Thott on Kunark
 

Stumbling around the interwebs looking for leveling info on Kunark, I come across this little gem:

http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/kunark.php

I didnt start until the tail end of velious, so I dont know how accurate this article is in saying that Kunark was a mistake because of how hard it was to get to 60. What do you guys think? Any merit to this?

Oddly enough I recall 60 to 65 being harder than 50 to 60. For me at least, it was all about motivation.

60-65 was miserable for me also, I think I spent most of my time in Bastion of Thunder and Plane of Valor.

I lol'd

It could be said that it was a mistake by the developers to make 50-60 take as long as it did. The article linked makes some convincing arguments for the notion that the amount of time required to get to 60 is too great, compared to the available context to experience while doing it.

But on what scale can we judge this mistake? The article said the major concern was that everyone would get to 60 right away, get bored, and leave. That obviously didn't happen, so Kunark was successful in averting that potential crisis.

Of course, averting a potential crisis does not at all excuse an overreaction that causes a real crisis. The article claims that people were frustrated with how long leveling took, and got bored with the idea of leveling in general. It says:

Does this sound correct to you? To wit, I can think of some pretty big, or long-lasting games that use levels and are popular today. To wit: Diablo 2, EQ2, WoW, and (gasp!) even the original EQ. Apparently, far from burning people out on leveling up, Kunark left such a good taste in the community's mouth that repeated expansions since have been regular and popular, including repeatedly increasing the level cap.

With the benefit of 10 years' hind-sight, we can probably say that this article's conclusion (leveling up is on the way out thanks to Kunark) was not entirely correct. However, we might also agree that Kunark was a mistake, and that WoW's decision to keep the time /played to level from 1 to max relatively constant, even as the level cap has increased has proven quite successful.

Of course, there's always a counter-example, and in this case it's this server right here. Obviously there are quite a few people who weren't burned out by Kunark, but rather are fired up to do it all over again!

While leveling up is not on the way out, it has been drastically decreased. Look at two of the most recent games, DCUO and Rift.

In DCUO you can go 1-30 over a long weekend. I rolled a character on a PvE server on Thursday evening after work and was 30 by early Sunday afternoon.

Rift, people were 50 by the end of the first week of release. While these were mainly the poopsocking crowd, I just hit 50 on my main two days ago, took 3 weeks for me.

Compare that to some of the original MMO's like UO, EQ an AC where for UO and EQ it took most everyone months (if you didn't macro in UO) to get to max skill/level. I believe my main character on Siege Perilous was just actually approaching being a 7xGM when about 8 months later I moved to AC. Speaking of AC, I don't believe anyone hit the max level of 126 until well over a year after the game was out.

I think this is mainly do to a shift in the gameplay of MMO's. They used to be very much about the world you played in and actual adventuring. Today leveling is just looked at as a means to an end when the realy game actually begins.

When was the last time any MMO had an expansion like Kunark? An expansion that wasn't just about increasing your characters levels but actually gave you a bunch of content for levels 1-50. The Burning Crusade gave us two new races but only new content for levels 1-20. With Cataclysm you got some new content for levels 1-10 for the new races and revamped content to STREAMLINE leveling from 10-60.

Really? 60 to 65 was a joke once you got into Valor and HoH. I remember many ppl doing it in a couple weeks or less. It was a sprint in comparison to 50-60.

50 to 60 was a huge grind. It took most people (except for the extreme hardcore) many many months.

That said, that's exactly why I loved Kunark more than any other expansion. When exp is so slow, you don't (or at least I didn't) feel the need to rush to the end. Personally, it allowed me to enjoy the content more, explore all the different areas and whatnot without feeling the need to level as soon as possible.

One aspect that WoW really brought out, in contrast to Everquest, which is not really considered is this:

The longer it takes to level, the more potential familiarity and skill a player can have at a given class. If you level a character up to 50 in 3 weeks, how much skill will you have at that class? You've only played it for 3 weeks and haven't had many difficult learning experiences! And so this is one reason why (imho) we had so many unskilled raiders in WoW and easy-leveling games like it.

Compare Everquest. A person could spend a large chunk of time leveling. But by the time they made it, they had some clue how to play the game and how to play their class. I recall original EQ raiders on my server as actually having skill almost regardless of what guild it was.. something that I didn't find much of on any server in WoW except in the top rated guilds. (I didn't stay in EQ2 DaoC or WAR long enough so I won't comment on them.)

People like feeling progress, which leveling gives. It's common and popular to this day and as yet there just haven't been many good alternatives. Imagine posting on the WoW forums that the days of leveling are long gone :rolleyes:

levelling from 50-60 was horrible for me, and I was in top3 pve guild on my blue server at the time. I was 50 before kunark came out, and I had a ton of play time (8th grade and my entire leg was in a cast). 59 was my favorite level, I won a fungi tunic and that 2hb from sebilis truncheon of doom that procced 50% slow on mobs... a warrior solo'ing mobs for exp while lfg was A++


level 60-65 was retarded easy, halls of honor and bot made it fly by..

IMO, big reason why levelling isn't what it "used" to be, is because back then most of us just didn't do things the right way, didn't know the ins and outs of our classes and the best spots. But yea, it took me just a few days to hit 80-85 in wow, its absolutely nothing compared to what 1-50 was, and deffinetly 50-60.

Don't forget that EQ back then didn't have any kind of competition. Nowadays, the attention-span of a game is radically shorter and you need to pack a punch in the time you're given to make a lasting impression. If EQ was released now, with newer graphics but the gameplay of 1999, we'd laugh at it and call it utter shit. The time invested does not warrant the rewards (xp/loot), that's why EQlive steered away from the original.

Don't forget that McQuaid based EQ pretty much on AD&D. There you level once every so many sessions, while a computer has to reward you each time you play. In 1999 they had the luxury to succeed with this approach, in 2011 such an approach is destined to fail.