The number of people exploiting the game and playing for free forever is vastly smaller than the number of people who hemorrhage a lot of real money on space money so they can buy a new spaceship.
It totally makes sense from CCP's point of view to allow gamecards. People get silly about purchasing them so they can buy <shiny new object>. It is also a great carrot to keep people playing...since you can technically play for free if you have enough ISK.
I spent quite a while on the treadmill of "Have enough ISK to buy timecards...but need to keep hustling so I have enough for next month". Sometimes you miss your target and have to pay for a month, sometimes you don't.
I eventually became "profitable" in that my businesses generated more revenue than what I had to pay in timecards, so I could pay for free as long as I kept them running. But most people like to blow up spaceships, not run businesses, so I was definitely in the minority. Furthermore, the vast majority of players live in crappy space which is not very lucrative. Making that 500m a month for a timecard is a very difficult proposition.
Note: I, like most people, had 2-3 accounts that I was playing on. So that's a lot of timecards to buy each month.
Comments
The number of people exploiting the game and playing for free forever is vastly smaller than the number of people who hemorrhage a lot of real money on space money so they can buy a new spaceship.
It totally makes sense from CCP's point of view to allow gamecards. People get silly about purchasing them so they can buy <shiny new object>. It is also a great carrot to keep people playing...since you can technically play for free if you have enough ISK.
I spent quite a while on the treadmill of "Have enough ISK to buy timecards...but need to keep hustling so I have enough for next month". Sometimes you miss your target and have to pay for a month, sometimes you don't.
I eventually became "profitable" in that my businesses generated more revenue than what I had to pay in timecards, so I could pay for free as long as I kept them running. But most people like to blow up spaceships, not run businesses, so I was definitely in the minority. Furthermore, the vast majority of players live in crappy space which is not very lucrative. Making that 500m a month for a timecard is a very difficult proposition.
Note: I, like most people, had 2-3 accounts that I was playing on. So that's a lot of timecards to buy each month.