onsdag 16 april 2008

Is levelling the wrong path?

MMORPG is all about getting better and doing cooler stuff. No problem with that. But I do wonder - is levelling actually the right thing?

Ok, I really liked to level up my first WoW-charachter, my paladin Gawain, to lvl 60. And then I levelled up my warrior to level 70. 1-60 was boooring but done with the 60 to 70 span to look forward to.

Then I tried to level up a warlock to 70 on a different server (this was actually my very first char that got abandoned at lvl 42 for my paladin). I managed to get the lock to 62 before interest faded completely. Same with trying to level up the pally just to be able to heal in the end game. He's stuck at 65-ish.

Not that I don't wanna play them in 70 instances. But it was too much of a boring one man job to get the bastards to 70. Doing the 1-60 span was better since with dedicated playing following a levelling guide it was kinda neat just to ding twice an evening. The lock was levelled after the "fast levelling patch" so he was even easier. And maybe because paladins are one of the slowest classes to level, fury warrior and affliction lock was pure dps fun in different aspects.

Reason for 10 new levels
But back to the point. New level caps are made for two reasons. One of them is that reaching the new cap is time needed to play (play time = income for Blizzard) and the other that everybody is at square one after reaching the new cap. All old gear needs to be replaced, factions worked at etc which needs more play time. And also since the slate is wiped clean we are all on equal footing Newbies and Hardcore raiders which makes it possible to become a hardcore raider for a former newbie.

Ok, that settled.

Blizzard wants us to play more. But levelling of alts is just made by some. Most people tend to leave them midlevel in my experience. If we played with many characters we would probably play more. Maybe it should only be needed to level one char and the rest would follow? Or will that mean we will only see hunters farm their way up to lvl 70 and then become different classes that don't know how to play their class?

More gaming = more fun = more money
All I know is that I would play more if I didn't need to level my alts. Especially since the problem with my warrior was that I reached what I call the "content-cap" (it is reaching the cap of content that you may experience due to different circumstances like game time, guild progress etc). I didn't have enough game time to do Karazhan on a regular basis and doing heroics over and over wasn't that fun. But I wouldn't mind healing through Shadow Labs if my pally had been lvl 70.

I don’t have the solution for the problem but I feel like it needs to be addressed. This is maybe a way towards a problem I noticed a while back with mates playing but not able to enjoy it fully because of different levels of progress. That might become a later post.

1 kommentar:

Anonym sa...

The one problem with having access to multiple 70s after you ding your first is the easy access to gold.

Once you ding 70 you would basically have infinite access to gold through daily quests on as many 70s as you would care to play.

I can see a system like that being abused.