Right after New World’s Aeternum launched, we did a piece looking into how the game was faring – and one complaint I saw over and over on Reddit and in our comments that was the leveling is just too fast. It struck me because usually MMORPG players have the opposite problem, but here, some of our commenters said they were leveling at breakneck speed, even without trying all that hard.
“In 2 days I went from 0-44,” MOP reader Lateris remarked.
“The road to 65 takes barely 15hrs now,” reader Paul M. chimed in.
“Noobs should be hitting level 65 in about 9 hours in,” wrote Kendall.
“It doesn’t take power leveling or rushing to hit 65 way sooner than 30 hours,” lamented ihatevnecks. “The XP being given for the main quest – which the game absolutely funnels you through – is insane. Even brand new players, like two of my friends playing on Xbox, were in their 50s by the weekend… and they were both avoiding fast travel the whole time too.”
Basically, the consensus is that Amazon has sped up the leveling dramatically, which sounds fun if you’re just trying to make a beeline to endgame or PvP – but maybe is counterproductive for this particular game, when so much of it is casual open-world content and the endgame is still a bit on the thinner side.
So I want to talk about the leveling quandary in this week’s Massively Overthinking. How long should it take to level to “endgame” in MMORPGs? Is it dependent on the specific MMO? Is there such a thing as leveling too quickly or too slowly? Which MMOs have struggled with this problem the most – and which have managed to solve it?
​Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): You folks know I’m not a big fan of the existence of “endgames” to begin with, but I’ma treat with my own question in good faith. I think it should probably take several solid weeks to get to the end of a leveling arc for the standard MMORPG, assuming I know nothing else about it. Maybe a month of playing a lot. But the type of game would really change that for me. A traditional MMORPG like Lord of the Rings Online should take many months because the journey is quite literally the point, not the endgame. Likewise, I don’t really think most sandboxes should be blitzed through. That’s just not what sandboxes are for.
But for a small-scale themepark like New World, one that is trying very hard to make console sales and still hasn’t confirmed what its content rollout is going to look like going forward? Well, it probably isn’t hurting anything to let people rip through it. It’s already being hurt so many other ways anyway. I tend to agree with Tyler’s pieces earlier this week that encourage Amazon to just retool the content to scale – that way it doesn’t matter how fast we’re going.
Relatedly: I’m a very big fan of giving players the tools to speed up and slow down their leveling at their leisure, like LOTRO and City of Heroes Homecoming. You’d think everyone would just crank it up to eleven, but that just isn’t what players do in an MMO where midgame matters (and it doesn’t hurt anything in a game where only endgame matters). All my characters have the LOTRO turtle that locks leveling until you’re ready to move on and the earring that speeds up leveling if I’m bored of a map. Problem solved.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog):Â If your levels and other experiences blitz by at breakneck speed, then that content – all of it, the level path, the story, the zones – all blur into a congealed mess of trash. And like trash, it’s mentally thrown away.
I don’t really know precisely how devs should really approach the matter, but I do appreciate a lot more how a slower walk up to power is important in making my character feel like a part of the world. I tend to enjoy stories in games, especially when they’re well crafted, so being allowed to soak in that for a long while isn’t a hindrance.
If anything, if I enjoyed that meander up to cap, then I’ll stick around for the endgame afterward. I ain’t in no rush, and MMORPGs probably shouldn’t be either.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog):Â I’m in the camp that agrees most MMOs level way, way too quickly these days. While the devs are thinking that people will love getting to the endgame super-fast and stick around, I say that it has the opposite effect. You’re devaluing the leveling journey, urging players to rush through (or skip!) zones and content, and over-emphasizing that the endgame is all that matters.
We need to get back to MMOs that make the journey, not the destination, the real experience. I think you can look at WoW Classic and modern WoW as a night-and-day difference, where people still praise the creaky old vanilla format for a meaningful leveling journey over the zip-zip-now-you’re-80 retail edition.
So yeah, slow it down for me. Fill your world up with interesting stories and give me multiple paths to encourage alts.
Sam Kash (@thesamkash): As a general rule for me, I do prefer quick leveling. I much prefer challenges from a skill or execution standpoint to a drawn-out one. It’s not that I don’t enjoy casually playing a game while leveling, but it has to be done correctly. You can’t arbitrarily make leveling slow just to extend it. If we were gaining strength all the way, that’s one thing, but if I stay at one power for too long, it’s boring.
In New World before, your power level grew slow slow slow. I wasn’t gaining new abilities gradually. Instead it was like running up a series of hills with marathon-long plateaus between each. Honestly, it was miserable for me. I just wanted to reach endgame and get on with things.
So if the leveling here now is something more akin to Guild Wars 2, then I’m all for it. I really should revisit NW in that case. I’ll keep an eye on it, but I’m hesitant to believe Amazon actually fixed things.
Tyler Edwards (blog):Â I usually enjoy leveling as much if not more than endgame, so if we’re going with a clear divide between the two, I’m happy for it to take a while. I’d want at least 20 hours, and ideally more like sixty to a hundred, assuming the process is enjoyable and not just mindless mob grinding or the like.
That said, I tend to prefer non-traditional leveling models like The Secret World or systems like Elder Scrolls Online where everything is relevant at all levels. If there’s no concern about over-leveling content, I prefer faster leveling. Who wouldn’t want more new toys faster?
Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!
