So, couple of things just came to mind this morning (I have a lot of time to think when my 4-month-old son wakes me at 5am for a bottle). First, I hope that as an Enchanter, I can change applied enchantments to something more situation-appropriate. Elemental resistances for example, or increased damage vs race x. My reasoning is that it would give Enchanters greater longevity, rather than in Skyrim where you crafted the best gear and then forgot the skill existed. Not sure how I feel about making weapons/armour degrade with use though. Yes, it would give Smiths the same continued utility, but it did become a chore in Oblivion.

Second, I realise that I would never want people to be allowed more than one character per server. Otherwise every man and his dog would roll themselves a crafter for their own uses, and the economy would be so much weaker. Even if you needed to hit level cap to do so, I can see tons of people investing the required 120 hours.

It depends how easy the game will be. It is simple to get/create great gear with enchants and have no depth to that type of progression.

While I like the idea of having one character on a server (especially with no real class structure) I think it could also hurt in that the economy could become outrageous due to having to choose combat viability or being able to make money.

I like the idea of degrading gear. You know you are out there fighting over and over again. It makes sense that your gear would loose its edge over the course of use and if you are going to have in game guilds for smithing and what not it would be a shame to toss that away with the standard craft 10 of X and toss it on auction until everyone has one or it becomes obsolete from other progression items.

That's a point. I remember coming out of an oblivion gate, seeing that my sword was at 12%, and feeling like I'd just been through Hell and back (which was appropriate). It did help with immersion, and breaking the feeling of grinding. Heh, on huge quests, you could have someone around just to carry swords! lol

Okay. I'm sold.

As an "altoholic" of the worst kind (In other words, I enjoy creating a -huge- amount of new characters), I have to disagree with this statement. Creating other characters brings a new approach to the game - even in Oblivion/Skyrim, I occasionally find myself creating a new character to get a different point of view to the game.

After playing World of Warcraft for two years and filling all my character slots on my favorite realm, I began to lose interest in the game; I could not create any more characters, I found myself incapable of playing on non-RP realms and I had grown accustomed to the community of the realm I was playing on, and I couldn't bring myself to delete the characters I had achieved so much on. This lead to increased boredom to an "altoholic" like me, as I had so many different characters I would have wished to try out, yet I just couldn't due to the reasons I mentioned.

It might indeed make that one character more valuable if you could only have one character per server. Though, it would take away a large aspect that makes playing games fun; Re-playability.
Re-playability is perhaps one of the most important aspect in a game. What makes you hook up into it, what makes you spend hours after hours playing a game, what gives a broader view on the whole game?

I found low-level content in World of Warcraft rather enjoyable myself. The end-game seemed a bit dull, but low-level kept me most interested in it. You actually had to do something, had to see the world and do quests. Something that was missing from the end-game - other than the "daily quests", of course, which felt more like a tedious duty than a fun hobby.

So, the point of this post, although biased by my past experiences of WoW - something often downgraded in societies not associated with it - is that there would be a need to creating more than just one character per realm. You are free to stick to one character if you wish, but why not allow others to create more? Even if they are only for profession farming, how does it affect -you-, mm?

Even as the text here might seem accusative, I am actually writing this - as most of my posts - from a neutral view.

Heh, I've certainly been an altoholic myself at times. I still have VMware installed from when I used to run a couple of Virtual Machines for Spiral Knights. I can certainly see the appeal, *especially* if quests/regions are faction-specific. As has been mentioned numerous times though, it'd damage faction integrity if you could spy on your opponents, or just switch over when your side's losing.

Besides, there'll be plenty of servers, what's to stop you creating one on each?

To the first paragraph:
I don't actually care about which faction is winning, as long as I enjoy the game.

To the second paragraph:
The community. If I get to know several people on one server and like to spend time with them, then create an alt on another server, how am I going to keep regular contact to them without external chat systems, mm?
That was the largest thing keeping me on that one realm in World of Warcraft. While the gaming aspect itself was... mediocre, the community and the people I knew were the most important part of the game for me. I couldn't just leave them and go on another realm, as I would have no way to contact them - especially as most of them refused to share any external chatting method names, or used a different program than I do - and as they preferred to stay on that one character with no desire to create a new one to keep in touch.

The way I would like to play it would be with people I have learned to know. Perhaps create new characters with them, embark in new ventures, perhaps roleplay. But being forced to change server would break the social aspects of the game for me, being incapable of sticking to one character permanently.
Especially so, if I made friends on that new server as well... I would be forced to switch server regularly to be with the friends of both realms.

It just would not work, from the view of social gaming. Like being forced to stick to one chat at a time, and having to alternate between closing and reopening two chats with people you wish to chat with.

Fair point on the community, though we don't currently know what the promised "new social networking features" are. However, as you said above, let's look at this from a neutral viewpoint. Yes, *you* may not care if the PvP gets broken, but it's a major component of the game, so others would. The important point is that it would be broken.

There has been so much debate on this that it seems they will have to provide numerous different server types to keep people happy.