I would like to reiterate an old thread, but its just as current today as it
was yesterday. Players are ever gaining in power. You see this especially in
"sp toys" like henry plates, blue bracelets, alex sleeves, etc etc. You can
do thanatos in what 20 mins or something some party did the other day? Also
following mobs like gatekeeper and reaver and waino have a lot less bite when
your store of sps is huge. The problem is that while top players have all
these toys, beginning players dont and i think its really in the best intrest
of the game to make eq mobs viable for all level of players. Already i see
less and less noob players on the game. This is especially true during
american times, the place is a veritable wasteland then, you can count on your
fingers the new players you see in the game then.

One solution to this problem of eq tuning is to upgrade monsters relative to
the party that faces them. For instance i absolutely despise the stifsim rape
prot because basically its the same group of 20 players killing the mob over
and over. This rape prot is good, but it should be based on PERSONAL rape..ie
if you have killed it in last 3 months then you are in deep grudge, and if
not, then its easier. If i was making a mob today what i would do is make it
get harder each time a certain person killed that showed up again. So if the
exact same party showed up after its rape prot wore off, it would be twice as
hard, if only one person /9 showed up then it would +1/9th as hard, etc. And
this would be a permanent protection. It would basically say, you cant just
keep on killing my mob over and over and getting more and more eq that you
already have. the idea is to WIN the area, get the eq, and then move on.
Anyways, in general i think more lvl based rape prot tuning needs to be put in
place so that the eq mobs are not tuned for the top 10% of players, leaving
the top 90% killing soth over and over.

As for the lack of new players during american times, i think its very
important to keep the transatlantic bond strong for batmud. My own personal
opinion is that batmud should spend some of its money on a archwizard or
perhaps player who would donate some time and be compensated for travel costs
and promote batmud at the various cons around the country. I think more needs
to be done to promote batmud through web based magazines and web sites. In
general i think promotion should be much more of a priority for the
administration , even sacrificing some of its hard won donation money, because
the fact that this is a world wide game that connects the entire world
together, is something that makes batmud really special.

My own personal feelings, feel free to respond.