So, it has been a while and I have been waiting until I had some time to evaluate this new system. And unsurprisingly, it turned out pretty much as I expected; it sucks. I will compare between some different servers, where I have different cities.
Main city: end-game player, that has been sitting at the end of chap 21 for a while now. A typical whale, top15 of the world player, lots of premium expansions, with pretty huge stocks of everything, whether goods, spells, summonings, sorcereries etc etc. Brought out 3 additional Moonstone lib sets, having 4 up now (and another 4 still in my inventory). Gold Spire every week, 16+ chests in the tourney every week and crafting 24/7.
Most of my AWs (and I have most of them up, 36 AWs total, 18 of them now at lvl 35) were about lvl 30, as there was no reason for me to upgrade them beyond that, as there was only 1 of the effects that would increase and picked up on upgrading them to 35 now.
My stock of CC-spells has dropped from about 1.300 to about 250, despite Tinlug providing 37-40 CCs every week, and cooking them in the MA and having the Dragon Ark providing 14 CCs for every chest I collect from the MA. My stock of spellfrags dropped from 1.1 MILLION to 120.000, despite disenchanting quite some spells and instants and event-buildings I didn't need for an additional 200.000 frags or so.
That means that at this point, spellfrags are going to be a bit of an issue if I want to bring the rest up to 35.
So for my main city, this is a hardship, but it still is do-able. Perhaps not as fast as I would like, but that is ok, it is a bit of a challenge, though there just are not enough sources for spellfrags to keep this up. But my stock of spells and PP-instants can still be used to create more spellfrags, it's just that I don't like to bring those stocks down, which is more psychologically than anything else as there is no reason to keep having such huge stocks with 1.500+ spells of each type and huge masses of instants I almost never use. Not to mention that I can always rebuild these later and will be getting more from events.
However, it also means that my whale-city is not really slowed down that much, which was the whole reason given for this change, so in that aspect this change is an abysmal failure.
Good sized city in chap 17. Quite a bit smaller than my main city, not as many AWs (18 up, ranging between lvl 13-29). This city has 2 Moonsone Lib sets up and does ok in the Spire, though we don't make gold every week, but do every other week, we do about 11-12 tourneychests every week.
This city has come to a halt in upgrading AWs. 3 are now ready to be upgraded, but I don't have enough frags to do so, with one more being at the lvl of needing to fill the ring and I'm waiting for more runes. My stock is now about 21.000 frags, but the AWs that are ready to be upped are all at a lvl that need more than that. And I still would like to craft, so my stock has to be carefully balanced. Though the city is good on goods and mana, the spellfrags and CC's are an issue.
So for this advanced city it will mean greatly slowing down upping AWs, which was the point.
Small city; chap 7. Not much money invested, but still got 4 premium expansions. 4 AWs up, lvl 4-12. Short on spellfrags. I might be able to up 1, maybe 2 lvls, but that will about it for a long time as I don't have any Moonstone sets here and am not able to climb much in the Spire. Maybe halfway up the 2nd floor. Don't make it to 10 chests every week either. Even though I do have Tinlug it's only to stage 9, but getting enough petfood through crafting is not easy and a drain on the spellfrags. It will take a lot of time to build up enough frags to upgrade anything and I really will have to chose between crafting and upgrading.
For this smaller city, it will mean (almost) no upping AWs at all, due to lack of frags and CCs and the need to craft to get an edge in the tourney. That is not 'slowing down', that is 'stopping'. These are not the same! Abysmal failure here.
Real small city, just finished chap 4, with 2 premium expansions. Hard time doing a lot of tourney. No Spire available at all yet. So the 2 AWs I have up can't be upgraded at all. There just is no way to get spellfrags and at this low level I even have an issue creating CC spells.
For this small city it means that even though I have more AWs unlocked, I can't build or upgrade any. Abysmal failure here.
So recapping; it's a disaster for small/new cities. AWs give a needed edge in the game, especially the GA which is a huge spacesaving AW, but only IF YOU CAN GET IT ABOVE lvl 6 or so, which for smaller cities is already going to be all but impossible.
But for the large end-game players with a lot of AWs already at high levels it is more an annoyance than a way to stop them.
Then some more problems
Additionally, there is the problem -again, especially for smaller players- that building an unwanted AW just so you can sell it off in order to fill the ring again and break runes into broken shards is going to be a huge drain on the already limited frags, CC's and RR spells. Needing 1.000 frags, 1 CC AND 5 RRs to build it, then only getting back 2 CCs and 1 RR when you sell it (no frags at all) means that mechanism is very much crapped for smaller cities, making it even harder to get the runes for the ones you do want to build or up at the rune level.
Second additional problem is the KPs. The AWs were initially introduced because so many players couldn't do anything with their KPs when they got techlocked.
That same problem is returning now, but in a worse way. Making it so hard to upgrade AWs means there are a lot of AWs waiting to be upped. When all the AWs you have up are waiting to be upped (and yes, there are quite a few players with only a few AWs and now not being able to up them) there is nothing one can do with the KPs at the moment you are techlocked. You can't swap KPs if you can't receive any. So the only thing to do is start finding other players and just start donating extra, in order to get runes and KP instants. However, when you are doing that without being able to receive anything you are taking away room from that other player, which can lead to that player getting KP-locked because they received way more than they donated. Before all the yelling starts; yes, I know it will take a good amount of KPs. However, just looking on my map (granted, I have a pretty large map) I can already see a good number of players who are KP locked. I don't have that problem myself, but I could easily drop a couple of thousand KPs all over the map and KP lock a bunch of players that way, especially smaller ones.
(Edit) Just had a player who is quitting dump 980 KPs into one of my AWs. Which is the 2nd time in 2 weeks something like that happened. Not a big deal to me as I have more than enough room, but still a good example of how that might be a problem for some players.
Suggestion
This new system should have been made for later levels of AWs only. Say lvl 31-35, or even lvl 26-35. And in that case, the cost could be made steeper. That would be slowing down larger players and players with high lvl AWs, but not the smaller/newer cities.
Right now, to bring any AW from lvl 1 to lvl 11 costs 66.000 frags and 66 CCs and 30 RRs. Already almost undoable for small cities, and lvl 11 isn't even that far.
To bring any single AW from lvl 1 to lvl 35 costs 630.000 frags and 630 CCs and 140 RRs. That is going to be almost impossible even for goodsized cities.
This change (NOT an improvement as claimed by Inno) will mostly hamper any new player, as well as anyone starting a new city. However, it will only slightly slow down the really large end-game players. Even less so since they already have a lot of AWs up at medium to high levels, so they don't have to deal with the cost in frags to get them there.
If the same cost needed to up 1 AW would be limited to the lvls 31-35 it would mean huge amounts per lvl (126.000 frags and 126 CCs and 28 RRs per level (on average, so could be changed a bit to make it a rising cost). That's a very steep price, so it would slow down even large players, but would not stop anyone else to getting their AWs to a decent level.
Or it could be spread out over lvls 26-35, in which case the cost would be halved (and would give a better opportunity to make it a rising scale of cost) and yet still offer all players to at least build and up their AWs to a decent level.
