Psychochild has a post up that I found an interesting read.
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| Scruffy, poster-child for low-level gameplay |
There were about five to eight of us at any given session, all in our early-mid 20s and I can clearly remember the increasing dissatisfaction of the group as the levels of our characters rose. Somewhere around level seven most of us were beginning to struggle to empathize with their increasingly baroque lives. I know I was, anyway. I retired my half-elf ranger at level 8 and rerolled a dwarf cleric, who didn't make it even that far. From then on our group played a series of different RPGs, never getting much above low level and I think we were all a lot more comfortable with that.
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| Kill it? I'm getting a crick in the neck just looking at it! |
The problem for me at least, was that I found the plots we were involved with and the opponents we were facing increasingly hard to care about. Help a village deal with bandit attacks on outlying farms? Fine! Investigate some ruins seen from the highway? Why not? Hire on to protect a merchant caravan? Good honest work. Travel to another plane to fight demons or demi-gods? Give me a break!
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| Newt or dragon? You decide. |
Ever since then I've very strongly preferred low-level gameplay. In my first few months of Everquest I decided I would never kill a dragon, putting that down as a line in the sand between my characters and silliness. I managed to keep that rule for many years, although I broke it eventually.
The attritional drip drip drip of high-level content in all MMOs got to me in the end. I've seen my share of gods and demons and defeated quite a few. Call it immersion fatigue. Still, though, I spend much more of my time clearing bandit camps and skinning animals. I imagine it'll always be that way. I hope so, anyway.
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