Shattered Kingdoms

Here's what I see in almost every post thats against increasing leveling speed:

If a player knows what he is doing then ...

If done properly...

If a player knows what he is doing ...

If a player knows what he is doing ...

A player shouldn't have to have all kinds of innate ooc knowledge to get around places. They shouldn't have to depend on other players to show them where to go because at times there simply isn't anyone of the right aura to ask, nor is everyone helpful when they are interrupted in the middle of doing something of their own. There also isn't the large player base that we used to have, so there isn't as many people to ask either way.

Not everyone is going to know what they are doing, or where to go nor should they be forced to learn oocly what they should be doing to achieve optimal XP. Raising the xp gain will give veteran players who have done the grind before a little more incentive to keep playing with new characters because they don't have to spend countless hours grinding and seeing a million You slash so and so lines of text across the screen. It will also make the game more newbie friendly because if they can't find a new leveling area right away their xp isn't so badly beaten down by the xp penalties for staying in the areas they know until they can get help.

Any newb can do perfectly fine with simple use of the area command, the online map, and asking for IC help. The area command can even be filtered through kingdoms, for crying out loud. That doesn't involve using OOC knowledge at all.

And yes, those who know the game's workings OOCly level faster than those who don't. But that's a completely different argument: raising EXP won't slow down the veterans.

The fact is that there -do- exist people who are willing to help others level ICly, even if its in just a few pieces of advice or directions to a good place to hone their skills. Finding a good place to level requires either a little perseverance and good interaction with others, or a lot of perseverance and no interaction with others at all. Your choice. Wanna be a loner? Pay the price. Don't want to level intelligently? Then you'll level slower. If the player is intelligent and at the screen while he levels, then he can sleep in between NPCs and never have to rest, greatly increasing his efficiency. There's nothing wrong with leveling speed, because getting to level 35-40 is a breeze for almost any race/class combination.

1. WW > Tlax. Also, Wastelands took quite a few people all the way to GM, with familiarity it's much slower to level even off the priests than it was to level to GM via the Wastes and random high level NPCs.

2. If done properly you can operate on someones brain and save their life, however the general population isn't capable of brain surgery.

3. You're missing a key point here. In the past, you weren't required to be up a newbies [REDACTED]. You could literally direct them to three or four basic
areas, and hand them a Teron n00b special and they were ready to go.

It's actually not hard to ruin a leveling path, the easiest example is to use your vaunted Tlax. You can go there as low as Journeyman or Veteran and level like a fiend, that is until you notice the fantastic fun that you've sent the familiarity into the red before you've even hit Expert. Now not only have you outleveled the good leveling grounds for those levels, you also don't have a leveling ground to get a normal amount of XP in. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

Choosing the correct leveling path is probably half of the battle when it comes to leveling now, the other half is trying to refrain from gouging your eyes out with boredom.

As far as your description of leveling goes Pyras, I'll guarantee that you along with 90% of the current PBase doesn't actually converse for a single second with other characters about where to level. Area tells you very little without some knowledge. Perfect example is Skybolt. There is absolutely next to no way for anyone to know that you should level off certain NPCs in that area without using OOC knowledge. Am I saying curse everyone? No. However I'm saying I don't give a flying [REDACTED] about the veterans. There isn't a single veteran of this game that continues to play because they just love grinding out levels.

TLDR: Who cares if Vets go back to leveling to Master in 20-25 hours with zero RP? It hurts absolutely no one, while benefiting every single new player and every single person that absolutely cannot stand leveling on this game any longer.

The area command is not the way to go to find leveling areas. A lot of the areas that come up have a huge range for people to level there at such as this one:

Such a big range doesn't help tell you if you should go early, or late, or somewhere in the middle range of leveling and could easily mess up your leveling path if you go at the wrong time. Lets not forget to mention that several spots on the area list can get you outlawed for leveling there, and do not have sextant cordinates to tell you how to get there.

No one says that everyone wants to be a loner, but you forget the guys who play late at night. These guys tend to see no more then 10-15 people online at some points, and can be left in the dark a lot.

