[Soothsayer]

I keep having this nagging question through these debates... Do you want to have a system that caters to people who will only play for their first month, or do you want to have a system that caters to the people who play for five years?

Benefiting long term players is my preferred route, but doing so in a way that does not discourage new players from becoming long term players.

The undisclosed f2p aspect may have bearing on this as well, but we don't know anything about that aside from there being some sort of f2p aspect to PS2.

The EVE online model has rabidly loyal long term customers. If you can get over the initial complexity of the UI and the harshness of the environment (and if you make friends and have positive, meaningful experiences) CCP has gained a customer that will keep coming back, acknowledging that some burnout factor applies.

Though I have no experience with it, WoW has loyal customers in the same sense, they release a new expansion and people feel compelled to go back to it. I've seen it, you've seen it... However it exists on the extreme other end of the spectrum.

I don't know where the middle ground lies, can't name another MMO that has carved out a niche like those two. This leads me to believe that the middle ground is not as successful over the long term.