Someone decided to give me a load of nice PvP on Sunday so I maxed the PvP quests. So I can see for myself that the rewards with little locks on them can't be claimed without buying the item. You do have to buy the rewards you have earned.
I don't think it needs to be discussed much tbh. It's horrible optics. What it says about Plarium and the game is pretty self evident. No matter what spinning people do here, players aren't gonna miss what it s says and means.
What might be worth saying is that treating the game so cynically probably does maximise their short term profit.
The people that were most upset about the complete lack of balance and super aggressive pay to win model have already left. The people that remain are either big coiners who like it like that way, or people that are gonna stick here regardless due to other factors like community or relationships. So they probably can treat the remaining ppl as badly as they like and we will suck it up.
But long term?
I am not going to quit now, will see it through to the bitter end. But I will NEVER EVER play another Plarium game seeing how they treated this one. The brand is TOXIC to me now.
I should have another 30 years of gaming in me spending $4/5k a year on the hobby. That makes me worth about $150k. They had me hooked in and attracted to their brand at one point. Then they threw that all away. There is no way that is good long term business.
And while the market as whole servers up very little good quality as pretty much all of it has been poisoned by micro transactions (especially the RTS ones), it might appear that there are few decent options to move to. We do actually still have choices. And those are other forms of entertainment,
There is still significant competition, even if it's not within the actual direct MMO market. That $4/5k gaming hobby has almost exclusively flipped from MMO's to single player / Steam games over the last 2/3 years. And if those start becoming over price money grabbing garbage as well then the money will simply flip to other forms of entertainment outside of games. There are actually a lot of decent indie games atm though where the love of passion shines through in the games themselves.
So that is why it is both possible for them to be maximising profitability (short term) while actually also killing profitability (long term).