Mirror, Mirror on the Wall….

…who is the saddest of them all? Would it be me, with my 4 level 70s or the player who can’t be bothered to level another character and asked me if I would trade my level 56 paladin for a level 70 mage?

Maybe I’m unusual but I don’t find it tedious to level another alt at all, in fact I find it the least tedious aspect of the game. I love learning a new class, finding out what it can do, what works and what doesn’t. Every other ding there are new spells or abilities to be learrned. there are dungeons to explore in your new role which might be quite different from anything you’ve ever played before. At each stage of levelling there are so many zones you could go to, it’s possible to level two or three characters in completely different zones. With the accelerated levelling that was introduced this year you will out-level most zones before you get to the end of the quests in that zone.

Each of my characters is a voyage of discovery and so far I haven’t gotten tired of it. My first character was a night elf hunter. It didn’t really occur to me to stray from the night elf areas until I was level 30 and I headed for Stranglethorn Vale because I’d heard of the good skinning to be had there. From there she went to Tanaris and Un’goro Crater, then the Plaguelands. Next was a human mage who flitted between Westfall and Loch Modan in her teens then the Wetlands, Hillsbrad and Arathi Highlands, Burning Steppes and Blasted Lands, ending up in Eastern Plaguelands. Subsequent characters were levelled using Jame’s Guide from 30-60 because it was wickedly efficient. Dimity has quested wherever she has found herself or wherever I fancied going for a change, usually places I haven’t quested much in the last couple of years.

When I started playing WoW it was the first time I’d played anything like it and, at the time, I accepted it for what it was however with the benefit of hindsight I can appreciate the depth that is there for lower levels and which, for the most part, has been there from the start. I was quite surprised when I tried LotRO to find that after level 12 there is only one zone to quest in. Yes, it’s massive and will take you to level 20-ish, where the next massive zone will take you from 20-30 and so on but if you roll another character of a different class and race, from level 12 you will be playing exactly the same content. In WoW you can roll at least 2 characters and level them all the way to 60 and never do the same quest twice. If you want to, you could then roll a character of the other faction and do it all again completely differently.

For me the significant part of the phrase “end-game” is end, I never get to the end, i re-roll and start again!