That's about the best thing I've read. If they make the game like that I'll..... I don't know. But i'll start by changing my sig to something really cool to promote the game, and then I'll buy it and ill tell allllll my friends (a good 2 or 3 people) and I'll... be a very good boy. And i'll use their cash shop.
You guys need to get on board with downtime. Because there is going to be massive opposition once people play it and I worry that SOE will cave and change it. Downtime is very important because by itself, it achieves several things. First off, it instantly makes combat dangerous. Because if you are fighting a mob and your health and mana is dropping (and wont recover quickly after the fight), it means that you have to be very careful not to attract adds, it means pulling the right number of mobs is very important, and it means that people need to be very efficient about how they play. You can't just spam your 1,2,3,444 because you need to rely on lower mana spells like DoT's and debuffs and stuff because they have bigger gains. (Anyone remember Splurt?)
Then once the fight is over, it makes it very tense and you have to be really careful, because just one more mob could wipe the whole group. Dungeons become things that you have the utmost respect for and you creep through them hugging each other as you go. As soon as downtime is short like in modern games, nobody cares about anything. You unload your entire mana bar on each mob and then hit your food icon or whatever and watch it all recover in 5-10 seconds and rinse and repeat. That kind of thing is just so dumbed down and needs to die.
If the mobs are really hard, and if they brought back proper downtime, it will make my year. I'll tattoo I <3 SOE on my forehead.