Thott on Kunark

[UrsusMajor]

While leveling up is not on the way out, it has been drastically decreased. Look at two of the most recent games, DCUO and Rift.

In DCUO you can go 1-30 over a long weekend. I rolled a character on a PvE server on Thursday evening after work and was 30 by early Sunday afternoon.

Rift, people were 50 by the end of the first week of release. While these were mainly the poopsocking crowd, I just hit 50 on my main two days ago, took 3 weeks for me.

Compare that to some of the original MMO's like UO, EQ an AC where for UO and EQ it took most everyone months (if you didn't macro in UO) to get to max skill/level. I believe my main character on Siege Perilous was just actually approaching being a 7xGM when about 8 months later I moved to AC. Speaking of AC, I don't believe anyone hit the max level of 126 until well over a year after the game was out.

I think this is mainly do to a shift in the gameplay of MMO's. They used to be very much about the world you played in and actual adventuring. Today leveling is just looked at as a means to an end when the realy game actually begins.

When was the last time any MMO had an expansion like Kunark? An expansion that wasn't just about increasing your characters levels but actually gave you a bunch of content for levels 1-50. The Burning Crusade gave us two new races but only new content for levels 1-20. With Cataclysm you got some new content for levels 1-10 for the new races and revamped content to STREAMLINE leveling from 10-60.