How to make leveling more interesting

[Dangermouse]

Well, there's reward, and risk - two seperate things.

I'm not expert on every zone, but generally I think the rewards to be gained from dungeon zones are acceptable, and generally higher than outdoor zones - although that's a very general statement and I'm sure there are exceptions.

I wouldn't want to increase rewards particularly - it seems that there is plenty of loot around on this server, masses of plat, and xp is not slow if you are determined.

What I would change, on our hypothetical server, is the risk factor of dungeons compared to outdoor zones. As has been pointed out, the risk in outdoors zones is pretty much zero if you can run to a zone line. So how to acceptably reduce risk in dungeons without trivialising the game and making a WoW style "invulnerable corpse run mode"?

- An item that will summon your corpse, but costs more than the tiny coffins needed for the necro spell.

- Lower xp loss on death in dungeons - perhaps related to the ZEM.

- Some way of getting a rez in a dungeon that doesn't involve a cleric. Although how would clerics feel about this I wonder - is it putting them out of a job, or freeing them up to do something more interesting?

Those are just ideas being chucked out for discussion. Back in the old days, Verant would baulk at allowing people to duplicate a "class defining ability" - for example no rez potions - and that's one of the things that makes classic the way we like it (I assume!)