Gah!

[Mikedok]

However, there is absolutely zero accomplishment in being rushed past Baal. A reward for this makes no sense at all. They already get a reward......they can go to Hell games and beg.  And I can conceive of no way to differentiate between those being rushed and those displaying skill, if not patience.

I know that there is no accomplishment in rushing. I also am aware that you can't tell if a character was rushed or not. I think that in this case, the skillful player who was able to beat Baal at a lower then standard level should get the benifit of the doubt. I disagree with a penalty that affects good players. In my post I thought I made it clear that I didn't think that a reward was in order either. I just said that I thought a reward would be "better" then a penalty in terms of which made more sense. I actually think that no reward or penalty is the best system.

And a small nit on the comment about how much experience there is in Single Player mode. I have recently started playing Realm after spending most of my D2 time in SP or TCP/IP games. My characters have reached Slayer status, indeed Champion and Patriarch status at much younger levels than they ever did in SP. You see, in SP there is this very handy feature called 'Players x', whereby you can simulate any number of players in the game from one to eight.

I am well aware of 'players x'. What I meant by single player was a realms character that plays by himself. While I am a big fan of grouping with other players, sometimes I find it easier to pass a certain parts of the game if I play solo. The handy 'players x' feature is not available to realms characters.

Besides, there are features to deal with xp leechs and with spammers. The party function deals well with leechs, either don't invite them, or leave a group that does invite them. For spammers just hit squelch. I realize that in perfect world these people wounldn't be there at all. I know that by imposing level req for NM and Hell you want to get closer to that perfect world. I think that imposing the level restrictions takes you farther away from the perfect world because of the effect it has on skillful low level players.