>That's so goddamned lame it makes my kidneys hurt. I would never want to go to an explore area with an experienced leader, unless he's going to keep his mouth shut except when we're all about to get killed for sure. Why would you want to go to an explore area, where the whole point is to solve quests, face challenges and *explore* if you have someone who takes all of that away? if you just want to see a quest solved, and a challenged faced, go read a book. The point of quests in CF is that you get to solve the quest, not read about it being solved in your presence.

I have pretty much never been "dragged around" by a experience leader before, but I'm honest enough to say that to go to an area explore I would.

I spend around 5 hours in the first circle before I figured out the way down to second. Now, lets say I did not know that now and wanted to explore then let me take you through the steps.

1. Try to cordinate together a group and an imm that can let me in, that wont take time at all, especially if you are not a well known character.

2. Now, going to hell. Spending around 5 hours figuring it out, and around 2 more so it can work for all. Yay, that is way past any length of time I can play in a row. I do most of my exploring alone because then I can leave when I want(and due to different things I have pretty chaotic playing times).

I love explore areas and I love playing strong characters that can explore parts of it alone, all that would disappear if all was made invite only.

>Bottom line: The imms make this game, and are within their rights in doing whatever they want (with the game) to protect their time/energy/emotional investment.

Yes, but insulting players and telling them that they should stop cheating is pretty pointless when the one who made the cheating page is banned since long time ago.