But... but... I thought they weren't re-directing any time or resources to Player Owned Towns? Obviously they must do, because they don't just appear out of nothing, but the illusion weaved was always that they were so well funded and staffed it wasn't an issue. Except... oh no!
So the defenders of Shroud don't understand the pledge process either? It was simple enough for me to quit the community over the move, and publicly post the reasons why; if you weren't Patron or upwards after the first pledge expiry, it doesn't matter what you were or how much you'd put into the game or why you downgraded, you lost all the property you would have got if you re-upgraded after that date.
Fortunately for Bowen, he degraded to Navigator, which was above Patron (the cut off point, since discontinued) so he escapes getting screwed so badly. I would hope he realises now how unfair it would have been though, after all of his passion for the game, to have been treated so shodily if he had to downgrade further to purchase his own Town; he would have ended up with a Town but no houses of his own to put in it.
Still to be fair to him now myself, the pledge system is both an unholy mess and, although most supporters don't want to believe it, monstrously greedy and unfair, so that makes it hard for people not as sharply cynical as me to spot this. Or does it? The game is mostly dead outside the last remaining hold outs. Not everyone is as lucky as Bowen to be able to drop $375 as a
minimum pledge. And they did see how unfair it was, and they walked away. Sorry old chap, glad you escaped being shafted, but they would have been, had they been there, so they're not.
I would have escaped too, by the way, I would have had an Ancestor pledge at the time of the cut off, except I sold it on principle. Made a reasonable profit on it too, although I would have happily taken the loss to defend what I believed was right. I gather cashing out is much harder now... sorry again, but we did all warn you that's where this design approach would naturally go.
