Let me jump in just to say that a couple of years ago I found PS.
Just so you know my background and know that I have no problem sticking with a MMORPG, I played everquest from 2000 through 2006. Just so you know I'm not afraid of a challenge, I played most of that time on Sullon Zek, which was the NO RULES pvp server where you could be killed and griefed (corpse camping, etc) with no recourse from the admins. In that environment, I played a cleric.. Without a doubt, one of the weakest pvp classes you could be. I worked my way up to become a mainstay in the largest and most successful guild (and we ensured we stayed that way through force
) on the server until Sony shut it down.
I'm not adverse to a challenge, and having put well over 8000 hours into my character in that game, I'm not very adverse to grinding to progress in a game..
Having said all that, I created a character on PS, as did my wife, and my best friend.. All of whom also came from Sullon Zek..
We tried to stick with PS.. Really.. I wanted this to be our new home as I'm very much an open source/free software advocate. I really enjoyed the premise of PS, and the game mechanics overall were promising. The problem, and what drove us to abandon PS, was exhaustion.
We have no problem with running around large areas and questing, obviously, but the fun of exploring and doing virtually ANYTHING in PS was completely sapped out by having to rest for 5-10 minutes for every 1 minute we moved. We all created our characters in different ways, and I spent several weeks working on nothing else but trying to get my character to a point where it wouldn't exhaust after moving distances measurable in yards with a light load.. I focused on that goal over anything else, including fighting ability, magic ability, etc.. All I invested in was stats to reduce the effects of exhaustion.. My best friend also did the same. We abandoned the game when we decided the tedium caused by 1 single feature of the game, exhaustion, made the game so unenjoyable and flat out BORING that it wasn't worth trying to play anymore.
I've checked back every few months in the hopes that the developers would come to their senses and remove that ridiculous feature. Alas, I'm still waiting. I firmly believe that exhaustion presents a HUGE barrier to entry for the vast majority of players, even those players who are accustomed to enduring some pretty serious tedium. I went through some serious tedium in EQ (36 hours straight to camp 1 single part of my epic weapon quest) but that was tedium endured to achieve a specific goal. It may have taken 30 minutes to an hour of running in EQ to move from place to place (back in the day) but it was tolerable because you were at least moving. Taking just 15 minutes to move from one place to another is thoroughly intolerable when 10 of those minutes is spent sitting on your butt trying to find something in the room to occupy your attention because your character can't walk across the street without being crippled from exhaustion.
If this "feature" can drive away the likes of us, who have a track record of investing obscene amounts of time into long and boring quests and experience grinds while constantly under threat of being ambushed by other players, then it's a definite show stopper for large numbers of people who are less likely to endure such pains.
I understand the desire for realism (though the realism of people who lived in an environment without cars and mainly got around on foot becoming exhausted to the point of being unable to move from running across a small courtyard is in question to me), but to destroy the fun of the game in that quest is ultimately self-defeating. THIS IS A GAME. It's first priority is to be fun, and having to stop and stare at a wall or twiddle thumbs every minute you're moving somewhere isn't fun.
I'll keep checking back in hopes that one day I'll see a post proclaiming this ball and chain on the game has been removed.
