For the love of leveling
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on “Western” role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. I gained one thousand seven hundred and twenty-one levels in the last year. Around the end of 2011, fellow game writer and RPG fan Phil Kollar asked his Twitter followers how many levels they thought they’d gained over the course of the year. The idea of calculating my progress seemed fascinating and throughout 2012 I decided to keep track of my earned levels.
The levels were earned from a variety of different sources. Some levels came easily: I played two BioWare games, for example, both games have a large casts of characters and 30 or 40 levels to gain. Allies in those games gain levels alongside the protagonist, so if those characters ever made it into my rotation, I counted each level. Some levels were more difficult to earn: the post-30 levels in the immediate aftermath of Star Wars: The Old Republic’s launch, when repetition, lack of motivation, and some nasty bugs slowed my progress and eventually drove me away. Some games featured both: In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim my pyromaniac mage torched her way through 15 levels easily, but upgrading to fireballs in the game’s odd skill system brought her leveling to a screeching halt.Continue reading For the love of levelingFor the love of leveling originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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