Why level 80?

[Delias]

If it takes 2 days to get to level 20 in GW1... you are bad at the game. One of the fastest leveling games.

Someone never played Prophecies! You were near the end of the game by the time you finally dinged 20 if you were playing just prophecies (Like, in the desert, iirc). And on your first char, that took a couple days.

Anyways, yeah, there's no steep leveling curve, and 80 levels is just a number. Leveling doesn't mean much, pretty much the only reason it's there is so that people aren't like "HIT LEVEL CAP IN A DAY, GOT BORDZ. GAME IZ BAD."

[Blznsmri]

If it takes 2 days to get to level 20 in GW1... you are bad at the game. One of the fastest leveling games.

It took me over a month when I first started back in '05...

[Squirrelbanes]

I got to lion's arch yesterday, having done almost every quest along the way, and was 15...
Didn't have to run through missions more than once except for one of them though...I guess ud get more xp that way. Unless you grind xp, or I'm totally missing something, don't see how anyone can easily be 20 before they hit LA.

[Fencers]

It took me over a month when I first started back in '05...

No way. Were you like... progressing really slow around the auqaducts in upper Ascalon? Surely by Crystal Desert you had to be at least... ~16/8. Shiverpeaks->Kryta->Maguuma is massive XP. And the eastern half of the Shiverpeaks has you slaying mobs for loads of XP.

Blznsmri, u bad.

[Balfire]

I agree with all the comment about prophecies, Fencers I think you are remembering incorrectly, even now unless you are speeding through content it should take a couple days. Factions and nightfall not even close though. I beat factions the second time around with a fresh character in one sitting :S.

And I was only 15ish when I hit LA on my first War back in the day but I don't remember exactly what I did back then it was like 6 years ago lol

I might go back and play GW1 now that I'm thinking about it, I always stop though because I have to solo missions which is SOOOOOOOO boring.

[Delias]

No way. Were you like... progressing really slow around the auqaducts in upper Ascalon? Surely by Crystal Desert you had to be at least... ~16/8. Shiverpeaks->Kryta->Maguuma is massive XP. And the eastern half of the Shiverpeaks has you slaying mobs for loads of XP.

Blznsmri, u bad.

Come to think of it, if I remember correctly, the doppelganger quest gave you enough EXP to boost you from 15ish to 20, which was intentional.
But still, if you were doing every mission, it took more than 2 days to get to the end of the desert.
Esp if you were stuck using henchmen.

[Fencers]

I agree with all the comment about prophecies, Fencers I think you are remembering incorrectly, even now unless you are speeding through content it should take a couple days

Hm, maybe more than 2 days. But I distinctly remember the jungle missions having mobs around the mid-teens and upper teens by the time of Crystal Desert. As a player we weren't too far off from that either.

The first game was rather easy/quick when not burning achievements-- which gave much XP as well. The way the missions moved you through was very rapid with only a small amount of slaying/bounties in between to max potential.

[Varyk]

Honestly they could call it level 10, make the experience exactly the same and you wouldn't know the difference.

[tibben]

Hm, maybe more than 2 days. But I distinctly remember the jungle missions having mobs around the mid-teens and upper teens by the time of Crystal Desert. As a player we weren't too far off from that either.

I'm wondering if some people's definition of a "day" of playing differs from others. Currently a "day" of playing for me is about 1.5-2 hours. I'm assuming that my day of playing would not equate to 2 days = 3-4 hours = level 20. Being bad would have very little to do with my speed of leveling. Being married with children and no way to commit to 12-16 hour gaming binges would have much more to do with it.

Either way, that has little or nothing to do with the topic here. Level 80 is just an arbitrary number. The fact that you can do basically everything in the game starting at level 2 (after the tutorial area) makes leveling for the sake of getting to see content a completely ridiculous idea. Leveling is just a happy consequence of doing whatever you enjoy doing in the game.

[Balfire]

Honestly they could call it level 10, make the experience exactly the same and you wouldn't know the difference.

Except the WoW drones, many of which will be trying out this game, need to be shown in some numerical way their character is making progress or there's no point. The leveling process will hopefully ween them away from this ideology. Anet originally had no levels but testers felt lost with no carrot to chase....

Tester:"what do you mean I just do what I want and play? What am i supposed to do?"
Anet:"Just explore the world and see what you find"
Tester:"but what am I supposed to do?"

Its also the entire reason for the heart system. Testers had no idea how to approach a game without being led by their noses around the game world.

[Fencers]

I'm wondering if some people's definition of a "day" of playing differs from others.

Good point. I usually go off of /played style counters. Or more like ~24-48 hours of game time.

I don't know what IRL time that would translate to. But I play very intensely where 8 IRL hours in a leveling session would be a breeze for me in a new MMO. Was really close to L-cap in TOR before EGA had ended while keeping a 3x night raid timetable in Rift - which was like week of IRL time.

2 days to 20? Child's play.

