From a game design standpoint, GeG makes absolutely no sense.
The secret to creating a successful MMO is to give all types of players a compelling reason to log in the next day. The secret to getting new and casual players on the treadmill is to have them aspire to be like high levels as well as giving them a means to achieve this. Besides making a games content much more balanced and easy to create, level caps are used in most games in order to give new players the sense that, no matter how much they play, some day, they will be the same level as all the other high level players. And then there's Faldon...
So, you have a game that the power of the character is entirely based upon how many levels have(and how well you can exploit glitches, but that's a whole other story). So, years after this client comes out and player levels are already extremely inflated because of players literally leveling for hours every night, you add a feature to the game that caters strictly to these players(it takes 4-5+ hours just to get into GeG), reward them with a large variety of spawns that drop some of the best items and gives gold every level. This game has never had a huge player retention rate, but it has always relied on new waves of players coming in. When most players log in the first time, they notice a lack of players and, as soon as they play for a while, they realize that there are always going to be infinitely higher level players than them because there's never been a stop to leveling or resets and active players are literally a decade ahead of them. This is my main problem with GeG. To put it in a different perspective, when given the choice between leveling multiple players to max level as well as being competitive and having to drop years into a game with 20 players logged on and still being way behind, customers are going to choose the option one.
As previously mentioned, from a religion standpoint, it made no sense at all. Originally(as stated by zer), religions were implemented in order to give players reason to create teams and compete in pvp with more meaning behind it(like factions in DAoC). All the religions were set up to provide advantages and counters against each other to make it more interesting. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way because, right away, there were balance issues that weren't addressed. If we pretend for a minute that, at some point, the religions will be balanced, GeG doesn't fit into that picture at all without heavy modifications to say the least.
Last edited by pennywise (September 2nd, 2010 4:13 PM)
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