Demigod maggots still get their +stats from demigod and the health from being level 100, which gave enough to be able to function without dying in one hit most of the time (given that most damage scales at least a little bit). The +stat actually does enable maggots to become much less frail than originally intended, and if you've got abilities that don't require you to have high stats yourself in order to kill, you can still be effective.
Certain guilds are much less affected by maggoting than others, based on their core design.
Viravain, Lady of the Thorns shouts, "And You would seize Me? Fool! I am the Glomdoring! I am the Wyrd, and beneath the cloak of Night, the shadows of the Silent stir!"
Imperian has a combination of a death timer (capping at a max of 2 minutes, I think?) and increased damage from players instead of experience loss when dying. The idea was to increase PK activity by divorcing experience, which is a resource mainly obtained through bashing (and thus, non-PK activity), from PK consequences. Of course, Imperian does a lot of things differently (statpacks, for one, which actually lessens the connection between level = PK viability because higher levels don't translate to considerably more health or increased stats).
Imperian seems to have pretty much killed city raiding, which, while it is probably "sad" in one sense, seems to be for the best. The biggest problem with raiding is that it's by nature far more opt-in for the raiders than it is for the people being raided. Imperian is having a surge in towne raids however, which in theory is more opt-in than city raiding (but this also has some problems, the biggest one being the actual cost of guards within the context of a small organization that probably does NOT have a massive war chest).
I've got my little guy over here waiting in the wings, occasionally toddling about the game, but there's a really good chance I'd take him all-in if Lusternia adopted a more Imperian-like model in terms of experience loss (and by all-in, yes, I do mean spending stupid amounts of money on yet another IRE char). Also, in light of some of the other comments (which I obviously don't completely understand) about things that are not "experience" per se, but which nonetheless are apparently lost in fights and require "grinding" to recover, I will just say that conflict is the most fun and most inclusive when there is plenty of perceived risk/danger, but very little (or even no) risk of losing actual time/RL money. In other words, if a few glorious moments of engaging the enemy as a fairly crappy combatant means I have to go do a bunch of grinding to "pay the bills" I am not interested. It's just a horrible model. Imperian has actually sort of made a mistake there as far as I am concerned and taken a few steps back towards that (but it's still not too bad).
Another big thing they do is that unless you really do opt in to certain systems that open you up to being attacked at any time, retribution for things like raiding and trespassing and attacking obelisks (a thing that gives your city certain powers) is limited by the bounty system. In other words, someone is going to come after you once per "event" and it will probably be fun and exciting and then you can go on about your merry way.
Finally, there are lots and lots of "opt-in" events every RL day where you can go fight over things, and everyone who goes knows they're probably walking into a fight (which is the antithesis of traditional raiding where one side definitely wants a fight and the other side may or may not be up for it).
Anyway, your toys are shiny and I'll be watching with interest.
Comments
Certain guilds are much less affected by maggoting than others, based on their core design.