Redbeard has an interesting post up, partially about leveling speed.
Thinking about what I wrote the last few days, basically pushing tons of alts through TWW content, seemingly with the goal of having them at 80 and never stopping to smell the roses, one would think I’m a big proponent of quick leveling. Maybe I am, but I actually don’t think so.
Every time a new expansion hits, I’m leveling one character and doing most or all side quests in a zone, reading all the quest text, and not really pushing it. What I usually do is reserving a lot of time, so I still reach the level cap not so many days after the launch, but I have invested a lot of hours – so leveling usually took a bit.
OK, sometimes for some reason or other I will take advantage of rested XP and already start leveling a second char while the first is not yet at max level, but I think that’s just something else.
I think the overall reason why I don’t enjoy classic or slow leveling is mostly that I don’t want to fall behind endlessly, as we saw with the Seasons of Discovery – it was kinda fun at first but then when everyone was zooming to max level with these portals I lost interest. Yeah, maybe it’s silly to let your accomplishment and joy be diminished by what others do, but I think there are certain criteria when it annoys me and when it doesn’t. Staying with the expansion launch thing – I know that many, many people will rush to max level and are probably three times as fast as I am, but I have no problem with that because a) I need to wait for my guild to catch up until we can raid anyway and b) it’s only maybe 1d for the quick people and 4d for me. But I wouldn’t for example ignore quests and just grind my way up (even if it was feasible) if that meant I’d be like 10 times slower than normal people leveling. And also apparently I enjoy leveling (as seen by all the alts), but after the nth time I have absolutely nothing against a speed boost, but I wouldn’t want my first character per expansion to cap out in like 6h of play.
Guess I’m just weird, but it really depends on the circumstances. Same in FFXIV – new expansion and I am leveling my first job? Can take weeks, no problem. Catching up many more jobs to max level? Fast please.
And here I thought that among the provocative things I’ve written on the blog over the years that this wasn’t going to be quite as hot a take as it turned out to be. Still it is nice to see that slow leveling still has a place in some people’s hearts!
A completely unrelated but yet related thing to me would be the games where you officially don’t have a level and stats but by buying equipment/getting weapons you still do (looking at you, looter shooters). Although iirc Destiny 2 and Borderlands 3 both had some form of skill tree, I’m mostly talking about the oldest CS betas where you could choose/buy weapons for the first time instead of finding them.