Its incredible how this game is molded by bots almost giving the impression its made for them.
Instead of adjusting adena amount they make it better for: bots!
What changed since HGM Spam?
The environment changed. Back in the days of HGM Spam the only alternative for Lineage 2 was World of Warcraft, which, through different graphics and different game play (instanced dungeons in WoW vs. open field hunting in L2) appealed to a different customer base, so it was not really a competition. Nowadays there are plenty of more or less well executed L2 clones around (TERA, ArcheAge, Black Desert ...), and in addition to that we have the shift towards mobile games.
In the days of HGM Spam there was a much larger player base and the monthly subscription of 15 dollars was enough to pay for the GMs and development of further updates. Nowadays most of the money generated by the established games (Lineage 1, Lineage 2, Aion ...) goes into financing the development of mobile games, where the futures is perceived to be. In a recent press conference, Netmarble CEO Kwon Yeong-shik gave detailed numbers:
http://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news/?news=171016&dable=10.1.4
In reality NCsoft and Netmarble are intertwined, with Netmarble owning 8.9 % (
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/structure.aspx) of NCsoft, using their intellectual property and staff (
http://boards.rochand.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1522#p31751). But for simplicity's sake let's say that Netmarble is a separate company.
So, in the one month from December 14 to January 13 the 1,406,825 paying users out of the 5 million account owners at Lineage 2 Revolution (what private server players call "donators") have generated a gross revenue of 206 billion Won (about 200 million US dollars), which must pay for the development of the mobile games you can see lined up about 1/4 down the page.
If Netmarble had adopted a monthly subscription instead of their freemium model, the 5 million players would have had to pay 40 dollars per month to arrive at the same revenue of 200 million.
Expecting players to pay 40 dollars per month for an old game with established powerclans that dominate whole servers, leaving new players zero hope to ever catch up, is simply not realistic. The only way for NCWest to make any money out of Lineage 2 is via the L2Store money laundering scheme:
1. Drive players into despair by reducing drop rates
2. Make L2Store items tradeable
3. Players buy L2Store items and sell them for botted adena
This is by the way the reason why drop rates will not be increased. If everybody could make adena by simply playing the game, there would be no motivation to resort to money laundering, people prefering to spend their dollars on beer and hamburgers instead. At the moment we have information about the Korean updates up to February 8 (
http://boards.rochand.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=1975#p35413). There is not the least hint about an increase in drop rates, not current, not being planned.