And than still have your raids owned by a 220 MBer 
As much as I (and others) gripe about the state of the game, AO is truly a lot of fun when you are playing with real people. The ability to go anywhere and team up is what makes AO great. If you have deserted areas, deserted cities, then you will have a deserted game.
I love playing AO just to play when I have people to play with. I have repeated so much of the same content just to help others because I found it fun. I dont see that now and I haven’t in a long time. People just want to buy loot rights and buy their way to end game because its their X amount alt.
What makes AO unique are a variety of things, I love the chat system the game has. No MMO to my knowledge has an in game way of checking various stats, items and many other things. Most of the time you have to alt tab in other games and go to a website and click multiple links to find it. The theory crafting with twinking is something yet to be seen in other games, I hate how current games spoon feed you in your abilities and level lock items and skills.
In a way, it is good AO has survived this long and managed to stay somewhat relevant to the changing dynamics of MMO culture. The daily missions, zone quest lines and GMI are all standard things in MMOs. The unfortunate thing has always and will always hold AO back is being unable to develop the game in a streamlined process. The few things I mentioned didn’t come out until AO was around 10 years old (dont quote me on the exact dates I dont have the time to look all of them up), flavor of the month instances take 6-12 months to bring to live, no real expansion since SL/AI, changes to bugs, skills, game engine that have existed for years or been in development for years still existing today. All prime examples of what holds AO back and why people dont stick around which in turn results in these dead areas around the game which further results in a player like me looking around and seeing that there is no one to play with. It would be like if I installed UT2003 only to find 1-4 people playing it, ok its fun for 10-20 minutes but I probably wont play it again for another 10 years if a server still exists.
Anyways, kind of went off on a rant and probably everything I just said has no relevance here.
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Looking forward to the SL release 
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yes very simple… SL adds perks and many more actions… at this point most classes are 2-button gimps… boring, simple non-complex. remember having 4-5 full bars to use on my Shade back then. but keep going. on RK you can play on a gameboy and will be just fine… you are probably overwhelmed by complex games^^ SL adds so much more and it will come. if you quit, we do not care. this is a progression server.
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I think the counter argument @Yeny is going to be that SL’s ‘overpowered’ items (mainly symbs) took away the ‘complexity’ of equipping a pre-SL character and perks reduced diversity by having only a few supported weapon lines. Rather than combat focused as your argument is.
Personally I don’t believe either case is more simple or complex than the other, as the complexity (if we decide to call it that) comes inherently from AOs skill system, and really we are just layering items into that. Sure, some cases the choices become more obvious, but factors other than just stats have to be taken into account (e.g. acquisition) when discussing the RK2019 perspective (no pockets or markets flooded from a decade of farming).
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SL did overpower things… spending of IP makes or breaks a character. Symbiants are cool don’t get me wrong… but the complexity went out the window when everybody is overpowered… and 2 buttons? Most people have all perks set off in a couple button smashes anyway. Either way it’s good to be back on AO!!
Biggest issue with all this is how current RK weapons are not balanced without SL! Melee classes have all of their crazy powerful weapons from crypt and the like. While many classes were very dependent on a similar option from SL.
Look at how underpowered much of the ranged weapons are in comparison to what’s coming out of the newer RK dungeons. The RK stuff was added to help balance the SL effect. If you don’t add SL you need to remove all of the unfair items a select few profs are getting.
Traders, NT, Soldier are hurting from lack of competitive weapon choices compared to anyone with drops from Crypt