I've been playing this game for free over two years now (quite a little while
compared to many), but I understand people who donate to keep this going.
Boons are very useful, not because of stat bonuses or skillmaxes etc, but
because they make it possible to try interesting race and guild combos. When I
started playing no one would have believed that ents would make rocking habo
off/def tanks.

Now that it is impossible (you know what I mean) to donate, those older
players (who did donate and actually knew what to do with task points and how
powerful they were) have a very clear advantage compared to those who started
playing a year ago or so. We could argue forever that is this fair, but I
would suggest inventing new things to do with your task points. IMO those
+skill/spellmaxes and statmaxes are actually quite lame. Perk -system from
Fallout games would be much more interesting:

You could buy avoid death or infravision ability with task points, you could
get that "strong back", which would enable you carry more equipment before
starting to lose def factor (Useful to tanks with 2 xormors or vorpals for
example), endurance boon that would work like the skill... The list goes on
and on

This would balance the powers between players with task points and those with
not (though current +statmaxes would require downtuning then), yet it would
introduce useful ways to spend your tp's. Compared to the current system,
there wouldn't of course be any 10% boons etc. but certain "perk" would cost a
certain amount of task points.

-Tsuran the negotiator