IIRC the level (tier) cap was 25. The number of experience points required doubled every tier up until I think 15th, and then went up more steadily. Somewhere along the line, an approval system was put in place to advance to 15th, and later, advance to 20th. Deaths could be weeks of playtime in experience (let alone gold!) lost, double deaths even more so.
I remember we had a ton of discussions about how to keep people from getting too powerful, while still allowing people to “hunt” to their heart’s content. I think the approval system ended up getting pretty political and generally unfair to those who didn’t have GM connections, played at weird times so didn’t RP much, etc.
So how to keep people from getting too powerful? How do we keep people from getting bored/frustrated by a small player base? How do we keep people with different motivations coming back for years? These seem like general problems with muds.
Various things have been discussed in this regard. I know we were talking about setting up instances. Perhaps instead of discouraging people from ever hitting 25 just make it a really long process, but also provide some endgame instances to do once you did hit the cap. I couldn’t remember exactly the exp scaling but I think we got it pretty close so it should take relatively the same amount of time it used to.
You could certainly do a lot with instances the way Nexus is, having mobs permed in rooms in set formations with possibly some sort of boss monster setup in the last room. You would just need to do a few things like make instance mobs unstealable to prevent abuse. Setup level ranges to access the instances so people couldn’t go into an instance with level 10 mobs at 25 and solo everthing.
As far as the smaller playerbase, I have suggested in some of my other posts about refining the roles to make it easier to put together functional parties (mainly adding “taunts” to additional classes so you have more tanking options than just fighter/barb).
Double deaths were pretty toxic though, I think new players may accept exp loss for death but I once saw someone double death as soon as they hit level 10 and go back to 8th. That kind of thing would definitely discourage someone unfamiliar with the game from wanting to continue.
The approval process was definitely not healthy, it was undoubtedly biased. It might not be bad if you could implement it fairly but I think Arcadia was leaning towards doing away with it completely. Might be something else we could come up with to replace at 15th, as that is a very pinnacle level.
I think it largely depends on the type of players that come back or that we are able to garner. I mean this isn’t the sort of game that’s going to appeal to the hardcore MMO player. Really I think we would be trying to focus on building traditional RPer’s that are all grown up and have kids and shit now and can’t make it to their typical D&D session. I could be wrong, I’m interested in finding out. But I think for now there will be no double deaths, just regular deaths/losses.
My own interest is for role-play more than worries about level. I don’t think I ever had a character get past 14. Most of my characters tended to remain on Falcion Isle because that’s where I always found the most RP. I’d started to get more involved with my full-fledged heroes, but even by then, it always seemed Falcion was the most consistent place to be. At least in my personal experience.