MMO Weekly: A Flatter, Funner MMO

06 Oct 2009 at 11:20:27 by Jeff Hollis

Hey there, MMO fanboys and fangirls, and welcome to this weeks flattened edition of MMO Weekly.  In this week's issue, we'll explore the idea of a flatter, funner (yes, I meant to say that), and utterly level-free MMO.  “Level free?”, I hear you asking.  How can such a thing be?

This issue arose during the week as I continued to level my WoW alt, a character whose sole purpose is to allow me to play with some Alliance family members on a different server.  I realized, as my wife and I both leveled these toons, that neither of us was having a particularly good time.  We were working.  Our goal was to get to 80 as quickly as possible, so we could really begin to enjoy the game again. 

Quite a bit of psychology inherent in our attitudes, isn't there?

This gave rise to several questions:  why wasn't I enjoying level 76 (and, as of last night 77)?  Why was I grinding away, running instances and battlegrounds without savoring the flavor?  Why am I trying to get to 80 as quickly as possible, and speed past all the content on the way?  Why was my significant other / life partner / the bearer of my spawn / the spender of my money, feeling the exact same way?  Why, when we've leveled various alts in the past, did we have this exact same experience?

Allow me to diverge, briefly, to explore how a character's ability and power are measured:

1)  First, of course, is a character's level.  As I've proven many, many times this past week in Alterac Valley, a sloppily played level 79 is significantly better than my level 76 DK.  By the same token, almost none of the level 73s I ran into stood a chance against me.  The difference of 3 levels was nearly insurmountable.  I simply had more abilities, these abilities were more powerful, and I had more HP than the 73s I victimized did.  The same was true of the 79s that easily eviscerated me.   

2)  Second, it's universally accepted that a geared-up toon is far more powerful than a character in greens and the occasional blue. 

3)  Third is player skill.  An experienced player, devoted to gaming well, is obviously better than a more lackadaisical one.  'Nuff said.

This isn't exclusive to WoW, but to MMOs across the board.  I've played a lot of MMORPGs over the years, and I couldn't think of a game that handled this differently.  It's possible I'm forgetting the one game that didn't follow this pattern.  But if that MMO exists, it didn't exactly create an impression on me, that's for sure.

This tepid realization actually caused a bit of discussion.  Are the levels really necessary?  Is this meaningless sojourn through sub-80 (again) really needed? Is a level-free MMO possible?

It seems that the answer is yes.  Unfortunately, this is something of an anathema.  Since D&D introduced the leveling concept waaaaaaay back in the 70s, role players have been leveling up character after character.  There are very few examples of level-free MMOs to point to, and some folks don't want to give up the leveling mechanic we've all grown so accustomed to.  (Story would be lost!  Players would have no opportunity to build their skills!  Players should have to *earn* their status!  So, the noobs would basically start out the same as level 80s?  Unthinkable!)  You'd think the “level up – gear up – skill up” triad was a law of some kind.

Could that triad be reduced to a simple duality?  Could the level up part – the part of the game we were clearly not enjoying - be eliminated, and could the game still be fun? 

The benefits would be manifest.  The developers of a flat, level-free MMO could produce instance after instance, encounter after encounter, and content upon content that players won't rush through.  The devs would never have to devote time to designing parts of the game players see one time, and then functionally discard.  The “endgame” – because there would be no real early or mid-game –  would be rich indeed. 

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