More time wasted

It's an attempt at least to create something. Likely it will fail, but for people working on the project it will give them some learning curve for next time round. At least if you selfstab you learn it's a bad idea next time.

As for the birth/death cycle. They seem to suggest you can hit new content high and low rather than saying it's the same content over and over. No doubt if it becomes a grind of the same content it's a doomed design but at this stage there's no telling. It all depends on how the design pans out. How long does a life last? What is different each time round? Maybe the grind will be reduced by an inheritance aspect. No doubt we'll never find out whether it could work. Vapour has a tendency to dissapear even if it smells interesting....

It is a bit amusing for it to say
"There is no high end cap" and then say "experience [not only] new high end content" though.

A bloodline/inheritance model is interesting. Many MMOs have already reached a point where it can actually be more exciting to start new characters than to play your existing ones - WoW and CoH/V being two - but many refrain from doing it because they don't care for the initial grind. With a bloodline/inheritance mechanic implemented properly, you might be able to pull off an MMO where one is less attached to a single character and more attached to ones account, at which point you could actually implement permadeath and other mechanics that would otherwise be suicidal. Then, it might actually be possible to do something about mudflation and the overabundance of high-level content.

I've been toying with the idea of child-rearing and transferral of skills for some time - anyone who played the (single-player) sleeper "Diggles" will know what I'm talking about. As an ingredient in a well thought out, sandbox style MMO, I think the concept is sound.

Psst Abalieno: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mourning_(game)

Mourning "debuted" on February 25, 2005 in the United States as a preorder or as a download from FilePlanet, but it was quickly discovered that the game had none of the features claimed in many previews of the game. When the preorder arrived, fans say that they only got a white box containing a burned CD-RW with an old beta client and nothing else. Also discovered was that the game was hardly even considered "finished" to any extent. Also noted was the sheer amount of bugs in the game, almost preventing any sort of enjoyment in the game. Some bugs range from CTD to incredible lag to extremely long server downtimes. The game sold no more than 211 copies, and total lack of tech support from the developers prompted many to cancel their Mourning accounts. On average, no more than 10 players are online at a time, and even when the number touches 50, the server crashes due to the networking code of the game. Gamers complained of lack of animation for the characters, rather simplistic player vs. player combat, only 2 quests for the entire game, and many bugs that were apparently never fixed, though reported numerous times.

Also, after the initial criticism from players, the developers now have a zero-tolerance policy for any negativity about their game. Those who spoke harshly about the game in their forums would often be banned, their posts deleted, and their IP address posted to encourage people to hack it. The developers often have deleted entire archives of posts for apparently no reason at all. Also, they have threatened with legal action the owners of MMORPG.com and Something Awful for refusing to reveal the identities of some Mourning critics and in Something Awful's case, slander. In the end, MMORPG.com removed its Mourning section, in which some other sites like WarCry followed the suit.

In October of 2005, the entire Mourning site was taken down and those tried to access the game itself got server errors. A chat with a designer stated that Mourning was in financial trouble and was attempting to secure new funding from a new publisher, who wanted to "upgrade" the site to reflect the new contract. However, it appears that development has stagnated at this point.

I apologize profusely for the self-pimpage, but a friend and I just finished a write-up of this whole thing- the new management, the new developers, recent events, etc. here. We were involved with the development of the game as vollunteers and beta tester a while back, got fed up with the bullshit, left, and now we research the game and see where it's going and try to keep people from wasting their money again.