I’ve been playing MMORPGs for a long time. I started the year Everquest came out, and save for the occassional break between games, I’ve pretty much always been active on one or another.

In all of these years, I’ve never once hit the level cap.

Oh sure, I came close on World of Warcraft (67 priest I think) and I often wonder why I’ve never once accomplished this dubious honor. Well, after much meditation on this subject (minutes and minutes, in fact) I think I came to the conclusion. Instead of blaming my own resolve, I think I’ll do instead what comes instinctively to humans as a species: I’ll blame someone else. MMORPG developers, all of you, pull the old bait and switch on your consumers. At first you mask grinding with quests and other shit but by the time you’re painfully close to the level cap all pretext of distraction is removed. Fuck you, you’re grinding. I suspect the reason they do this is because they reason they already have you paying, and you’re already that close, so you’ll surely endure those last few levels of pain because the glory of a maxed character is forever.
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In a world with so many MMORPGs on the market, it can be tough to decide which games have actual content, and which are just meant to be profit machines for companies. The latter seems to be happening more often recently as companies fear to break the ‘be like World of Warcraft’ mold for fear of making no profit. This causes the market to turn into one bland, singular blob of mediocrity in our games. It’s for this very reason that this gamer in particular cannot recommend any new MMO releases this year. So what are we left to? Well not much.

Despite all that I’m about to say, I want to make it clear that I’ve played my share of MMORPGs (and still do.) I do not dislike them, I do however see many, many flaws in them. I would like to outline a few popular MMORPGs with established (or not so established in a few cases) playerbases so that you– the gamer- can decide what is worthwhile and what isn’t. The first thing this gamer can advise however, is to avoid any free or web bases MMO like the plague (you’re going to get exactly what you pay for.) So what’s good? What’s bad? What’s just plain laughable? Well it all depends on what you’re looking for. Let’s start out with the most popular and work our way around from there…
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Blizzard Entertainment has announced that World of Warcraft, its incredibly popular MMO, is now played by more than 11.5 million subscribers worldwide. The landmark was aided by the November 13 release of WoW’s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

Apparently, WoTLK sold over 2.8 million copies within 24 hours of launch, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time. And it has gone from strength to strength, having sold 4 million copies total in its first month.

“We’re pleased to welcome the new and returning players who have helped World of Warcraft reach these new milestones, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and support that the game’s global community has continued to show,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We look forward to providing all of them with an excellent entertainment experience for a long time to come.”

Some of the biggest news floating around is about the new World of Warcraft expansion: Wrath of the Lich King. The expansion sold a whopping 2,800,000 copies on it’s first 24 hours, making it one of the fastest expansion packs ever, breaking the first expansion’s record (The Burning Crusade, 2.4 Million) by a whole 400,000 copies. One of the major points of the expansion pack is the raising of the level cap – while in the original WoW the level cap was only 60, Burning Crusade raised it to 70, and now Wrath of the Lich King is bumping it up to 80. As expected, there was a huge rush as everyone watched and waited to see who could do it first – hit level 80 before anyone else.

Originally, Bilzzard had titles prepared for those who hit 80 first with each player class. This would be extremely unique titles – only one person per server could have each. The community went completely up in arms about this, as almost every player complained about the repercussions of such an attempt. By giving a reward for being first, Blizzard was promoting the fact that people were cutting class and calling in sick to work to play the new expansion. That people would be getting physically sick by not sleeping for days to get these titles. Or so, this is what players complained about. The complaining worked, and Blizzard pulled the titles, making them unavailable to everyone. They left in the “Feats of Strength”, or so they’re called – these are achievements that reward nothing. Nothing. At all. You get bragging rights – that’s it. Most players would be completely turned off from these. They’d think “well, what’s the point?” and move on to something else.

But not all players thought this way. These two players are Athene, a human female paladin, and Nymh, a human female warlock. There has been a rather big debate over who is the first level 80.
Nymh’s plan was rather simple: She joined up with a healer friend of his, Pavelomm, who stayed out of the group and got no XP for anything, sacrificing his time for his friend, so she could be the first 80. Then, they camped the crypt in Drakil’ji Ruins for 27 hours. For over a full day, they sat and killed enemies over. And over. And over for 27 straight hours. Officially, she was the first level 80.

However, some players consider Athene as the first level 80. He hit level 79 in 13 and a half hours. So, how did he lose? After all, it couldn’t have taken another 13.5 to get from 79 to 80, right? Well, I’m glad you asked! It’s simple, really.

He was banned for cheating, and had his character reset to 70. His tactic was a bit shadier. His tactic was to join a group with four of his guild mates. He would enter an instance with them, then leave the group. He would then have 60 seconds to attack enemies, or the game would remove him from the instance. This would “tag” them to his group – but since he left the group, only he was considered to “own” that enemy. He would then rejoin his group to reset the removal timer, then kill the enemies. Since he was out of the group when they were first hit, his group members had no claim to the enemies, meaning Athene earned ALL of the experience instead of having to share it with his group mates. Using this idea, he was able to sky rocket to 79 within just 13.5 hours. To the right is a screen shot that Athene claims was from a GM, who confirmed that it would be okay for them to do this, that there was no chance of getting banned. However, on the left is a screen shot of a different GM banning them.

Is this an exploit, or is it just clever? Either way, one thing is certain: Nymh is the first level 80. Some argue that Athene should have claims to the “world first” level 80, because he got to 79 the fastest and would have been the first 80 by literally hours was he not banned – but others counterargue that it doesn’t matter if he would have, because he wasn’t.