[Info needed] Losing 7700 gold for LOOKING in a chest

I am pretty pissed at this mechanic. I've spent hundreds of real life dollars into this game and with a simple click of a mouse all of the people I had attracted to this game to play with have quit. This really sucks, I was hoping to play this game with friends but the lack of a warning that they were about to do something wrong drove them all off. I guess it's good that they decided to quit during the free trial and before the next telethon.

I completely understand the reason for the fine, but as a new player we have no clue what we can and are allowed to do in the game so how is taking all of the gold we've earned in the weeks of playing because we clicked on something we didn't know we weren't supposed to going to make us want to keep playing? The fine is outrageous, but we'd be OK with it if we were warned we were about to do something that was against the law.

To elaborate, if I had 100k gold then this mechanic would not affect me much. But when I've never even seen 10k gold, taking 90% of my gold in one swoop hurts a lot. Sure, I might have learned a lesson now so when I have 100k gold I won't lose 5% of it, but when the lesson costs 90% and all of my friends leave the game because of it you can't blame me for being pissed off.

 

from the draft for next release (and so not concrete):

• Stealing Fines Lowered: We have lowered the fines considerably for stealing until such time as we have better visual clues and we have ways to escalate the fines for repeat offenses. Previously the fines were 100 times the value of the item plus 100 gold. For now they are simply the value of the item plus 100 gold.

 

Thank you, I'm glad to see this is being addressed.