Power-leveling: It’s not just the design, it’s our need greed for speed

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, power-leveling is an act or form done in various ways where themodus operandi and hopeful result is to level or reach a destination at a fast pace. Some forms are considered acceptable and others are perceived as bone-breaking, you get no-cookie bad.

The most recognized and agreed upon form is accelerated advancement via assistance from another character(s). Other methods include: twinking, which is outfitting a character with powerful items and enchants; minimizing (weakness) / maximizing (strength) quests (skipping quests purposely based on their reward) or grinding in specific areas that reward better experience; knowing what skills and using them to advance a character faster (dismissing fluff abilities to enhance damage - certain elements in a class build are deemed weaker by power gamers over elements that grant added damage, “lolz I did 10 more dmg then you newb- my damage build pwnz your shitty mixed build, amIrite u suk!”); using walkthroughs and guides to be efficient (being the best and saving time to reach a goal, (skip-hop-jump to the top or a point, the goal is max level and it must be accomplished as soon as possible); rotating level shifts with other basement dwellers to level the same character (level races, self established goals to beat a record, helping a friend progress by playing their character).

And there is the frowned upon side to power-leveling, a place where those indulging in the dark arts may be shunned by the law-abiding purists, banned if the developers catch em’ in a lecherous act, or exemplified by supportive onlookers and fellow exploiting aficionados. These methods include: Exploiting bugs, loopholes, (unintended repeatable quests in the game, quirky foozles with experience tricks, geometry pathing exploits); Bypassing intended content (player needs a key to enter an area, but instead they know a shady work around); Using bots to do all the tedious hard work; And the most frowned upon by most – using real-money and paying someone to advance a character. This guys needs to eat, for only one level a day you could adopt a gold farmer and make their lives better. Don’t player hate, I love shrimp fried rice. Anyway – as the genre explodes with new players underground power-leveling services is booming.

It reminds me, when it comes to no-cookie bad, I’m guilty…

A good acquaintance approached me to level a character competitively on Diablo 2’s ladder, a viewable scoreboard that tracked the highest level characters. This was shortly after Diablo 2’s launch when the ladder was vacant from the ubiquitous level 99 clones that overtook the ranks in the expansion. When ninety and up was no easy feat, when the real no-life sock-pooping basement dwellers owned the charts – the top ten players were in the low to mid ninety’s and the best method to gain experience was camping Diablo’s reanimated corpses for days on end while your ass turned blue and purple from a lack of circulation.

I had just been laid off and those pesky bills piled up so the proposal to play a game for money was bewildering. I didn’t know what a mmog was or jack shit about eula’s (the rules) or game economies; if you had told me people paid money for items in any game I would have thought you had a screw loose. All I thought was being paid to play a video game is the greatest profession in the whole wide world (minus writing obscene checks and leaving massive cash piles on palettes in the desert) I wasn’t sure whether it was a scam and if I had to call a number and invest some money beforehand – I was a sellout bastard before I even realized I sold out.

The deal laid out on the table – was it snorting lines off a midget’s ass and then tossing her into a crowd of other loitering midgets waiting for their turn? Close enough! A grueling forty-hour week supplemented with ten bones an hour. Sounded far fetched, but I had nothing to lose and supposedly this person owned his own company, was a multimillionaire, loved to play Diablo 2 and never came across as immature and to this date is one of the nicest people I have met in any game.

This person’s conundrum was they couldn’t afford to invest the time to be competitive on the ladder since they were always busy working and making heaps of scratch, so they had the wherewithal to hire a leveling monkey instead. (I still am, *scratches armpits and eats a rotten banana peel* but I’m legit and level my own characters all for free!) I soon started the epic grind, and it wasn’t all that exciting, I’m elite on this level ninety-two barbarian, I can press buttons and dodge the hostiles trying to player kill me. Like any other job where your task is non stop repetition by the secondy day it was already dull, but a week later my first paycheck arrived and put food in my belly. It sank in and I had a moment…”Dude, my mom said I’d never get anywhere playing these games!”

I’m a repeat offender. Like many others I have shared my account with good friends who wanted to two-box my character. This netted me experience towards AA’s (alternative advancement levels in EverQuest, lots and lots of them waiting to be filled.) Would I pay for someone to earn AA points for my character? No, but if a friend wanted to two-box my character and I got some free AA levels in the process, I savored my cabal membership. I would rather have friends using and sharing accounts and taking the risk instead of hiring a computer mercenary; alas, developers can’t encourage account sharing because it opens up their customer service drones to a non-stop slew of account investigations. (I’m open to letting players hire their friends as mercenaries when they aren’t online, and gaining some exp and completing some quests - that could be interesting and help curb account sharing. The scripted version might play better than your friend, that would be hilarious.)

Never enough time and being selfish – The Burning Crusade introduces more levels and it doesn’t take long to hit level 70, but if you work 50 plus hours a week and drowning in other responsibilities, sometimes with what little free time available, it can be difficult investing any effort to level. One of my friends lives this predicament, whenever we discuss WoW, it’s always the same fucking sad song. ‘”Come on bro, level up my character, I need some experience. I’m falling behind in my guild.” Every time, I respond “sorry man, I got my own fat newb lewtz to grind!” In the back of my mind, especially if that friend has young kids, they shouldn’t be playing, or approach a more casual play style, because it doesn’t work with their schedule, dammit Jim, stop trying to make it work when you can’t invest the time. On the other hand this guy is my friend, I don’t want him to quit playing, and I would probably give him shit for not playing whenever WoW is brought up in a conversation, yea I’m a dick.

For or against power-leveling it comes down to player’s motives, I shared mine, and I think another big one we can all agree on is redundant content, and it’s unrealistic to assume that content will have every player entertained all the time. It becomes old hat and even if you add new content classes might never change making the gameplay stale. “Corrections” can be implemented, but what can’t be corrected is human nature, we are the main flaw. There is no avant-garde panacea in mmog design, no designer can prevent every player’s desire for faster and instant gratification, as long as there is a time investment developers can try to prevent and inhibit power-leveling, but our desire will always be there.

This isn’t a pass for developers to not try and do something; players can buy advanced character templates in Ultima Online, EverQuest II’s Station Exchange, etc. Other mmogs use another approach with in game mechanics like side kicking or multi-classing, it depends on what the developers think is right for their game and too roll with the punches.