The Wrong Side Of History?

This morning I read an article on Massively about Aion's new expansion, Invasion.  Among the features listed is a new system that rewards players for logging in every day.  Of course, Aion is not the only game to do this.  When I played Neverwinter, sometimes all I would do was log in, press a button, receive a reward, and then log back out.  The longer my streak of logging in every day, the greater the rewards I could obtain.

Contrast that with what occurred in the Phoebe release on Tuesday.  CCP removed the 24-hour limit on the skills queue.  That's right, CCP now believes they receive more of a benefit from not forcing players to log in frequently to update their skills queue.

So who's right?  Possibly both.  Aion and Neverwinter are both free-to-play games, which depend on their cash shops.  Those games need players to log in to have the opportunity to entice them into buying the latest shiny.  EVE, on the other hand, is a subscription game, and allowing players to only train skills with out logging in gives CCP as much money as if they play 3 hours a day.

However, I think CCP will act as an outlier in the future as more game companies will become desperate for players to simply log into its games.  Daily quests are bad enough, but at least people are playing the game.  Getting rewards for just logging in?  Been there, done it, didn't like it.