Powelevelling - Why?

[Jasede]

I've been seeing a lot of "powerlevelling" ads on the Codex lately. They advertise a paid service where they take your WoW or Runescape or whatever account and level your character up to max for measily 100$ or so.

Now. This is something my brain is too feeble to understand: Why would you do that? Isn't "grinding" with some friends the reason why you'd play those games in the first place? If you just pay someone to do it for you, what is there left to do? Raid instances? But now that you are max level, where's the point?

Someone explain.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

I think thats because MMORPGs (in their current form) are an abomination and the bulk of people playing those things are absolute retards.

 

[Jason]

There's a lot of gamers, often the over 30 ones, that have more money than time. It may be impossible for them to play a game for 20 hours a week (jobs, family, drug habits, etc) to build a character that can keep up with the others and kickass at the "fun" stuff, like PVP or higher level raids. But they can afford to throw away some cash on being able to skip all the lower level stuff like collecting 20 monkey ball sacs for an NPC or what have you and jump ahead to being a powerful warrior with giant glowing shoulder pads.

 

[Woetohice]

__

 

[Destroid]

Cheaper to do that the official way with guildwars.

 

[cutterjohn]

Powerlevelling allow the lesser echelons of society to feel that that they actually have some sort of recourse as to the direction that society takes, regardless of wether they are intelectually or otherwhise incapable of having an effect...

[EDIT]
This is balanced by the assocrats who "administer" business bureaucracies, who therwise have no redeeming qualities other than their ability to be extremely malleable...

 

[Top Hat]

I've been seeing a lot of "powerlevelling" ads on the Codex lately. They advertise a paid service where they take your WoW or Runescape or whatever account and level your character up to max for measily 100$ or so.

Now. This is something my brain is too feeble to understand: Why would you do that? Isn't "grinding" with some friends the reason why you'd play those games in the first place? If you just pay someone to do it for you, what is there left to do? Raid instances? But now that you are max level, where's the point?

Someone explain.

IT'S BECAUSE YOU TOUCH YOURSELF AT NIGHT!!!

*ahem*

Well, let's look at Top Hat's Three General Principles of Human Behaviour:

TH1. Wherever possible, humans will try to minimize effort.
TH2. Wherever possible, humans will try to maximize feeling pleasure.
TH3. Wherever possible, humans will try to maximize status over others.

TH1? Check. People are both lazy (minimizing work effort) and stupid (minimizing mental effort) in general, so people who don't realize that the journey is more interesting than the destination will invariably look for a quick way to get what they want. Why spend $20 a month or whatever to hard slog through a game when spending another $2 or whatever lets you skip to being ALL-POWERFUL THUNDAR ME SMASH WHERE DAT CHOCOLATE MILK? without having to go through the fun of actually playing the game? People also want to minimize the time they spend playing a game because oh look a shiney!

TH2? Check. People want to feel good, which is why pornography is #1 in terms of searches on the Internet. Being big and powerful in a fantasy land boosts your ego (or something).

TH3? Check. Mwahaha I am all-powerful wizard Tah Pot, and I will crush you with this spell which I don't know how to use properly but it causes so much damage that I kill you if I couldn't even target it at the broad side of a bard. (Misspelling intended).

But, in the end, it takes money out of the pockets of developers of MMO games, which according to Martha, is "a good thing".

 

[Sarvis]

To a certain extent the games don't really start until high level. I know it's a problem my old mud tends to have... new players can't get a group because all the long time players get themselves to max level within a couple days sothey can do the fun, high level zones.

Also, think about it, if you've ground your way through several classes but a new expansion was just added and you want to try a new class out with it do you really want to go through eveyrthing again?

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

Isn't "grinding" with some friends the reason why you'd play those games in the first place?

Depending on your play schedule your friends might hit level seventy while you are still doing Scarlet Monastary PUG runs in your forties.

WoW is also a solo-friendly game. Well, that is until you reach the level cap, then you better get yourself in a raiding or PvPing guild if you want your purples.

But, in the end, it takes money out of the pockets of developers of MMO games

Wait, paying somebody to grind your character for you in a game like WoW is taking the money out of Blizzard's pocket? :s

 

[tardtastic]

I tried playing WoW for a while, and granted this was before the last expansion pack was released, but it seemed to me that, at a certain point in the game, once you reached the highest level and got the basic high-tier equipment, there really was no way to substantially improve your character unless you gave all of your free time to some guild. So, yeah, I agree - I don't see the point. I mean, even if you do pay for some Korean slave chained-up in an internet cafe to level you high - then what? If you're the kind of person who doesn't have the will to waste your free-time utterly, such that you could've grinded up your levels in the first place, then clearly you aren't going to have the time to do anything with that character that you just paid to have improved - because, at "endgame", everything is guilds and raids, and you'll only get in on the "runs" and get yourself enough "loot points" if you play all the fucking time.


so anyway my point is if you play mmorpg you are retarded and should be drug oput into the street and shot in the face

 

[Shannow]

Well, let's look at Top Hat's Three General Principles of Human Behaviour:

TH1. Wherever possible, humans will try to minimize effort.
TH2. Wherever possible, humans will try to maximize feeling pleasure.
TH3. Wherever possible, humans will try to maximize status over others.