[Blznsmri]

No way. Were you like... progressing really slow around the auqaducts in upper Ascalon? Surely by Crystal Desert you had to be at least... ~16/8. Shiverpeaks->Kryta->Maguuma is massive XP. And the eastern half of the Shiverpeaks has you slaying mobs for loads of XP.

Blznsmri, u bad.

I was 14, first Online game i'd played outside of runescape, and I was like level 18 before I even got to the Crystal desert. I just went slow.

[melodramocracy]

Leveling becoming quicker / easier in MMO's is a poor trend in my eyes.. but there's a bit more to it.

These are games that you're supposed to be in for the long haul. Being able to hammer on levelling for 1-3 weeks straight, in a game that the devs are hoping you'll play for many months is absurd. And it must be frustrating from their end to put a shitload of work into the questing / leveling routine, just for folks to go through it as quickly as possible and then ask what's left to do.

It's also apparent that the old school 'grind' doesn't appeal to many players. Game companies can say 'well, too bad', and then be faced with the liklihood of a small (but really loyal!) playerbase, so that isn't exactly lucrative from a business standpoint either. One answer might be to not make end game actually happen AT max level... or just diminish the idea of end game altogether.

While there should certainly be some perks to hitting max level, and some motivation for folks to get there, perhaps stats and abilities should peak far sooner than that, or at least become a 'diminishing returns' sort of scenario. This way there'd be less of a mindset, IMO, to race to top level and then complain that there's nothing to do. Alternatively, maybe health pools should be fairly static, and leveling simply means you get to have talents in several different areas of expertise rather than just one. Or a wider range of abilities, not necessarily ones that hit a lot harder.

I dunno.. just rambling.

[Fencers]

Not really. I hate leveling. Esp. when leveling keeps me from content. In MMOs, the content I enjoy is often found at maximum level. Leveling is nothing more than an extended tutorial of mediocrity.

I wish Anet would have been ballsy enough to just drop leveling altogether. Barring a removal of the leveling process, I am satisfied with rapid level schemes ala Guild Wars or Rift.

Never played an MMO where I was so happy to be level 13/100 waiting to get 100 so I can actually play the parts of the game that interest me. Everquest 2, I am looking at you in this regard.

[Hockeyhacker]

So pretty much as the title asks, why do you think they decided to make the starting level cap so high? It seems like 50-60 would be a much better place to begin

PSO though not a MMO was a online game and its level cap was 255... level cap is just an arbitrary number, what matters is power scaling, how and how fast you gain skills over time, and time spent leveling. If you have game A which level cap is 40 and game B is 80, in game A it takes 3 hours on average per level to get to cap and you get 1 skill every level, game B it takes 1.5 hours on average per level to get to level cap and you get 1 skill every other level... Is there a difference between game A's content and game Bs because game B has a level cap 2x as high? nope, just an arbitrary number.

[Balfire]

Not really. I hate leveling. Esp. when leveling keeps me from content. In MMOs, the content I enjoy is often found at maximum level. Leveling is nothing more than an extended tutorial of mediocrity.

I wish Anet would have been ballsy enough to just drop leveling altogether. Barring a removal of the leveling process, I am satisfied with rapid level schemes ala Guild Wars or Rift.

Never played an MMO where I was so happy to be level 13/100 waiting to get 100 so I can actually play the parts of the game that interest me. Everquest 2, I am looking at you in this regard.

And thats exactly why I'm loving the philosophy behind GW2s leveling system simply there to have a framework, it actually doesn't keep you from 90% of the games content like most MMO's.

[Jovanaar]

Do be honest, normal leveling curve in GW1 is hitting level 20 ON the doppleganger. Yes you can get it before that, hell I had a character who was level 20 before it hit the Maguuma, who cares? People level in their own way, GW1 Prophecies wasn't a game where you needed to rush to max level to enjoy playing the game.

[Deleted]

I've also read that if you go to a lower level zone as a high level your level will get lowered to a level appropriate to the zone you are in. Only stats though, you will keep all your skills. So you never really outlevel content, so if there's a dynamic event you really want to do you can still go do it while it staying a challenge and you getting rewards from it.

Pure genius.

[Deleted]

Curious, has Anet said that level cap will increase with expansions as the OP suggests?

"Yeah. The level cap will be 80 on the initial release of the game, and we absolutely would increase it further into the game, probably through expansions is the most likely place we would do that." - Colin Johanson, Lead Content Designer GW2

Of course, I wouldn't take a single developer quote talking about expansions as acknowledgment. Standpoints may change after release as the work on the first expansion begins.

[Squirrelbanes]

"Yeah. The level cap will be 80 on the initial release of the game, and we absolutely would increase it further into the game, probably through expansions is the most likely place we would do that." - Colin Johanson, Lead Content Designer GW2

Of course, I wouldn't take a single developer quote talking about expansions as acknowledgment. Standpoints may change after release as the work on the first expansion begins.

It would have to be something pretty epic to contradict Colin xD
Besides.....any change would be relative...