I will speak honestly about my opinion about all of this muck. I will say ahead of time that I do not care if you all decide to spam me with negative rep points because of this post.
The Golden Globe hurts the game and helps the game. It hurts the game in that people do not properly learn how to fight and it unbalances the game because with the training area as it is, a lower mp level can gain high stats and excel more than that particular mp level is supposed to. (Mp3, Mp4)
It helps the game in that it seems to have been the only thing that has held many people to the game. The training is boring, and is not always the most effective method of training, but it is similar to how willows was.
Now my whole reason for wanting to keep the Golden Globe as a working training area after the MRs abandoned it was because MRD put a lot of work into trying to make it something useful for not only the MRs but for other people as well. Back in the days when Willows Shop was all the rage, I could not sit in the location and enjoy conversation because no matter what I did any ritual I put together got immediately plowed by Drachorns. So, I stopped going to the area and searched for other methods of enjoyment. I would stop by and converse, but I truly did not know much about fighting, and by the time I was almost a year old.. I decided that I should try to get stronger.
I fought the old fashioned way and bought/traded creatures. Many creatures were given to me by friends who had decided it was time for them to leave. So, in essence, I learned to fight by old fashioned fighting. This did nothing for my stats however.
The Golden Globe helped me get strong enough to fight the drachorn fiends and those who possessed tokens. It has helped me since I became a new mp5 since I was eager and willing to participate in the Heads Contest. I learned methods of training and ways of fighting by [b]experimenting[/b] outside of the GGG and [b]asking questions[/b] once I began to train.
This is why I do not always agree with what is considered a "spoiler". Some things you simply HAVE to ask to understand. I have suggested multiple times that the GGG be reformed, that we should teach ways to fight as well as train.
In my opinion, with tokens dominating the game and with so very little to do, I do not think that getting rid of the Golden Globe will achieve what the people who are against it want it to achieve. Perhaps if these people would stop whining about everyone gathering at the GGG and start asking WHY people gather there, they would understand.
Some say stats have become useless, but in truth they are only another method of fighting. If your stats are high enough, you can defeat tokens (Sparrhawk is a perfect example of someone who can beat tokens with his stats)- and at least the GGG gives newer mp5's a chance to do that without spending so much money on the game.
What I will never understand is why there has to be categories of people, you fight or you don't, you role play or you don't, you use tokens or you use stats... What is wrong with role playing, fighting, using tokens, and using stats? There is nothing wrong with it, and the fact that people don't realize this will hurt the game even worse than it already is.