Stop the linear leveling

[Hoofhurr]

Doh I hit the edit button on your post on accident Slamz. I think that's the original text. Anyhow back to my post.

That giant crab never did get me. I graduated from the School of Lockjaw.

And that's the point I've been trying to make in a nutshell. MMOGs have the ability to really set any baseline they want for how you contextualize what you experience. The unexpected lockjaw encounter put you on alert. It was good training for the unexpected pvp encounter but more than that it made you not take anything for granted. Most of the games we play these days have very predictable boundaries and these make the game seem safe by comparison.

If you want your gaming experience to have some emotional return on your investment then they need to encompass as much of the range of possibility that the real world possesses and that includes getting one shotted by shit once in a while.

Part of the sense of wonderment that EQ possessed was engendered by the understanding that 'anything' might happen or that you had no frame of reference for what might be possible in that virtual world. This is most important in the early stages of the game. Am I saying you need this in every game to appreciate a good game? No, but persistent worlds ought to have some random elements that aren't entirely player driven. The reason for this is that players are perhaps too sporadic to have a significant impact. If the random elements are so random that there's no anticipation or too long a period transpires before the element surfaces, then that can have the same net effect as those elements that are too predictable, i.e. a general apathy towards random encounters.

I suppose I contradict myself. I'm not really talking about random elements at all. Truly random events aren't experiences that let you learn from and adapt to. I guess what we're talking about is some mixing up of the leveling progression. Instead of feeding you content in a serial progression such that one area sets you up for the next area without much thought, it might be nice to be surprised once in a while like a scary movie sets a pattern and then switches tracks to give you a good scare.