Yep, that’s Everest you’re seeing. What other mountain would I have picked for this topic today? Heh.
Anyone who’s played an MMO before knows that there is an end, a top, a pinnacle to be reached that everyone aspires to and works towards. It could take the form of a level cap, the best gear in the game, being ranked number one in killing squishy cloth-wearing classes, or something else entirely. It’s the sort of “cream of the crop” that MMO tourists never really get close to and many powerlevelers race to achieve first.
Me? I’m somewhere in the middle – a journeyman who tends to tough it out whenever possible, and sometimes reaches the top of the mountain climb. I watch the tourists fade away into obscurity and the powerlevelers fade away into distant heights. As someone who has less playtime than the average gamer, my schedule sometimes prevents me from getting to that mythical MMO peak.
This, however, is not one of those times. In Aion, my current game of choice, I’m close to level 50, the current cap of the game. Now, many of you who are reading this know that if I’ve gotten near Aion‘s cap, that means that I’ve grinded, literally, hundreds of millions of experience points to get there. I’ve probably suffered through tons of instances gone bad and death penalty bills that have flattened my virtual wallet. Sure, the crippling experience curve makes trying to walk straight up a wall less of an effort and it seems odd that a PvP advancement system takes away more ranking points than a supermodel breaks hearts, but I manage to have soldiered on.
The secret, it seems, is people. Everyone plays an MMO for their own reasons, but at least one of those reasons involves other people – whether to stand alone at the top of the MMO mountain in front of an audience or to play with others and have a grand old geeky MMO time. I’m doing the latter – running with an extremely small but dedicated bunch of people who have been climbing the steep mountain of Aion along with me. It’s funny how a few laughs over getting low-quality items from bosses makes the game a little bit easier to bear. Along the way, I’ve gotten to know new people, snicker at the usual community chat hilarity, and generally try to mask the fact that I’m climbing the MMO mountain. It’s probably part of the reason why I’ve managed to get as far as I did, and I think that if more people realized that, they’d be more apt to stick with an MMO.
Now to get that 125+ million experience to get to the cap…
I absolutely agree. I have, for several years, tried on-and-off to solo MMOs or to only get with PUGs when I needed help and let me tell you, it gets extremely boring after a while.
Socialization is the key to enjoying an MMO.
I imagine players hitting the level cap in Aion to be streaming tears of joy in front of their bloodied keyboard and fleshy stumps they used to call fingers. Sort of like a zombie tasting the sweet delicious brain of a marathon runner who has been outpacing them for the past 500 miles with nary but a light jog, teasingly out of reach. Or Frankensteins monster literally going to the ends of the earth, although that story doesn't end as well.
Either way, grats on your accomplishment! Enjoy every moment of being able to look down on the mere peons and touristas that may never achieve your peak of glory. At the end of the day, that's really all we have, isn't it? Hehe… =p