So, the game's been out a week....Follow

And some of you have hit level 50 already....To what purpose? To sit around and help kinship folks complete quests? To sit and wait for Turbine to put in end-game content? To go back and complete all the quests you should have done as you leveled? To experience PvMP? To really take your time to explore this wonderful virtual world? To unlock all those secret traits and deeds that you should have taken the time to do as you leveled up? To ***** and moan that there is nothing to do now that you are 50? To re-roll another toon and do it all again? To level up your crafts? To run instances over and over again hoping for that one piece of gear that is just going to be replaced with new items coming out in the patches over the next few months? To show off your e-peen?

I know this thread is bound to start a flame war, but I want those people to actually try and come up with a better reason than I have heard so far; "So I can be first to cap" or "I enjoy maxing out my toon as soon as possible". What drives people to be a "power-player"? I am truly disturbed by all these kinships that I see posting on their sites that they are focused on leveling as fast as possible and want to start raiding as soon as possible. These people will be the first to tell you that they love the game and have explored and learned the intricacies and yet, I can almost guarantee that these will be the same folks that quit or are completely burned out of the game in just a few months time. It happens in almost every MMO you play.

I have experienced both sides of the topic. With FFXI I took the time to explore and learn and enjoy the game, and to this day I still log in and craft and raise my choco and merit. I have multiple jobs at 75 and experienced end-game and enjoyed it for the most part. With WoW I "power-played" my way to 70 in a few weeks and struggled for rep and attunements and got it all done and went, "Meh...", cancelled my account and moved on. There was no love or enjoyment left in the game for me.

Am I the only one that is disturbed by this mentality in MMO's of rushing towards a goal and not taking the time to enjoy the trip? 90% of the fun in these games is the exploration of the world and meeting new folks on the way. I was in the beta from the start and got by toon above 10 before the open beta ended and the game went live. I get that some folks had a bit of a head start, but to be level 50 five days after the level 15 cap was removed is just sad to me. To think someone took a week off of work, slept very little and rushed through the game just saddens me to no end, and I hope that this is not a show of things to come and an influx of the WoW mentality of getting everything you can as fast as you can at the expense of others. Now don't get me wrong, I will still play this game how I see fit and the way that I enjoy playing. I am looking forward to hitting the level cap and seeing what Turbine has to offer, but I plan on actually taking the time to enjoy the ride.

Ok, I'm done now. I just wanted to throw some things out as food for thought and see what other people had to say. /flame on

I power leveled my way to 70(Before the latest expansion) in EQ2 and 70 in WoW. Haven't played EQ2 in nearly a year and my WoW account is sitting there, ready to be canceled..Don't know if I'm gonna do it yet or not. Both of the times I power leveled to raid, both times I burned myself out.(I've played many other MMOs, but those 2 are the only ones I've reached max level on.) I'm picking up LotRO because its a brand new game and theres no incentive for me to get to max level anytime soon, and thats because its brand new, not much raid content as of yet, etc, etc, gives me time to do other things.

Anyway, some people get to max level as quickly as possible so they can stop playing for a bit while everyone catches up and they can go out and do other things in their life; work, school, relationships, etc..Granted the population that does this is probably only 1% of people who play MMOs but its one other possible reason to do it. ;)


Edit: Grammar ****..ing myself.

Edited, May 2nd 2007 10:25pm by Vazion

Heck, I'm still lvl 16 working on quests and such in the Shire. I haven't been compelled to leave yet even though I'm only recieiving 10-15XP per kill. Frankly, it's a great experience running through the map, exploring new areas. I already completed all deeds and traits in Erid Luin, figure I'll do the same in the Shire before moving on.

I was in pre-release and got my one character to 15, now I'm level 17. I'm definitely in agreement with you on taking your time. However if racing to the cap is what floats your boat, I'm not going to begrudge anyone of it. Play the way you want.

That said, I think the rush to raid people are going to find this game is different than other MMO's in that according to everything the devs have stated the end game is not focused on Raiding and the best gear isn't going to come exclusively from raids. They want people to raid because it's fun, not because they have to do each instance 50 times until they get the "best" purple item for every slot. Indeed, this isn't even an item centric game - gear is not make or break. That mentality just doesn't make sense here.

I hope with all my heart the devs don't cave to the "best stuff from raids only" mentality that IMHO ruins good MMO's by creating an elite subclass with their own subgame that sucks up resources that could go into providing fun for every playstyle, and negates the non-raid playstyle to second class.

