What startles me is how much Mythic has *failed* to learn about long-term MMO viability as it relates to new-player and alt-player experience. The best MMO's at player retention, WoW and EQ1 have always had multiple, diverse starting towns for the level 1-20 experience (yes, I know about EQ1's newb caves). And from there, on to multiple progression zones, and zones for specific Races and Factions.

Late, they learned this lesson in EQ2, which also now sports Race and Faction zones with multiple starting towns (up from the pitiful two they had at launch).

Games like DAoC, WAR, and so forth are taking a BIG step backwards by distilling down their new-player/alt-player experience to a SINGLE location. What does that leave these players after they have capped? The same-old all over again? Does not work, in my experience.