Discuss the latest Conquest communication

it’s entirely natural to believe it’s caused by corporate greed.

I won't say that "greed" isn't a factor, but I will add a couple things to that.

1. CG is a corporation. Its purpose in life is to make money. Greed is woven into its fabric, but that doesn't make it any different from Pharma companies or petrochemical companies or hospitals.

2. Objecting to the idea that CG is both greedy AND incredibly stupid is not the same as objecting to the idea that CG is greedy. I don't think that CG sabotages Conquest progress on purpose to sell more Conquest Passes. But that's not because I believe CG isn't motivated by money. They are. They're literally required by law to be motivated by money. It's illegal for the corporate board to fail to maximize shareholder profit, with only small amounts of wiggle room for consideration of other values, primarily through the backdoor of corporate branding (the idea being that companies can use their self-professed values to distinguish themselves from their competitors in the marketplace).

3. I am a critic of unregulated capitalism. It's bad. But regulated capitalism is the best economic system humans have yet developed for meeting the material needs of human beings. If corporations are "too greedy" and the exceptions for non-profit motivations in corporate decision making are too narrow, that's a problem for the government to take up. The government can adjust the regulations for everyone if the system is out of balance, but CG isn't evil for operating under the profits-to-the-exclusion-of-almost-everything system. That's the system that we have created, as voters and as consumers. Critiquing the system is fine, and I do that, but it's both pointless and unfair to critique CG (assuming it's not breaking the law) for participating in the system that we all have collectively created.

Greed is what it is, and yes it's part of CG. But I don't believe that the conspiracy theories that get bandied about are credible ... mostly because I don't think that CG could be so incompetent as to believe that sabotaging player fun leads to increased profits.

Instead I think that they make the lesser errors of failing to anticipate what increases player fun. And they make a lot of those errors. And I wish they would get better. But "they're greedy so they hurt people on purpose so we will give them our money" doesn't remotely ring true to me.