Sorry to hear your not enjoying it Maz =( Makes me sad panda.

That's a new one to me. I'd check your settings. I've never had lighting issues in game and hardly notice day/night because my visibility is the same either way. This is playing a human so there's no goofy "elf vision" or anything at work.

You actually gave valid reasons in your post. And some part of me can even grudgingly admit that "First!!!" is a somewhat valid reason, but after the first person has hit 50, then what?



This also is a valid reason and response to my question.

Those are thought out answers and should make sense to most people on some level, as they do to me. "Maxing out my toon as fast as possible" doesn't explain anything. That would be like me saying "I like to level slowly" in response to the same question about my leveling style. That really isn't an answer. Exploration, crafting, meeting new friends, etc, as I explained in my OP is a valid answer. I just wanted someone to give me a good explanation as to why people do what they do. =P

Also, some of you seem to think that I am letting these people bother me and that is far from the truth. They don't affect the way I play this game or what I plan on doing with it. The best example I can give on my outlook of it all is that of the old-timer down at the plant who has been around for a while and seen everything. You just look at the younger people you work with and shake your head and chuckle at how much knowledge and life experience they are lacking hoping that they learn it all before it's too late. Anyways, glad to see there are more people like me out there that just plan on taking their time and enjoying the game as they go along. ^^

I really hope no one is lvl 50 yet. Is anyone here lvl 50?

Let ppl decide what they want. Don't tell them to slow down, just like they won't force you to powerlevel.

Afterall you don't mind to be helped in that hard instance by some lvl 50 minstrel, after you died about 10 times and had a 100s repairbill while you only have 90s, don't you ?

(Btw I'm lvl 20 and I was in the prelaunch and I don't feel I'm taking my time, this game just eats time, especially if you need to run 5 mins to get a quest, then do the quest 5 mins on the other side of the map and then run 5 mins back to the quest-giver to deliver. That's a plain waste of time and nobody is enjoying that unless they are a *********.)

So far the content is fine for me and it will take a few weeks before I hit 50. And when I do I'll have a explored most of the world, no because I like to walk around enjoying the scenery and smoke weed, but because the quests force me to go all around. Furthermore my char will have maxxed out professions at that time, unless they're too hard to levelup.

Let's be honest it's a bit easier to mine around mobs that are 10 levels below you than to have to fight over each vein coz THAT takes your precious time and THAT makes you levelup so damn slow.

Haven't seen any 50's on Windfola. Highest I've seen so far is a late 30 lvl champion. For some reason everyone just likes to hang out in Bree playing music. From my understanding though, we're not heavily populated.

No problem at all... the speed racers can rush to the lvl cap now and in a month when the additional content comes out, they can race through that and miss 80% of it too! :)

Bottom line for me is whatever floats your boat. If someone wants to race to the end game it's no skin off my nose... my game is based on what I enjoy doing with my evenings... how the other guy wants to play (or what he enjoys) isn't my concern... or my 15 bucks!

Well, it might be a problem when your lvl 50's learn that the new content is supposedly intended for lvls 30-40s or so, partially to address the lack of solo quests in that range.

I do hope this game has already content for ppl hitting 50 since I'm totally NOT interested in any new content below 50 being added months after the game was released.

So if they aren't releasing new 50+ content within 2 months they WILL have a problem.

Can anyone enlight us what can be done in this game when you hit 50 with all your mates ?

I'm lvl 23 right now (have wasted a few days on levelling my metalsmithing and prospecting since I neglected that upto lvl 20) and now I'm back on levelling I feel I can do at least a level a day (on avg). That would mean I'm 50 around the patch and trust me, I've done 90% of all the quests / content which is available ingame. And if I've missed some then I don't feel that I've missed some.

I can image you cannot find many 40+ friends on the server to do a certain fellowship-quest so you have skip those. But then again ; it can take 3-4 hours to do some of those and if you are able to level up for 50% in the same amount of time and come back to the instance when you are 10 levels above the end-boss, supported by some lowbies (do you see the symbiosis here?) then you still see most of the content and still enjoy it (don't you love to whack a boss that normally whacks your ***?).

Can someone point me to a detailed description (guide?) to the lvl 50 instances in this game ? Will there be only some of them so you end up grinding those for rare drops after you got the quest-rewards in the first succesful run ?

Edited, May 5th 2007 9:00pm by GnoofRagnaros

Edited, May 5th 2007 9:00pm by GnoofRagnaros

Edited, May 5th 2007 9:02pm by GnoofRagnaros