Why does equipment in many modern RPGs have level requirements?

A cynical and nostalgic designer might imagine that perhaps it's some sort of skinner box or other psychological manipulation, created to get players to play the game even when it's not actually fun to do so, like loot boxes or daily quests.

However, the opposite is true.

The next round of stats are (finally!) up. We somehow lost 12 articles, Heartache 101 is slowly climbing the categories' ranks, and a lot of people have a lot of lockerfiles.

The latest round of stats are up and available. We are approaching a cumulative download count of 5 million games downloaded! That's pretty amazing for a little niche website populated by hobbyist game developers.