Personally I don't mind if paying customers get to log in without standing in the queue. Quite the opposite, if they put money in the game they might as well benefit from it and get the share of entertainment they payed for, doesn't this sound obvious?
What bothers me however, is first and foremost the context in which this change was introduced. Have all bots been banned? No. Has the issue regarding AFK stallers and stall characters (which are a vicious circle, really) been adressed? No.
So basically that all feels like JM wants to get a fat wallet without doing the slightest effort. And to make the matter worse, people fall for it. Now think about this a bit, if you were maintaining a product that had major flaws yet got payed all the same twiddling your thumbs, would you honestly work your butt off to fix your product? I doubt so.
The new PT system might have made it better for the individual paying customer however it didn't improve the game as a whole (from a player's perspective, that is).
What Joymax fails to understand is that among the (legit
For the same reason if current non-paying customers actually get kicked to let a PT user in, that's also bad practice. A simple "You will be disconnected in 20 seconds, please move to a safe location" warning would be a first step in the right direction.
Second, the game is still marketed as Free to Play. There is no * with a footnote that says "Well, unless the server is crowded with bots, AFK players and the like... Which corresponds to all our servers actually... But to still give us your money while we're scratching our balls, please click here".
I mean, why not limit the amount of log in time per day for non paying characters? Say 3 hours. I'm pretty sure that would ensure:
- A higher turnaround of players (hence more people get to try the game, potentially more players turning into customers)
- Limit the meaningfulness of bots
- Pretty much eliminate AFK stallers
- Since Joymax have no apparent intention to start acting like a real MMO publisher with GMs that actually do their job, it wouldn't interfere with their lack of commitment

