Ok, no flames, we promised...
It does get to a point thou, you have to admit, it ruins the game (wait, hold on).
While I do agree that much past lvl.100, you almost have to cheat...
Because like was said, an adult plays this game an hour / day, I've been playing 3 years and I'm still non 1st-rb. I won't argue that the first 70 levels were spent in noob status and it would've been possible to get up the ranks faster, but still, it gets downright stupid once you get much past lvl.100...
Lets face it: For an archer you NEED at least full elite+3's with no less than 2 refdrags, and that's still awful poor leveling. Full +4's with at least one superdrag and an extra socket sure helps.
But who can tolerate this, even if you have two characters with one as a dedicated market account, it takes FOREVER to build 100m gold (at least a month for me, right now).
On the other hand...
You got all these high lvl punks jumping around (on bot), they swamp up all the spawns and every decent place and ks and don't care who you are, so not only do they act like they own the Internet, but they also promote a VERY rude attitude which has been the norm on CO for some time.
Then, you have some macros which, I just saw one in action, could do certain repetitive tasks at such great speed that it was pulling in 2,000 gold per second (think about letting this run for 2-3 hours). That's 21,600,000 gold (in 3 hours). Now I can see how this greatly enhances someone's pocket, but it also ruins the entire game for everybody else.
Basically, it sends across the message that it is ok to cheat, and lie, and steal, and what's next, murder?
Because these kids grow up into a world, and I meet many throughout my days, and a LOT of young adults think nothing of trying to cheat in the real world... Then, they act all surprised when someone brings the fires of hell down on them for even trying.
Like, whaaat did I do wrong?
While I can appreciate my market account no longer suffering from a gold shortage, it also dawns on me that this seriously erodes the entire CO scene, bringing it to a point where it really IS impossible not to cheat. And if CO were my business, I would fry cheaters in hell for bringing me down.
But then, I suppose someone made the game so stupidly hard past some points, it's kinda easy
to see what brings this on.
Idk, just my 002