Please consider TR Iconic to 1 as an option

[pjw]

the concept of selling class/race combinations with minimal changes to races and classes and introducing heuristics like not starting at level 1 (15 instead) and fixating the class for the first level is a failure imho.

I agree.

Why not generate new class/race combinations, starting at level 7 (max level 23), ...Because it is bad design imho.

Yep, which is pretty much why I refuse to TR my Iconic and then pay for an LR+1 every life.

I'll happily pay for good design, but deeply resent paying for bad design.

At least to me I can not see a good reason why sun elf, bladeforged, shadar-kai and purple dragon knight and deep gnome was not integrated as a normal race.

Yep. It *was* good marketing; most of them came when MotU came out and it was a way to get new players who would be nearly able to play the new content. It was actually quite sensible from a marketing point of view. The problem is that as with so many other things, there was no folow through.

I currently play a shadar-kai. It is so frustrating starting at level 15. The annoying character generation. Not having any favor before, not having the bags. Technically you need 15 levels favor cleanup if you do not intend to reincarnate the character again.

Yep, it sucks and it's boring. I'm almost at the "need to TR" stage again (bored with L20+) and I really can't face another bout of L16+.

But I guess, "don't like it don't use it" is valid here.

That was, is, and never shall be a valid argument. At best it's an excuse for poor design.

[FranOhmsford]

I currently play a shadar-kai. It is so frustrating starting at level 15. The annoying character generation. Not having any favor before, not having the bags. Technically you need 15 levels favor cleanup if you do not intend to reincarnate the character again.

Actually it's even worse as you get xp while doing that Favour Cleanup {large amounts of Monster Manual XP included}.

So if you do that Favour Cleanup at say Lvl 15 you're reducing the number of Gianthold/Orchard etc. quests you can run at BB level, and so on into higher levels as you carry on catching up.


I've worked out one decent xp route for an Iconic but it requires NOT TAKING 15 until hardcapped 16 and therefore not having that Starter Gear immediately available to you {it doesn't pop into your Inv until you take 15 and even if it did it's min lvl 15}.
- Level to 14, do Enhancements, figure out best gear set up from TR Cache for Lvl 14.
- Run VoN 1-4 Elite {Gets you your 1st extra Bank Tab and decent xp actually from this even at 14}
- Run Lordsmarch I Elite BB {51 Coin Lords Favour}
- Run Invaders and Relic E-BB
- Run OoB Elite, WK E-BB, Chains E-BB and ADQ1 E-BB
- Take 15
- Run GH Walkups, Lordsmarch II, Mired and Archons E-BB
- Take 16
- Run GH Flags, Tor, Orchard E-BB
- Take 17
- Run Harbinger of Madness, Disciples of Shar/Escape Plan/Shadow of a Doubt, Acid Wit and Delirium E-BB
- Take 18
- Run LoD Chain+Rift+Mask of Deception and Vale E-BB
- Take 20
- Now do your Favour Cleanup of Lvl 1-10 Quests you missed before.

[Chilldude]

I know this has been suggested by myself and other before, but I'd love to see this.

I had given Iconics a lot of thought when I posted a thread about them a couple months back. To me, iconics are worthless, which is a shame. The only use I have for iconics at all is to quickly whip up a middle level character to test a build idea, or to quickly whip up a character to run with a guild mate. In both cases the iconic will be destroyed when I'm done. For anything other than that I find iconics a complete waste of time.

Turbine has a deep rooted compulsion to take an interesting or sometimes even an outright cool idea and then start slapping on penalties until the negative aspects far outweigh the good. Just as they've shown time and again that they don't have even a rudimentary understanding of scaling or percentages, they don't seem to have any concept of multiplicatively stacking penalties.

Here's a new race, with interesting and even a few cool new racial abilities.
Nice! Way to go Turbine!

This race starts at level 15 so that you can skip all that low level junk you've ran a million and a half times over the past decade.
WOW! That's really cool Turbine!

But you are forced to take one level of this certain class to be this race.
OUCH! That really sucks, and is a complete deal breaker for a lot of builds. I was really excited about this new race, but now it's just a niche race for certain builds that use that class. Still, I guess it'll be cool when I want to make those few builds that can make use of that class.

