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IGE On Why Power-Leveling Is Like Day Care
simoniker writes "In a rare interview with the COO of MMO item-selling giant IGE at Gamasutra, topics discussed include the ownership of in-game items, why gold selling can be a "great business opportunity" for Chinese suppliers, and why power-leveling (paying other players to increase your character stats) is something IGE will be moving into." From the article: "Clarke also noted that, in pure economic terms, paying people to level your character is 'a market which tends toward commoditization.' Of course, those handing over their character have 'a high degree of sensitivity' to what's happening to their virtual avatar — the COO quipped: 'It's almost like day care... you'd be amazed how much they check in.'"
I'd agree with you if it's your first character in a game. However if it's a re-roll then the levelling process can be VERY tedious. I've gone through the barrens on 3 characters in WoW, and I'd be happy to NEVER do that again. I don't agree with power-levelling, but I can understand the desire to let someone else do the grunt work for you...
It depends on the game.
I do droks runs in guild wars for a few reasons. I've not only been the runner, but been ran by others myself. In guild wars the lvl cap is 20. You are free to change your secondary class as much as you want. But you cannot change your primary class. This means there are several other builds you could try out. However, before Factions, it took a very long time to get where the good stuff was. Droks armor is highest in stats (not best skin/but AC rating), plus the skills trader has more advanced skills.
If you've already played the game through say 4-5 times then doing it again and again for each new character type is boring and painful.
And before factions, we were limited to 4 characters per account. Which meant you had to delete your old ones before trying out different classes. Guild wars isn't a level grinder like most other RPG games. After you hit 20, that's it. You just focus on better skill combos and different areas. Why make the players go through the entire noob areas again?
If you look at factions, this is what the game devs did. They made it so you can level up to 20 in two days with 3000+ XP quests. In GW1 it took week(s) at 250-500XP per quest.
And finally, running is a quick, not always easy, way to make some money. They have nerfed all the good farming areas and made it so money is much harder to aquire. Granted green/gold drops help, it's a pain trying to do player-player trades. In one droks run I make 10-15k in 35 minutes. When a full suite of nice looking (15k) armor cost me 150k it's still hard work.
And if you're wondering, playing with skills and builds is what it's all about. I just got my ele to do 2,672 damage in one spell hit. (4x-668 damage to lvl 5 guys). =)
http://www.linuxlogin.com/public/2672damage.jpg
BTW, that's wine 0.9.19 running a test this morning. Why health bars overlap.