I absolutely agree with Richard Garriott, what happened?

A full set of top quality gear will bump you up between a half and a full tier over the F2P player, obsidian potions will let you grind longer and run faster allowing faster leveling and finishing quest faster. If you really want to full on power game, you could pay folks to help you grind faster and to carry you through high level, but multiplayer, areas. The biggest restriction on hardcore power gaming is the low population, if we were talking UO population levels, there'd be braces of websites offering these services.

 

That was the perfect 100th reply in this thread.

 

And all of that (with the exception of the Obsidian Potions) has nothing to do with Portalarium, other than their decision early on to accept it as an inevitable rather than try and fight against the tide. It would all happen anyway and I support Portalarium's decision to not waste resources trying to fight a battle that can't be won.

 

And Obsidian Potions can be had by getting up from the computer and walking around.

Shroud is 100% excersise to win, get out the pitchforks!!!

 

And this is fine. The pay to win part is that you can buy them from Portalarium for real money and they give you a tangible in-game benefit other than looks.

 

Thank you everyone for your feedback. We will definitely consider the strong reactions that this is provoking in a certain segment of users. We are locking this thread as the conversation is running in circles.