any time you force players to stop leveling to do other things, for whatever reason, those are essentially artificial roadblocks to progression. while i don't disagree that it led to greater immersion and sense of adventure in XI, it's also a major reason why XI was never considered a commercial success and predominantly kept only a small niche of dedicated players happy over the years.

adventure and immersion are important, without a doubt- but i don't agree that artificial roadblocks are the answer. especially not when the game using artificial roadblocks as an example was never very successful itself.