Ask Massively: Enough business already!

With all of the talk in previous columns about the business side of MMO gaming, it can be easy to lose track of the real reason that we are all here. Fun! Since I have been up to my eyeballs in the business side of things recently, I thought we'd return to the realm of fun for this week's Ask Massively.

To the Massive Team,

I recently wanted to get back into Everquest, mostly for nostalgic reason but couldn't bear the grind up to some decent levels again, so i thought id get a account of a char with a reasonably respectable level eg 50's to 60's. The reason is so i could get straight into the good stuff and skip the completely isolated newbie levels. (nowadays Kelethin and Clan Crushbone zones are deserted, who thought it possible??) But the question pricking my gamer conscience was whether it was frowned upon? please help me out in this most dire of ethical battles!

Thank,
Token88

Of course, now that I think about it, this has just as much to do with the business of MMO gaming as it does the fun side. I'm pretty sure that the folks at Sony aren't too keen on players who bypass 50-60 levels of content that cost time and money to produce, but if that content isn't fun for the player then they won't play the game (read: "they won't pay the subscription fee to play the game"). So what's the right answer?

Well, that's where "fun" comes into the equation. As a player, your first concern is your own enjoyment. Sure, you have your friends and guild mates to consider. You might even feel a personal degree of loyalty to a particular game based on the time you've already spent or the reputation that your character has achieved in the community. Ultimately, however, it all boils down to "are you having a good time"?

As you might have guessed from some of my previous work, I am not a big fan of the RMT industry. I understand that the sellers are providing a service that is in demand. I blame the players who pay someone else to play their game for them. However, as with any hard and fast, dogmatic, opinion, there are exceptions. If you've already played the game, why not pay someone else to skip the boring parts for you if you choose to do it again? EQ, in particular, was notorious for requiring marathon stretches of grinding just to level up to end-game content. If you decide that you would rather play a raiding tank than a raiding mage, why on earth should you repeat the parts of your gaming experience that you hate the most? If we compare MMO's to other elements of the entertainment industry, when you watch a movie for the second time, do you sometimes fast forward through the boring parts? If you're watching a TV show on your TiVO, do you skip the commercials or the credits?

Why not use your wallet to "fast forward" through the parts of a game that don't interest you?

From the game producer's perspective, the answer is easy. Since it takes time to level a character from 1-60, they want you to take as much time as you can in order to get there. If it takes too long, you'll get bored and go play something else, but if it is too easy, then they will miss out on several months of subscription fees that they could have had for no additional effort. The task, for developers, is to keep the grind entertaining and rewarding. This can be done by using quests with rich story lines , rewarding specific achievements while you are leveling up, or even by allowing your character to become more powerful over the passage of time.

What about you, and your fellow players? The biggest argument against fast-forwarding through the early levels is that, at least in a well constructed game, the early levels teach the player how to play that particular class. If you are a raiding mage and decide to re-roll as a tank, I don't want you anywhere near my raid until you've learned how to get, keep, and manage aggro. I want you to be familiar enough with your class that you won't cause our raid to fail, and waste my time as well as the time of everyone else who came along. If you think you know enough about your new class to skip the "tutorial" phase, then go right ahead, but be aware that many players will assume that you are clueless about your class if they know that you used a power leveling service. (and in many cases, their assumption is correct.)

Of course, if your aim is not to raid, but rather to play the game with your friends, then you have stumbled into one of the reasons that the Mentor/Sidekick system from City of Heroes (and Age of Conan) is so popular. Instead of having to level to catch up to your friends, you can join them as soon as you roll your character. Unfortunately, for the purpose of answering Token's question, this isn't an option in Everquest.

Ultimately, there is no real right or wrong answer to this dilemma outside of the context of the game, and your goals in playing it. Since Token just wants to hang out with his friends, and there aren't really other options for him like there would be in other games, I don't see anything particularly wrong with buying an existing character or power leveling one to an appropriate level. However, this feeds an industry that I would rather see go away entirely, so I can't really say that I like the idea either. I imagine that Token will get a similarly mixed reaction from the folks he meets in EQ. As for Sony, I don't mean to sound snarky, but I would imagine that they're just happy to keep a subscriber at this point in the game's life cycle.

I apologize for the relatively brief column this week, but as I am sure you will hear a lot more in the next few weeks, some of the Massively staff are working on the events that will be held at this year's Dragon*Con MMO programming track, including a costume contest and MMO Trivia contest. If you can make it to Atlanta for Labor Day weekend, I highly recommend stopping by Dragon*Con. If you have a question that you would like to see answered in a future edition of Ask Massively, let us know either by using our tip line or by sending an email to ask AT massively DOT com.