I haven't really played actively since my rebirth, so take this with a grain
of salt.

It worries me that even though most of the elements that make BatMUD a good
game are still there, there are some features that make the playing a bit too
challenging for most of the casual players.

First of them being is the reinc system. I personally am a big fan of the
regain-your-exp-by-gaining-exp reinc system, but at the moment it seems that
the exp gain is way too biased towards the end of the reinc. The upped
levelcosts of 91-100 probably fixed some of this for the ones big enough to
reach level 100.
This could be fixed by tuning the formula of the regain exp to give more exp
at the beginning of the reinc.
Other way to fix this - which I'd prefer is to HEAVILY uptune the level costs
of levels 2 through 90. Aiming towards newbie friendliness and all, this would
also fix another issue; it seems pretty unfair to give the newbies a false
hope of quick progress (with the help of explore exp and all) to level 50 and
then hitting the wall of 'work your ass off on crappy tune monsters to gain
half a level in same time as you gained first 50'

Even bigger flaw in the reinc system is that the cash cost of levels (and NO
WAY WHATSOEVER to work around those costs) were *NOT* tuned at 2 different
occasions that made the economy quite different: a) the installation of new
playercity system (and latter their taxes) b) when the name tune deflated the
EQ prices totally.

It seems that the old players who quit and come back have noticed this too -
back in the old days there was much less (or was there at all?)
suicide+restore - people just started over - and gained their exp/eq/whatever
much quicker with their friends and skills (real life skill 'Play batmud' not
ingame skills).

Summa summarum; It looks that nowadays you cannot really 'grow' a character
with playing skills or knowledge - you just need to do it with your ass
muscles and by 24/7 sessions. I don't think that this has always been the case

Since this rambling seems to go on for ever I think I'll stop to think for a
while and write a new post in a few ,)