Shattered Kingdoms

Even for scouts, do you know what will be happening if you get all their abilities at max lvl 40 which is extremely easy to achieve? Everyone will be playing a scout alt, providing skins and herbs to his main's friends. That's what will be happening. I say no less than champ for full abilities.

I think it's clear we would all like to see the thieves disappear. From what I've read over the thread most people think it should be Champion. The arguements for Champion are that Champion is still harder to get to than Master. This will discourage the hoarding factor still, but allow for people that reincarnate/get raised to retain their GM items.

As for the enchanting perspective, I believe that Masters shouldn't get the uber enchanted items.

Your average computer geek may be a master of putting together computers...they are masters.

Bill Gates, however, is a Grand Master, his computer is going to own yours.

Which brigns me to my next point.

Chuck Norris invented the internet, screw you Al Gore!

Only some herbs are found by GM scouts.

Highest level pets can be tamed at a lower level, and mithril hide NPCs can be skinned at a lower level.

I don't want to see master level scouts or necros with nice herbs, pets, wraiths etc.

I also don't care about the enchanting. The magic of the spell identify is that it lets you know what level an item is(more or less) so the enchanter can know when to stop enchanting.

Level thieves are fine IMO. If they go, I expect to see lots of twinking/ooc hookups/hoarding(yes, I can speak about that well).

What is not fine is the boredom of the players who want to GM in 20 hours. Don't expect everything handed to you on a silver plate.

PS: Levelling up to master/champ is still a joke. Doing what this topic says will nullify all the levelling nerf that happened not long ago.

Do you know how many lvl 49 NPCs there are out there? Like two. Basically, you have to wait to GM to get wraiths.

Just because you have ooc hookups, doesn't mean everyone else does. One again, your argument is a faulty one, DA. Just because there exists one person that abuses knowledge, connections, etc, to organize the way they play, does not mean there doesn't exist at least one person who goes into this cold. And that's what this will benefit - those who play cold, and don't look to the help of their ic buddies. Sometimes I wish you'd just shut your trap.

GL I'm talking without any OOC help. Last week I started a char, no help at all, none to mentor me, none to give me enchanted weapons, none to get me armor and +stat mods.

In about 30 hours of levelling I was master. I even visited levelling areas I've never used before and saw they were good.

Levelling is still a joke.

You don't need to abuse OOC knowledge, you don't need to get elite phat lewt from level 1. You need to pay attention in what you are doing, time your levelling-grinding with the area repop tick, don't stall between NPCs even while dirt kicked, you generally need to use your mind. If you can't dedicate to your purpose(levelling), it's not the levelling that is broken. It's you who doesn't perform at 100% of what you can.

That's not "talking without any ooc help".

I can level pretty fast, too. It only takes me about 70-80 hours to hit master if everything is right, such as right class and I'm lucky enough to get a decent weapon or proper gear.

I wasn't planning on doing more posting, but I would like to play again this summer, and I can't imagine a more important issue. Allowing Masters and Champions to use SK's best equipment would greatly improve the game.

The higher level you have to be to "compete", the greater barrier to entry SK has. Achiever-types may enjoy the progress that comes with killing NPCs; the rest of us just plow through NPCs to get to the good stuff. If someone has limited leisure time, he really has to consider: Is the future fun worth the effort? For some, the answer will be no.

Some levelling costs are unavoidable in a MUD. But when there's an opportunity to allow competition at a lower time cost, while still keeping GM advantageous and difficult to get to, why shouldn't we leap on it? Is there some great advantage in weeding out potential players?

Worried about hoarding? I don't see why Masters are any more likely to hoard than GMs. But if we want to stop excessive hoarding, it's easily done: Give all Master+ characters the same small chance of losing any Master+ item. The scheme maintains level-independence, and it discourages players from keeping things they won't soon use.

For those GM-players worried that they won't have enough benefits: Consider that if more people stop levelling at Master, you'll have an advantage over them not just for a week or three, but as long as they play their character. Is that really so bad?

Master is an obvious break point in levelling difficulty. Requiring Champion to keep equipment is better than GM, of course, but Champion still requires a great deal of time, especially for the inexperienced. Let's stick with Master, and thereby get the full benefits of the switch.

It talks about a level 10 character levelling with deadheart blade, it talks about a level 40 character using Velshar, Ender, headchopper, dracolich's heartstone or the coils of enslavement.

These things should stay for the GMs that take effort and time to become GMs. Not passing around in characters that were created 30-40 hours ago. Especially when it comes in forms of ooc twinking.

As I said, making master the end of all thieves leaves little to no reason for someone to want the GM status. Especially many classes like warriors that all they get are a few HP/PE more, nothing more. And it nullifies the effort made by immortals to make GM status worth something again, not just a "I'm bored today, I'll roll a char, I'll GM tommorrow". Now it won't be GM, it will be "make him master" who eventually will get to hold all the phat lewt of SK with no fear at all.