You know, I do wonder sometimes if we could use a game like the one postulated in http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal

Heh, I am exactly the opposite.  I enjoy exploring the game, which is what you do from level 1->X.  I like seeing the history of the world, and the fauna and the roleplay.  As far as I am concerned the leveling part in most games are the only time when you are really building up the character at a decent pace, learning new skills, seeing your equipment change on a fast basis.  You get lots of zones to play in and explore.

Then you hit the endgame.  You can no longer solo anything worth having.  Small groups can not accomplish anything worthwhile usually either so if you hunted in a pair as opposed to a full group for a good part of you still hit the wall.  You end up running the same thing over and over again to hit the next same thing over and over again.  You have practically all of your skills and you get minimal upgrades to them.  It becomes all gear and your choice of gear goes away.  You end up taking the tier 3 gear over the tier 2 gear for some nebulous but required extra stat even though it clashes with the concept of your character so you are allowed to hunt in tier 4. 

Usually the endgame is the end of the game for me.  You lose variety, equipment choice, style, etc.

Vanguard -- if they had stayed true to the mechanics in the OLD beta (we are talking 2.x) and then just worked on content, releasing under microsoft instead of soe, the game could have been great.

Warhammer -- released unfinished.  If they had a better endgame at the beginning with fortresses that worked etc and not damaged the zone flip mechanics on purpose this one could have been great.

Horizons -- very unique game with a lot of things that were thrown out in the bathwater of a really bad launch.  It eventually got its act partially together but by then it was far too late.  Still had the best flight with dragons and the system they came up with for laircrafting was top notch.

Note there were only three places where you lost over 1/4 of a level in the original everquest. 

While most people realized that 35, 40, and 45 were WAY longer than normal levels, a smaller number of people realized the other issue with those levels...

In 36 41 and 46 deaths were figured as a percentage of the exp from the extremely long levels before them and would be MUCH harsher than any other death in the game.  It also made those points the most likely to unding you and throw you back into the long level before it.

Note that this is before they put in the patch to smooth out the levels.

While I like the idea of there being realistic travel times, I do not like the idea of corpse runs.  I can remember losing a corpse in EQ1 -- You then ended up back to really crappy equipment and nobody wanted to group with you.  The worst was when you were in a corpse run situation then the server had trouble -- you now got to decide to wait until it came back up and then try to get your corpse or go to bed and maybe lose all of your stuff. 

Having it take 30 minutes travel time to get to a nice hidden area with significantly better results than the normal places is nice.

Actually in my ideal game, death would remove a small amount of permanent stats.  Your strength might go from 85% to 84%.  A clean character would be able to wear better equipment etc than one who had died several times during their tenure.  You could then reset your stats if you got reincarnated.  This would cost you 5 levels and allow you to reset your stats to their original levels.  It would also allow you to shift one class type.  IE from pure healer to hybrid dps/healer or hybrid dps/healer to dps or dps to hybrid dps/tank etc.  One step(each class would have 3-5 options).  This mechanic would also allow people to change up how they play every once in a while at a cost. 

What I dislike is the lack of customization.  When you get to a tier 2 equipment vs tier 3 vs tier 4 you get stuck using EXACTLY what the devs want you to use and you can't have any individuality at all.  Usually until you hit raid gear you can focus your equipment where you want it.  If you want a huge block value, you can get it.  If you prefer high hit points, or to be a tank who can do some damage you are allowed to tinker your gear to achieve what you want.  Once you hit the tiered equipment levels then (like in say rift) you end up sacrificing it all for toughness and your block drops with every piece of new equipment you get.  It doesnt get better until much later.  Plus equipment systems like this can force you into different playstyles -- IE tier 4 might have a block focus but tier 5 is all about the hit points and tier 6 has better resistances but is really lousy in parties compared to tier 5. 

I remember back to Everquest 1 where the raids were not structured in quite that way (yes you had a certain order to some things but sometimes the best piece of raid equipment especially if you catered to a style was not from the most recent raid, and some equipment was far far rarer than others).

The problem I have with path of exile is how very very slow the levelling gets near the end and just how very nasty the death penalty gets.  I do not like the idea of playing a game for a full week or longer with the hopes of gaining a level. 

People always say how slow the levelling was in Everquest, but really it was never as bad as most FTP grind games of the current day.  I mean the worst I think EQ ever got was 2 blue in an hour and that was 8% of a level per hour.  Things were even easier back before expansions.  I used to want to get out of the long levels(35,40,45) and I would usually manage to grind them out in a single day. 

You are talking about fake beta anyway.  Every company who does this sort of giveaway does their REAL beta in parallel.  By example Rift.  There was the occasional beta // pre-purchase etc thing and the REAL beta. 

You join the REAL beta because you want the game to be the best it can be.  The fake beta is essentially a pre-view and when they do it on pre-purchase it is kind of like a hint book.  Personally doing a preview hurts playing the real game as most games are not very fun in a replay. 

I am not currently playing an MMO and the only vaguely MMO game I played since The Secret World was Path of Exile.  PoE's exp curve made it dead to me.  There havent been too many periods going back to the launch of the original Everquest where I have been this much an outsider in the MMO scene.

I mean right now so far as I see it wildstar and maybe cabal ii are the only things I see on the horizon.

I definitely prefer zones in one way or another.  With zones you can have completely different graphics for various areas in the game and do not have to worry about ice areas in a desert allowing you to have a far greater variety of textures with the same level of video card.