I think it should be pointed out that just because you haven't made a fighter capable of achieving victory somewhere, doesn't mean its not possible. Tarth is often brought up as an example of a great build, and he is at that. His AC surpasses my wizard, and his offense as well. There's some very powerful barbarian builds that could solo some of the higher level areas on this server. It's tough, yeah. The enemies here tend to be high AB and high damage, and they came in multiples, so unless you can out club them it's a losing battle. They also tend to be crit immune, and in some cases have high damage resistance. It's these types of foes that can stop a high level fighter in his tracks, but not even slow down Tensers. Then again, that makes the problem the monsters, not the mages. It doesn't help that it's quite rare on RL to have a band of 3 to 4 level 18's traveling together. When you boil it down, the server as it stands right now have two to three pure melee builds of that level, and the rest are somewhere around 10 to 13. It's interesting that at the end of the day, RL has more soloing and less group play than any server I have ever played on. From my own experience though, being a melee build does not change this. I spent months soloing various crypts and the werewolf den with my weapon master. I like to solo. My wizard can solo places my fighter cannot, that is all. If I could find a caster to be my main man, I'd gladly do it. shoot, I tried with Tzaeru but he wasn't so hot on the idea
Magiko has paid tens of thousands to tanks just to act as tanks for him, basically so I can take them to dungeons. Again, it's not mages. The popularity of mages here is a direct reaction to the environment being fostered. Designing a map that mages "can't beat" seems pretty silly. Why not simply make a few high reward maps that a tank can beat, and then tanks can have their fun there earning xp and gold? The werewolf caves, by the way, are a wonderful challenge for a level 6/8 tank.