Numerous attempts at Level-Indifferent missions. I enjoy shroud and monster missions that let me play with everyone, regardless of level. Their main flaw was rewarding people experience for their time and effort. Every year, I look forward to "An Alternate View" where I get to play Valdoon. And that one where we play animals running through a dungeon until we get to the part where the skunk can't get up on the ledge. Being drachnids was cool too!
Monster missions were great! They just needed better experience tuning. Here are a few good things about them. They encouraged grouping for a little quick experience. Some of the most rocking times for pickup groups were LDON and MMs. The MM exp just needed to be tuned down, not nerfed into oblivion. Decent gear rewards for the level: I remember doing the Fairy monster mission for some dagger, then helping a bunch of people get it. I think I used some gear from the SolB and Lower Guk MMs for a short time. I used an aug from the Rivervale MM on some chars for a while. Fun (and becoming a better EQ player): It was cool to learn how to play a monster mini-class or three in order to best contribute to your MM group. It was fun to invade some standard zones (Rivervale MM -- poor halflings!).
Monster missions are an interesting novelty to play occasionally, but I find that most players don't really enjoy all of their character's gear, AA's, clickies, levels etc. being rendered completely useless. We spend all our time in game building these great characters, and monster missions just throw all that out the window. I think their implementation in DoDH was fine. One monster mission for progression purposes, and a few others if you feel like doing them, but not a primary method of improving your character. The state the game reached during the peak of Old Man McKenzie missions was that for a lot of players, their only method of improving their main character was actually to not play that character at all, but to play monster missions. That's poor design imo.
