Personally I have always felt that the MMO world was, well to put it mildly, silly. One of the big problems is the myth of balance. These are fantasy worlds, why aren't there mechanisms in-game where a player can become a super powerful evil arch-mage, instead there's an ongoing saga of tweaking and fiddling in all MMO's as soon as the playerbase starts to think a particular class or weapon is OP. It's something you see on every forum, the dreaded letters OP.
Hey why not let a player become a super powerful evil arch-mage and the rest of the server band together to defeat him, with of course one caveat, anyone who does aspire to the superpowerful evil arch-mage category (or good one for that matter) loses that toon when he gets defeated, and all who fight him get rewarded appropriately. This wishy washy balance stuff is a pain sometimes.....but alas I can already here the bleating of the defeated and demoralised..."unfair unfair" the mob cried...."burn him!!!"