No kidding. I'm still trying to get my head around the "why" it happened. The whole topic of tokens on Siege is blowing my mind. Its like I'm in an alternate reality version of Siege.
I understand that it is difficult to wrap your brain around all the changes. If I hadn't been here experiencing the dying of Siege first hand, I would feel the same way. I never imagined that I would ever be on board with many of the changes that have come down the pike over the past several years. That's not to say I agree with all of them and/or the way they were implemented, but I get why they happened. We were desperate to try and somehow rebuild the population!
When you left, TnT was a young, fledgling guild. We eventually came into our own and grew to fairly large numbers in our heyday, by Siege standards. Most nights we averaged 7-15 players online and in Vent, but at some point between 2009 and 2010 [much smaller than when you left] the population started dwindling very noticably. It started when most of JSV just up and left never to be heard from again. Then KOC, which were mostly former REV [a guild name probably familiar to you] members and a few others got frustrated and decided to try prodo. Alot of those guys and eventually a handful of TnT went to Atlantic because the whole faction artie buyback just ruined all the fun. No one wanted to keep losing their equipment, having to question who had what, who would sell back, at what price and which vendor was it on, arguing with those who would always trash faction equipment no matter what, etc. Sometimes buybacks went okay, but most often ego's got in the way. Various "buyback agreements" and communication would easily breakdown. Faction gear was 5x the silver cost here vs. prodo and at 30 gold a drop [max tythe rate], it was time consuming to farm. It just took the fun out of everything and the pvper's became so frustrated that most of them left. The majority who play to PvP just want to PvP and have little interest in farming for hours on end. Their gameplay is very different from the rest of us and when they couldn't get PvP here where they wanted to play, they went elsewhere... even if it meant playing with insurance.
Many here will try and deny it, but this shard was mostly driven by those who liked to PvP and PK. They drove the economy in may ways. They made it fun for those of us who really love and support what Siege was meant to be. A number of other players just became bored and left. I wasn't here the entire time, but most of us who stayed tried to make the best of it. Many asked for changes in hopes of giving other players an incentive to try Siege. They questioned prodo players about what kept them from trying Siege and they weren't shy about their reasons. Many hated the RoT system, so timers were changed, then caps were removed. Many said they didn't want to lose what they had on their "home shard" and that it was impossible to live out of 125 item bank boxs, so they made the housing changes. Some wanted to just jump in and PvP and not have to spend eon's having to train up more characters. I guess I was gone during those discussions, but when I came back, Mythic tokens were all the rage and suddenly all our old, useless Advanced Character tokens were useful!
House tele tiles, portals, pinks, blues, etc is all bleedover... Same issue Siege has always had. The minute the first prodo bleedovers started, Siege was destined to eventually fail. A few things were corrected along the way, but from almost the beginning, no one cared enough about Siege to keep it healthy and thriving. Devs to follow Sieges creators certainly were not interested in investing time to correct the mistakes. What we have now is the result of the few stubborn souls who refuse to give up and move on. They made a little headway with some of the more recent devs. A lot of us call them trammies, but whatever label is slapped on them, a few of them are still here and hanging on! I guess we have to give them credit for trying. If they didn't love Siege, they would have left a long, long time ago.
Damn, I'm long winded!
hth
