[Leokaiser]

Leveling hasn't gone away, no, but the pacing of leveling and the rate of reward has changed dramatically. Sometimes the only notable progress you made during a lengthy session in EQ was seeing a bar fill up - regardless of the fun you might have had, the end result isn't as satisfying for most people compared to when you actually gain a tangible benefit from your play to carry on to your next session ("just want to ding, then I can log"?). Things like AAs or faster leveling rates and the consistant stream of gear/ability upgrades were the solution to this, to make (almost) every session a rewarding one in terms of character progress.

The problem is that as rewards become more frequent, they become less significant, so it is a hard formula to balance.

I'm fairly certain that no game hoping for commercial success will adopt a classic EQ approch to leveling, where A) groups are pretty much required for certain classes, yet there are no tools for ensuring the players will find one, B) progress is slow to the point that all you might get from hours of play is 10% of a level and some coin or C) the possibility to actually lose progress from a session due to exp loss on death (while danger and the fear of death are good, you are mad if you actually enjoy suffering a death penalty).

As someone sussinctly put it, that shit don't fly no more. Game budgets are huge these days, so you need to reel in the punters, not a niche who enjoy corpse runs and waiting 30 mins on boats. This server, which is free to play, developed and ran by hobbyists using an exisiting game client, and aimed at people who loved EQ classic (flaws and all), cannot be held up as proof that a similar commercial game released today could survive in the difficult market of MMOs.