I want a game that dumps levels.

The public quests sound cool though. Very cool. Actually, the whole mindset of making it easy for players to work together yet still be "solo" is fantastic. That's what I want in my MMOs, the feeling that I can impact the world even when I am alone.

But back to levels. In games, they serve a few clear purposes:

1. To restrict people to a storyline path
2. To show growth
3. To reward.

Since MMOs have multiple storylines, it almost makes sense not to have one big level but instead have lots of little levels. They could be chains of quests, reputation levels, etc... And you still get the reward of leveling each, but there are a lot of things to level and grow as opposed to one big level.

But the biggest problem with levels in MMOs... they end. When they end the game changes so much that we now have two games in one, the level game and then the end game. The level game being a race to see how fast we can get to the end game where the "real game" starts (as so many people say).

So, uh, why not just let us all skip to the real game, find ways to offer growth and rewards there (WoW does it through reputation and gear, but there are other ways), and put all the work into that. In the end, we will have a game that didn't spends months making a leveling system that we will all stop using within a few months anyway.