Keen: Fixing the Journey Fixes the End-game

[Morreion]

Fixing the Journey Fixes the End-game (Keen & Graev)

I think it should take months, even a year to get max level. I think the journey to get to the point where you’re faced with the reality if hitting a wall has to be so long that only 1% of the people even think about it. I’m not saying it has to be hard, punishing, or any of that. I just think the journey ends too quickly.

I look back at the original EverQuest and I see a game that took me 6 months to solo level a Necromancer to level 50...There were months and months of fun to be had on the way toward the end. I was always working towards becoming better, but I wasn’t doing it so that I could get to the end and face the reality of either not being able to do content or running out of it. If I never once saw the hardest dungeons it didn’t matter to me because the experience on the way was just as fulfilling as anything in the end.

I believe that when someone reaches the end-game they should never be faced with wanting yet being unable to participate. This artificial barrier exists to make modern MMO end-game feel out of reach. How silly is that? Most people make it to the max level but only 1% see the content. It should be that 1% reach the max level and all of them can see the content.

Making the journey matter more fixes a huge part of the problem.

[Regolyth]

I like this. I have to agree with Keen. I don't know about taking a year, but I'm totally down with six months. The end of the game shouldn't be where people are playing. They shouldn't have to get to the end to really start. The end should only be for the most biggest, baddest and impressive stuff. Or perhaps just crafting while sitting around a forge telling heroic stories (or perhaps more realistically, PvP). What's the point of leveling 1 through 50 if 80% of the content is at 50?

While I agree things move to quickly in modern MMOs I also think some of the ‘blame’ can be placed on the player and their habits. These days I encounter more players that just want to get to the end game and could not care less about story and content so much that playing an mmo and leveling almost becomes a mathematical task instead of an actual experience. What can I do in the shortest amount of time to gain as much xp as possible to get to the raids (or whatever they are called each game). I had fantastic sessions in the early pre-burning crusade days of WOW but as soon as all emphasis switched to gear and raids I found those sessions were few and far between.

Above is what one commenter had to say. I think this is partially true too. Blizzard has publically announced that they are now, and have for the last few years, catering to the players as opposed to building the game they way they see it. They're doing this because the end of WoW is coming and Blizzard is trying to get the playerbase to switch to their new MMO, Titan. It's not a bad strategy, but it just shows what happens when you cater to the player versus building what's good. In the early days of WoW, it took much longer to level. I think it took me a couple of months to hit 60 (not that I couldn't have tried and hit it faster). In today's WoW, people hit max level on the opening day of the new expansion and are given a special achievement for it.

My first 50 in DAoC took me five months to level. Then again, I spent a lot of time in Thidrinki and Caledonia, maxing my RPs in both battlegrounds. I also just explored areas within the game. My second 50 only took a week. However, that was at least eight hours a day of power leveling non-stop. I ran a heal/buff bot, a mana enchanter and my bard in a fins group.

[Morreion]

That's one of the things I miss most from the MMO scene- taking several months to level up. In that several months, you saw the world, and THAT was the game. It gave meaning to you hitting level cap. You'd look back on the several different zones you'd been through with a feeling of accomplishment and nostalgia, thinking of all of the fun incidents and stories. None of this 'rush to end game' goal. At least for me...the only game I ever stuck around after hitting level cap was DAoC, and that was because of the great community there.