Horizontal Leveling

[Vangor]

Already I like the idea of skill based leveling systems, as I hated the idea of gaining a reputation, equipment, levels, attributes, etc., and the necessity to restart if I wished to try anything else. Most often career options were rigid as well with few chances to start over and rather defined sets of skills. Not to mention any change was always too major that the feeling became awkward after growing accustomed to your first character.

Now I read on the class based leveling system as well, which has me wondering a bit more in terms of how someone will be raising their "experience". Can we expect the class to be more open rather than selecting say a Fighter, Rogue, Priest, or Mage from moment one? And will we ever be forced into remaining anything after having made our character? This includes even whether you are a fighter, rogue, priest, or mage, or whatever classes are designed.

And, how much horizontal development will be included for characters, progressing to unlock the ability to use new abilities, instead of a straight course. That is, after a certain plateau of leveling and skilling up has been reached, instead you become a more diverse character. This means newer people have a broad range of skills with no specific strength or weakness, while you can branch yourself out to be specifically strong against say very light armored targets who have no melee ability, while another person could be a counter to your close ranged assassin being more towards blocking, parrying, and disrupting your melee based attacks.

It is my thought simply that the ability to alter every aspect of your character after creation encourages people to pursue more aspects of the game, if you feel more comfort with a blade early in the game and choose to pursue a new character for magic, you may hate it, but if you can slowly utilize it with a character who has decent armor, high health, and little magical prowess, well after a time you may come to see its utility and change into a complete mage.

While the ability to diversify is more important for creating a large group of worthy opponents but developing strategies in order to defeat them, not having my tier 2 armor against a newly level 60 who has not a chance even though we are the same level.

[Will]

Without revealing too much, yes, there will be a focus on what you've termed "Horizontal Development". You may have a good idea of what skills you want, or what kind of character you'd like to have, but we want it to be a really fun experience as you grow along with your character, and determine what you want to become. Obviously there will be limits to your growth, and those limits will be an ongoing effort as we progress.

[Paladin]

I think armor should be more for the looks of it, maybe for certain effects or auras that may help you, but doesn't make one person totally anihilate the other.

Think GW, where the end-game armors are all balanced, and you can have a cheaper version of an armor that looks ok, and have the expensive one do exactly the same thing, but look l33ter.