Power-Leveling = Bad?
June 15th, 2008Would anyone care to explain to me the deep moral dilemma that apparently is power-leveling? I honestly don’t get why this is so controversial that Kotaku AU had to label its column with a disclaimer.
Sure, it violates Blizzard’s EULA (a position on character ownership that I find rather reprehensible, while we’re at it). But Blizzard can always ban you. It seems to me that if your game is so unpleasant that the prospect of leveling back up to 60 gives you “stomach cramps… Brain cramps… Cramps in my hair…” there are bigger problems in play. So that’s out. The next option would be the Chinese sweatshop angle. I sympathize more with this, but frankly, if the players could be making more money doing something else, they would. Clearly this is better than their other employment options, and I thus have a hard time distinguishing WoW power-leveling from the average call center in Costa Rica.
Now, it’s beyond me why you would pay for someone else to play a game for you… the level and loot system, to be blunt, is the only reason to play in the first place: it’s the lone reward for the huge time sink that is WoW. Without levels and loot, you basically have nothing to do but gank lower level players (assuming you’re a jerk). But if you have a lot of money, and you want to pay some guy to get you to level X, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be allowed to. You’re not hurting anyone but yourself.
Posted in Etc, Geoff |
June 15th, 2008 at 3:33 am
“Now, it’s beyond me why you would pay for someone else to play a game for you… the level and loot system, to be blunt, is the only reason to play in the first place: it’s the lone reward for the huge time sink that is WoW.”
To be fair, this isn’t exactly true. While I never made it to the highest level character, there are lots of raids that can only be done once you hit the level cap. If, for instance, you’re in a serious guild that likes to run these all the time, and you want to create a new character or your guild basically is in need of a new class, then yeah, I can definitely see wanting to pay someone to level up your character. Why should you have to bother going through the entire game that you already played (and probably sunk over 100 hours into) if all you really want to do is go on the high-level raids with your guild?
June 15th, 2008 at 7:45 am
I don’t think we’re disagreeing… my point is just that there’s no point in playing at all, raids or not, if you don’t get anything from the experience. And people generally do these instances for the fundamental rewards - loot or XP.