My meaning is right on the money (pun intended
), not just in the ballpark. Just take a look at corporate history.
Giving people GM commands is on Live would be foolhardy for SOE, as it would speed up gameplay and players would have too little to do to stay interested. People would get to the high-end too fast, vastly reducing the length of time that players would pay monthlies. Profits would bottom out and the stockholders would be out for corporate blood. Giving everyone on Live GM commands is nowhere near the same as what I said.
The cold, hard fact is that corporations like SOE exist for profit. There's no better way for them to keep their stockholders at bay than to keep the gameplay slow. The slower it is, the longer people pay the monthlies, period. And monthlies are the name of the game, not the comparable pittance they make from one-time client sales.
While the development team at SOE might be more concerned that SOE corporate about keeping the game interesting, they are not (and never have been since SOE took over) in control of the big picture. The real death of EQ will come when there aren't enough players out there to sustain the corporate appetite. At that point the developers will be put on other projects or leave.
Remember when they did the big server merges? That was not done to make the game more interesting, balanced, or more social. The sole reason was to maximize profit. They were intent on upping the ratio of players to servers. Profit is the reason for SOE's existence. Take away the profit and see how long Sony (the parent corporation) lets SOE keep EQ around. There are no noble causes there.