Darth_Xiane all they're doing is forcing people to pirate. No one sane pays for WN's stuff because it's a recurring payment to rent the rights to see something. You pay 15+ dollars, unlock 20ish chapters, and then every single month thereafter you have to pay the same absurdly high price to not lose what you originally paid for. Every month after the first you are literally paying to give a pittance to an author and an absurd amount to WN for literally nothing. You get nothing new, and if you don't pay you actually lose chapter access, to the point it's as if you'd never paid at all, because it's a zero sum game.
This is just another example of WN's dogshit money grubbing practices alienating users. No one who could actually be considered sentient paid because the paid service was shit. Now the free service is shit too, to try get more people to pay, because no one wants to pay, because everything is overpriced and doesn't actually provide anything while requiring endless payment, until the end of a novel.
Also, interaction and voting with power stones actually does provide something to the author (and webnovel). Power stone voting is pretty obvious; the author becomes more popular and therefore more likely to be found by subhumans who are willing to pay a not insignificant chunk of their limited amount of money on D tier authored stories with 1/8th the value per word of good novels on discount. Like, who the fuck would pay 10 USD per month on a once off unlock of 16 privileged chapters of MVS when you could get the entire 1.3 million words of the first 3 Stormlight Archive novels for Kindle for 16 dollars on discount or 21 in paperback at full price, and never have to pay for them again. That compared to 16 chapters, which if you don't keep paying every single month to keep, you lose. First month you pay, you get 16 new chapters to read, and every day thereafter, you get the same number of chapters as you would if you weren't paying. Second month, you pay again so you don't lose those 16 chapters, and you get nothing a free reader wouldn't get. Same number of chapters per day, except you're actually losing 16 chapters if you don't pay. It's literally a scam/extortion lmao. No one sane's reading this shit on webnovel because they think it's worth paying for, they're doing it because it's free and they can meme in the comment section. You can literally get 3 whole, physical epic fantasy novels by the widely considered best currently active fantasy author for the price of 2 months of webnovel's dogshit literally-a-scam privileged service for ONE novel. So much reading you can practically read for the entirety of your spare time, for that same 2 months. And you have a physical product to enjoy.
Beyond that, a thriving community of commenters and such are a big part of what separates WN from Amazon. On amazon you get reasonable prices and good books. On Webnovel you get a horrific price point and generally bad writing, but significant amounts of community interaction, which in turn leads to greater investment in the community. That makes someone more likely to wind up paying for a book's privileged scam chapters.
Free readers indirectly provide income to both authors and Webnovel. Shitting on their experience means that they're just going to read their trash tier time passing web novels on free websites with better layouts for reading, and less hoops to jump through to get chapters free.
Yeah so that was ramble-y, but the gist is WN sucks, they're doing this because they're not earning enough money for their liking, and they're not earning enough money because they suck. Solution: take to the high seas!
