Players wonder, why there is less players or why this or that is more popular
guild/playing style.. Lots of things affect the why.
1. We used to have parry ON while offtanking, before combat speed tune. You
only got slight -hit from that. That made tanking bigger monsters easier, I
remember that good leaders used to make 6 man offtank parties. Not anymore.
2. The whole nomad backround sucked compared to hybrids before hpcap tune. Now
there is more choise and it's more balanced. Also spellcasting on frontrow
were easier, nowadays monsters break it more --> you cannot cast longer spells
unless you totally rock.
3. Only few guilds had repsystem, so you didn't have play the guild for a year
until you could use the full potential. Also reincs were easier --> only
instant mode and it went to minimum in ~month, which btw was 1% tax..

So why tanks are still rocking the game after those downtunes?
1. With weaponspeed and str affecting more, somehow we hit harder now, tho
seems that even newbies now have better weapons than years ago. Inflation?
2. Mounts. There were not mounted guilds to make soloing easier. But mounted
guilds have problem with parties because mounts slow party down if there is
special exists to go (and every area has). So mounts might be reason why there
is more soloers nowadays --> harder to get party.
3. Continents really made travelling a issue, I remember that leading a party
was a lot easier with the old map. Now everyone is used to this. I still don't
understand that why making the land suddenly so much bigger, even laenor is
bigger than old continent was + there is now 4 more continents, just laenor
and one more for starters would have been better, maybe many old players would
have continued playing instead of quitting. Yeah, there were 400+ players
online before continents..
4. What was I rambling about? Ah, tanks, only guilds who can solo. Nowadays
even better.
e
Well anyways, think about how much the game has changed. Like the need of exp,
nowaydays lvl100 is ~300megs, when I started it was 150megs. Overtrain is
uptune, but it also means that standard is that you overtrain some
skills/spells aka you need more exp. Oh, almost forgot, there were cap how
much skill/spell% would cost, it was 230k, nowadays there is not.

I still think the game is more balanced now and there is more for everyone. I
don't want to whine that much anymore because there is allways the flipside of
the coin too. Just try to enjoy the game and keep a break when playing goes
too obsessive.

++Beliah Thevil