Judging by the previous comments, I'm about to get flamed, but I'll try to convey my thought (without insisting on anything). The game is F2P (or, if you like, very conditionally B2P), and participation in tournaments was also free. With the introduction of mandatory Overlord Heroes (OH) in its current form, the game becomes P2P, as does participation in tournaments. Whether this fee is expensive, cheap, or moderate is another question, and everyone will probably have their own opinion on that. Moreover, it also depends on the intensity of the game. If you play 10-15 games a month or 1 game every month or two, the effective cost will be very different. The policy of the vast majority of modern online games is to make it easy for new players to get started (and retain them); it's hard to even think of P2P projects. I won't judge which path is optimal for developing heroes. On the other hand, if the unwillingness to play with OH leads to aggression and conflict, then perhaps it is better to introduce a rule as a preventive measure. A definite plus of OH is the absence of the need to install and configure third-party programs. Regarding saving time, it's not so straightforward. For me, for example (and here I'm definitely going to get flamed), I wouldn't want to play with OH primarily because of the timer. The level of play is not high, but I want to play meaningfully, and I'm only just starting to avoid wasting time at the beginning of the game. With OH, either the quality of the game noticeably decreases, or you're already in a complete time crunch by the second week, with corresponding problems later on. I understand that this problem arises for a very small number of players. Stronger and more experienced players get bored in the first week, and the timer is not so important to them; saving time is more relevant. However, we also exist :-)