? lines?). And rumor has it that they -will- control the sales of their unique items. So, maybe someone else out there already beat me to this? Like the people who created it in the first place? :thumbsup: