Slashdot Mirror
A Gaming God For Dollars A Day
Wired is reporting on the new "Gamepal" service, which offers up the chance to MMOG players of renting a character in an online world for only a few dollars a day. From the article: "GamePal customers pay a $300 deposit, $150 for the first month and $130 for each subsequent month for access to their choice of 50 accounts (available initially) for 14 popular MMOs, including EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes and Ultima Online. Newcomers to these games who aren't sure where they want to devote their time are in luck: GamePal allows them to try out what they want."
Oh please dear god don't let this include FFXI (at work, can't check TFA). Nothing fills me with more terror than the idea of complete newbies running around with high level jobs, even if only on a temporary basis.
This isn't just an elitist thing; it's more of an "I don't like dying" thing. Levelling at any point beyond level 18 or so (and preferrably a long time before then) in FFXI requires that you join a party, usually of 6 people. Roles in these parties are pretty defined and a good party needs all of its members to be on the ball. Depending on his role in the party, a single incomptetent can do anything from dramatically reducing the rate you get xp at to causing the death of the entire party.
Most jobs grow in complexity as you level up and gain new abilities. For example, as a Paladin, you can get away at first with just tanking by using provoke. As you get into the 25-30 level range, it becomes more and more importand to keep hate by using cure spells and abilities such as shield bash. Ideally, you should know how to use Cover (a notoriously fiddly and tricky, but incredibly useful ability) by the time you hit 40 and certainly by the time you are 50. In a level 60 party, a paladin who didn't know how to do any of this stuff would get his party killed... fast. By cutting out the learning curve on a job, you are putting yourself and others at risk of unnecessary deaths and xp loss.