You'll have to forgive me, but I stopped believing anything Abashi posts,
but here's yet another reason why:

A player asked "Why hell levels?" and as has been answered by Brad McQ a few
months ago, (paraphrased) "Many MUDs had them, they are a part of the game."

From Abashi on 01/04/00,

"It's the way the experience curves work. Unfortunately, going in and fixing
it at this point isn't an option. Anyone who had gone through a "hell level"
would instantly get another level or two. Additionally, people who had
already fought there way through several of them would be cheated out of the
work they did."

To be polite, there is at least a "disconnect" between their PR guy and the
dev team. Abashi's posts are very political, rarely answering our questions
definitively (he must have a macro for the phrase "on-going issues" as often
as he uses it) and always loaded with a sickly sweet ass kissing. I'm
sorry, but I don't want to hear excuses or "the upside" to a bug. Fix it.
That's why we PAY to play.

Verant is guilty of what happens to so many MUD admins: they forget what its
like to play the game. Aside from the implementers, most MUD admin teams
are drawn from the player base, and usually are the ones that were highly
successful. Two things happen at this point that make you a less effect
admin person as time goes on:

(1) All the smoke and mirrors are gone and you see how the game mechanics
work. Initially this is a very good thing, since you can take your existing
knowledge of how to play the game and can tweak the balance correctly. This
later is a problem because players come to you with problems however you
"know" how something works and you don't need this mere player telling you
different.

(2) You forget what it was like to play the game. This clearly plagues
Verant, buffing chars up to an appropriate level and loading gear so they
don't have to "deal" with the miseries of low levels to get to mid levels to
"play test" eliminates the learning curve in between. This most clearly
manifests itself in Brad McQ's response to melee classes not being able to
bind anywhere:

"The idea is that casters are more prone to dying (especially in group
situations, in the depths of dungeons, when something goes bad) and thus can
bind in more places. "

Clearly Verant hasn't played with the gating cleric or the stun|mez|gate
enchanter. The game mechanics are lost upon them. The fact binding a
dungeon is a bug is immaterial; you bind just outside the zone. The only
place I can think of this not being the case is dragon runs or lower guk.

Sigh, sorry for the rant, but reading his stuff and seeing it taken as the
word and the truth annoy me to no end.

-GW
<Tork@Nameless>