Hydrogen peroxide powered rocket packs fly for around 30 seconds, because they have a specific impulse of around 125, meaning that one pound of propellant can make 125 pound-seconds of thrust, meaning that it takes about two pounds of propellant for every second you are in the air. Mass ratios are low for anything strapped to a human, so the exponential nature of the rocket equation can be safely ignored.

A pretty hot (both literally and figuratively) bipropellant rocket could manage about twice the specific impulse, and you could carry somewhat heavier tanks, but two minutes of flight on a rocket pack is probably about the upper limit with conventional propellants.

However, an actual jet pack that used atmospheric oxygen could have an Isp ten times higher, allowing theoretical flights of fifteen minutes or so. Here, it really is a matter of technical development, since jet engines have thrust to weight ratios too low to make it practical. There is movement on this technical front, but it will still take a while.

John Carmack

Asheron's Call makes the same basic gameplay mistake as Everquest: kill the monster, loot it, sell the loot, buy better stuff. Repeat until boredom sets in. I finally got bored of AC after two and a half years of it. *shakes head* (It was the first one I'd played, I didn't know, I didn't know...)

AC doesn't have a class system. It's entirely skills-based. You can pick your character's race and facial appearance, which has no effect on your character's abilities. It's just for looks. AC did get avatar appearance mostly right. You rarely see two AC avatars who look alike.

The monsters in AC are dumb as dirt. Their "tactics" consist of an extra dice roll: what body part to strike.

The environment didn't change anything about how you played, or how the monsters attacked. It just put some different graphics on the screen.

AC and EQ are little better than Diablo when you get right down to it. AC and EQ are just massively multiplayer.

MMORPGs have a long way to progress from "kill-stuff-get-loot". Their only strength lies in the social aspect: if you have a good group of people to play with, it's much more fun. Aside from that, it's Nethack with better graphics.