upgrading your familiar...

It hasn't. Season 1 and 2 familiars cannot be used to level familiars.. even ones that have been aqcuired since the GU

That is exactly what Finora wrote. That you can level any familiar but the only familiars that will give xp are season 3 familiars. Regardless, good luck levelling an ethereal to level 10 without spending a lot of money, if there are not significant changes to the system its going to take you many many years.

She said she hadn't checked to see if it had changed between test and live. I was confirming that it had not.

^^^ This x 100

The target for this stupidity is obviously raiders and / or people with more money than sense, but, how much do they think these players can be milked?

no raider i know is stupid enough to spend hundreds of dollars to level the battlecat or any other ethereal familiar. if they don't drastically reduce the needed XP per level i'm not going to even bother leveling my battlecat past level2 (used the panda potion on it).

why raiders ? a lot of raiders don't pay, coz it's the total opposite of character progression.

there's less respect in what is earned through credit card

Didnt you all read the latest producer letter? This was what we could look forward to and the tradeskill line. Holly's own words: "Look forward to it". When will people learn and stop subbing and use the cash shop?

You want to know where all our money went?

Friends and nostalgia used to be enough for me to tolerate the lack of quality and quantity we have seen for a while now, but not any more. I can no longer ignore the obvious. Closing my wallet is the most effective way I can think of to express my dissatisfaction.

I say raiders because they are generally the most competitive. Of course not all raiders will buy them, and then there's the ones that won't admit to buying them.