I was playing with one of my friends the other day who hasn't played in a long time, and while we were playing he was inspecting his gear looked over at the infusion option and said "what's an enhancement core?" I have sincere worries about bringing new players into D2 when the year 1 content becomes free to play. It will be hard to have a new player who was curious, but not necessarily interested in the series to keep playing when they have to abandon a cool weapon because they won't have the resources to upgrade that weapon's attack power. Yes they do have avenues to obtain cores in the form of masterworked leviathan gear, gunsmith bounties, and a rare chance from dismantling weapons. But 2 of those 3 avenues require a player to want to play the game enough to go down those routes... My point is even though some of us (including me) have plenty of cores, they could be a turn off for new players come September. TL:DR New players good. Cores bad. Edit: I made this post because my entire friends list had said that they will play this game when it becomes free to play but one of my friends who played this game became disappointed BECAUSE he had to leave his favorite guns behind practically every 5 power levels. He hasn't played the game since he mentioned it. And another friend quit because his 2 favorite year 2 weapons require cores he doesn't have. So I know that this topic will be a determining factor into their interest in playing this game. I know that my friends would enjoy this game, but I don't want them to have this steep price to play how you want. Especially when they play other games that don't demand steep sacrifices early-ish in their time playing. And I AM NOT calling for enhancement cores to be removed, they are simply just a steep asking price for newer players (who would only have 2 or 3 free methods to obtain them) to use their favorite gear. And for those saying they make using gear a meaningful choice. Yes they do kind of. They flow like water for people who know how to farm them and play the game a good amount already and are as scarce as copper for new players. Yes I understand it won't be a problem for them in TIME. But that's way after their first impression has settled. If there was a workaround to where newer players could not be turned off while still providing a meaningful choice for infusion I believe many players would be satisfied. (Perhaps reducing the core cost to 1 or 2 while doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the glimmer cost since that would still limit infusions but make infusion more pertinent to time invested rather than luck.)