The only way to leave the build is to level to cap and Inconic Reincarnate, gaining the heroic past life of your icon and a weak racial past life perk that stacks up to 3 times.
Hmmm... at first that sounded pretty sucktastic, but after thinking about it for a bit it actually makes the race completely useless for anyone that doesn't have epic completionist and all possible fate points. Not only do you have to sacrifice the superior Epic Past Life for the weak Iconic Past Life perk every time you Iconic Reincarnate, after 3 iconic past lives have been earned for that race any further Iconic Reincarnations sacrifice the Epic Past Life with absolutely nothing in return. To put it another way, if for example you really like the gnome race and can either work the wiz level into your build or lesser it away, you can only be a gnome 3 times before being a gnome would be a massive detriment, because you have to forfeit the epic past life you earned with absolutely nothing in return. Way to go Turbine, you took something interesting and cool and turned it into something absolutely worthless.

For me, I don't think the iconic past lives are anywhere near worth trading in an epic past life for. So that makes iconics useless on their first, second, and third lives as well as all subsequent lives. What a shame, a new, interesting, and in some aspects even kinda cool addition to the game is completely useless unless you've got epic completionist and all the fate points you could ever need.

So what could be done about it?

1) Provide an alternate avenue to earn past life perks at end game.

This is the best idea. Grinding out a past life is literally just a matter of time, it takes absolutely zero skill or effort to grind out a past life. Therefore allowing past lives to be earned at cap, through whatever mechanic, wouldn't take anything away from anyone because they didn't do anything to begin with. You could have epic past life tokens drop in the end chests of raids, and/or appear on 20th completions. You could create a new difficulty for all epic quests that can only be entered by capped players where past lives could either be earned gradually by some sort of currency system or rare random drops. This difficulty would be challenging but not punishing. It would have zero scaling, with lots of high HP mobs to encourage grouping.

This would concentrate the player base at level cap, which is what you want, but still provide the same grindy functionality as grinding past lives does now. Make the past lives BTA, so that wether it's tokens or commendations or whatever, you can trade them to alts. I'm imagining tokens that can drop in end chests of raids, and always an assortment on 20th completions. Token of Past Life Wizard or Token of Epic Past Life Martial for example. So if your main character already has 3 wiz past lives... pass it along to your Bard alt who could definitely use it.

In my opinion, this needs to happen no matter what, and it needs to happen soon. I also know it's never going to happen. It makes too much sense. It would concentrate the player base at cap mitigating the crippling low population. It would get people playing together again, and playing together is how MMORPGs survive. You can ask a million WoW players and 999,000 of them will tell you the reason they still play is the people, their friends and guildmates. Raids are the funnest part of DDO, and really the ultimate point of every character's existence.

2) Unbind races from iconics.

Simply make all races just plain races and allow any race to start at level 15 as an iconic. This solution is so simple it doesn't need any further explanation.

3) Allow iconics to reincarnate after an epic reincarnation.

Whether it's for just a heroic past life, a heroic and iconic past life, or even a true reincarnation with no past life perk at all, allowing an iconic an opportunity to change their build without sacrificing the epic past life they earned would make the races playable by players who aren't already epic completionists with all the fate points they could ever need.

4) Put a lid on it.

Cap all abilities so that pastlife perks are just one way of getting to cap. For example, 2 spell pen for every wiz past life stacking 3 times gives a player with 3 wiz past lives 6 spell pen. If you cap spell pen at 10 + character level, then the +6 from Wiz past life would be nice to have because it would require less gear, caster levels, feats, and enhancement to a hit cap, but even with no wiz past lives you could still hit cap. Do that with everything and it would fix every problem with the entire game. People crying about not enough challenge would get their challenge, and they would get a chance to show that it's their skill and not their OP character that wins the day. People sick of the endless grind wouldn't have to endlessly grind, they might have to gear swap for different situations a lot more than people with all the past life perks, but they could still be just as effective as anyone else. This would get everyone playing the same game again, and when someone completes content you didn't it was because they pushed the right buttons at the right time instead of pushing the same exact buttons as you but their buttons were many times more effective than yours.

