Free-to-play schemes could be unlawful, warns OFT

I have, but it doesn't change all the inside problems with the game that turns people away. Mechanically, it is the best 2D MMO to exist, but all of the massive problems with the game internally are the issue. Why did we have to wait years for a Windows Vista/7 fix? Why does the game still randomly crash for no reason? Why does the game bug out all the time?

Software has bugs? A piece of software of this magnitude has bugs and crashes? Martha, quick, get the car, we need to get to the police station!

Sarcasm aside, Vista was notorious for breaking compatibility, so obviously Nexon didn't want to upgrade to that. And then you have a huge upgrade to Windows 7. Nexon runs EVERYTHING on their stack on Windows. Can you imagine the huge backend and frontend upgrade costs that would be? Yeah, I wouldn't switch if I didn't have to either.

There's all kinds of internal issues that prevent the game from being as good as it could be, and I doubt very much that new players will ever want to deal with that kind of crap. We deal with it because it didn't happen when the game was first released. Before I stopped playing after the release of Ariant back in the day, I never had unexpected crashes, random "bot" disconnects when I didn't bot, or anything of the kind. Yet now I can't even play for a few hours straight without running into a world of issues. They never adapted to any of the new technology that has been released or anything like that. I believe the game still runs on what, DirectX7? Most of the issues could be fixed by just upgrading/updating the engine a little, but they don't.

I'd agree with you if they were still on 800 x 600. But take into consideration that back then all maps were made for 8x6, and now they're moving into widescreen. I think they're trying to update the game for more recent technology. And I think the game runs on DirectX 8. But what would they need anything better than DX8 for, really?

It's a huge turn off to people who are unsure of the game. Then you mention to them that they can't even fight the end-game bosses because you need to invest thousands (money or hours, pick one) to get the gear necessary, and is it any wonder they leave? No.

An MMO is a time sink. It's no surprise that people would have to spend thousands of hours on it. Dollars? Maybe. If you want to. You don't have to spend money, but you have to spend time. Your argument could be used against any F2P MMO, really.