Not really. Could you solo WW as a warrior? As a rogue? As a bard?(lol, no bards then )

Anyway, my point is simple math. Areas offer roughly 5 lvls before they hit red, right? Let's say to effectively hit GM back then, you needed wastelands from 38 to 49.5(and do 0.5 lvls with rainbow tower, jade icon, slave in Vaerlain quests). What do you need now? Oh right, you can go and do 38-43 solo in Tlax as a warrior, then group up with a priest(as you would to get to wastelands) and get 43-48. And then you can quest for 2 whole leves(actually people like Peso claim they can quest for 4+ levels). Better yet, start from lvl 35 in Tlax, grouped up with the priest. The warrior reaps the xp, the priest gains slowly xp because of low damage output. The result? In the amount of time the priest gets his five levels(43-48), the warrior has earned 15 levels in one single area. That's the awesomeness of familiarity. And let's not forget how you can *gasp* RP and find different companions, spam reducing your familiarity in an area to zero once it hits red. You can stay in Tlaxcala from level 26 all to way to GM, by changing levelling companions and RPing with them.

So all that about ruining your levelling do not apply. The moment the change happened so that the familiarity for your group is the least familiarity for any group member, this was changed. Nothing was ruined.

Example, I was plvling a rare combo to see levelling speed and stuff and as I finished with one area(one of the best plvling areas imo), a random guy pops by, fresh. He invites me in his group and I suddenly get 4 more levels in that area as a bonus.

PS: fridgeraider, Menegroth is Ama to Gra, but then again you bring the examples of starting cities as an argument for levelling areas. Because Thrak used to kill things in Menegroth or Krychire all the way from level 25 to GM.
PPS: None mentions how SK has about 30 to 40 times more quests right now than what it had back then. And that's a huge boost to levelling, because levelling doesn't feel like boring grinding, even for a total new player to the game. But some might argue that it was better back then, when you could grind 50 NPCs in wastelands than spend the equal amount of time doing the Sage tower quest for example and gain half the xp. But if you say that, you suggest that grinding is a good thing, right?

I see both sides of the coin, but I believe I agree with D-A. Leveling is not any more difficult than it used to be. Grinding is more difficult. Move around more. Don't sit in the same area for more than an hour. There are plenty of places to find decent leveling that aren't that dangerous. There are lots of quests. There is familiarity to help get bonus experience. When you become familiar with an area, find a group mate and then you can get bonus experience while they are. There are a lot of ways leveling is boring. It simply requires a change in tactic. I've seen new players progressing faster than I ever did on my first characters. I do believe Dulrik has been trying a few things to make life easier in the leveling. The adjustment to enchantments is another example. Its just important to remember in this new tactic that grinding itself is not rewarded. Moving around frequently and varying which target you fight is most important.

Achernar, sometimes the IMMs live in their own world. Do you actually play the game yourself? if you do you know there is a very strict order in which places to visit and when. A team mate (if you are lucky to find one) will only be useful in one area and only for a short amount of time then you move on to the next area or he does or you do it together. So the familiarity XP bonus is only valid in one area IF you find a team mate and IF the team mate haven't been to the area before.
Another problem with yours and DAs answer is that NPCs only grant decent XP for about 5 levels then they are out of your level and wont give much XP .

Each area has more than one type of NPCs. Take the classic example of Tlaxcala again. There are level 44 NPCs and level 50 NPCs. Considering the ideal xp come from around 5 levels below the NPC(but you have to start about 2-3 levels earlier also), Tlaxcala can start being used from level 37 to level 43. This is up to each player to decide. I personally prefer to leave it for level 43 at least, so I won't have to rely on another PC to be around to reset my familiarity. But others enjoy grinding the sick XP of that area from before level 40. They end up out of areas afterwards though, and they have to find another companion for Tlaxcala or find a group to hit Beozaztar/ToM/wastes.

Levelling now is easier than ever. You can practically solo GM any race/class combo with minimum to 0 risk, if you know what you are doing. You could never do that in the past, at least not without spending like 250+ hours. Because that's the average time it took any new player to hit GM back then(if they even managed that). Now that you can do it in less than 100 hours(even as a new player), you are still complaining?

PS: Only exception to the above rule were casters who plvled purely by spamming spells/brewing/scribing. It can still be done, but not with spam.

I frequently play the game. Probably more than any IMM before me.

This is the exact problem with having to rely on another PC. If you don't play at peak hours (people from europe) then you have a very little chance to find team mates and especially ones that have not become familiar with the area.

I would rather that area like Circle of Holy (haven't been there since the psyko change to it) or any other area is a little dangerous but more rewarding.

Anyways, I don't think we are progressing with this discussion. Its the usual elite players (20-30+ hours a week) vs normal players (4-8 hours a week) discussion, where the elite players doesn't see anything wrong in having to spend much time leveling.

In the long run I am convinced it will drain the players from the mud, just look at the decline in playerbase since leveling was made harder (familiarity, closing good areas etc). You can't blame it all on consoles.