I'm a moderate Turtle. I don't do the crazy rages, I don't do the Turbine bashing, I just play the game, chatter on the forums in as friendly a tone as I know how, and have a good time. So I hope you are actually willing to hear me. You are of course free to do anything with your game, that is a long standing privilege of a gm. Just remember that players have choices too and long standing traditions of leaving the table also.

You're recent decisions have made me come to the conclusion that you don't understand our vender/consumer relationship. I do not pay you for 'things', no matter how you detail them, I pay you to entertain me. Not for the xp pots, hearts of wood, or individual things no matter how shiny, I just pay you to give me a large virtual world and the freedom to interact with it as I like. Because that is the appeal of mmo's. By their very nature, they do NOT have engrossing, driving stories like the Elder Scrolls single player games, or the Silent Hills and Final Fantasies. We get that. So the fun is being able to do things we find fun. I don't even mind paying for the expansions as a vip, I understand R&D costs and that they need to be recouped. And I understand that buying them encourages you to make more game for me.

In your previous system, I was able to gather enough tokens to true reincarnate by doing about 20 to 40 quests, depending on how lucky I was with my loot rolls. Which for me, and my massively impressive bad loot roll luck, basically means about 40 quests. This was spread out through Carnival, Vons, Sands, Sentinals, Chrono/Da, and Lod chains. Lots of choices, no need to mind numbingly grind the same content over and over, and I was entertained while playing the game and happily paying you to do so.

Apparently now you feel that I have to grind out the same quests a really astonishingly bad number of times. I see from Lammania that 900 comms are needed for a heroic heart, and an average of 17 per saga are falling. I did the math, that is 53 saga runs. Let's say Gianthold. That is a 10 quest saga, so you are basically asking me to run 530 quests for the same reward with no explanation on your end as to why. Or any explanation of how this could POSSIBLY be considered entertaining. While I believe you have a motivation you are unwilling to discuss, revenue goals, the recent duping issues, or something I cant' even think of on my own, and understand as one office worker to others that contrary to popular entitlement mentality over here the customer actually does not get to know the whys of every thing a company does.

However, that being said, I also have the choices of consumers everywhere, and there is simply no way a jump of 500 quests for the same reward is going to entertain me. Especially given that it's a very tiny pool of quests choices. I also gave you the benefit of the doubt on placeholder numbers for before, but understand by your past decisions that is generally not a true statement and just general pr to calm the consumers. I expect that the general rage of the forum will have an effect on you, but I still have serious doubts you'll actually sit down and look at the quest numbers you are requiring out of us. I think you might look at the comm numbers, but it really seems like no one in your company is looking at this and saying "players will have to do this many quests for a reward that used to take this many". And I am aware that I have the option to buy hearts from the store. But understand this. It's not a small jump like 30 to 50, it's a jump of a factor over 100X.

I pay you money every month, you are not getting more for the privilege of keeping me as a customer so i can have a heart to tr my toon and have a reason to play (more hours of entertainment). Listen to your player base this time, which I am aware has a long standing history of dramatics and over the top hysteria and it would be very easy to be in your position and say "they'll get over it and just start doing it", I wanted you to hear from someone with a forum history of moderation and often defending your position as I understand the place for the person talking to the customer caught between them and what the bosses want from my own job, and understand this is not coming from forum rage/dramatics. I'm more than a casual player, less than a power gamer.

I will not give you the income from the hearts, and I will get bored very quickly and end up playing something else. You will have failed to keep up you're end of the bargain. This is not a don't do this or else letter, this is a why I and others like me will slip away quietly. No forum dramatics, no screenshots of cancellations, just every companies worst problem consumers, the ones that just leave. Because you have kept your end and entertained me for years, I decided to at least do you the courtesy of why. I don't want something for nothing, I don't use the cheats, I don't throw a hissy fit over every little change. I just want to be entertained by a game and know that there are reasonable people working on new things for me to be entertained by. And I don't know that anymore. I'll be sad when my relationship with ddo is over, I can say that quite honestly. But I think marketing has forgotten that this should be entertainment, and while I believe the devs at least play and understand the game, I can't say the same for marketing. I hope enough people will remain afterwards so that ddo can continue. I hope I'm mistaken in my fears that this will break this game for all the sakes of your jobs, this is a bad time to drive customers away and kill something.

=The Crazy Turtle Girl of Sarlona