antonius said:Well, the pace of levelling and the time needed to do raid content are two different things. It should not take 10, 12, 20 hours to raid something...not because it should be different than EQ, but because that is beyond idiotic.
And because socks are getting expensive.
I have no doubt that the leveling will be slower than anyone who has not played vanilla EQ is use to. With that said, I hope that there is enough content outside of group exp to keep everyone engaged. This will be a subscription based game so people will want to feel like they've accomplished something (anything!) every time they play for more than a few hours. I remember some days in original EQ I would actually regress instead of progress in some game sessions due to the harsh death penalty (talking about the CR, not loss of exp). Again... I really hope they can keep people engaged without having to grind, because the xp loss on death combined with strict corpse runs and slow level progressing will have a lot of people looking for the next MMO unless the game goes free to play (and people don't have the subconcios feeling of wanting validation/justification for their money spent versus time of enjoyment). The larger our community, the better the social experience will be... those that don't need to justify their money versus time spent because we just enjoy the social aspect of the game will start to notice a decline in social interaction if the population starts to decline. Then you end up with handfulls of people socializing exclusively with one-another or maybe solely within one of the few guilds remaining (which isn't a bad thing) but it defeats the purpose of trying to create a world designed around socializing.
I just hope there is enough content to keep people engage/fullfiled without having to dedicate 20 hours of grinding to get 1 level (like in EQ1).
@Darch
The other side of that is that if the game is rewarding enough and addicting, then the setbacks and losses will not be detrimental, but may help galvanize the players.
It was that high risk that really made EQ1 nail biting, then you get lucky and get that one awesome item to add to your gear and the euphoria drove you through, and kept reminding you during the bad nights of why you keep logging on.