Quote Originally Posted by Zantetsuken View Post
ARR follows WoW's model almost exactly. It is accessible, in the early levels, everything is charted out and spoon fed to you in rapid succession. When you finally get to endgame, it layers on difficulty by being punishing if you don't follow the exact scripted steps that the game designers intend for you to take.

I think the following sums up what is wrong with this model, from one of the people who designed it:



ARR tries to artificially infuse challenge and longevity into this model by implementing punishing group memorization tests.

But the flaws in cloning WoW are fundamental, and simply making Titan EX or T5 easier won't fix them.

The game needs challenge... REAL challenge based on DEPTH (meaningful decision making) rather than mere EXECUTION (group jump-rope)
Once again another "hit the nail on the head" moment. It used to take AGES to get one single level in games like EQ, in fact "ding" was often announced in general chat accompanied by many congrats, even if it was level 2!! I remember the run from my home town to Kaladim...it was SCARY, my adrenaline actually kicked in. I've never, ever had those moments in mmos since then.

The times I lost my body before it rotted in those early days of levelling up and had to go kill skeletons again to just get some ragged cloth items to wear. Yeah it was FUN, challenging right from the beginning to the very end. Grindy? yup, but for some reason we didn't seem to mind back then....and you could lose levels! yeah...go afk somewhere and you could come back finding yourself delevelled maybe 10 levels, if you weren't careful where you were.

Nice to see a developer asknowledge the fact that WoW ruined the mmorpg genre, and a shame that modern games try to emulate wow. Although there is one coming out that has gone back to basics...sure hope they don't change anything, as it is pure sandbox and looks awesome. Looking forward to the hours of training my skills (lockpicking/provoking in UO anyone?)