Originally posted by Gronomist
...I dare you to find a MMOG, developed by an asian company that isn\'t about getting the highest level and the highest skills. But I\'m warning you already. If there is such a thing, it wont exactly be easy to find, simply because the asian culture is based around the idea of practicing what you want to be good at, day after day after day, in a drone-like fashion, so of course their games reflect this style of play. However, should you find a real MMORPG, that is asian, you had better tell me where it is, or else...! 
Interestingly the PlaneShift server you\'re connected to is hosted in Asia. Well I don\'t know about you, but branding \"Asian\" MMORPGs as \'boring\' seems like prejudice itself! While I\'m not an intensive MMORPG gamer, I do agree that a lot of MMORPGs I see are centred around levelling etc. They need not be Asian of course, since the first thing that comes to mind when I think of powerlevelling is Diablo. I feel that there is an ingrained culture here (in Asia) where intense diligence and hardwork, which you casually label as \'drone-like\', seems to be the order of the day at least in East Asian countries such as China, Korea, Japan. This results in gameplay you don\'t like, but conversely, I am sure that lots of Asians who play this way wouldn\'t give 2 hoots about someone who\'s widely loved by the community and yet doesn\'t put 24 hrs into the game. The dislike works both ways.
While I would love to embrace all-encompassing statements about Asian MMORPGs such as how they can be \'boring\' and duplicates of each other, I think that the international reach of a number of MMORPGs and their inherent popularity speak for themselves - FFXI for instance. East Asia is the centre for MMORPG development. The most avid gamers, and those who play other games professionally, put an immense number of hours into training. I don\'t see why it would be deplorable for someone to do the same for PS, although I think a balance of mingling with other players should be required for someone to have more influence in-game.
I\'d like to suggest that your gripe is not entirely about being afraid of powerlevelling, but more that you\'d like to see a PlaneShift that is centred around the community, or politics
. Because of your bias against powerlevellers, which you rightly pinpoint come mostly from Asia, you need to feel comfortable entrenched in the mindset that PlaneShift is *only* about how you get around in the community.
We haven\'t got CB out of the door yet, but it\'s amazing the amount of speculation that I\'m seeing about how some people prefer PlaneShift run. Frankly speaking, I doubt any of us have a clue how it would turn out, although it is good to have aspirations and be involved in its development to influence what it becomes for everyone.
