Elitist Noobs (The brilliant new MMO)

Let's be honest, MMOs are a bit of an elitist spawning genre of gaming, second only to the wonderful world of FPS. Except a lot of what commands respect and admiration (And a lot of misfounded self-importance) in MMOs is items which take a very low level of skill. This especially is prevalent in the F2P market, where complete noobs can buy insane gear without thinking. In the end, what constitutes an elite player in MMOs in many cases is the time they have put into the game to aquire the gear that everyone else salivates over and lusts hopelessly after. However, it doesn't just have to be in free MMOs, I've seen a bunch of people on youtube in the top raids of WoW and they still have no idea what key-binding is and s-key all over the place. In the same vein you also get very geared players in WoW instances who are horrible at healing/holding agro/controlling agro/doing any amount of damage.

Following this train of thought I have come up with an MMO which will celebrate the time-spam elitists who appear in every MMO. I was inspired in a way by a free MMO I heard of in which it takes month of hardcore leveling to get a single level, and if you died it would set you back a week or more of progress. Anyway, my game is called Exponential (Creative eh?) This is its story...

In Exponential, everything is...well...you know. Every time you level your stats get twice as good, the time it takes to reach the level is twice as long, and there is absolutely no limit on anything. A death in the game will set you back one whole level, which has varying ramifications depending on how far in the game you are. The game is completely free-to-play but the cash shop nothing that will in any way speed up your leveling. Instead it offers such items that inhibit loss when you die.

(All figures in AUD)
$300.00 ....Will prevent you from losing any experience if/when you are killed.
$140.00 ....Will prevent you from losing 50% of a level if/when you are killed.
$50.00 ....Will prevent you from losing 25% of a level if/when you are killed.
You can also buy a wonderful array of fancy shmancy clothing and non-combat pets for low prices.

Now of course no one would even think of buying the $300 pot for a long long time, because its hard to justify spending such a huge amount of money unless you have been working (Oops I mean, playing) long enough for the risk to warrant such a cost. Say if a gamer is at the point where it takes them 80 days of play time to level once, then they may think the $300 would be well spent.

The beautiful thing about this game is it appeals to the most hardcore elitist noobs imaginable, people would go crazy over hitting the next level before anyone else because it would make them twice as powerful. (World PvP kills only reduce experience by 10% of a level) Of course there are just one or two little elements which I haven't really considered, but those are the main points.

Ah the joys of taking fun out of gaming, and making you work so that at the end of it all you feel slightly rewarded at the end, but ultimately realise that you had to WORK. But that's another post for another time.