Honestly, there are so many things that could be done, but I just don't think there's anyone left at Turbine who can actually do it. I think all that's left is level designers that can just add more mobs with higher stats. Anything requiring technical proficiency with software development seems beyond their capabilities.

[gzargel]

I know this has been suggested by myself and other before, but I'd love to see this.

Why?

• It gives me the option of playing a much broader group of quests on the same character
• I like my iconic characters and don't want to change their race, but I'd like to take them through low level stuff
• Getting low level favour is more fun a low level
• I don't have the patience to "not level" for 16 levels as some people have previously suggested
• For me, the upper-level game is pretty stale. It's more likely to keep me playing
• I'd like to be able to change the mandatory level 1 (at least on TR); I would never brought a LR+n heart for this alone since it would psychologically lock me at 20+.

Why Not?

• People say they wouldn't be Iconic. Honestly, they're just being pedants. What is the *harm* in breaking this particular rule if it keep more people playing?
• It means fewer LR+n hearts get sold. I doubt it; I'd need to see the stats. It might also mean more people buy iconics and play for longer and at lower levels.
• It uses up precious developer time. This I also doubt: we already have Level 1 iconics, they just have millions of XP. Take the XP away and flag them as TR-capable at 20. It's always difficult determining whats 'hard', but taking away XP doesn't seem hard to me. I'd even go for it if I couldn't TR at 20.

Edit:

How would I do it cheaply?

Make an LR+1 freely available once per life to level 1 iconics. Add a small dialog to the creation story. "If you truly wish to reject all we have taught you, you may also want to talk to <DUDE-WHO-DOES-LR> about your early life. Do it soon though, and remember that to us you will always be <RACE>, despite your willfulness". Or something like that.

There is a problem from the FTP perspective. There is no real end game in DDO. The game being played by most people is the TR train. On a non-Iconic life I usually get ~750 TP from favor. It takes me about 1-2 months to do a TR (yeah i know I am slow). This allowed me to always have enough TP to buy whatever new content came to DDO. Now I am on the iconics i am getting about ~300 TP per life and I am finding I don't have enough TP to buy the new content without spending money. I have not bought slavers or the newest monster manual yet but next time they do double points I'll probably buy them.

If iconics change to start at level 1 I go back to playing the game for free.

[spyder7723]

There is a problem from the FTP perspective. There is no real end game in DDO. The game being played by most people is the TR train. On a non-Iconic life I usually get ~750 TP from favor. It takes me about 1-2 months to do a TR (yeah i know I am slow). This allowed me to always have enough TP to buy whatever new content came to DDO. Now I am on the iconics i am getting about ~300 TP per life and I am finding I don't have enough TP to buy the new content without spending money. I have not bought slavers or the newest monster manual yet but next time they do double points I'll probably buy them.

If iconics change to start at level 1 I go back to playing the game for free.

And this a good arguement why they don't give the option to choose a different clad at level 1. They DONT want you to play the game for free. If everyone plays the game for free the game gets shut down.


On s similar note, a few have complained about how boring it is to go get favor on the low levels with an iconic. I don't understand this point for several reasons, not the last of which is that those low levels are so easy you have to practically intentionally build a gimped character in order to get any challenge out of them. Kobold assault is no less boring on a decent level 5 than it is on a level 15 iconic. Besides, its favor! Is the 200 tp from favor worth spending two dozen hours running? 500 tp cost what? 5 bucks? No matey how a guy spins it, that's just not time effective. Besides the backpack and bank favor, if you are going to tr or ir is absolutely pointless to waste time getting more than what you do just by playing your normal questing.

Another arguement that was posted, that iconics are wasting the 20 to 30 run for a crappy iconic past life...dude, nothing makes you do an ir instead of an epic reincarnation. Iconics can do epic lives just like normal races.

[TBot1234]

You got it. Leveling is not mandatory in DDO.

Terrific. Did my TR to deep gnome last night. I expect it will be fun, and for once I won't have to worry about levelling up faster than my guildmates!

