This is a question I’ve asked myself repeatedly as I’ve been working away at the last few ranks under WAR’s level cap. I hit rank 39 on my Warrior Priest late last night after a few hours of slogging away, having run out of rested experience around 2/3 of way through the level. I don’t think I have it in me to push through that last rank to 40 without waiting for the rest XP to come back, though.
I’d rather get my Swordmaster up to rank 30 with the level-and-a-half of rest XP he currently has, catch up on some work I’ve been putting off, and enjoy my last day off before going back to work tomorrow. Sigh.
I’m not sure what it is that differentiates WAR’s PvE experience from all of the other MMOs I’ve played. Public Quests are innovative, the questing system is no different than other contemporary games, and there are plenty of ways to level up. Granted, the only other games I’ve leveled up to the cap in at all were Dark Age of Camelot (several times) and World of Warcraft (once, with several near- the-max alts before The Burning Crusade came out). Maybe it’s just my hazy memory of the last time I was in this position, but it just feels like it’s taking longer in WAR.
Learning from previous experience
Of course, the sluggishness I feel in WAR’s PvE just seems to be an impression when I look at the raw numbers. From memory, my first time to level 50 in DAOC took around 15 days /played. That’s a lot. I was playing a Shadowblade at the time, and they were pretty gimpy back when the game was released, so it’s unsurprising. However, MMOs were so new to me back then, having only played Ultima Online while it was in beta and a couple of weeks of Everquest (I never got into it) beforehand, that maybe the whole leveling atmosphere was still appealing to me and I didn’t notice the time fly by as much. It definitely slowed down at the end, and on my various alts I found other ways of grinding out the last few ranks (AoE groups were popular and very quick to level up with), but I still felt entertained and didn’t get bored all that quickly.
In World of Warcraft, my Hunter (if I recall correctly) took around the same amount of time to get to level 60. I don’t think it was any less than 12 days or any more than 15, at least, and Hunters were a pretty good soloing class — and I had played the open beta for a while so I was familiar getting into it. Again, though, the joy of exploration in a new game (the first new MMORPG I had played in several years after DAOC) seems to have taken the edge off. I remember the 50-60 stage being a bit of a slog, but I still recall it fondly. Was the content more interesting, or was I just more patient and less burned-out on MMOs?
In between WoW and WAR, I played Age of Conan for a couple of months. I didn’t play it heavily, and I didn’t reach the level 80 cap (I barely made it halfway before I stopped playing), but I do clearly recall the first 20 levels in Tortage as being a blast. I always think the game had a bad rap — Funcom probably deserved better than they got, but they did rush the game and it seemed pretty unfinished once you got into the 30s and 40s. I quit at level 35 or 36, being too busy with my real life™ commitments to continue the grind. At the time, it was still moving at a decent clip, but the questing areas were beginning to be extremely spread out and the content very thin. I was more dissatisfied with the lack of distinct areas to level than the game’s quality. Also, the lack of any PvP at the time was disheartening. I quit, eventually cancelled my accounts, and waited for WAR.
WAR’s unlikely grind
And now we get to the heart of it: why does it feel slow slow to level in WAR? I’m not a powergamer by any stretch of the imagination. If I play for more than a few hours straight, it’s an oddity, or I’m on vacation and have time to kill. I should fall into the typical casual gamer bucket quite nicely. I try and take a bit of a swipe at a level each day or two, and if I can make it through half a rank in the late stages, I feel good about it. Yesterday, I managed an entire level (38), which involved a whole lot of standing still and grinding mobs — something I had hoped I could avoid, but seem to have fallen back into. Between these bloody snotlings (still no luck, after almost 1,000 kills), the fact that scenarios take much longer to level via rather than straight PvE, and that I really don’t want to quest anymore, I’m reduced to going back to the dreaded grind.
Still, I’ve only played my Warrior Priest just over 7 days. That’s less half the time of my other first characters to maximum level (so far), so I shouldn’t be complaining, should I?
