Persistent stats are great. Lets hope that more time was spent on defining the paramenters than was spent on the RO achievements.
One of the things that I found interesting is that the carrots being offered to these other potential players are the exact same as the carrots of the other popular shooters (where are they now?). "One must grind to be uber". The emphasis in shooters is being led to grinding instead of becoming a better player. Instant gratification, yes. Actual tangible gain? No. Long-term replayability, lost.
In spending resources to copy what has come before, and to cater to the "leveling market", this many-year RO player feels that a real opportunity to produce a truly original experience has been lost.
Make no mistake, its about the money. It seems that nowadays, everyone wants to level their character instead of themselves. The problem with this is that it gets boring for a shooter player. Fast. The only people who do not get bored with this play offering are the most committed leveling players, and there are much better games to get one's level fix than RO/RO2. So, perhaps a million copies will be sold. Let's hope so. What happens to the game once the leveling gets old and the community is splintered? The game goes away.
What had happened if the game carrot had been a gaming paradigm where heroes and the like are created by their actions? Have you ever heard of a game called Advanced Squad Leader? There were instances in that game where battle hardening or heroes would emerge as a result of the action, not the turn number.
Imagine a RO2 that gave heroic attributes to a player who does heroic things in game. This paradigm dovetails nicely into Valve achivements. When heroic actions are performed heroic events are triggered, and different things can happen (to the environment, to the player, to players around them... engage imagination). This does a number of things, but the most profound effects from a replayability standpoint is that anyone can be a hero (just like real life), and the heroic events paradigm can be continually built upon (giving endless opportunity for game growth in many different directions).
One of the unique things about RO is that one could be a hero simply by being a hero, not by having more time in game, or a faster load time, than the others. One will still be able to be a significant contributor to the HOS battlefield, but personally, everything I do will be de-emphasized because I know I am playing a watered-down game against watered-down players. This is simply because I am so against leveling as a shooting type game.
Its not the amount of time my avatar spends in game that makes me better, it is how I spend the time in my game that makes me better.
With only the info on this site, I believe TWI lost a significant opportunity to create a unique multi-player experience in favor of the industry direction, which is to incorporate psuedo single player scripted win and leveling into multiplayer.
Skill and Game Experience > Consumer Psychology