I have been playing PWI for several months now and have high level characters on both PvE and PvP servers.  I used to love the game but recently there have been many changes that have upset loyal players and to me casts doubt about the stability of the game and company.

I will try to make this discussion as unbiased as possible so you can make your own decision if you are considering playing the game.

The Changes:

RARE ITEMS >> Worthless

In the last 2 months or so there has been a huge number of Sales and price reductions in the cash shop.  On the surface it might seem a good thing.  The problem is it devalues items that YOU have bought in the past so you have to sell them for less.  So in other words higher level players and players who have been around a while get screwed. 

Extremely Rare Mounts that once could only be obtained through months of Questing were released into the Cash Shop so that any NooB could own one with a few dollars.  My Guild Leader quested for over 8 months to get her Silvermane horse, a beautiful glowing white horse.  It was her pride and joy.  Not long after she got it, the very same horse was released for $20 in the cash shop.  Less than one tenth the original value.  The game was flooded with NooBs riding the same horse.  She was so heartbroken she quit the game.

I myself Quested for over 4 months for that horse, and I was 3/4 there when it was released.  All my time and money sunk into it went down the drain.

The same thing is happening with Game Prizes.  You get supposedly rare land or flying mounts for various contests but not long after, the mount becomes relatively worthless because they are released into the cash shop. 

Cost to PvP Skyrocketing

It used to be that you could buy a binding charm to permanently bind rare items without fear of losing it if you were killed by another player.  Well they just introduced this system called SHATTERING where your bound (and unbound) equipment can now get destroyed and need to be repaired.  A flying mount if shattered could cost around 700K coins or ~ $5 to repair. Or you could buy Guardian Angels for 30cents which get consumed everytime you die whether killed by a mob or player

So in sumarry the company seems to be trying to "milk" as much money out of the players as quickly as possible with no regard as to how it affects the game economy and reward structure.  There is little stability be prepared to have rules and the value of things changed on you with no notice.

The POSITIVES to PWI.

Well it is Free to Play, the graphics are awesome and there is flying combat. Large player base and nice community although you will come across in-game scammers and nasty people.  

Levels 1 - 50 or so are fun and do not require you to spend any cash unless you want to. As you go higher up it gets more and more difficult to play for free.   

So new players beware, low levels are fun and easy.  There is lots of eye candy for a F2P, but later on you will find there is a huge push to spend money, lots more than in a P2P.

 yep one of the drawback of micro transaction ,cash shop lol

I was shocked to see the SilverMane hit cash shop... =O

 yep R M  T  do have its drawback

why you think they made that your supposed to buy stuff once in a while in those store lol

if you dont then this happen

so game now isnt good because they did that,hell often its just avail in store and for a week or 2 your lucky it stayed in the game so long

lol the sliver mane is on CS now, haha

i had about 35 copper and 15 sliver (i was pretty goddam lucky with dq 51/61 with the 70/30% copper silver). at the and i sold most of them. lucky i wasnt reaching for one.

this game was fun, but HL prices now are insane. just happy i had good times with.

taking land was fun, pve and pvp side. pk partys. world boss, the diff starting towns. the game had a good amount of staff to do. (btw i was loving the dragon temple event, every thusday swim for 3 hours was fun).

good times :).

Even them changes above didn't ruin the game as much as nix and herc hitting the CS, fair enough them being implemented into the game for high lvl veno's to acquire them, but when you can spend 150-200usd just like that and get the ultimate killing/farming machine it just defeats the purpose for some of us.  Then in a similar vain being able to upgrade your weapon, guess what? Via the cash-shop ofc, yes spend 2 years farming enough to upgrade them the proper way or spend 2k usd to make your weapon +12 and 1 shot everyone (HeadTrauma on Harshlands springs to mind)

if the cashshop doesn't kill the game for you i'm sure the botting will, if you spend enough $$$ in the cashshop you can bot, wall-hack and do whatever you please really.

Territory wars and pvp at the beginning where good, but not enough to keep players who want to be competive without spending vast amounts of usd, or investing 14 hours per day farming.

Lots of people are saying that the free to play model is the way to go. This situation here is a very good example of why it shouldn't.