There are places where this works very well for them. Crafting has developed on consensus lines and is a remarkably contented sub-forum and a good game experience. In other areas (*cough, NGE, cough*) paying too much heed to what players are whining for this week hasn’t done them any favours.

I find cosmetic clothing weird also. I’m just a virtual world dino I guess. I think other people should be able to see what my character is wearing and doing, otherwise what’s the point? but I could come round to cosmetic clothing, since that could be used in a good RP way. Cosmetic mounts, not so much. It’s like playing with coconuts as you run along and yell, “I’M ON A HORSE!!”

The revamp wasn’t intended to put mounted combat in, either: it was explained in terms of “oh, we don’t have the right animations for that, we’re going to take it out.” And yes, while monks do look a little idiotic doing crane kicks from mountback, it was one of those things that don’t bother *me* — clearly people have different tolerances for what they’re willing to look at and not. It’s not a hard and fast, one-right-answer thing. In any case, the base intent of the mount-here-mount-gone thing was to reduce graphical loads in crowded fighting situations.

Having been popped off and on the horse for a few weeks on test, for my own part I would *much* prefer non-realistic (oh FFS please) art where I’m still on my horse to being endlessly unmounted and remounted. Different horses for different courses. Is it such a bad thing that there’s a choice now? Really?

Greed and addiction are used to make players pay more than ever before for less than ever before. It makes me sick.