The real issue is the absurd amounts of time CF requires. It's a steep curve - you can't really do much on CF with less than, say, 6* hours a week. Moreover, the sucky parts of CF (ranking, prepping, etc.) are mostly fixed costs and come out of that six hours first. Why don't I play much anymore? I've got a job and school and I just don't have time to commit myself to ten+ hours a week to get a good character going.

* - Please don't bother nitpicking this number. If you disagree, substitute it with whatever number makes you happy.

CF tends to be a very insular community, which leads to rather warped expectations of time expenditure. Try telling a random friend you put 100 hours into one character in a game and see what the look you get is -- I guarantee it's not going to be "You heroed in 100 hours? How fast!". That's like six days of doing nothing but waking up and playing CF. Stop and think about that for a moment.

CF is trending towards a game that has 500 players who play an average of 20 hours a week rather than one that has 2000 who play 5 hours a week.

I think the imm dancing around on the practice issue is generally a coy response to the fact that they really don't mind it at all -- having more people logged in spam practicing is only to the good as far as they're concerned, since it stops "too few players on, log right back off" syndrome that starts creeping in at off hours, and it's probably more fun to be an immortal with 100 people on than 50. But I think this is shortsighted in the long run, because having robocop logged in for an extra 2 hours spamming a day is going to add far less to the game than the guy that was driven away and doesn't play his 1 hour a day.

The immortals are a group of intelligent people. I have no doubt that putting an end to the practicing "arms race" (which benefits people who have the time to undergo utter drudgery at the cost of people who don't have that much spare time but would like to play anyway) would take about an hour of their time, to close all the spam practice loopholes and create a system whereby only 'natural' increases in skills are viable. Certainly, there should be rewards brought on to those who play more, but I think CF has skewed way too far to the "power to those who play most" side and it's hurt the game and driven away casual players.

Bottom line, my solution: ranking isn't too bad, but it's time to replace the practice system with a realistic system that doesn't hurt people who don't have 900 hours to spam bash. Easiest solution that comes to mind is that there's a hidden timer after a skill improve where the same skill won't improve again (exception: spam required classes like invokers). Problem solved.