If you have listened to the Channel Massive podcast then you have, no doubt, heard my incessant whining about my unending quest to reach level 70 with my Night Elf warrior.  It was a very deliberate goal that I set for myself. 

I have always had a tendency to play these MMOs with several alternate characters.  In WOW, for instance, I have played to level 40 with at least six characters now and have always suffered from “the grass is always greener” syndrome, as far as coveting some other race or class above and beyond my own.  Eventually whatever character I was playing seemed boring and I’d roll a new character of whatever flavor seemed appealing at the time.  In fact I’d never actually achieved end-game level with any MMO.   I’m more of a self proclaimed “King of the Alts” than an end-game participant.

So I really wanted to make sure I actually achieved max level just this once.  With this goal in mind I really had to constantly fight my tendencies to want to switch to a character I felt more suited for levelling quickly or soloing or whatever.  I was constantly taunted by the sweet siren song of my twinked ”alts” calling to me to play some battlegrounds.  But at long last, I finally achieved my goal last week and am still a bit stunned. 

After I hit level 70 (see screenshot below) I immediately and foolishly typed /played.  I think the greatest shock to me was the realization that it took me a little over 15 days of game play to get to this level.  If you consider that I started playing this character nine months ago, obviously casually, that’s still a lot of time dedicated to one character in one game of one hobby.  That’s about one full 40 hour work week per month.

Putting the time sink into perspective is difficult.  Did I enjoy the time I squandered away playing this one game to reach a goal that is really just the beginning of a seemingly even longer series of time sinks?  I enjoyed some of it.  Certainly there were highs and lows.  When I think back on my slow, deliberate climb to level 70 it seems that some levels seemed to just fly by because of back to back consecutive play, while others just took forever.  Level 67-68, for instance was interrupted by several breaks do to real life, while levels 30-40 seemed to go by in an instant.

Some of my fondest memories were failed ganking attempts by horde players in STV, running through The Barrens for some quest or another while trying to provoke players to attack me and thus, flag themselves for PVP, and of course my first time actually successfully main tanking an instance.  Those were good times for me and made for fond memories.  I even met up with some old friends on-line and we did some quests together even though they were both already way into the end-game content. 

Not so fun were my first few minutes in Outland as I was repeatedly killed by both Horde players and mobs.  I can’t say I really enjoyed the grind from level fifty to sixty, nor the constant flying around from zone to zone or slow mount travel prior to purchasing my epic land mount.  Even following every quest that I possibly could to avoid grinding mobs for XP, the slow kill rate per minute of a warrior of any spec, compared to say a hunter or warlock, led to the “slow grind” feeling that I didn’t miss from other games like DAOC. 

Still my 40 hours a month or so of play was rewarding, I’d have to say in retrospect, if not completely fulfilling.  When I think of other things I could have been doing I shudder a bit.  I have several single-player RPGs piled up that I’ve never finished.  Averaging 40 hours each for completion, I’d estimate I could have completed around nine of them.  I could finally have finished Baldurs Gate II for god’s sake! 

I could have spent the time working out or working on some other real life achievement like a getting some more IT certifications or working on my guitar skills or I could even have  taken the time to restring my Oud and learn to play it ,though the Turkish language instructional VCDs continue to intimidate me.  Basically, I could have achieved some levels in real life, as opposed to this game which demands your time as payment for the enjoyment that it randomly doles out sometimes in high, and other times in low doses.

But what’s done is done.  I’ve squandered fifteen days of my life in a nine month period to play a game and achieve a very specific goal.  Maybe “squandered” is too harsh of a word; maybe ”sacrificed” is the right term for it.  It was spare time that wasn’t allocated to anything else and I put it towards this goal.  Now I have to decide whether to keep playing this game and this character or move on to something else with my spare time.  

With the delays of AOC and the far off ship date of Warhammer Online there isn’t some obvious choice for me as far as the new frontier of fantasy based MMOs go.  I’d hoped that AOC would be coming out just about now which would basically make my decision for me.  Well, in any case, I guess it’s time to either take Helrik to the next level (PVP and/or Raid content) or find something else with which to squander my casual gaming time allocation. 

One thing is for sure, this time around I think I’m going to try not to think in terms of a goal but instead I’m going to try to just enjoy the game.  I think that’s what it’s all about anyway, especially when you’ve transitioned from a power game to a casual gamer and only have so much time.  Instead of thinking “goal, goal, gooooooooooooooooooooal” I should have spent a lot more time just smelling the roses. 

Mark