When I started digging through the backlog of some of the Blaugust participants’ blogs there was one topic I found pretty interesting: character boosts.
(I wrote down one specific post, it was this one, but I’m pretty sure I saw more).
I wouldn’t say I have a strong opinion, so why am I talking about them? I guess what you often see is this “Back in my day we had to walk uphill.. both ways” attitude, but if I ever held it, I regret it. Sure, if you’re playing a game where some stuff is gated behind a terrible grind… maybe the easy route shouldn’t be available. Same as “Buy this boost for money!” – although I usually prefer level playing fields, something in the range of a monthly subscription price (or 2 months) can be acceptable for everyone who wants to take part in endgame and skip the time sink.
The thing is… I usually don’t do it. In any game where I get a free max-level (or old-expansion-max-level) boost.. I just keep on stalling and not using it. I am actively playing SWTOR right now (I also wrote a lot about it) and I have one “Level 65 boost” sitting there, unused – I’m still not even sure for which character I want to use it. I think I’ll pick one of the missing pure DPS classes where I am not too fond of the mirror class, or where the fun part is missing, like the Gunslinger, where I liked the Scoundrel because of stealth, but didn’t love the combat.
In WildStar I did use a Level 50 boost (I have no clue where I got it from) for a class I hadn’t leveled much yet (Engineer) but it was a very forgettable experience – but I guess I didn’t play much after using the boost, so I never got to know my character very well.
In WoW, I remember using one boost to Level 60 – but I’m pretty sure it was refer-a-friend in TBC or WotLK, and I didn’t enjoy playing Mage in Vanilla at all. After he was 60, I leveled him in a normal way and by that time also had a ton of fun at times. I’m not sure we ever got another free boost, but a quick google search tells me you got a Level 100 boost for Legion. Thinking hard I might have used that one for my Alliance Paladin. I might have leveled her to 60 (via demon invasions? were they called that?) and then boosted to 100, because I had already leveled a Horde Paladin to 100. And apparently there will be 110 boost available if I purchase Battle for Azeroth. Doesn’t make much sense for a 91 Monk that I don’t enjoy playing anyway, but on the Alliance side I’m completely missing Warlock, Druid, and Monk, I have no Horde Demon Hunter, and the Alliance Mage is only 20 (but I wanted to level one to 60 the normal way anyway) and then there’s a 60 Hunter and a 7x Priest and an 80 Shaman. Oh, also no Alliance DK on my main account, but not a fan either. We’ll see, maybe it will stay unused just like in the other games.
Guild Wars 2 is an exception, because just by playing you get so many Tomes of Knowledge (click to advance a level) that you can level 3-4 characters to max level just by playing a handful to max level, nearly 2 for the price of 1, so to say. And you also get a complete boost, but I haven’t used that one either. Or do you even get 2? I don’t remember, but I had no shame using my Tomes on some characters to fill up some levels, e.g. personal story from 10-13, then 7 Tomes, personal story from 20-22, then 8 Tomes, and so on.
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my thirteenth post.
Ninja edit: Hehe, of course Wilhelm also wrote about it, but I had this draft since late July, I swear 🙂
