Levels in MMORPGs - relics of the past

It is assumed that anyone reading this paper has at least heard of Everquest.  Everquest is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG).  It has a level based character advancement system.  It takes from 40 to 100 days of /play time (each day is 24 hours spent playing, so 10 days /play is 240 hours) for someone's first character to get to the original level cap of 50.

Everquest was/is a grind based game that artificially inflated content to hundred of hours in order to ensure that subscribers will always have a carrot to hunt for in order to keep them paying and stay addicted.

GW is a game that nearly abolished levels, sadly few people understood the benefits of this.

Kunark was the first expansion shipped for Everquest.  One of the features of the expansion, for many people the main feature, was an increase in the level cap from the old cap of level 50, to a new cap of level 60.

Basically, lots of people reached Level 50 and realized that … there is no more content. Thus, several new dungeons were introduced and a new carrot was created.

People reached level 20 and had to pass through a major test: Will they be able to continue improving their character, but not by grind, but by using their brain?

Because of the time it took for the first expansion to come out, a great many people were at the level 50 cap before Kunark.  All were ready and eager for more levels.  All of them naturally expected to hit level 60 in very little time.  After all, each had obtained level 50, and level 60 is simply 20% more.

People expected to have fun doing dungeons and levels were not important.

People expected levels never to raise.

The major concern before Kunark shipped was that everyone would be level 60 in a week.  Once level 60 they would have little to do, boredom would set in, and many would leave the game.  The designers solved this by making the new levels take much, much longer to pass through than the old levels.

People relying very much on BIG numbers to keep their ego inflated were in panic, what if everyone was allowed to reach the same power and have fun? Designers solved this easily - they made leveling even more grind, making inflated egos happy. And fulfilling their carrot task.

People wanting big numbers succeeded and got their big numbers in next installment (GW2), almost abandoning the skill based system in favor of a grinding ego system of time played over skill.

Kunark is frequently pointed to and described as a major mistake.  People say that it takes too long to level to 60, and that level 60 is "required" to play the game.  Leveling they say is boring, and they want to be done with it, and be 60, so they can "play the game".  In a nutshell, this is the Kunark Problem.

People realized that there was little difference from fighting L50 foes as L50 player, it is the same as L60 mobs vs L60 player. Thus, leveling became boring, as it no longer served any purpose except of keeping people from consuming content they wanted to consume

People didn't realize what problems the reintroduction of a more level based system would bring.

Why do levels exist in a game at all?  Lets consider the early game of most any level based RPG.  Generally the player starts at level one, walks outside, and starts killing mobs around his level.  The level one player can't travel very far, because mobs quickly become far too powerful to defeat, and happily eat level one players that wander out of their pen.  The character is thus confined to the newbie areas, where there are mobs that he can kill.  After an hour or so, the character reaches level 2.  Now the area the character can kill in increases.   After another level or two the level 1 mobs are no longer worth killing.  By this point, the character has completely left the area he was killing in before, and is killing in a new area.  Elapsed time: about 10 hours.

Levels exist because the ancestors of all RPGs used them as easily understood number to measure character power, not taking in account strategy or smarts of the player behind the character.

The player starts and is locked in area until he increases his level somehow and then he is allowed to proceed. Increasing ones "level number" usually has nothing to do with traveling where the character wants to go.

By increasing ones "number", the player is also discouraged from returning to previous areas, regardless if he had fun in them or not. He is too high level from them

Eventually, he would reach areas which are required to progress through, but which are unfun (Barrens - WoW). Our player realized how leveling slows down his content consumption and thus makes it less fun. Unless he has a certain addiction to big numbers.

Levels got yet again to be  the carrot for those uncreative enough to realize where future character progression was.

What if there were no levels?  What if all mobs were level 1, and all players were level 1, and never advanced?  There is nothing preventing the player from leaving the newbie area right away.  Instead of 10 hours in the newbie area, the player spends 5 minutes there, then travels to the next area.  And the next.  And the next.  Instead of taking 40-100 days /played to explore everything as it did in original Everquest, it would take at most 1.

If player had no level to worry about, he would travel freely. Once the player has enough experience, he can defeat harder foes, eventually refining his tactics to take on the hardest areas.

He would spend time in areas he deems fun, he would socialize and go forth and back and party with people for various tasks.

Veteran player would have little advantage if he would fail to learn viable tactics, while bright newbies could attempt harder dungeons almost immediately.

When players had no levels to gain, they panicked. With hard mode they panicked even more - how were they supposed to overcome hard challenges when they were unable to grind familiar places and then use grind power to simply overpower hard enemies?

