[casdegere]

I'm not sure that Kunark was a mistake. When it was released EQ was booming and people seemed to eat up its difficulty compared to other games. Contested zones, camps and loot. Traveling still took time/danger vs. coin and corpse recovery could be dangerous. What they added with Kunark was almost mandatory grinding on top of it all. But some people always had/have time and energy to login for vast hours upon hours of EQ even still. It held their attention, it certainly held mine more then any other game I have ever played.

Before rotations on raid mobs the guilds with the most people that barely worked or slept were the ones that got the kills. People were addicted to the point of divorce and/or financial ruin. I even remember cases where wives, girlfriends...moms/dads deleted characters of insanely addicted EQ players and there were suicides and/or violent repercussions afterward.

On Rift, people had maxed out their level and crafting professions in 1-2 weeks. Doubtful there is enough content made for that game besides PVP to keep them satisfied for very long. To have seen level 60, 70, 80, 85th level characters in EQ soon after their perspective content add-on was a much bigger deal than 1-2 weeks of play. I mean, someone could grind on through, xping almost nonstop and do it fairly quickly but everything else will not be getting developed. Equipment, spells, crafts etc. would nearly have to be ignored. Banks and/or sellers have to be traveled to at some point as well. In these new games things like sellers, portals etc. to get back and forth to convenient places are built into the game from the start.