Given the size of the cRPG playerbase, it's not a good thing to lose players. So perhaps we should be offering some words of encouragement rather than just being smug, or we may find ourselves having fewer and fewer people to whom we might show off our 'uber elite' skills.
To that end: As I understand it, the average upkeep cost should only be going up slightly. The actual repair costs are higher, but repair should happen less often. I heard there was a bug such that the reduced frequency is not, or was not, working properly - but that should be fixed. So if you hang in there for a bit, repair should be more manageable soon.
Anyway, as I recall from way back, the whole idea of upkeep was to make the game a bit better for newer players; supposedly people at lower levels would have an easier time if not everyone was in full plate armor. So perhaps we should be more receptive when we hear newer players telling us "Damn, I can't even afford to use my new [middling] gear because of repair costs!", while we more hardcore players have 1mil+ gold in the bank and can sell heirloom points to get an extra 400-450k each generation and thus can use much heavier gear.
I mean, hey, personally I'm in favor of more inequality based on time played, so whatever. It's just kind of silly when some game mechanic ends up having the opposite of the intended effect. You just end up with a clumsy game, since the actual state of things was not planned for (and indeed was meant to be avoided).
For the sake of newer players - and the convenience of everyone - it really would be better if the repair system was just changed to a constant cost per tick, which could be displayed on the website default equipment selection. Over time the costs of whatever item average out to a certain amount anyway; the current system merely makes it unnecessarily obscure what those costs will be. Why not let newer players clearly see, 'This set of equipment will cost you 20 gold per round', etc.?