Exploration done so easily has little value.  Everyone would see Nagafen and Vox on the first day, and since Nagafen and Vox would be level 1, they would easily be killed by whoever felt like walking there.  There would be no sense of accomplishment, no sense of wonder, no anticipation and desire to see these rare places, because they wouldn't be rare.

If exploration requires player skill, anyone having the skill to go and to see Nagafen on the first day would go there, but inept player will struggle and eventually never see it as there would be no repetitive mindless task that would allow him to outlevel the boss and make it easy prey.

Anyone reaching Vox would have a clue and be a hard target for anyone trying to kill him.

People would feel immensely rewarded by visiting rare places as being there would be a badge of honor - "I did this myself, I got here by my reflexes and smarts. You will never be able to go here."

Exploration was of little value and only players really interested in it saw everything. Cartographer Title changed this a bit. Elite areas were somewhat easy to reach, but hard to survive without proper tactics, people yet again called for an easy way out.

Add levels and suddenly the game is far more compelling and interesting.  Levels also add another dimension: replayability.  This isn't just playing a character up from level 1 a second time, this is visiting the same place visited before, but at a different level.  The location is unchanged; the monsters are the same level, the zone has exactly the same geometry...but it's fun, different, and exciting, because the player changed.

Add levels and the game is suddenly more addictive.

Levels remove on dimension: Replayability. When character attempts to visit same place several levels later, he discovers that there is nothing to do for him - his power would make the area too trivial and loot or other rewards would be minimum. Unless our player wants to show off, he has nothing sensible to do there. Character changed so that areas is obsolete… while player stays same. The world is divided up in zones and gets smaller every time you level up, not bigger.

People didn't get what made the game interesting and compelling and instead requested another carrot, as they were unable to have fun without any concrete goal.

It's the player changing the makes the world vibrant and dynamic, not the content itself.  I've been to the same dungeons over and over again as my levels have changed, and each time it's interesting in a different way.  The first time it's hard and challenging with a full group, or even multiple groups.  Later it's hard and challenging with less than a full group.  Eventually, assuming a level cap isn't reached, the dungeon can be killed in while solo.

Again, it is the character that is changing. The Players stays the same, mostly inept.

With level-less system, returning to hard challenges requiring innovative strategy makes playing through very different. Once one perfected his strategy and accomplishes full dungeon run solo, while knowing that other players with same tools available struggle in groups of 4-5, the feeling of accomplishment is gigantic.

Players returning to previous areas with different skill sets felt cheated - even thou they played longer, they had to use brain to steamroll mobs which didn't just die when they looked at them.

Thus levels serve two important functions: they slow down the consumption of content, and they create a dynamic game.

Thus, Levels server two things: Slow down consumption of content so that subscribers stay subscribed longer and they allow people to overcome obstacles by repetitive action instead of using brain.

Thus, players cried for a return to the stone old level style, and they were heard.

Let's look at Kunark content.  There are several dungeons for level 51+ in Kunark: Karnor's Castle (karnors), Old Sebilis (sebilis), Chardok, and Howling Stones/Charasis (charasis).  Each one of these dungeons is extensive and interesting, and entertaining for hours of game play.  In fact, these dungeons are compelling for easily 2 days of /play time (at 4 hours each RL day, that's 12 days playing there every day) each, and maybe depending on the player/group, some dungeons may be good for as long as 3 days, if revisited at later levels.

Kunark added somewhat interesting dungeons.

Now let's do some math.  Each dungeon is good for 2-3 days of /play time.  There are four major dungeons, so that's 8-12 days of /play time they're good for.  It takes from 35 to 50 days /played to get from 51 to 60.  35 days - 12 days = 23 days unaccounted for...using the longest possible entertainment time for each dungeon, and the shortest possible (without heavy twinking) time to reach 60 from level 51.  Worst case is 42 days.  What happens for those other 23-42 days?  All content at that point has been consumed.  The extra days are work.  Endless repetition, not for enjoyment or entertainment, but solely to gain levels.

Artificially inflated leveling systems created a gap - all fun content was already consumed but the carrot stayed. Basically, the extreme situation of the leveling system happened: You had no point in returning to obsolete areas, as you are already too high level - while having seen only a fraction of the world.

See Thott's idea below how to avoid this, but note the problems this will cause.

There are other things to do, but they involve large numbers of people raiding big mobs, and to do those things most guilds want, or even require, level 60 players.  These are end game tasks, things to keep players busy once they reach 60, and they are balanced to be challenging at that level.  This is why players feel they are required to get 60 - they are, in order to continue consuming new content.

