Well... It seams FoE is turning in to one of THOUSE games... Any game that demands you spend money to keep up is not worth playing in my opinion - been there done that - got a buyers remorse to show for it.
There are much better ways to spend money than on a bunch of pixels that will stop being relevant pretty soon anyway. I'm all for supporting the developer and having "pay to skip" options, if I enjoy the game I'd gladly pay to keep it going, but things like this event when the best prizes can not obtained without cash... Well I'm hoping it was a one time mistake and will not happen again. Other ways - I'm out. The experience will only go downhill from that point on anyway.