I AM NOT A NUMBER!
Gordon 'Muun' Calleja, 2006-05-08

…Oh damn, actually… I am a number. I'm a level 40 Night Elf Rogue. I'm a level 28 Troll Shaman…I'm a…thing with a number on its head. Everything about my MMOG life revolves around that number. My flower picking forays are limited to fields that accommodate people of my level range. If I want to play with my buddy elves I need to make sure I keep up with their levelling or else I become levelly redundant. The guild boss hassles me when I don't churn out the weekly level quota. The alchemy trainer in Feathermoon won't train me until I'm 35 no matter what a whiz I am at brewing aphrodisiacs. But it's cool that I'm a number 'cause I know my place in the world:

"Levels are great because they let people know who they are and where they're at", Rob Pardo, keynote speech, Australian Games Developers Conference 2005.

That was a response to my "Are levels a necessary way to go in MMOG design?" And, like all design related questions, there's going to be two ways to approach the question: the players' perspective and the designer's perspective. Levels make a lot of sense from a design point of view because they create a straightforward way of ordering the world. Everything is neatly labelled and organised from 1 to 60 (in the case of World of Warcraft, for example). This area is traversable by characters from level x to level y, because it is populated by mobs of levels x to levels y. Items and skills require a set level to use, and after a few levels of use become redundant. Who wants to be seen wielding a sword he could use ten levels ago? It's like going out clubbing in a 50s outfit. Only fashion goes in cycles - levels go in one direction: up.

The joy of the treadmill. Perhaps this is what gets to me so much about a world where levels determine where I can virtually pee. It offends my intelligence. It tells me "Hey buddy, fork out $15 a month and you can be another hamster in a world full of other hamsters and guess what? Every nth thousand cycle of that wheel, we'll…give you a fancier wheel! How's that for a deal?"

It doesn't seem to bother most people, but I find it hard to deal with the fact that at level 40, I can wipe out a level 10 lion by sneezing on it. A lion is a lion. A better warrior should stand a better chance at dealing with it, but it should still pose a threat. It's a freakin' lion for god's sake! Then there's aggro. I'm standing in a corridor five metres away from a bloodthirsty, raging orc after I've just butchered his girlfriend, parents and neighbour and he's just standing there looking at me. Next thing I know I'm charged by three orcs in the room next to me because I showed up on their area radar. So as such, all the creatures in this world have bat-like senses. They can't see a cow catapulted at them on a sunny day, but can detect a flea hopping into their radar. And of course, their senses are totally relative to our difference in levels. Ten levels up and I become the World of Warcraft equivalent of a stealth bomber.

Then there are the items. Why can't we have finely balanced swords, masterfully sharpened blades or something sensible? Because it's boring, that's why. We want ten thousand five hundred and twenty magical items with corny names that give bonuses to the numbers. The one thing that can make me stand out, both visually and numerically, in an MMOG like World of Warcraft is what I carry. I literally am what I wear. So much for being an individual - for having a personality. I am a number modified by the numbers of stuff I own.

All this brings to mind an analogy with RPG systems. Dungeons and Dragons is a great game. Swords of plus x and level driven design clearly follow this model of thinking. But it's not the only model out there! There are good old games like Runequest where no levels are mentioned. Where a walking tank of a master warrior can still get a puny goblin shot arrow through his helmet and die. There is always a 2% chance that something goes wrong, with every encounter. With every blow suffered. And then things become more real, more exciting because there is always an element of risk involved. Sure, a veteran is going to skin a newbie, but there is always a chance that he will slip on a bit of spilled gut, find himself on his arse and get a newbie-wielded axe through his head. And it does make a difference if there are four of the newbs around because now he can only block one or two of those guys, and the back is a nasty place to get smacked from, no matter how amazing a warrior you are.

Levels are a great way of organising a world, but not the only way of creating exciting and believable experiences. Is it a matter of money and technology or a matter of thinking outside the design square?