great article adam :)
My feeling is that I am happy to accept my position. I sit in gold league, doing pretty badly in the table with a $500 collection that I probably invested about a quarter of and the rest is mostly long term reward gains.
Fortunately, I enjoy the game. Its improved lots since I started playing and Im looking forward to seeing the huge updates of the future.
It kind of has to appeal to the big investors so that people actually invest I suppose....especially with something like the land sale, so they can raise the money to do the work involved. I suppose one concern is that its always going to feel like a major advantage to the early investors, potentially to the point where no-one (even the wealthy!) might ever want to invest enough to compete at top level... I dont know if thats really true, but theres a danger that it could only ever be worthwhile to those who got in early, creating a historical elite which might stunt the growth of the game.
My answer to that concern is that the developers do a great job (in my opinion) of shifting the balances in their updates and of course they will have to make the game appealing or it will die. As long as the fun is always alive, there will be happy players and the conversation of splinterclass will just be an added mystique. Its when the gripes outweigh the game itself that the devs will need to make changes....