Player mutiny forces 19-year-old MMO to retract new 'pay-to-raid' feature two weeks after announcing it

pcgamer.com:

Nearly two decades on from release, Everquest 2 got a new system last month. MMOBomb(opens in new tab) reports that the devs at Daybreak introduced the «Personal Treasure Unlocker,» which would let players reset the loot lockout timers on the game's bosses, effectively giving anyone with money as many shots at rare drops as they could stomach. Fans were not pleased. They were so displeased, in fact, that Daybreak axed the system in the same month it announced it.

It worked like this: Players who purchased the new Libant Evernight Heritage Crate would have a chance of obtaining a Personal Treasure Unlocker, which let you bypass the default 18-hour cooldown between loot drops from bosses (players can still fight them and play their associated content in that period, they just usually won't get any loot before it's ticked down). 

That meant anyone with the funds to burn on a fat stack of Heritage Crates could net themselves a stash of Treasure Unlockers, effectively allowing them to roll the dice as often as they liked on loot drops from bosses, while players who were unable or unwilling to spend money were left to stew for the cooldown period.

Players immediately rebelled. In the forum thread announcing the change, responses were almost uniformly negative: «This only drives more separation,» said a player named Jrox(opens in new tab), «even worse they added it to the market place so now it's officially another money grab». Another, Menoric, said «This is basically now a Pay-to-Raid system. This is going to be and is HUGELY unpopular». Meanwhile, other players threatened to cancel their memberships(opens in new tab)—which aren't necessary to play the game—entirely.

In short, it was a disaster, which is why a dev announced