You are very correct in that concern, as those BPOs in the Veteran Pack were purchased directly with real world cash. If CCP were to remove those, they would likely be legally obligated to refund the cash.

However because the modules in question were only purchasable with AUR and not available directly in any pack, there is no legal obligation to refund the cash for the BPOs, only the AUR used to buy the BPOs since the AUR was purchased directly.

So I understand the slippery slope concern, but there is a significant difference in the BPOs you're worried about and the ones actually in question now.

In the case where blueprints went from 25AUR to 4800AUR, CCP must make a decision whether to refund the original purchase price, the current price, or somewhere in between.

As I said, no guidance -> angst.

Oh man, it was insanity back then.

The horror, The horror

here's the problem with the aur refund...

these items were supposed to be permanent.

Dude I could have had around $800k net gain, I was hysterical at that time baahahhahaha.

I think there's a bit of "prolog" to this situation which might explain the intensity a bit. At EVE Vegas, a panelist received a question which, as I recall, was "are my BPO's safe"? The panelist seemed, from my perspective, to have misheard/misinterpreted the question as "are BPOs safe", to which he replied, "no". What I believe he meant was "no, we're in the process of removing them from the market." In any case, this caused a bit of a panic here on the forums, there was a bit of a threadnaught on the topic, and CCP issues a clarification that BPOs were being removed from the market only, and not from inventories. A couple of weeks later, here we are, and the BPOs in question are being removed from inventories.

That's all my attempt at impartial reporting. IMO, we've known for a while that they were paring back the vehicle module selection, and as soon as I heard that I assumed we'd be getting refunds for any BPO equivalents they removed, but hey...

so it's to be semantics?

permanent is permanent...

I was never given any indication that an item I bought from ccp that implied permanence would be pulled out from under my feet in such an obtuse way....

but even so, it still doesn't change the fact that confidence in their aur has dropped making it less valuable then the aur I purchased, and certainly less valuable than the bpo.

and remained in your inventory....and I don't remember the exact wording anymore but blueprints were described as being permanent items in your inventory.

and lets face it was also always implied they were ours to keep.

Here's my view as a long time buyer of merc packs and aurum.

- In the upcoming patch I have one module being removed (a militio vehicle BPO) and I'm getting a refund (4800 aurum I believe). Now I have no problem with the removal of the module, or the refund.

- What I DO have a problem with is that now there is little use for Aurum. There are no more BPO's on the marketplace, these were by far the best value when using aurum. There are expendable items, which I don't need, since their only use is for using items which you aren't skilled for (in itself, a weird concept since you won't be effective on the battlefield with them anyway), and this in a game where you can burn through up to 10 suits or more in a single battle, they are terrible value. It leaves boosters, which I have plenty of due to my purchases of aforementioned merc packs.

- So this leaves two acceptable options for those affected:

1. Improve the aurum marketplace - more/different boosters, vanity BPO items, aurum-respecs,etc.
2. Give me a BPO of the equivalent module that is replacing the deprecated one.

I think it's in CCP's best interest to improve the uses of Aurum, considering it is their primary revenue stream at work. If there is little use for the currency, what use is there buying it - which begs the question, where else do you get your revenue from in this free to play game?