1. Two class system. Everyone paying something reasonable like $5 a month and on equal ground is the #1 most important foundation for a game. To allow kids and broke people to play you could have them pay the fee in game-gold. And if they can't pay so they can't play, they could play a minigame to harvest things or something for other players which goes straight to the auction house to make gold to pay the monthly fee so they can play again. The cold hard fact is; this current 2 class system puts unreasonable pressure on people to keep up, people get burned out, and they leave.
I completely disagree. A monthly fee would cause many people including myself to stop playing. I want to choose how to spend my cash. Your idea of having gold expenses for playing is similar to the concept of having to maintain your equipment which I would not be against.
2. Soloing is too easy and xp lucrative. Leveling should be challenging and require a group for serious leveling and dungeoning. Boosting group xp again would be a good first step. Mob placement needs to be like those humanoids in otherworld in more cases and areas like that should be more profitable in xp.
That is the funnyest thing I have heard of in a long time. XP is not lucrative in any form in this game. Grouping is very difficult in many situations which leaves soloing as your only option. (see below)
3. Lack of skill balance. Simply put; if more skills were usable there would be incentive to make an alt since it would be different from everone else. Most skills are broken, only a few select ones for each class are usable making uniqueness almost impossible for serious playing.
Agreed, skills need work.
4. Lack of class balance. OTM knows this, enough said. The mage tweak was superficial and it made low level mages too strong while balancing high levels.
Classes will never balance as most people express the idea. Ever play rock paper siscors? the rock will never beat the paper. They cant balance if we keep thinking combat. However there are ways to balance in that each class needs to be needed. There must be situations where a specific class in the group is almost mandatory. Also, amount of XP an Gold gained per hour can be balanced but not necessarily gained in the same way.
5. Lack of social gathering places inside zones. Shale river is a decent place in this regard. In OTW there is no kinda common meeting place inside the zone. Highshore used to be a hub in lirs, but definatly not anymore. Tavern failed as a hub. Social aspect is incredibly important in an MMO and it is definatley lacking in this game.
I dont care about this one. Except there should be "safe zones" in the OW. Every other area has places that you can run too and regen before making the next dash through the gauntlet.
6. Lack of server density. Either because of low player retention due to above reasons, not enough marketing, or too many servers. It needs to be more player dense.
IMHO the biggest problem is there are never enough people on your level to group with. The past few weeks have been very difficult to get people to group with you to get the Samhain armor bosses. We need more people on but not at the expense of stepping on each others toes. If each area were four times larger with for times the bosses and mobs, then we could have four times the people on and not be congested but still have enough people on to group with. You end up begging people much higher level than you to help which they have to do out of kindness because they get almost nothing for the effort.
