[fadetree]

I think a fundamental problem with his idea is that there's a difference between 'mystery' and 'unreasonably hard'. If you are flailing around because you *don't* know the mechanics, yes it makes seem harder. That just feels ok, understandable, and it's also fun figuring out stuff. There's hope to be had and cool new techniques to be shared.

However, if you take known mechanics and just make them WAY harder, it doesn't feel the same. You know perfectly well why things are or are not working, and you know there's nothing you can do to make them any better other than just group up and play really hard and suffer through it. That's a valid play style for some, but you will lose people's interest at a huge clip, I predict. You will do nothing to 'recapture' the original feels of being alone in a harsh world without a clue, because everybody has a clue. Let's face it, even as well known and 'easy' as it is, EQ will still make you pay horribly for mistakes and they seem to happen in infuriatingly obscure and random ways. It's balanced some though, becuase lots of teh game is fairly well known and more or less 'easy'. Cranking up the 'hardness' knob will make those kinds of things even harder to take.

I personally would be fine with no MQ and lots more of the good stuff being non-droppable.

Now, if a NEW game was all super bad-ass hard, then yeah I can see that. I'm looking at you, Pantheon.