[pjw]

And this a good arguement why they don't give the option to choose a different clad at level 1.

No it's not, it's an argument why, if people play iconics all the time, they should start at level 15 and not at level 1. It has nothing to do with the class choices. And to be clear, the argument ONLY applies to people who play iconic races ALL THE TIME.

[decease]

And as soon as you truly refuse all you have learned

*** POOF ***

Shadari-Kai becomes a normal Human

Purple Dragon Knight becomes a Human

BladeForged becomes a Warforged

Sun-Elf becomes an Elf

Deep Gnome becomes a Gnome

Sounds like a simple solution to me no one is forcing anyone to play and iconic race at all

huh?? what are you talking about??

Shadari-Kai is a race, it have nothing to do with any of the class. in fact in game we see Shadari-Kai black guard..and ranger(?)

Purple Dragon Knight is human, they are special trained knight of Cormyrian army, in dnd 3.5e they have nothing to do with fighter or any of the base class. pdk is a prestige class that open to all race, but lore wise they mostly consist of human.

BladeForged- they are warforged who follow the lord of blade...not all lord of blade's follower are paladin, in game we fight many artificer, rogue, assassin alike...

sun-elf is a race, not a class.. it have nothing to do with cleric. morninglord is a divine caster class, they are not cleric. just like stormlord, war priest, champion of torm...etc are not cleric. their class tree and race tree have been tied together so you do not lose anything iconic about it!

Deep Gnome- again deep gnome is a race, it is not a class combination. sure all gnome favor illusionist, but not all gnome are illusionist..especially not deep gnome!

p.s. whatever they learned in the past are merged into their racial tree.. so nothing ever get forgotten. you can rest assure of that.


edit: i just did a quick check.. deep gnome(svirfneblin) favor class is rogue not wizard....

[spyder7723]

No it's not, it's an argument why, if people play iconics all the time, they should start at level 15 and not at level 1. It has nothing to do with the class choices. And to be clear, the argument ONLY applies to people who play iconic races ALL THE TIME.

When you own a business, turning paying customers into non paying customers is the exact opposite of your goal. That was my point. The post i quoted was about buying turbine points.

[Oliphant]

Cool idea. This would create a lot of value without much coding. Just let you pick the race at level 1!

[FranOhmsford]

I had given Iconics a lot of thought when I posted a thread about them a couple months back. To me, iconics are worthless, which is a shame. The only use I have for iconics at all is to quickly whip up a middle level character to test a build idea, or to quickly whip up a character to run with a guild mate. In both cases the iconic will be destroyed when I'm done. For anything other than that I find iconics a complete waste of time.

Iconics are very good for helping friends, guildies, newbies. Being able to start at any lvl from 1-15 is very nice {unlike with say Vet 1 or Vet II status you aren't stuck at starting at 15 on an Iconic.

Turbine has a deep rooted compulsion to take an interesting or sometimes even an outright cool idea and then start slapping on penalties until the negative aspects far outweigh the good. Just as they've shown time and again that they don't have even a rudimentary understanding of scaling or percentages, they don't seem to have any concept of multiplicatively stacking penalties.

Here's a new race, with interesting and even a few cool new racial abilities.
Nice! Way to go Turbine!

This race starts at level 15 so that you can skip all that low level junk you've ran a million and a half times over the past decade.
WOW! That's really cool Turbine!

But you are forced to take one level of this certain class to be this race.
OUCH! That really sucks, and is a complete deal breaker for a lot of builds. I was really excited about this new race, but now it's just a niche race for certain builds that use that class. Still, I guess it'll be cool when I want to make those few builds that can make use of that class.

This wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the blatantly obvious P2W aspect of being able to buy +1 Hearts {that you have to be insanely lucky to actually get In-Game} to get rid of that level.
{At the very least +1 Hearts should be halved in Price PERMANENTLY so more people are able to make use of them!}.

It would still be bad though because it reduces certain Iconics basically to "gimp" right off the bat - Yes I'm looking at you Morninglords! {At least until Warlock came out and gave Morninglords an escape route!}.

