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The Soapbox: Instant high-level characters are a terrible, horrible, very bad, no good idea
While handing players the keys to a high-level character isn't something brand-new that studios are doing, it does seem to be more en vogue these days, from TERA to EverQuest II and now to World of Warcraft. It's a topic that has caused a lot of discussion and debate in the community, not to mention a lot of disquiet and dismay in my heart. In last week's Soapbox, Massively's Mike Foster advocated instant leveling by saying, "There is no downside to giving players a chance to skip to the start of new content." With much love and respect to my fellow Massively writer, I think Mike is completely wrong on this front, as are others that are giving a thumbs-up to any MMO that allows players to jump past content and into a high-level character. It has nothing to do with elitism and ego, as was suggested, but has everything to do with cheapening our mutual experience and the very foundation of MMOs. There are many, many downsides to this disturbing trend, and I need to get this off my chest so that at least I've said it somewhere.
