Board Thread:The Gatehouse/@comment-24153309-20140125221853/@comment-24.209.144.170-20140126001354

I know people like the idea of convergence for gold to buy Gem's. From a business model perspective, it can be tempting to try to please the loud constituency that seems to be clamoring for this. The bottom line is the majority of people that I see looking for this are people that are currently on the site for free and looking to get more value out of their accumulated gold and do not want to pay for gems. A good example of this was a person that join the site in early January and is already at level 30 that was complaining about needing gems for a quest scroll. Look at how many people are clamoring for Qwest's to drop rather than invest in the gems.

I strongly support that new accounts are not getting gems. I did not realize this until I talked to a relatively new member. I think the key to monetizing the site is having some quality benefits for subscribers that are paying the five bucks a month to have some great options to use their gems. I think the idea of gold is a great way for someone who is not paying to be on the site to have a valuable experience but the ruthless reality is the site has to be monetized for this to continue long term.

So providing quality benefits for paying members and having a different ecosystem for the gem use what I would advise. If someone wants to be on the site for free they are going to get a ton of quality benefits. They can buy armor and weapons with their gold and even participate in the class system. They can use the gold purchase custom rewards for themselves. That was the initial intent, and I think it was a sound decision. I really dislike the idea of using game gold to buy Gem intended goodies in the game.This gives people a strong incentive for task inflation and were going to see some people getting high levels in a very very short period of time if that system is implemented.