I don’t mind paying to play (Hell! I paid to play this ‘beta’ round for crying out loud!) But I think it is very important that there be some level where it is not a requirement.

The secret seems to lie in offering JUST enough advantage in paying, without making it a requirement or even a necessity to remaining competitive. IOW, you can sap the fun out of it either way and when that happens, you’re done.

This is only the 3rd RPG I’ve participated in and it is by far the bestest. I won’t mention names (unless you beg me) but one was a ‘cookie-cutter’ game with next to nothing in the way of new code and fraught with uncorrectable bugs. The other was coded from the ground up but the owners were criminals. (They were playing the game under multiple alts and essentially goading other players into spending because ‘Well, THEY are…’ (I wound up being banned because I called them out on it. From time to time I check back to see how they are doing and, suffice it to say, they are NOT. ‘Nuff said.)

I only bring this up because of the 3 games this one really is clever. I don’t want to see you guys make any of the same mistakes.

(Oh, and I’m really only here as part of the research for my OWN game, haha! No, seriously, I am! You guys set the bar pretty G-D high too!)