An Imm that is only capable of RPing with good aligns and possibly neutrals, that both refuses and has no clue how to cater to evil aligns without being excessively afraid of causing Battlefield thread drama (and ends up causing it anyway with inactivity) that made level 58 in less than two years by marrying an IMP who was otherwise sane.
Masochists whose claims the wand system is fine and the time creep (same time/feature creep in MMO's) is entirely RNG based once you know where to look, continue it's horrifying mutated ugly bastard child of an existence, along with explore areas that take as long as a WoW raid to complete with far more destructive consequences to your character for dying in them.
As a corrollary to this, the time creep in exploration hasn't gone down and the game as a whole is excessively afraid of people spam rolling characters to get exactly what they want and creates lame time-based punishments and reward patterns to discourage that.
The same players getting the same pile of excessive rewards until very recently, and some of those players being dramafags and quitting the game over not getting them and/or being held to higher standards once it was determined it was them (and others simply did the smart thing and stopped taking the game seriously after they finished winning it, or getting as close as they ever would and stopped having delusions of being the next Cabru)
Evil alignments being held to higher sportsmanlike standards than good aligns, especially when the game is built to conditionally and unintentionally allow them to collaborate with two other cabals like a cartel.
And as an aside, popular ranking areas getting harder while new ones for evils are rarely, if ever, added toward the higher levels.
All of these problems add up to a dwindling cannibalistic staff, behavior that which while still difficult to observe is still present, which also only recently had a glimmer of hope changing (with Data and Alzinghul imming, quite possibly the two most PK knowledgeable imms that have been added to the staff in years since Eshval).
There's some green shoots, but ultimately the game needs to evolve, not just add content and tweak code. If you're going to reward longevity, continue to do so. If you're going to reward merit, you cannot reward longevity and merit at the same time (see the grumbling about Baog, who probably only got himself a painless alignment change because he was essentially a declawed housecat that shot himself in the foot: merit based reward and not longevity)
Toss out some of the old systems that don't work even if new solutions haven't been found. Zulgh's idea of ditching a/b/s for good and tweaking innate dam redux is an excellent idea PROVIDED it is balanced with a reduction of the power of inherent empowerment class dam redux (no more inherent 50-75% dam redux) a shaman revamp to compensate for all this, and the removal of permanent haste, barrier and sanctuary from all mobs in the game. If you still want to give some tooth to those mobs, add specs, add skills, make them use them more often, but definitely make them take more damage.
Tweak the dispel mechanics for all classes to be more consistent across the board and strip dispelling progs from explore gear.
Continue to increase the effectiveness of purchased gear at low levels and create a more functional, sustainable economy in which the merchants slowly regenerate copper instead of only on being slain/rebooted.
The level of RP in the game is just fine. But it could use more Quake and less of a bastardized version of King's Quest and less of a defense of creativity for the amount of man hours put into it.
The amount of Imm run quests happening recently, while not my bag, are a 'keep up the good work' state too.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/02/2009 09:06AM by Scrimbul.
