Except this problem was utterly avoidable. Yet it was put in anyway. Funcom staff knew this was going to happen. Even if they had their heads so far up their own rears that a QA review or just a plain 30 second bit of reflection didn’t raise red flags, they got effectively universal (again ignoring the obvious
sock puppet accounts, shills, etc) feedback saying it was horrible.
Yet they still went ahead with it. Yes they’re saying they will roll it back, but its already a case of the damage is done. More players have quit, others closed their wallets, and even a number of the ones staying are going to just that much closer to throwing in the towel. And for what? This change solved absolutely no issues what so ever nor did it improve the game for anyone. Those are hard, irrefutable facts. No one benefited from this change so it did absolutely nothing to increase the number of players (aka sources of revenue) coming in. All it did was drive more players (again - sources of revenue) away. For absolutely nothing. Yet the entire mess could literally have been avoided by someone taking 30 seconds to ask basic questions and realizing it was doomed from the start. Failing that there as a second chance to avoid the mistake by taking a few minutes to go over the feedback from the players and realizing it wasn’t going to liked at all.
That is the biggest issue. Bad decisions that should never had made it out of the internal build are being shoved onto the live servers “for reasons”. And its killing this game more quickly and surely than any bug or competitor product.