Some have pointed out that some rewards are luckluster but overall this is a solid improvement from what was proposed over a year ago. The cloud mount looks nice.
I was clearly quite happy to see the fletching go away and say something positive because I don't think the solid improvement is accurate after looking at the previous proposal (axel's stream:
)
All in all, it is leagues better than the initial concept.
I thought it was significantly better at first (that's how bad the fletching was) but now I don't see it.
From the previous incarnation, the Greater Bag can now be claimed a couple months earlier, Fletching and 20% Hireling duration were swapped out in favor of VIP discovery boost (1%+ for named) and a few bonus shared bank slots. Both those are better than what was taken away but not significantly so. I am not certain 1% is going to be much more noticeable than Fletching to be honest.
They had also down graded the sentient XP from 1000 to 300 in this incarnation but a recent post by Cordo make it look like that was a mistake and I assume its going back to 1000. That was too low then and still is. Make it 3 x1000. And as was mentioned (and ignored) in the feedback from the first pitch, throw in some sentient toolkits and jewelers toolkits into the VIP bag. (of course this suggestion will still be ignored).
So overall, it is really a very small tweak on the previous underwhelming proposal.
My guess is the game is not profitable enough to develop the kinda perks we want to spend on...which makes me sad.
The funny thing is that you don't make things more profitable by making things people don't much want to pay for. They need to build those perks. You can't get the profit before there is something people want to pay for.
Finally, this starts on May 1 and is not retroactive for all those VIPs that have been here for years. I can understand you can't go back and reward too far back (no one should expect to collect month 200 on May 1) but this was supposed to be out a year ago. Perhaps meet people in the middle and reward up to 6 months retroactive.
Of course, with what the claim system appears to be, you can only claim once per month and you can't skip so they can simply say it
IS retroactive but you are on Month 1 because you haven't talked to Violet Peregrine for the past 18 years.