Dupe thread much?
Of course the original was less assholeish, without things like “demand” and the exclamation mark at the end.
I of course agree with the idea, since I posted the first one, but not from some sense of entitlement as the OP does here. Mostly because I’m not “an Alpha”, I have multiple subscriptions.
But conditions of the Alpha skill expansion is a little bit of a breach of trust on the part of CCP against those it is trying to court. CCP has made it clear that Alpha is not an unlimited trial but a new way to play that they intend to monetize. Before the Dec release the way that Alphas could pay, was with buying PLEX and/or Aur. These are real world money payments for in-game things other than upgrading to Omega. And at least buying Aur (now PLEX) to buy and bind SKINs to a single character is a real world paid transaction. Any Alpha who did that is a paying customer of CCP.
Now comparing Apples to Apples, or Alphas to Alphas. Early adopters of Alpha accounts were basically beta testers for the Alpha program, which now because of their play and feedback has been expanded. (Into what I think is a good, very playable system.) The only problem is it “rewards” the early Alphas with an inferior product to any new Alpha.
Aside from the intangibles like standings, in-game reputations (something so valuable according to CCP characters can never be renamed), and other grinded for character-bound things, it also creates the situation where the old Alpha is offered the choice “either pay us more to have the same product we are now giving for free, or lose the things you’ve already paid for.”
I admit this is a very small sub-set of Alpha accounts, but there are such accounts who are paying Alphas and have been slighted in this update. I see no harm in saving all the Alphas some restarting time for the sake of those who have made CCP money in the Alpha beta testing process. (I assume that this number is actually bigger than we think, because by expanding Alpha CCP has taken a stronger “it’s not a trail” stance and more of an “it’s a valid gameplay option” stance, and this indicates that the Alpha program is making them real world money other than converting into subscriptions.)
I would never wish such things on EvE, but imagine if there was an over-all skill-cap (less than training all skills) or that your efficiency in doing something in the game was based on a percentage of relevant SP to total SP. Everyone would be up in arms about it, because never in the history of EvE has training a skill come with an in-game cost (other than the time to train it). This is what the expansion has now done, every SP an Alpha trains costs not only the time to train it, but also the opportunity cost of other skills you can’t train (without paying for those SP).
I know there are some of the old vets who feel “I paid so you should have to pay”, that’s understandable, But if that’s the community’s attitude to change, new players, and a new business model, then we really are in a sand-box, and we have failed to grow as people since those first years playing in a sand-box.
-Anjyl