Googleshng:
So... what was your question exactly? I suppose I'll work on the assumption that you're asking why we cover all the 2D Castlevanias starting with SotN, but not 2. Well, in a nutshell, the rest are borderline, and while 2 technically features experience levels, the emphasis is on the word technically there.

Googleshng:
This really depends on whether you're talking about a MMORPG or one of the single player variety. Offline, all you have to do is make sure the father you get in the game, the more EXP and cash monsters give goes up on a nice smooth scale, and set up prices in shops based on how many things you want the players to kill before they can afford them.

If we're talking about online, player driven economy though, it gets trickier. You want a system where the higher a player's level gets, the more money they have, but where the total money in the system stays constant. One way of doing this is to make it a closed system, where money can neither be created (i.e. get dropped by monsters, given to new characters, etc.) or destroyed (deleted with characters, given to NPCs who just eat it, etc.), and keep in mind that items dropped by monsters or created by players are money too. This is a pain though, so you're probably better off with a balanced open system. Money and items can be created out of thin air, but there's also things which pull money out of the system. Equipment repairs, forcing players to periodically buy and eat food, things like that. Ideally set up so that the wealthier you are, the higher your upkeep costs (but the more easily you can make the cash to pay those costs, thanks to your high level and cool stuff).

Googleshng:
First, I didn't say that. Second, I consider Myau to be cooler than Nall precisely BECAUSE he's a plain ol' ordinary housecat. I'd make another observation here, but it'd be a decent sized spoiler for a game most people still haven't played.

Googleshng:
It depends on the quality of them really. If by "dungeon" we mean "a big straight line of a path with a lot of random encounters that happens to have cave looking walls" I'll pass. If we're talking about some huge sprawling maze though, or some spiffy puzzle filled affair a la Zelda or Lufia, I want as many as I can get. Having a good system of combat helps too.

Googleshng:
It's a funny thing about videogame marketting really. The more people you know are going to buy a game no questions asked, the more money you spend marketting it. I suppose the logic is, when you have mass market appeal, you need to reach out to make sure that whole market knows you have a new game coming out, but when you're targetting the core RPG audience, you're expecting the people who are going to buy your game to, well, come to sites like this and hunt around for tidbits of info on their own. I have a few problems with this sort of logic, but there you have it.

How this applies here though has a lot to do with the difference in popularity we're dealing with. In Japan, the DQ series is It. The be-all, end-all of RPGs, which pretty much everyone in the entire country has played. Here though, they're honestly more of a cult favorite sort of thing. 1-4 came out when the U.S. RPG market was much smaller than it is now, and at that the reception wasn't all that great. So 5 and 6 we didn't even get, 7 took so long getting over here that the dated look drove off most potential newcomers... so the people likely to grab 8 don't really need the extra push into it. All that said though, I'd expect the media exposure to start climbing when it's closer to release.