[ffcmike]

Observer mode should be removed everywhere, not simply because of the fact it is a restriction in itself, but because it is a poorly implemented game-killing restriction. The problems + bugs caused by it are so severe that staff are left with no choice but to exclude trials from PVP activities so as not to hinder the experience of upgraded players.

Even when it comes to questing content trials can very easily become stuck due to problems inflicted by observer mode, and as I've said before it is a massive pain in the arse to log on a trial and attempt to debug these problems.

It's also somewhat annoying that I've gone through so much effort to put together abstract pluggable systems, where one system will uninitialize before another system initializes, in a way which avoids bugs, only for observer mode to often throw a spanner into the works.

That said, if Stefan and Unixmad honestly think it would be more financially beneficial to keep observer mode than remove it, then the reasons for not being able to remove it have already been made clear.

While not ideal, it is much simpler to implement a rigid collection of global shop items for servers which revolve around economies or character levelling. For a more traditional server it would be much harder to accomplish it in this way, a much easier method being what is done on the iPhone servers, which is selling a currency within the global shop and then being free to add and sell a higher variety of items in game.

The problem with the more flexible method however is that the currency needs to be secure. It can't be handed out at vast rates, the item prices can't be too cheap, it can't be handed out by corrupt staff, it needs to be logged, it needs to be kept track of, it needs to be impossible to obtain by hacking etc.

Stefan and Unixmad can't realistically monitor and enforce this as much with PC servers as they can with iPhone servers, therefore they need to be 100% sure that the systems are secure, the staff are trustworthy, and any involved currencies are sustainable.