The opinions below could be valid at this stage since it hasn't been live for long, so we have no evidence, or data to interpret, or argue about. But nobody (imms included) can fully anticipate all of the outcomes of a change.

It's tricky to make even minor changes which aren't going to disadvantage someone somewhere. The reasons for this change were not to shift this game increasingly toward a "favored crowd" type mentality (the staff would honestly be crazy to do that at this point). They were just to redistribute the weighting of certain types of experience.

For some of the folks above, nothing really nefarious going on behind the scenes, and nobody is genuinely trying to ruin anyone else's day. I know it makes for a better story, and much more drama in general, but it just isn't true.

If people worry this change could enable that kind of behavior at a later stage, I think that may have validity if we see a rapidly growing player base, or staff and the guys responsible for policing behavior are stretched thin. At this stage though, it is not a consideration.