New bit of news recently posted on the Eve online forums:
A long overdue and much needed change will be put in place with the Wednesday, 15 October 2008 patch. Ghost Training, the continuous skill gain on accounts in an inactive or expired state - will no longer function after Wednesday, 15 October 2008. This practice upsets the balance of the game, and capsuleers who actively put their time and energy into working on their characters will no longer be unfairly affected by those few who have not.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=896003
Luckily I've never really benefitted from this, as I only managed to gain a few days worth of skill training from doing battlecruisers 3 to 4 when I last quit Eve, I do constantly kick myself that I didn't keep up with the extra 15 million skill points I would have expected to earn during my year off if I kept on popping on and off every 2 months or so as I set the longer skills training.
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4 comments:
Sure is a lot of discussion on the forum thread already, wow. Not sure how I feel about this one...it's not something I've ever done, probably not something I would do. I think CCP has a right not to have to maintain data updates on unpaid accounts. But I can think of circumstances where someone needs to be away from the game for an extended time. It seems unfair to make them pay full boat to keep their character skilling...maybe a skill-queueable inactive account at a reduced price might address those issues. Probably a whole mess of game balance impacts THAT would have, though.
I've always been a paid subscriber, this will indeed hit those that live (and play) paycheck to paycheck. None the less I like the idea that they no longer will be able to sponge off of CCP.
It's hard not to notice that this comes at the same time Iceland has had its three largest banks nationalized, and hard economic times are hitting the world. I wonder how CCP's balance sheets are looking, if they're only now taking action against "essentially supporting and maintaining a large number of customers that weren't paying us regular subscriptions".
I wonder if they are being pushed by their investors into bottom-line "improving" actions. Who knows how inactive accounts are represented on their books or how it might affect taxes, but sure seems the timing on this was rather abrupt and the "story" not quite kosher.
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