Nice to have a reply.
It is a pity that, when players have been asking for more AI drops on the Island, FC decide to do the exact opposite and then not make it known they plan to do it.
I have a couple of kids who play (and pay) for AO and they tend to play a character to around level 50/60 and then start up a new one. Not typical game play perhaps, but that's what they enjoy (as do I, I might add).
A part of their enjoyment was collecting and using the alien weapons on the Island, as it is pretty much the only AI related play they are ever likely to get with the current way the AI expansion works.
I feel it was particularly brutal of FC to remove these items without warning.
At least if it had been mentioned in the pre-notes some stockpiling could have been arranged, or something.
I know it's only small beer but it is increasingly symptomatic of how players in general are treated, or at least how they are percieved to be treated.
Now both go the old Jobe route and one was even smart enough to ask if he could reduce his monthly payments by dropping the, now useless (to him), AI expansion. That was another inflexibility I needed to try and explain.
Yesterday I opened froob accounts for both of them am letting them explore the froob option.