There is a thread that sprung up on the AggroChat slack that has been largely demonizing the process of leveling in MMORPGs. The consensus seems to be, that games should allow you to immediately drop into content with your friends without any requirement to push through levels and push through gearing. On one level I absolutely get where they are coming from, but on another… I genuinely love the process of leveling. Games struggle to provide content that feels meaningful, but at the same time is generally low-pressure. When you hit the endgame, there is this propensity for expecting that players want the difficulty dial cranked up to eleven. I am fine with difficult content, but I also don’t want things to be “sweaty” all the time. In fact I need large swaths of chill gaming in order to distance out the spikes of frustration.
Yesterday I rolled a brand new Guardian in Guild Wars 2, and I have been having a blast going through the motions of doing a ton of content I have done several times before. However the introduction of leveling and earning new things each time I level… makes the process enjoyable. I am also getting to see story content again with fresh eyes. This is a huge part of why Ace and I rolled alts on Kraken server in Final Fantasy XIV, was to experience those early days of the game all over again. There is something charming about starting over, so much so that there are a few times I have legitimately considered creating an alt account in Guild Wars 2 so that I can see the game with the same eyes I would as a brand-new player. I get that this is not something that most players would want to do… but also I am also a huge proponent of the seasonal model in ARPGs, and after experiencing Pandaria Remix think it might be an interesting thought experiment in MMORPGs as well.
Part of the reason why I end up rolling so many characters during what is effectively a limited event like a Path of Exile league… is that every so often I just get that itch to start over. For example, I have played through Cyberpunk 2077 up to the “Embers” quest chain something around eight or nine times at this point… only actually finishing the game on two of those play-throughs. I could not tell you how many times I have put at least 40-60 hours worth of playtime into a Bethesda game… only to start all over again the next time I get the itch to play one. In Minecraft, I almost never continue in the same world for more than a few weeks at a time because I get this urge to explore and “break” the world and once I have satisfied that urge I can move on with something else. I’ve played through the entirety of Mass Effect start to finish at least four times… with individual segments like my favorite Mass Effect 2 even more times. There is just something comforting and compelling about revisiting some of my favorite games.
So while leveling is a chore to most players… for whatever reason my brain is keyed to crave it. I leveled three characters during the Pandaria Remix event in World of Warcraft and one of those characters is now the character I am starting to play in War Within. Similarly, in Final Fantasy XIV I already have five jobs at level 100 and am continuing to level more as I do daily content. Before Endwalker released I pushed everything that I had on my account to level 80 and while I think I burnt myself out in the process… I also had a hell of a lot of fun experience with all of these different gameplay styles while doing content that was deeply familiar. I have at least a half dozen different Warriors scattered between multiple servers in World of Warcraft, and I enjoyed creating and leveling all of them.
I think the problem that I have with games that don’t have leveling… is that the characters I am playing oftentimes don’t feel like they are mine. Like I don’t really have a concept of “character” in roleplaying terms, but I have a deep investment in character as a sequence of my interactions and gearing decisions. All of my characters are me and in spite of playing on many a roleplaying server for the better sense of community… I don’t really do roleplay. However I remember when I acquired this item or that item, or when I got a new ability that I had been wanting and played with it for the first time. I remember each and every Path of Exile character when I managed to push across the line toward viability and was able to start ripping through content and farming it. Similarly, I have a stable of characters in Guild Wars 2, that I boosted that I feel almost no investment in.
Guild Wars 2 is really free with its character boosts, either in the form of partial boosts that come in the birthday gifts or the level 80 boosts that you end up getting each expansion. After seeing how much more I care about my Guardian while going through the process of leveling him… I feel like I might have robbed myself of a critical experience to enjoy these characters by taking those boosts. I’m legitimately contemplating deleting characters, and rerolling them over time so that I can expand my stable of characters in a more organic fashion. In truth… I am probably still going to use a boost to get a free set of gear, but I am planning on using it around 70-75 after I have already leveled through the content most of the way naturally. This character feels more “mine” than my baby Asuran Guardian that I boosted ever did.
In other news, I wrapped up my Griffon yesterday and now officially have every mount unlocked on my account. This one was a little bittersweet because despite all of this effort and expenditure of gold… I still don’t really like this mount. It feels like a worse version of the Skyscale, which I guess I already understood. Maybe it is better if you are crossing a large distance and starting at a really high vantage point… but getting up off the ground is miserable. One thing that I really wish Guild Wars 2 was better about is organizing all of these “system” unlocks into a category of Achievements. For example, if they had one place where you should see all of the Legendary item quests, all of the Mount quests, and anything that unlocks a specific system it would be far less obtuse to players. As it stands you essentially have to live on the Wiki in order to figure out how to do any of these things… which is a challenge as I am trying to determine what my next “long grind” is going to be.
I also spent some time yesterday crafting a new set of award badges for Blaugust 2024. I apologize to everyone who has participated this year because I have not really been engaged. August was a really rough month for me, and I have felt like I was largely phoning it in because I just did not have enough spoons for anything else. There were times this month that I thought I should have probably ended the event at the decade mark because I just was not feeling it. I think that is more the viewpoint into this specific month and how busy it has been and less about the event as a whole. I might start actually accepting more help in the planning and running of the event in future years though, and I have leaned way the hell more on my mentors than I have at any other time. Huge thanks to Jaedia and Magi who have carried a lot of the burden.
