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You still alive, bro?

AionSource won't be/is not as interesting without you. It's a shame. Best of luck out there.

Ahh okay. Let me know what new games you try out. Spellborn is Live now I think in both Europe and NA. TERA still looks promising. Was it mostly a concern over the community here or just lack of interest in Aion itself that's driving you into hiding?

Why thank you kind sir, yeah it makes a change from my usual anime avatars, huh. You can't top that classy socialite/lady-in-red look, I find.

Umm... the current generation of RTS games focus very little on base building or dirt management. Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, World in Conflict are all about land control. Tech trees are rarely more than three tiers deep. The more land you control, the more income you gain. Its as simple as that. Yet because the game is purely about land control, the games not only put you in direct contact with the enemy early on and frequently, they force pure unit tactics. The stair system works because it creates flow. You need to beat a boss, but you can't beat the boss until you're level 24 and the game won't let you progress to the next boss until you've beaten this boss. Invisible wall. Once you know that at any point you can skip directly to the last boss fight the game takes on an entirely different existence. Are you really going to still play through every story element as intended knowing that they are now all optional? You might, but a lot of people won't. Let's not forget that you might simply miss some. And developers aren't stupid. All events that are not key to central story progression cannot be essential. If they are essential then some people will miss them and their experience will be poorer off. Now imagine if there were no invisible walls at all. You could not have any essential elements at all. These are the problems that plague Prince of Persia, Oblivion and Fallout 3. But that's besides the point; you've admitted we need invisible walls.

This is nice and all, but you missed the point maybe? Sometimes, RPGs just have invisible walls that prevent you from playing a purely skill based game simply because if the game was built like that, the game would suck. If the game was purely skill based, there would be nothing at all to stop you from beating the game at level 1. But then what would be the point of the game? There would be none. MMOs are just like that. If you can beat the end game dungeons at level 1, what's the point of anything that comes inbetween? The game must be built around some kind of achievement system. The most common system is obviously levels, but the system creates a series of invisible walls that prevent progression until certain requirements are met. They are absolutely necessary for the continuity of the game. I personally loved Oblivion. It was incredibly beautiful and was just a wonderful, low key experience you could play to relax. That's right, Oblivion was an experience. Few games manage to cross that threshold onto the next level of worship.

There's a difference between invisible walls for the sake of player control and invisible walls for purposes of logical progression. Fallout 3 and Oblivion are perfect examples of this. They are great games. Very few invisible walls. You want to go somewhere? Go ahead, just walk over there. But will either ever be remembered for a good story? Nope. Whatever story there was simply served as a backdrop. There stories were both paper thin and nonmemorable. In RPGs, invisible walls exist for everything to make sense in context of each other. There's a big bad empire and you need to stop the king! If there were no invisible walls then what's to stop you from waltzing right over to the king at level 1 and killing him? There's nothing! But if you killed him, what would happen to the remaining 40 hours of content? The king's dead! There's no more empire! You won; the game is over. This is opposed to well, I'm an orphan or something and I'm not that good at fighting, but I need to defeat the king so I will practice until I become stronger and can defeat the king. Invisible walls not only make the game coherent, but make the game itself. MMORPGs, being RPGs share this element. There's an order or progression. This is different from a FPS game where, well, I see this great sniper vantage point and all I need to do is walk over there, but for some reason, I can't cross this tiny stream. MMOs are built around limitations as a driving, core gameplay element.

You haven't PvP'd in D2 competitively under regulation rules then. Its nuts. I've had 5 minute duels before. There are so many things to min / max, so many different tactics and glitches to exploit that its ridiculous. Anti-sorc babas, javazons, trapassins, templars, bonemancers, hydra sorcs ( use fireball and hydra to trap, plays out almost like chess ) all very nasty stuff. Let me edit that. The game went to hell after 1.09. But 1.08 - 1.09 was the golden age of D2 dueling. And it was damned tough.