The pros and cons of instant leveling
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, Classes, Game mechanics, Leveling, Warhammer Online, Opinion
Keen took an interesting look at a strange little MMO game mechanic last weekend: instant leveling. I first encountered this in Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot-- after you get one character to a certain level, the game would let you use the "/level" command to pop any character you created up to a higher level instantly.You might argue that we haven't seen that tactic lately, but we're going to see a big example of it next year-- when Blizzard releases Death Knights in the next WoW expansion, we've already been told that they'll start at a higher level. The official explanation for that is that they don't want Death Knights to ever be level 1 (they want them cool from the start), but considering that the expansion will also bring 10 more levels into the mix, it's a lot to ask players who've already reached level 80 to roll a new character and do it again.
Keen actually says it drains a little bit of the fun out of the game for him, but of course, each player is different-- some people "beat" the game once by reaching the highest level, and don't really want to do it again. And while his concerns that instant leveling makes ghost towns out of lowbie areas are valid to a point, the easy fix for that is to add content to those lowbie areas that players want to play. Players who really enjoy the leveling experience won't use the command when there's new content to be played.
There should definitely be fairly harsh prerequisites for any instant leveling-- skipping parts of the game should never be done lightly (and if players do want to literally skip parts of your game for free, odds are your game isn't good enough). But in the right situations, advancing starting (or, more likely, restarting) players to a higher level can have great benefits for all involved.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Burgdorn said on 1:20PM 11-02-2007
I wouldn't relate the Death Knight class with insta-leveling. The Death Knight is designed from the very get-go to be a lvl 55 starting class, and I doubt they are going to just drop you in Goldshire and say... Go find quest! They probably will have some method of starting out, and will more than likely start in the plague lands. Which means there are going to likely be some missions tailored to the new Death Knight. It is lvl 1 for a Hero class and it is constructed not just giving the option to say Ding 80.
I know you didn't say it was like that, but there is a defined difference to starting a character with a progression level being set higher then the standard, and having heroic classes being set higher. One thing being a Heroic class does is open alt playing to a group of players who would never have considered doing it before. Much like giving faction specific classes to the other faction did for some. This just opens the door to others who haven't become addicted to the alt addicted habits of the game yet.
Burgy out.
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Snafzg said on 2:06PM 11-07-2007
I definitely remember the days of "/level" and DAOC. That was pretty much the turning point for having barren low level zones, which scared away any potential newbies to the game.
I wrote an article inspired (and cited) by this one, so please have a look and tell me what you think? http://www.thegreenskin.com/2007/11/instantpower-leveling-and-warhammer.html
If the Death Knight is a hero class, then I fully support him being able to start at a higher level than other classes in the game. I'll have to look into the proposed mechanics because I haven't played WoW for some time... Thanks for a thought-inspiring post! :)
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Nollind Whachell said on 5:24PM 11-29-2007
I for one am all for instant leveling, especially if you've already leveled one character to that point. I know this is using D&D as an example which doesn't really equate fully with online MMO's but I used to actually love roleplaying lower level characters (below 10th level) much more than higher characters. Yet at the same time, if a friend of a friend showed up, we could always role up a high level character to allow him to jump into our group immediately.
I mean imagine the real life D&D equivalent of WoW? "Sorry Billy, you'll have to play separately with the DM every night for the next month until you can get to the same level we are. It just wouldn't be fair if we gave you a 25th level character for free. You have to earn it and level him up first."
The flip side of this is making games that don't have levels at all but instead rely upon the person's skills to do things. For example, being a merchant in EVE does give you some bonuses if you pick the right skills but more often than not you're buying and selling those items using your own intelligence, not some characters. You're using your own brain to figure out where to find the best deals and which routes are safe enough to take to sell them for the most profit.
I mean games that rely upon the players skills (i.e. dexterity, intelligence, etc) open up whole new possibilities of gameplay. For example, permadeath in character based games is often disliked by many people because when you lose that character, you lose everything, all that time spent into creating that character. In a game based upon a players skill though, you lose no skills whatsoever because you yourself know them. Of course, there are other losses, such as your equipment, resources, and standings with various communities but it isn't a complete wipe out like in a character based game. Therefore, you could easily recreate another warrior and just be as skillful with a sword but you wont have the resources (i.e. money, better armor & weapons, horse, etc) to maximize the damage potential of those skills and you won't have the standing in your community to be able to be a commander to lead other forces. Both of these have to be worked at over time again to be obtained again.
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