The only way to leave the build is to level to cap and Inconic Reincarnate, gaining the heroic past life of your icon and a weak racial past life perk that stacks up to 3 times.
Hmmm... at first that sounded pretty sucktastic, but after thinking about it for a bit it actually makes the race completely useless for anyone that doesn't have epic completionist and all possible fate points. Not only do you have to sacrifice the superior Epic Past Life for the weak Iconic Past Life perk every time you Iconic Reincarnate, after 3 iconic past lives have been earned for that race any further Iconic Reincarnations sacrifice the Epic Past Life with absolutely nothing in return. To put it another way, if for example you really like the gnome race and can either work the wiz level into your build or lesser it away, you can only be a gnome 3 times before being a gnome would be a massive detriment, because you have to forfeit the epic past life you earned with absolutely nothing in return. Way to go Turbine, you took something interesting and cool and turned it into something absolutely worthless.

For me, I don't think the iconic past lives are anywhere near worth trading in an epic past life for. So that makes iconics useless on their first, second, and third lives as well as all subsequent lives. What a shame, a new, interesting, and in some aspects even kinda cool addition to the game is completely useless unless you've got epic completionist and all the fate points you could ever need.

You know...You really hurt your argument with this assertion because there is NO STRONGER PAST LIFE THAN PRR and that makes PDK the joint Top Past Life {alongside the Epic PRR Past Life - Block Energy}.

+1% {+3% total} Dodge from Shadar-Kai is a strong Past Life
+3 MRR {+9 total} from Svirfneblin is a strong Past Life
The +3/9 Pos Spell Power from Morninglord boosts Cocoon does it not?

Now I will agree that Bladeforged's +5/15% Fort is basically worthless.

So what could be done about it?

1) Provide an alternate avenue to earn past life perks at end game.

This is the best idea. Grinding out a past life is literally just a matter of time, it takes absolutely zero skill or effort to grind out a past life. Therefore allowing past lives to be earned at cap, through whatever mechanic, wouldn't take anything away from anyone because they didn't do anything to begin with. You could have epic past life tokens drop in the end chests of raids, and/or appear on 20th completions. You could create a new difficulty for all epic quests that can only be entered by capped players where past lives could either be earned gradually by some sort of currency system or rare random drops. This difficulty would be challenging but not punishing. It would have zero scaling, with lots of high HP mobs to encourage grouping.

This would concentrate the player base at level cap, which is what you want, but still provide the same grindy functionality as grinding past lives does now. Make the past lives BTA, so that wether it's tokens or commendations or whatever, you can trade them to alts. I'm imagining tokens that can drop in end chests of raids, and always an assortment on 20th completions. Token of Past Life Wizard or Token of Epic Past Life Martial for example. So if your main character already has 3 wiz past lives... pass it along to your Bard alt who could definitely use it.

In my opinion, this needs to happen no matter what, and it needs to happen soon. I also know it's never going to happen. It makes too much sense. It would concentrate the player base at cap mitigating the crippling low population. It would get people playing together again, and playing together is how MMORPGs survive. You can ask a million WoW players and 999,000 of them will tell you the reason they still play is the people, their friends and guildmates. Raids are the funnest part of DDO, and really the ultimate point of every character's existence.

Base idea great /signed.

details can be worked out by the Devs.

2) Unbind races from iconics.

Simply make all races just plain races and allow any race to start at level 15 as an iconic. This solution is so simple it doesn't need any further explanation.

I love this idea - I badly wanted to play a Svirfneblin Cleric but of course the Devs killed that with the required level of Wizard! {oh and the required umpteen past lives to be viable as a Cleric in the first place!}.

3) Allow iconics to reincarnate after an epic reincarnation.

Whether it's for just a heroic past life, a heroic and iconic past life, or even a true reincarnation with no past life perk at all, allowing an iconic an opportunity to change their build without sacrificing the epic past life they earned would make the races playable by players who aren't already epic completionists with all the fate points they could ever need.

Can't argue with this either tbh - I've found that by the time I get an Iconic to 30 I've decided to TR and NOT ER because the first few ERs are so hardgoing and the requirement to go all the way back to 30 is rough!

