Tales of a Lone Knight
"The walls around you blend into a blur of grey particles as you jog down the hallway. Constant yet increasing, the rhythmic cacophony - that is your heartbeat - pounds in your head and you wonder, as many have before you, how loud it actually is. In the distance, you see the familiar, familial corner where you’ve turned left so many times before. As you squeeze your eyelids with utmost concentration, you recognize two similar figures. Both are pale, squinty-eyed and reek of hospital disinfectant. One wears a blue robe, the other a red robe. You are now within proximal distance from them and they notice you, eyes-dead, face-pale. The mage in red reacts first, shooting a stream of fire though the blue-robed mage is not far behind and aims several commendable boomerangs at you.
You’ve done this a thousand times before and with deft movement, you swerve left, avoiding the fire and ice. Mostly. Your skin immediately blisters, it does not hurt, as an infinitesimal slice of flame touches you. Before the flame even touches you, your arm has already jerked outwards and the blue shield smashes the red-mage’s face leaving him stunned. You keep running, and a tiny smirk peeps onto your face. The smirk transforms into a grin as you see two piss-yellow obelisks emerge into view in the massive chamber ahead. What good luck. Two more piss-yellow towers. You give a small laugh as you smash the stone-switch into pieces carelessly and sprint back full speed, praising the unwavering RNGesus. A lone mage with a stolidly stone face approaches you from the left and you wonder where he came from. She. Nobody cared, nobody knew. You enter the hallway again and pivot around looking at the stone mage desperately trying to catch up with you. The smile lingers on your face as the mage get smaller and smaller, dwindling into the distance, but a cold chill, one so familiar, familial runs down your spine. Then you’re dead. In your carelessness, you had rotated and run backwards into the fatal grasps of the despiséd orb.
You look at the screen where the number ‘four-twenty’ shows up next to the bright-orange, upside-down ‘v’. That knight was freshly maxed, not yet two-hours old, and now you dread what comes next. Levelling. You close your eyes and rub the folds that had developed under them from hours of staring at a screen. There’s enough potions in your vault to max another knight, six out of eight, but you still cringe. Levelling. The infamous Train of Fame is at peak hours but you don’t like the idea of waiting in line for ten minutes to board the train. Not that there was ever a cohesive line-up anyhow. You call to your guildies for help, but they are all still in the Shatters, fighting the immortal evil, the omnipresent enemy. Reluctantly, you head to the pet yard where your fidelitous penguin awaits joyfully. The two of you head out on the beach and Sisyphus’ tasks begins…"
Ok… maybe that was a bit overdramatic but the point remains. Currently, levelling up a character is nothing but tedious to a mid/endgame player. There’s no reward, no ‘fun’ in levelling. In a more general sense, the majority of the space in a realm becomes obsolete once you reach a certain level; most of gameplay is centred around the godlands once you reach even 1/8.
How can we make levelling not an obstacle but something we look forward to? How can we make use of the wonderfully designed Realm (Amit’s map generation) instead of it being just a tiresome expanse of land that’s another obstacle when trying to get somewhere?
#MakeLevellingGreatAgain
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