The point is - there ARE newbies - and there ARE casual gamers. This is a
gentrification of elder player problem as old as all the genres of online
games/MUDs etc. How do you keep it challenging to the elder player?

The easiest bandaid is to make everything harder - this shuts out new
players. The correct solution is adding new things - not continually
raising the bar.

I've noticed in a few posts the attitude that Verant is the enemy. Well,
sortof - WE are the enemy. This too is a very common attitude shift for
designers and GMs/DMs. What starts out as OUR game - eventually turns out
to be THEIR game - and the players do become the enemy. It's all bout
attitude and human nature - and it's as predictable as tommorrow's sunrise
- they ALL go thru it.

>Which is, of course, how it should be. As a casual gamer playing 2 hours a
>night, I should expect to advance slower than somebody who plays 12 hours a
>day. There's no "bias" against casual gamers in EQ that doesn't exist in any
>other online game. And it's not really accurate to call it a bias
>either...after all would it be fair for me to level 6x faster than Joe
>Collegestudent just because I can't play as much as him?