4) Put a lid on it.

Cap all abilities so that pastlife perks are just one way of getting to cap. For example, 2 spell pen for every wiz past life stacking 3 times gives a player with 3 wiz past lives 6 spell pen. If you cap spell pen at 10 + character level, then the +6 from Wiz past life would be nice to have because it would require less gear, caster levels, feats, and enhancement to a hit cap, but even with no wiz past lives you could still hit cap. Do that with everything and it would fix every problem with the entire game. People crying about not enough challenge would get their challenge, and they would get a chance to show that it's their skill and not their OP character that wins the day. People sick of the endless grind wouldn't have to endlessly grind, they might have to gear swap for different situations a lot more than people with all the past life perks, but they could still be just as effective as anyone else. This would get everyone playing the same game again, and when someone completes content you didn't it was because they pushed the right buttons at the right time instead of pushing the same exact buttons as you but their buttons were many times more effective than yours.

Preaching to the choir here as I've oft lamented the ludicrous power creep of open ended ability bonuses without a Cap in DDO!

This would allow Players to truly customise their gear as well IF the Devs took the opportunity to create more unique gear/bonuses because players would have space for them rather than basically being tied to the absolute must haves!

[Tscheuss]

No. Just no.

[pjw]

Cool idea. This would create a lot of value without much coding. Just let you pick the race at level 1!

Yes, I like the simplicity that provides flexibility and options to players, without affecting game balance in any substantial way. I'd also be fine if it cost another 42 heart seeds or whatever.

[Bob_of_QF]

You got it. Leveling is not mandatory in DDO.

Yes. I routinely avoid leveling up, until I've completed a story arc-- to keep higher exp, if nothing else. But also to keep the story-flow going.

I've done 5-6 quests in an arc, before leveling... and when I eventually do? I sometimes have 2 or even 3 APs to spend... Win-win!

[redoubt]

Create an inconic and get two options:

1. Start at level 15. All reincarnation process as they are today.

2. Start at level 1. Reincarnation options are: at level 20 get a class past life. At level 30 get an epic. (No iconic option here. Works like a regular race for TR purposes.)

[pjw]

Create an inconic and get two options:

1. Start at level 15. All reincarnation process as they are today.

2. Start at level 1. Reincarnation options are: at level 20 get a class past life. At level 30 get an epic. (No iconic option here. Works like a regular race for TR purposes.)

While I'd be very happy with this, it requires recoding of the character creation screen (apparently hard). My suggested, and somewhat more clunky, option uses existing tools to get the job done. All we need is an NPC in the room you appear in to allow LR+1 and take away all your XP. I'm not entirely sure why your suggestion is so hard, but either would work for me.

[spyder7723]

While I'd be very happy with this, it requires recoding of the character creation screen (apparently hard). My suggested, and somewhat more clunky, option uses existing tools to get the job done. All we need is an NPC in the room you appear in to allow LR+1 and take away all your XP. I'm not entirely sure why your suggestion is so hard, but either would work for me.

One problem with it is if you can tr at 20 it makes getting heroic lives to easy. You can go from 15 to 20 in a single play session. That would be an insult to everyone that had to do it the long grind way back before bravery and the xp revamp. And while I'm grateful i don't have to greetings as much as they did, i don't want to insult them either.

[gzargel]

When you own a business, turning paying customers into non paying customers is the exact opposite of your goal. That was my point. The post i quoted was about buying turbine points.

Yes and Turbine as been going that direction for awhile (turning paying customers into non-paying for awhile). I started playing with the FTP release and I bought the game a piece at a time. It used to take me 2-3months to do a TR and then I had to collect enough tokens to TR. Collecting tokens was hard and every other TR I would buy a heart from the store. The bravery bonus increased my TP to the 750/month on a non iconic TR and the reworking of epics made it so that I no longer needed to spend TP on hearts. They did try and recoup this with the epic hearts but I think the player base had gotten used to the low cost of heroic hearts and expected epic ones to be the same and revolted.

Iconics starting at 15 is only thing they have done to make me spend more money in this game.