I have to agree, there’s something with revisiting familiar content.
Be it rereading a novel (or series, for that matter), coming back to a roguelite (or roguelike), or replaying a cRPG… or even coming back to a completely linear action-adventure game.
I prefer having to level classes because it makes me learn them, how they play, what my “intended” play style needs to adapt to. In Final Fantasy XI, I’d have to unlock a new class and level it from 1-99, but having classes in WoW or FFXIV that don’t start at 1, or let you skip a ton of the actual leveling makes me feel like I don’t get a chance to learn the class, learn its mechanics and how it’s supposed to play. I’ve been playing Warframe recently, and in it, there’s an activity called “The Duviri Paradox”. When I play it, I tend to select a Frame that I already have, and have leveled up, simply because I know the Frame’s abilities, and don’t have to learn them on-the-fly. I’d much rather trudge through the aggravating parts of leveling, so that I’m not having to learn to fly the metaphorical plane as I’ve got it in the air.
I don’t understand how someone who wants to play an RPG would want to skip levelling. Yes, after you’ve levelled several characters to ‘max’ it might be nice to have a ‘skip’ button, but it seems to me that most MMORPGs have something of this nature already.
As you so adroitly put it: “the problem that I have with games that don’t have levelling… is that the characters I am playing oftentimes don’t feel like they are mine.” RPGs are all about the story and character interactions for me: MMORPGs maybe less so, but living through the process of levelling seems like a key part of that.
And back when I was playing MMORPGs on the regular I recall how important another factor was: experience playing that particular character under various group circumstances was critical. If you were playing in a serious group or even worse a raid party and didn’t understand how your class specific DoTs/HoTS, aggro, heal timing for tanks, etc, etc worked to the point where you didn’t even need to think about it, then you were a drag on the whole party. A party wipe with corpse retrieval waiting to happen.
People who bought/inherited high level characters without ‘earning’ their levels were looked at as dangerously incompetent. The “Leroy Jenkins” effect writ large. Yikes!
As for Blaugust 2024: it was the best blogging activity I could have hoped for. I would love for it to carry on for many years to come, so hopefully you find the right balance of delegation and so on to make it feel like as much fun for you as it is for the participants.
Back in the old D&D games, once your character got to a certain level, it was expected they would move into more of an offstage role, as a Lord or Lady or leader of a temple or something else like that, and become part of the lore and leadership of the world, in order to let new adventurers shine.
I vaguely recall one or two mmos that would retire your character at a certain point and let you carry on with your kids or apprentice or something.
I like leveling, too. But in many cases the content just seems tacked on in order to delay you from the endgame, and not really relevant to the endgame. Why work hard to get weapon X when weapon Y that you will get next level is so much better, and weapon Z that you get the level after that blows everything else away? Your time would be much better used just trying to get weapon Z rather than waste time on throwaway gear.
I do like FFXIV for emphasizing story at all levels, and it is generally a consistent story with characters you know.
It was nothing. <3 I only offer what I’m able to do and only too happy to offer the help I can! I’m glad the event is still going, but absolutely accept help if it’s needed, you’ve done SO MUCH for us over the years and it’s an awful lot to ask of just one person. hugs Thank you!!
I’m with you, mostly. I love the leveling process, too. The building of your character and finding out what game style you like for it, which could change from game to game depending on gameplay, is part of the whole experience. Plus, all the story and lore. What fun is playing in a big world if you don’t learn more about it. To me, the story and lore are the entire point. So where we differ is that I’m not a big fan of repeating content I’ve already played unless I very much forget it. I’ll take my one character and 100% a game as much as possible and eek out every little bit of story and lore I can. But still, skipping all of that? That’s like watching a movie, but just fast-forwarding to the climax. And if you’ve paid for the game? How are you then paying to not play the game you’ve bought? Just wasteful. I get people love playing with other people, but why do you have to sacrifice the game itself in order to do so?
Please go to that Slack channel and waggle your finger disapprovingly at the others and tell them it is from me. I also love the leveling process and often drift away once I hit cap.
Also this:
“I think the problem that I have with games that don’t have leveling… is that the characters I am playing oftentimes don’t feel like they are mine. Like I don’t really have a concept of “character” in roleplaying terms, but I have a deep investment in character as a sequence of my interactions and gearing decisions.”
Totally nailed it, right there.
I love leveling! For me, that is the game. I know that quite a few people feel like the game doesn’t start until you level cap but, for me, that’s when the game ends. I have exactly zero desire to do raids or most endgame content. Which is why I have a bazillion alts in any MMO that I play. Because, I want to level up a new class to see new mechanics, or start in a different area and see new quests.
If there is nothing else for me to do after I level cap than the usual ‘push to be extra badass,’ that’s when I quit and move on to something else. So, give me all the crafting, collection, and exploration whatnots to do! That’s how you will keep me.