The level cap is a weird thing. While some of the more dedicated online gamers out there, god bless them, strongly believe that the real, the actual gameplay starts after the cap, another, equally large amount of players finds themselves forced to do things, which have absolutely nothing in common with the quests and tasks they had to face so far.
Life from 1 to 85* is pretty sweet. You can choose whether you want to explore the world alone or with friends, you don't really depend on anyone and it doesn't really matter whether you're checking out all the dungeons. It doesn't even matter whether you spend 2 or 12 hours a day leveling up. Either way, you'll grow stronger and better at your own pace, feeling progress and unlocking parts of the game world, which had been too dangerous for you not long ago. Chances are, you're not entirely familiar with "DPS" or "gearscore", as nobody really gives a crap at your level.
*or whichever cap your MMO of choice has
Dungeons and the majority of quests at your level are piss-easy, now that every MMO has its own wiki, strategy-guides and walkthrough-videos. If you're playing WoW, you can see every single boss encounter on your map, enemy special attacks generate huge on-screen warnings and you even get a loot preview with every dungeon now, so you can decide whether or not you want to go there in the first place. Perhaps you're not even familiar with the basics of tanking or crowd-control at this point, but there's usually some high level player around to boost you through, should the going get too tough.
But at some point, no matter how much you're enjoying the trip, taking your time and avoid rushing through the quests and dungeons, the inevitable happens: You will turn from a nicely-equipped, pretty tough and cool level 84 character into a useless, weak, puny level 85 maggot. Just like that. And the community will work really hard to make you feel just how weak and useless you are!
In the example of WoW, the first step to gearing up at level 85 might be spending some ungodly amounts of gold for purple crap on the auction house. And in the unlikely event, that you really do (legally) own the 30.000 or so gold people charge you per current-level epic item, wearing them will help with that annoying gear score, but by no means will it stop your fellow adventurers from being assholes about it. In fact, they'll point out that you're clad in "welfare-epix" - epic items, that every idiot can obtain with absolutely no effort.
Assuming you're not rich or stupid enough to take such drastic steps, let's say you do the next logical thing and queue up for random battlegrounds or heroic dungeons to gear up. While they can't do much about your green and blue level 84 gear in a BG, they will moan, complain and insult a lot, telling you to "fuck off and gear up". Ironically, it has proven to be rather difficult to obtain better pvp gear without actually taking part in, well, pvp.
Things tend to get slightly more dramatic when joining a random heroic dungeon. You don't have epic gear on you? You have bever been here before? You don't know how to deal with all the bosses? People will kick you out faster than you can say " ".
Of course, the experience varies a bit with the game you play. I have reached the level cap on Age of Conan just recently, joined a pvp minigame (the AoC version of Battlegrounds) and my entire team refused to fight and just stood completely still and let the other team win, because they refused to play with a noob (me). You can earn a shit ton of insanely powerful pvp gear and new abilities, skills and resistances by spending countless hours with the game's pvp content. And that's what pretty much everyone around me had done. Except for myself, obviously. At the end of the BG I received several messages kindly asking me to never queue up for pvp again and informing me that I'm a fucking bastard for ruining it for everyone. Because none of those guys had to start with no pvp gear, no pvp rank and no pvp abilities, I suppose. Or because Funcom couldn't be arsed to create pvp-brackets based on ranks or gear.
The maximum level divides most modern MMORPGs into two entirely different experiences: The time before and the time after you hit the cap. Suddenly, people will refuse to invite you if you're not using voice chat. Suddenly, you no longer have to team up with 4 or 5 other people, but 9 or even 24. Suddenly, you're supposed to know the entire dungeon ahead of you in your sleep, no matter whether or not you've actually ever been there before.
And most of all: You're supposed to repeat that shit over and over again. Until you throw up. Fight the same battles, endure the same insults in the same battlegrounds, fail the same random heroics and get kicked out of the same raids so many times, you're starting to ask yourself whether acquiring the exact same epic gear that every moron, their mothers and their dogs around you already have is really worth all this trouble. And when you spend a minute to think about it, it really isn't - by the time you've finally managed to get all the epic gear there is, you'll have about 2 more weeks until the next content update or a new expansion, which make all the crap you've slaved to obtain utterly useless.
Of course I'm being a tad overdramatic here. Of course some people love their endgame more than anything and I won't deny that, should you be fortunate enough to be part of a helpful, active guild, some of the raids might even be entertaining once or twice. But twenty times?
And if gameplay pre 85 is so extremely different from the post 85 stuff, then maybe something isn't right here. Maybe the leveling experience is a little too easy, a little too user-friendly and not challenging enough. Maybe the endgame content is a tad too hard if people refuse to let you join unless you're fully kitted out in gear, which you could only obtain by beating the dungeons they won't let you enter - because your gear is still too crappy. See the problem there?
Why does the entire game have to change at this point? Why does the whole thing turn into an ever-repeating grind fest, a race for insanely powerful items, which are ultimately going to become obsolete with the next update? And what's the alternative?
I've been through the Molten Core with 39 people I loathe, spent more than five hours on the first raid there, I've fought tens of thousands of battles in the arena, had some of the most powerful stuff half a decade ago and I have some of it right now. And I wonder. Why the hell am I doing this to myself and why am I paying monthly fees for something I have never enjoyed in the first place? Peer pressure? Nothing better to do?
I'm not sure whether I'm getting too old for this or whether MMOs have simply stopped being innovative and I grew tired of the same old mechanisms in every single one of them. But I can no longer be bothered to go the extra mile in Age of Conan, suffer through another thousand pvp sessions to obtain meaningless purple items, just so some 12 year old French kid will stop calling me a fucking bastard. I just no longer care enough.
-Cat
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen