Alternate Advancement: Good or Bad?

[Tallenn]

First of all, the claim of upsetting balance assumes that there ever was or indeed, ever could be, real balance between the classes. There never has been and I submit, there never can be, unless all classes are removed, and everyone given all identical abilities. One set of abilities can NEVER be made to perfectly balance against another set, not to mention 14 different sets to all balance against one another. It's just not possible. There is not balance- there never was any balance, there never can be any balance. So that is not a valid argument.

That said, I like AAs. That was the whole problem with WoW. Once you have reached max level (admittedly far easier than in classic EQ), the only way to improve your character is with gear. Now, getting all the very best gear can take quite a bit of time, but what if you don't want to raid, what if you don't want to do arena or battlegrounds, or whatever the PvP du jour is now? What if you don't really even want to group? I got my character to 80, did all the quests I could solo, and grinded out tons of cash to buy the very best equipment available on the AH. Ok, then what? Keep grinding cash? for what? There's nothing left to buy that would make my character better. Grind factions to get a different mount that's not going to be any faster than what I already have? Unless I wanted to start raiding or doing those mind-numbing daily heroics, I was done. I beat the game- as much as I was interested in doing, anyway. I went and leveled another character to 80, but got tired of that one even quicker. That's why I'm not playing WoW now, and why I probably won't until the next xpac comes out.

EQ without AAs is the same way. The only way you can continue to improve your character once you are at max level is by raiding, which I'm no longer interested in doing.

Let me be clear though. I'm not promoting the idea that AAs be included on this server. AAs were introduced with Luclin, and this server will not include that xpac. Therefore, there should not be AAs on this server. Period. I love AAs, but they do not belong on a classic server.