Instances introduce more problems than just the total decline of community and PvP environment, too. Suddenly there's no limit to how many times a day any given mob can be killed, so having tradeable items worth anything at all was out of the question. That led to overitemization because acquiring a given item was just a matter of doing the instance x amount of times, and usually not nearly as many times as you would have to try to get an item the traditional way in old-fashioned dungeons. It also forced instances to have copious rewards, because nobody would be satisfied with an instance that just had XP mobs. This further encouraged the over-itemization since any given instance run would be guaranteed to produce far more and better rewards than the same amount of time spent in an actual dungeon. This first started in LDoN where you got not only drops from bosses but also points to buy more items with - usually a full set that was superior to anything you could acquire with similar effort elsewhere - and suddenly there was far too much emphasis on equipment. In Classic/Kunark, you're not useless if you're undergeared, and something like a set of mixed Crafted and Cobalt pieces can absolutely last you until the very upper levels. When content eventually had to over-reward players for participation, that content also had to be tuned so as to require those rewards, increasing the gap between those who had acquired the rewards and those who hadn't. In the end, we got the result that is now a fact in every MMORPG: those with good gear have twice as high stats, DPS, mana etc. as those without it, and the two demographics can't interact in any meaningful way, whether PvP or PvE.
|