The Easy Road or the Hard Road

There is a moment, at the end of the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the version with Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka) where Willy Wonka turns to Charlie and says, “Do you know what happened to the little boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted?” In response to Charlie’s quizzical look, the famous chocolate maker replies with a smile and says…

“He lived happily ever after.”

That’s the question we ask ourselves today – would we be happy if we had it all handed to us on a silver platter?  Players across the myriad mmo gaming worlds strive to have the best armor or the fastest spaceship.  But does the attaining of the object of a desire matter more than the struggle to achieve it? Some of the unhappiest people I have known are living in four story mansions and driving BMW’s. 

But what if you could have literally anything in a gaming world you wanted? What would you do? Would it make it you happy?

The easy road or the hard road?

I used to see the player who managed to receive the giant bug mount from the opening of Ahn’Quiraj in World of Warcraft (Wow). It was the only one of its kind on each server. From time to time I would see him just sitting out front of the bank in Ironforge as if to say “I have a giant bug mount and you don’t…hah.” Bank sitting, after all, is a well established pastime in many games.  This can, of course, occur in any one of many given areas where players gather such as auction houses. But you can only gloat so long before you get bored I would think. However, greed is not what this article is about.  What it is about are two games that are very popular at the moment, the games that are the “it” place to be, and the approach they have taken to leveling speed.

Keep in mind, however, as we have discussed before, all of this is tempered by what Paul Barnett called “Perceived leveling speed” when he appeared on the No Prisoners, No Mercy show.  The idea being, that if you are used to lighting fast leveling, even normally paced leveling will seem impossibly slow to you.

The game of the moment, the talk of the town (and the gaming communities across the internet) is, of course, Aion Online.  Increasingly, if you mention those two words, it will be followed closely by a third word (or at least a derivative of one). That oft coined word is “grindy”.  There is many a player who will tell you that trying to level in Aion Online is much akin to attempting to watch the grass grow.  I myself am level 23, and so far have only found levels 15 through 19 to be a bit slow.  Again, this is further tempered by the fact that gamers tend to have more than one definition of “grind” when it comes to leveling.  Some will tell you it only applies to games were you run out of quests and are forced to just go kill monsters to level. Others will tell you that it refers to any game where you level slowly.   However you term it, there is little doubt that in adapting Aion Online for western audiences,  NCSoft has chosen to leave in at least some degree of slower paced leveling. Oddly enough, this is also accompanied by what seems to be a “push” to have players attain higher levels so they can pvp; sort of a “push me – pull you” effect like the famous llama from Dr. Dolittle.

Compare this to what Lead Game Designer for Champions Online, Randy Mosiondz, had to say on the subject recently in a Becket Massive Online Gamer interview:

Becket: The proposed level cap at game launch will be level 40 – I managed to level my first character to 28 in just a few days and imagine I could hit the level cap in about another week or two. Was the decision to make this process so quick a deliberate one?

Randy: Part of it is that we wanted to appeal to casual gamers a bit more. If you look a few years back, in order to reach level cap it took hundreds and hundreds of hours and there were people really getting tired of the grind. As newer gamers come out, they are a little more forgiving to players because there are a lot of casual gamers who want to play the game and see advancement but don’t want to spend 20 to 30 hours just to gain a level.

 Two different games, both vying for a slice of the same gaming market, both with vastly different approaches toward game development – which will be garner long term success? Obviously there is some truth to what Mr. Mosiondz has to say about making games friendlier to the “casual gamer.” After all, it is one of the favorite complaints in World of Warcraft circles – that raiding is too easy now.

Time will, of course, tell which game will grab the greatest piece of the market action. The answer also depends on how one defines “success”. There was a time when John Smedly told us all that if a game paid to keep the servers open that he considered it a success.  However, that doesn’t always seem to be the case these days.  It would be difficult to tell by past track records because those involved with both games have had successes and failures.  One might be tempted to point toward Aion Online’s success in the country where it first came out, but that doesn’t mean it will be successful here.

Of course, nothing says that gamers can’t choose both, and perhaps they will. However I can’t help but think of the war of words that Mythic Entertainment (or whatever they are called these days now that EA has reorganized them) and Activision/Blizzard had when Warhammer Online first came out.  Activison/Blizzard told us all how players often indulged in what we call “virtual tourism” – going out to take a look at a new game, but returning to your regular game.  In the end, it appears that the gaming market may have been “working as expected” – at least as far as the developers and producers of World of Warcraft expected.  So while everyone is deciding whether or not to take the easy road, the hard road, or both roads I will be venturing down both (at least for now).

 See you online,

Julie Whitefeather