Why does it feel so sluggish?
While I was repeatedly killing the same camp of mobs last night, I gave some thought to why this might be. I came up with a few reasons, but feel free to correct me or suggest others.
- Instant gratification.
We’re used to being able to jump into a scenario at any time, and most games these days offer quick routes to interesting content. MMOs are remnants from a darker time, where users have to suffer and toil before reaching the reward. Obviously, it’s a way to keep people artificially engaged and playing the game for longer than your average single-player shooter or strategy game, but when does the drudgery become too much? It’s just no fun to grind, and anyone will tell you that. - Too much feedback?
Just something that struck me as I was watching the XP numbers fly over my character’s head. In the old days, mods weren’t available, and you couldn’t see exactly how much XP you had left as easily, and how much each monster gave on death wasn’t as prominent. Maybe it’s just impatience, but it just struck me that I was watching the numbers religiously. That can’t be healthy. - Dungeon XP in WAR sucks.
After having run Bastion Stair a few times over, this one really struck a chord. The last time I ran all three wings in a guild group at rank 38, I did just shy of 1% of my level in the dungeon itself. Then another 10% or so from quest turn-ins. The next time, quest-free, is going to be really painful. WAR definitely doesn’t encourage grouping via grou-bonus XP rewards enough, unless you’re AoE farming Public Quests in Caledor or the Chaos Wastes. Worse yet, most of the players on in my alliance are already rank 40 and doing other dungeons like Lost Vale and Sigmar’s Crypts, so I have to keep leveling up just to be able to participate on the PvE side. - Scenarios (and questing) don’t give enough XP.
I think this one’s obvious to everyone. I realize that Mythic is trying to get more people into open RvR, and I don’t mind oRvR giving better renown/influence rewards, but at least make the quest turn-ins from scenarios give more XP. I’d love to level up solely via PvP/RvR as Mythic originally stated would be the “preferred” route, but it’s completely inefficient when I can just stand in the middle of a spawn of 10 or 20 mobs and kill to my heart’s content. What’s worse is that grinding is even better than questing most often — except those easy travel quests that I always make sure to knock off when I hit specific ranks and warcamps. - Too many distractions.
I can jump into a scenario at any time, or hop over to an oRvR lake and join in a keep take. Granted, I’ll be bolstered most of the time, and weaker than the Destruction forces (I’m pretty sure their rank 40s outnumber us on Skull Throne pretty significantly), so I really should be going back and getting rank 40. But why? I’d rather oRvR or do scenarios when I’m coming home from work and tired. I don’t want to grind. - We’ve all done this before.
This is probably the kicker. Back in the day, we didn’t really have much experience grinding out the last few ranks of your traditional MMO. Now, we’ve all done it before. We just want to get to the meat of it without all of the additional cruft. This gets back to the instant gratification point, too. But I want something fresh and new — and this definitely isn’t it. However, the PvP side of things is enough to keep me engaged and to help me pass the time before I get to the level cap, so that’s something Mythic’s done well enough. The carrot is there — maybe the path to it just needs to be a little tastier. - I’m getting old and impatient.
I’ve been playing MMOs for over ten years now. I’m 30. I don’t have the patience I used to have for this. I don’t think it’s going to get any better, either. Could be that I’m not the target audience for this type of game anymore, and my complaints are falling on deaf ears. Maybe that’s why I keep my Xbox 360 handy in the other room. :)
I’m sure there are other reasons, but these are the ones that struck me as blatant at 3am last night. Is it time for a new, improved, less tedious PvE model in MMOs? I thought WAR might be the one to change the status quo, but it’s not feeling that way right now. Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe I’m not giving WAR’s PvE experience a fair shake, but I just keep thinking “I wish I was done with this, so I can get on to the good stuff.”
Photo courtesy of Nate Steiner on Flickr.
