Confused by the mid section of this game

[bunglehaze]

Hi guys, I have been playing RO now for 6 days and amassed a pretty respectable lvl 32 on my lock, so far until now I have been really impressed but have hit that mid-level plateau and I cannot understand why the game follows this logic.

As with a number of other players I have come across I have a long history in WoW and have played for many years before getting bored with having to pay for an expansion and again for playing - with that in mind though that is the only real game I have to compare this too - on the whole RO is pretty good though, so what is my issue?

Well I noticed a couple of levels ago that quests get few and far between and leave you to grind zones to progress which is not a huge concern, however there are levels where there is seemingly nothing you can do but grind and this is hugely frustrating, tedious and takes a massive portion of fun away from the game. Now at lvl 32 I have a couple of WZ quests and one laid over from lvl 32 as it is a leader - but nothing else. This seems like a huge blank area between starting, getting levelled and eventually going to war, it is almost as if the developers have figured the start and end sections but could not get inspired about the middle. Does anyone else find this?

As a mid level player you are realistically too squishy to be in WZ for any length of time and I cannot see any benefit to going there until much higher level, similarly if grinding levels is the only way to progress there needs to be a much more logical progression with mobs within zones - too many zones are loaded with what become easy and very easy mobs and occasionally something higher may spawn which is not really useful to progression. IMO though the greatest issue here is that the quest plot during the middle of the game is weak at best and ought to be bumped up - using WoW for comparison again, the system they have where there are always more quests available for your level that you can get through is the main reason why players remain 'hooked' through to high levels. Grinding is useful for a number of reasons for drops and skilling up professions - something missing from RO that would otherwise brighten up the hours of tedious grinding with an end goal.

Please do not take this as a negative, more a feedback on where I am right now in the game. Until now I have found a reason to log in as often as possible to play a little here or there but the momentum for me has been lost because there is no clear path to follow that would make levelling 30-60 a pleasure rather than a chore.

Oh, one final thing. Where are the good drops? At level 29 I was still using a level 16 staff, gloves and hat, nothing better came up during 13 levels - that is crazy!

I look forward to hearing other peoples feedback and suggestions too - perhaps I am missing something?