No they give the software away and rent out an environment for players to get together and play. The software they give away is structured to be used by as many players/systems as possible to allow the widest range of playablity for the largest subscription base they can get.
If you don't like the software you more than able to move on.... and many have unfortunately. However being a "nitch" game it already has a small following. Should they build the game around the top end rigs and cut out such a large portion of this small group?
They don't give any software 'away' to anyone. They sell a service which is based on the piece of code called AH. Most busineses need to keep growing in order to survive. If design decisions are made that keep the company from growing, it's a path of diminishing returns. I can't see how it would be beneficial to them to throttle development just because a portion of existing users are too poor or cheap to upgrade their hardware to this millenium. The only logical reason for doing that is that they believe there is no market and through that no new potential customers. In that case it makes sense to ensure that existing users do not have to quit if they can't upgrade their hardware.
But if that's the case then HTC is in big trouble.
We all saw what happened to WB when they couldn't step up to the competition AH gave it. If they would have upgraded their product before most of the player base had left, they would probably be profitable today. Once your service loses its users your biggest asset is gone and it will be incredibly hard to get them back if the arena gets more or less empty. In my opinion what HTC should do is to implement a strategy that will regain a healthy player base basically at any cost because the online community is the reason AH is AH, not the game itself.
