Over at Journey’s with Jaye (its great to see you posting again, BTW), Jaye has yet again gotten on her soapbox about how the grind affects MMO games.  She basically says that a constantly rising level cap in games only serves your shrinking end-game base, and creates a growing schism between the newcomer and the games veterans.  I know I have played a fair amount of Everquest 2, raising a handful of characters up to around the level 35 mark before losing it.  In Everquest 1, my highest level character in the original game ( up to Luclin) was only level 30ish as well.  I tried to join the Nostalgia gulid folks for their tear through the games content, but I just couldn’t keep up and eventually my interest in soloing petered out.  Once this happens, you start to play less and less and the chasm between you and your friends keeps on growing until you just give up.  In FFXI I started with gusto at the launch, reaching level 15 within a few days.  Then forced grouping happened, and being an adult with a full time job while going to school full time decimated my ability to advance.  My brother and friends skyrocketed ahead and I never moved past my 30s.  Same thing happened with Vanguard and the R&H guild.

People bash WoW for being too easy.  However, when WoW came out, it was the first MMO that allowed me to solo.  This was a major advancement because I literally did not have enough time to invest in the other MMOs out there.  Its not that I COULDN’T play them, it is that they demanded a greater time investment in order to make satisfying progress in a reasonable amount of time.  Yes, I could manager to get a decent group in FFXI once or twice a week, but I would be gaining a level a month at that rate.  WoW changed all that.  I could solo and make meaningful progress towards the end game where friends were.  It was heaven to me and I still think that the success of WoW, like it or not, was due to the fact that it catered to the “gamer with a life” as it were.

However, as great as this was, we still have the problem of vertical expansion of an online game and the increasing distance between the newcomer and the end gamer.  Everquest 2’s mentoring system is a great step in the right direction, but as Jaye points out, it is not enough.  How do you make it meaningful for both the newbie and the mentor?  Mentors can gain AA from mentoring, but what if you are done leveling and done with AA grinding and all you need from the game is to run dungeons on repeat, hoping for that one nice gear drop?

There is no easy answer though.  With the current model of adding levels with each expansion, do you either water down character progression by allowing people to skip to a high level, or do you do away with levels completely?  Doing away with meaningful character progression would murder a key aspect fo role playing games.  We want to grow as we play.  If you allow just anybosy to skip to a high level when you create a new expansion, then what you are essentially doing is trashing all of your old game content in favor of the new stuff, as players will have absolutely zero incentive to use it.

Maybe the truth is that MMOs have a shelf life.  If you are not in on the early game, be prepared to grind if you want to play.  Personally, I LIKE the idea of using RMT to deal with this.  I think that the reason we have so many gold sellers and powerleveling services spamming our games is that there is a great demand for these services due to the fact that the modern MMO design CREATES a great demand for them.  Poo poo the thought of paying someone to level you, but I will be damned if I didnt sometimes wish I could buy a high level character to play with my end game friends while I leveled another “take your time” character through the game regularly.  Anyone who plays FFXI can tell you that the economy is so freaking busted that if you refuse to buy gil online, you will be broke until the end game.  Given that the game is SO gear oriented, you will be either camping mobs for weeks, hoping for a drop, or you will quietly buy gil and move on.

You might say that if we have a NEED for RMT in our game that allows people to “buy into” the end game, then thats just broken design.  You are probably right too, but the fact remains that the current batch of games would probably greatly benefit from it.  Why not allow people to buy a level 70 character in WoW now?  They still face a 10 level grind to get to end game, but at least they would be able to jump right into the game, playing socially.  The way I see it is that money is going out the door and into the pockets of Chinese power leveling services, or it can go into the pockets of Blizzard, or SoE, or NCsoft … you know, the folks who run the game you love so much.  For all the people out there who refuse to pay, thats fine.  However, you will still have to grind.  If you are OK with that, then live and let live, I say.  The argument will inveitably come up that people will buy a level 70 paladin and have no clue how to play it!  This is true … for about a day or two if they are dilligent about learning, and if you paid, say, $50 for that paladin, I would think that you would be interested in learning how to play it properly.  If you have already been playing the game and purchase a character to be an high level alt, then the learning time is going to be even less.

So, I guess I am in favor of this brand of RMT for games that have been out for a long time.  It would be a huge source of cash and it would allow me the ability to jump to end game.  There are caveats though.  I think that the max purchasable level should be the previous level cap, before the latest expansion.  So in teh case of WoW, you could purchase a character up to level 70, but not a epic geared level 80.   The purpose of this is to not water down the achievements of the people who ARE currently playing the end game.  I think that perhaps there should be a character markeyplace where you can buy into certain level tiers, paying $X per level, up to the limit.  I also think that previously epic gear should be available for sale after a while.  In WoW, I would kill for a set of tier 2 paladin judgement armor.  Its stats in the modern game are shit, but I love the look.  Convincing people to run the raids for it is impossible these days.  I would buy it.  Even better, what if I could buy a set of great armor like that, and actually be able to USE it at the level it was intended to be used at?

I am sure that some people disagree, but I see RMT like this as a HUGE untapped source of wealth for game dev companies.  SoE seems to be waking up to this fact.  Blizzard, too, is offerieng more and more pay services for WoW.  I say lets let it go.  EQ2 is never going to release a magic expansion that causes subscriber numbers to explode overnight.  Same for WoW, believe it or not.  Lets open the flood gates and allow people like me who need a little boost the ability to jump into the game at a level where we can actually play with other people.  Isn’t that the point of MMOs in the first place?