Now having the first class level being pre-selected is a different argument and the only downside i would see there is a power level. The iconic racial trees are a lot more powerful than even the pay races. The requirement to have a specific class is the min to that max.

[NaturalHazard]

Being able to choose any class you want at level 1, but then the cost is you have to start at level 1 instead of 15? That's a neat wrinkle.

I like it.

I love it, and the choice to TR like normal at 20 would be a big bonus to many I see it opening up more content for more people, it would have more people interested in Iconics and probably playing the game longer. But some will argue that it will sell less hearts in the store, +1's and Iconic and Epic hearts to tr.

[Chilldude]

One problem with it is if you can tr at 20 it makes getting heroic lives to easy. You can go from 15 to 20 in a single play session. That would be an insult to everyone that had to do it the long grind way back before bravery and the xp revamp. And while I'm grateful i don't have to greetings as much as they did, i don't want to insult them either.

I think the reason you incorrectly used the term insult is because you couldn't think of the right term to use, as there isn't one. How long it takes Player B to earn a past life has absolutely no impact what so ever on Player A. The perpetuation of this idea that the grind must never change, because it would be unfair to veterans, is what killed DDO.

As someone pointed out earlier in this thread, a player is never forced to level up in DDO. You can take as long as you like, completing every quest on every level if that's what you prefer. Just as them taking 5 times longer to level up has no impact on you, if they were able to level up 5 times faster it wouldn't have any impact on you either.

It's not an achievement, it never was. There are no qualifications beyond becoming level 20. There are no limits to the number of deaths. There is no maximum amount of time one is allotted. There are no restrictions as to difficulty level one must play at. There's absolutely nothing to prevent a player from running every quest on normal while having a hireling do all fighting and thereby reaching 20 without ever swinging a sword.

Leveling has never been fair, and it could never be. If you have a lot of free time to spend playing DDO, you're going to level faster than someone who doesn't. If you have a lot of friends in DDO you're going to level faster than someone who doesn't. Using forum builds and leveling guides gives one player and advantage over another who does not. Someone with more money than someone else can buy tomes of learning and experience elixirs to gain a huge advantage. Someone with a lot more money can buy Otto Boxes and not have to level at all.

It had its place back in the day when there wasn't a lot to do. It gave players a way to experience all the content again from a different angle on a different class. Today there is many times the content as there was back then. Ironically there is a massive collection of content that never gets used because the majority of players that remain are merely grinding past lives.

We as a community need to break free of this mindset that there is anything at all special about having a lot of past lives and accept that the non-achievement does not need to be protected. When someone tells me they are a completionist, I honestly feel a bit sad for them. When they say they are a triple uber duber special snoflake completionist, I find it rather tragic. I can't help but to think of the change that could have been made to their life and the lives of those around them if they'd instead focused those thousands of hours on something productive. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge gamer, always have been. In fact, I'm an OG, black and white Pong at age 8, Atari at 12, Intellivision after that, then on to computer games starting with the Commodore 64 becoming a founding member of the PC master race. So I'm in no way suggesting playing video games is a bad thing, nor even a waste of time when used properly as a leisure time activity. However, spending thousands of hours grinding pastlives is a bad thing, and a colossal waste of time. The vast majority of players refer to grinding past lives as a chore. People will take exception to that and insist they thoroughly enjoy every minute of grinding past lives, but anyone being honest knows the vast majority of the time, for the vast majority of players, grinding past lives is a chore. When you spend thousands of hours doing something you do not enjoy, I consider that a profoundly sad waste. You could have learned a foreign language, taken up a musical instrument, built an addition on the house, or any number of tangible accomplishments that would enrich your life, but instead stared blankly into a computer screen wiggling a mouse back and forth.

Turbine, show past lives the respect they deserve and hand them out in every box of Frosted Flakes. Get rid of the grind, for all our sakes. Instead of forcing all players to grind due to the insanely high XP requirements, allow all the players that reply to this post saying how much they love to grind by not changing the fact that they can grind as long as they want because they are never forced to level up. Yet, allow all the players who left the game because they hate the ridiculous grind to come back by reducing XP requirements ten fold.