There were a whole lot of reasons. I’ll try to not go on for a page about them all!
The biggest reason for the new character progression was better class differentiation from the start. The average person picks up an RPG and has an idea of who they want to be when they grow up – They want to be Paladins, Necromancers, Shadowknights, and so on.
They don’t want to wait 20 levels to become what they wanted to be on day one. Down this same line, people who already play an RPG like making alts. Replay value in an MMO is a huge point of playing. Having to repeat 10 or 20 levels of the identical experience as the same archetype, and sometimes even the same class, really gets in the way of the fun.
As for the two islands, the primary reason we kept them separated by alignment even at launch was due to the following situation:
A person joins a new MMO. They make a friend in their first 20 minutes on the island. They leave the island after a few hours, and they’re on opposite sides of the world and they can’t play together. It’s better to ensure that the people they do meet are people they’re absolutely going to be able to play with as their characters grow up.
Since that’s a situation that will always occur in EQ2, we decided to invest the time into making the content on the new islands two completely unique experiences, to make replaying across alignments even more interesting from the outset.
As for The Far Journey, while we do appreciate the Captain’s fine service, the premise of a person coming in and being a rescued refugee really isn’t where we wanted to put people on day one.
Everything about the new experience – From class selection, to the equipment people start with, to the new starting appearances/clothing, to the removal of the ship – It’s about setting people up in the lore as a returning hero, in a world full of other people, out to make their name in the new land.
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