Really?

As magnificent as The New Chess.com (Version 3) may be, there is a thing that spells its inevitable downfall: the restricted availability of Real 3D (beta) pieces to Premium Members only.

How would that be its downfall? I doubt very many people only play on the site if they had that piece set. There are other 3D sets available.

Yet to play with said set as a non-Premium Member, one has to use the old version, and be deprived of all of the new one's awesomeness. The affected people may really be few, and the restriction of their freedom of choice may look insignificant, but as Vaclav Havel put it, "Human freedom is also indivisible: if it is denied to anyone in the world, it is therefore denied, indirectly, to all people".

Ah, got it. v3 is still in development so it could change in the future. That said, lots of things are different between v2 and v3 and basic members have better benefits in the latter in most cases.