[Milawe]

I think the way that GWs does it is the most popular form of doing it. World of Warcraft uses the same exploration system where you get XP the first time you "discover" an area. The fog-of-war concept used by many RTSes operates in much the same way. You find a certain spot on a map, and you either unlock it on a mini-map, get XP, are now able to see the surrounding area, or some combination of the above. It makes a ton of sense and has proven to be an excellent design mechanic for several games.

Threshold, since we are implementing this now- 14 years into the game's existence, operates differently because most of our players have already "explored" the world. Threshold's purpose for implementing the new AGEC is a little different than just rewarding players for unlocking a new area. I'm not sure that the two systems can really be compared since I think you could actually run both systems simultaneously and get double the reward for your players.

I'd like to play around with The Shadow's Embrace system because I would find it very interesting to see how this works as more areas are added. Do they reconfigure the percentage? Does exploration XP just become harder to earn? Is the world static with the number of rooms it has? It's a very interesting way to do it, and I'd like to see how they deal with the issues that may come with it. The decisions they made would be very interesting to follow.

Anyway, fun topic! I love ideas for world exploration. I have a few ready for our second game (Primordiax) and can't wait to get them implemented.