1gabis

Have you ever tested any other games? A lot of MMO's will do things like start everyone at level 30 because it helps them test later content instead of constantly having people re-test the same early content at the start of each phase of testing. Other games I've tested had phases where you only tested boss fights with fully geared characters, or FPS games where you only had access to certain late levels of the game etc. This is pretty standard practice because, again, you get more actual testing of ALL content instead of an over-abundance of testing of the "early" content with only a small percentage of players properly testing the rest of it. So, what the OP is saying actually makes sense. Just because a bunch of you guys want the game to be "hardcore" doesn't mean that, from a testing standpoint, doing this temporarily wouldn't be useful. Your reasoning against this is actually a selfish one: You want to play the game, not test it. That's ok, but don't pretend it has anything to do with "mucking up data." Personally, I think it's a bit early to do this but the idea itself is not flawed in any way. But there are more important, critical problems to be addressed before we get to this point.