Community reacted in the typical way - Claimed a high level number holy and adhered to that. For the first time players were able to see that pure level progressing is extremely dull.

A related problem is based on player behavior.  Some players will go to karnors at level 51, and not leave until after 55.  Why?  Because they know the area, they know people there and thus can group with them, and the most important reason, the game doesn't encourage them to leave.  The mobs in karnors give xp day after day after day after day.  What if the level 1 mobs in the newbie area gave xp at level 5?  Level 10?  Level 20?  What if they gave roughly the same xp as level 20 mobs?  That's the problem with Kunark.  The mobs in karnors are blue, and thus good xp, for all of those levels, all of those days spent playing.

People were having fun doing Karnors. Obviously, we can't allow that and need a carrot to pull them away from a fun place to another place.

Kunark is content weak assuming 100% consumption of that content.  For those that sit in one dungeon for all 10 levels, it's pain beyond description.

Yep, there was little true content in Kunark except level grind. Guess what? People hated it. And they had all right to do so.

How could Kunark be done differently?  Or more importantly, how can this be avoided in other games?  The key is not the total time it takes to reach the level cap.  That value can be arbitrarily large, or even infinite.  The key is avoiding content burnout, by never forcing, or even allowing, a player to continuously play in the same area.

The Root of all evil is that players want to have fun, thus you have to show them light and the holiness of numbers by punishing them for playing fun parts of the game by making them unfun.

In this fictional, improved, Kunark, karnors may only be good while level 51.  At level 52, the front half of karnors would give no xp; instead, the player would have to move deeper, to the more interesting (and harder) basement and deep castle areas.  At 53, those areas would no longer give xp, and the player would then move to the front half of sebilis.  Levels 54-58 take much longer than 51-53, so for those levels, each one takes an entire dungeon:

Instead of allowing player to play through areas as he wants to, we have to lock him in one area and burn out on it, till he is allowed/powerful enough to enter the next area.

Instead of allowing access to all of Karnors, people should be put on a linear progression. First go there, then go there, then go there. You can even recognize where you should be and where not, by the level on the enemy mob.

This further illustrates that there isn't enough content in Kunark for 51-60, which we already knew.  But it's more than just a lack of content; even if there were 100 different interesting dungeons, some players are going to stay in the first one they come to until either 1) the game makes them move (because killing there is no longer beneficial), or 2) they burn out on EQ and quit.

People would stay in fun zones until they burn out of them, after that they can relocate to another zone, they play and have fun there, and eventually going thought all the content will bring them enjoyment.

Then they wait for the next 10-20 level expansion, as they are too high level for most areas of their world

Because of the Kunark problem, many people are burned out on the idea of leveling in general.  Pain, once experienced, is avoided in the future.  At this point it will be difficult to overcome this aversion in future games.

People realized that leveling in no way means more fun. Let's hope people will carry this thought in mind and apply this experience to other games.

UO had no level system and very little progression in their skill system.  There was thus little barrier to consuming content, making UO a short term game.  The long term selling points are PvP and Community, both of which are nice, and both of which are worthwhile.  There are plenty of games (FPS) that are pure PvP.  There are plenty of things that are pure Community (IRC).  Both approaches are compelling to the people that enjoy them.

UO has a very different system without levels, yet it is still alive several years after its launch. As there are little artificial limits, people who enjoy the game keep on playing it. In fact the game is expecting a major overhaul (Kingdom Reborn), where EverQuest 1 and 2 are slowly dying to Warcraft and other competitors applying the same formula.

Levels (or a good substitute) add a great deal to any game.  The key points being the limiting of consumption of content (and this is far more than just saving development time, the wait and anticipation is often more enjoyable than the actual consumption, true entertainment comes from within) and the game world as a dynamic place through the change of the player.

Levels when used as content consumption control reveal one thing: There is not enough content, or content is not of high quality, thus we keep player looking forward to the next zone that will be just as dull.

Still, as I said before, many are burned by Kunark.  Most games currently under development are shooting for the persistent PvP and 3d IRC crowds more than true RPG world exploration and character development, simply because of the negative reaction most players have towards leveling after Kunark.

Modern games should have content that allows players to have fun and not to grind or do pointless things in order to progress to have fun.

It will be another generation before levels are seen as useful again.  At that time, I hope this paper is useful.

Hopefully, levels will never ever be seen as useful again.

They are relics of the past, almost Pen&Paper remnants.