TH1? Check. People are both lazy (minimizing work effort) and stupid (minimizing mental effort) in general, so people who don't realize that the journey is more interesting than the destination will invariably look for a quick way to get what they want. Why spend $20 a month or whatever to hard slog through a game when spending another $2 or whatever lets you skip to being ALL-POWERFUL THUNDAR ME SMASH WHERE DAT CHOCOLATE MILK? without having to go through the fun of actually playing the game? People also want to minimize the time they spend playing a game because oh look a shiney!

TH2? Check. People want to feel good, which is why pornography is #1 in terms of searches on the Internet. Being big and powerful in a fantasy land boosts your ego (or something).

TH3? Check. Mwahaha I am all-powerful wizard Tah Pot, and I will crush you with this spell which I don't know how to use properly but it causes so much damage that I kill you if I couldn't even target it at the broad side of a bard. (Misspelling intended).

But, in the end, it takes money out of the pockets of developers of MMO games, which according to Martha, is "a good thing".

While I generally concur with your sentiments, I'd really like to know in what mmorpg "grinding" is fun.

 

[Atrokkus]

heh I would never buy a powerleveled d2 hardcore ladder char, because the process of grinding in hardcore d2 is what's fun. I mean i dont care if i lose my lvl 80+ char because it was still fun, and now i can try out other builds (most builds are pretty much finished past lvl80). The process is where it's at.


But in games like WoW it makes sense because the raids are more important.

 

[Wulfgar]

Why would you do that? Isn't "grinding" with some friends the reason why you'd play those games in the first place?

Sounds real nice in theory. Doesn't really work like that in practice. Sooner or later, the schedule breaks, or someone jumps ahead or lags too far away from the group, or someone gets bored and stops playing etc. And then you're all alone and forced to group with strangers. And do you know how many unbelieveably retarded people play MMO's? People who barely speak two words of english and/or don't know how to follow the simplest advice/order?

Speaking of WoW precisely, do you know how horrible a experience 5 man PUGs or low level battlegrounds can be? Those who know what's it like (whether through experience or from advice) don't want to go through it. The alternative is a brutal grind, and that is absolutely no fun, not with friends or alone. So the desire to skip it is perfectly understandable, for me at least.

If you just pay someone to do it for you, what is there left to do? Raid instances? But now that you are max level, where's the point?

Well, you answered yourself, if it's WoW you're talking about. Aks someone who plays and they will probably say that the game truly begins when you get to 70... the rest is a tutorial.

Make a PvE build - try to find a non-retarded guild and raid your ass off. Bragging rights if your guild is the first to clear this or that shit on your server.
Make a PvP build - play Arena and BG's. Bragging rights if you have a good arena rating.

And since you can't do raids or play Arena before max level, and as mentioned, lower level bg's are a masochist ordeal - it's normal that people don't want to go through all that shit just so that maybe, when it's all done, they can actually start enjoying the game.
If you have the moneys, it's much easier to just pay someone to wade through the crap for you.

 

[Data4]

Wulfgar, you illustrated perfectly why MMORPGs are simply variations of Counterstrike with a flimsy pretense of a story.

Don't get me wrong, it CAN be fun if you're playing with real, offline obtained friends. But in the end, it just boils down to how big someone's virtual dick is. Give me a single player game where my character's actions matter any day. As soon as one of those is made, call me.

 

[Zinc]

I played both DAoC (in 2002) and WoW (in 2005) for quite lengthy periods of time and I confess that I was actually addicted to them for a while. Dark, dark times...

Anyway, grinding isn't fun. Levelling up is fun, however, as is getting drops, and exploring new areas, which is why people grind. As has already been explained, people pay other people to do it for them because they do not have the time or the patience to do it themselves. Either that or they have more money than sense.

These games are flawed in that once you reach the top level, get some decent gear, and go PvPing for a couple of weeks or so, you will begin to get bored and then, inevitably, you slowly begin to wonder why you wasted all that time on the fucking game in the first place. I used to do a warrior/priest duo with my brother on WoW and I did enjoy the game a lot, and there was definitely a rush to be had when facing evenly matched opponent(s) and barely coming out on top, but it was still a massive waste of time.

MMORPG's are not something that I would partake in ever again.

Something funny: I sold my character to some guy for 150 dollars and Blizzard didn't let him change the email address, so I was still receiving emails with regards to my old character. Then, one day, about 6 months after I'd sold the character and almost completely forgotten about WoW, I get this message from Blizzard telling me that the character had been permanently banned because this guy had been using all kinds of different hacks. I laughed to myself for a while and then forwarded him the message.

He didn't reply.