At the time this system was put into place, Ibonic was handling it all. He was a paid employee so it was costing them money. It still does in the sense that if Stefan has to handle this type of support issue its taking him away from coding, which is actually his job.

I am only covering some of his former duties (email and passwords) which is why I'm still unpaid. This will give them time to decide how they want to handle it permanently. Granted it was with a selfish motive since its the PWA people go to with complaints of lack of support.

People who actually bought the accounts are giving it life. Subscription leeches are just living off someone else and providing nothing in return.

You usually pay extra for this at the time of purchase!

We cannot change the email of classic accounts for free because it's often requested by people who never owned the account and just want to avoid paying (there are people requesting the email change of accounts that were not used for 3 years...). It's a lot of work to check if someone is really the owner of the account and is not sharing the account etc. that's why we said it's not possible anymore. The current system is still quite "open", e.g. you could upgrade your account with one or two SMS messages and then let the email change. That way you will keep the lifetime classic.

Am I the only one who has observed that these things are regarded with more comments from the staff then...well...before?

Thats because its one of the most commonly misunderstood policies that seem to pop up periodically as a new round of rumors start to float around. The latest being that you will lose lifetime if you upgrade. Completely opposite of the actual facts. All of us are asked these same questions daily and it doesn't ever seem to sink in.