[stormlord]

I like the lower levels. To be honest, I've been rushing for the past 10 years and I'm tired of it. That's why I like project1999. It's about the memories. It's about qeynos. I don't want to be 50 too soon.

I don't understand why people think 4x or 8x or 12x or 18x exp would be better. It's all about the journey for me. I don't want to have to killl myself to slow down leveling.

The option to make exp 1/8 or 1/4 or 1/12 would be welcome.

And you know.. the faster you reach max level and max your alts, the sooner EQ becomes no-longer-new. At that point it's just a grind because you already know what to expect. That's what a grind is. And I think a lot of people that have exhausted the lower levels, are the ones who rush to max level and complain about grind.

Once you run out of new things to do, you move on. That or you love to grind.

If killing a skeleton or adventuring in a dungeon or exploring a zone isn't fun, giving you all the money or gear or experience you ever wanted won't make it fun either.

If you're not happy with limited knowledge, why would you be happy with all existing knowledge?

Your can have fun at level 3 or 7 or 12 or 18 or 25 or 30 or 40 or 50, it doesn't matter. If you don't enjoy this game at level 2, I don't think being level 50 will change anything unless the population distribution is uneven (ex: lots of people at level 50 but only a small number of them less than level 10). In fact, I think that on the live servers this is especially true because there're far more high levels than low levels. This creates a circumstance where the low levels want to reach max level asap so they can play with other people and find groups. (i neglected to also say here that another reason someone might want to be 50 is because they've exhausted the low level content/gameplay and they haven't exhausted the high level content/gameplay, but i had already stated this in a previous paragraph - geez things are never simple are they?)

Case in point, on live I have a midtier raider with modern gear and he's level 85. I have had fun with him, but then again, it gets boring real quick. I've had just as much fun here at project1999 on my less-than-level-9 alts (i don't twink any of my alts either). That should say something!

The proper way to go about this is to assess your population distribution and change exp gain for all levels accordingly. For example, if you're only 50% of the optimal number of people between 1 and 10, then you need to increase experience between 1 and 10 to compensate for the shortfall (maybe 2x). So the key is changing experience at all level ranges in distinct ways, not a broad overall increase. This ensures better fairness, but the equation might need to include more factors or elements than just increasing by a comparative amount.

From this it's very likely that the lower level game will deteriorate at project1999 unless we can keep a constant supply of incoming new players to keep the low levels populated. This will result in a lot of people complaining and the veterans will misinterpet this as them being casuals (and they'll disdainfully say go play wow!). The thing is, these players will not be able to find enough groups in the low levels to satisfy the experience curve, so it's harder for them than it was for the veterans!!!! The veterans got it all backwards. The appropriate response is to have a graph of population distribution and do what I said in the previous paragraph. A lot of the changes to live eq were exactly these kinds of measures: mercs, pots, faster experience, new soloable zones, hotzones, etc. These changes were not fundamental, they were necessary to satisfy the experience curve and population distribution. Veterans, a lot of them anyway, do not understand this very well. The changes made to live were not a broad brush stroke to make the game easier. The changes were not fundamental - it was not a matter of opinion. Simply put, unless they advertised and got a sufficient number of new players to populate the low levels, then these changes were absolutely integral to the success of the servers.

The success of eq in 1999 was not because it was alone and people had no choice, it was because the experience curve requirements were met by the population distribution. The failure later on was not due to the "hardcore" elements that people rememeber, but instead due to a failing rate of incoming players to populate the lower levels - lots of people were streaming to a plethora of new mmorpgs and this hurt eq a lot. The response by SOE to reduce the difficulties and demands were a direct result of failing populations, not a difference of opinion that favored easy gameplay. When you look at the great numbers of mmorpgs that appeared between 1999 and 2005, you begin to understand why eq failed and needed to change.

It's how that population failed that is the great debate and it still is going on. Some people say it was the hardcore gameplay, some say it was lack of advertising, some say it was a combination of mediocre advertising + old software and attrition and content exhaustion + many new mmorpgs that grabbed potential new people (i feel it's all of these), and some people just ignore the great debate altogether.

Bottom line, people want to try new things. They will not stay with a single mmorpg forever. And each mmorpg is limited by its audience size. For example, many mmorpgs are made in such a way that it takes x days to level to max. Some are based on 2 hour sessions and short playtime for max level, and some are based on 3 or 4 hour sessions and long playtimes to reach max stats and max level. These will have different, finite audiences. It's impossible for an mmorpg to perpetually grow because it gets harder and harder to maintain the old software and to overcome content exhaustion and attrition. The odds get oppressive. Death is a part of our universe.

Even project1999 is not immune. Many of the people who're playing here have played eq for a long time and many played in 1999. There's a great deal of content exhaustion - this diminishes the value of the game world. You've seen the zone five hundred times and know where the spawns are - there's no more adventure, less learning, more grind. This will have consequences. It will eventaully lead to attrition because people feed on new things just like we need food and water. Some people will survive longer by changing the reasons they play hte game - like instead of adventuring and seeing new things and learning, they play instead to meet people and help them. But even the best will, in time, cripple under the weight of the grind. And it's unlikely that population can remain steady unless the expected audience is far larger than anyone expected (and everyone does their job to advertise). This will further hurt the server (as has been said a lot in this post).

There's no perpetual motion device, yet! Perpetual growth is equally irrational.

(sorry for restating the same points in multiple places. I was trying to rephrase things in different light. i've found it helps to "forget" what I say and then go back to it later from different angle.)