Over the last year or so, my six-year-old has been making his way through LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga on our old PS3. Yes, I know it’s not an MMO, but bear with me a sec. Last week, he broke 4B studs in the game, completely legitimately, which is apparently as high as it goes. We didn’t even know there was cap, but there it is. And my son was despondent. He wanted to nuke everything and start over because, as he put it, there was no point to playing if he wasn’t getting a score and racking up studs. He’d rather start over with nothing as long as it meant he had goals to work toward.
This is not at all how my husband and I play games, especially MMOs: Life is too short to worry about scoring; we play for fun, and if it’s not fun, we quit and find something that is. We don’t delete characters who hit the level cap and max out their gear, or abandon maxed out accounts, because the point wasn’t the characters but what we can do with them. And yet somehow, our kid has come to the opposite conclusion, which was an eye-opener to me.
Then again, I can see the appeal. I used to start over on fresh servers in Star Wars Galaxies just to see how far I could get with nothing but knowledge. There’s definitely amusement and challenge to starting over. (We did talk him out of deleting his saves entirely, at least!)
Do you start over in MMOs when your character or account is maxed out?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
