Depends on the game, they have to make even the lower levels feel like an adventure in order to expect players to go through a steep leveling curve, offering a wide variety of mobs and areas for each level range and alot of thought needs to be put into creating them. 

A game that is only based on the so called end game with little variety or fun to be had in reaching that stage, should have very rapid  skill gain, keeping the curve to high in a game like this would have me cancel my account.

For those two reasons, its hard to say what is the best leveling curve, for each game my answer could be different.

voted lineage 2. I prefer extremely long leveling goals.

Of which we'll probably never see another one in the coming years.

Originally posted by Sovrath

voted lineage 2. I prefer extremely long leveling goals.

Of which we'll probably never see another one in the coming years.

I don't know.. I'm thinking Blizzard is going hardcore with their new game.

Won't be very good business if they make another WOW now will it?

Originally posted by Venger

I haven't played a level based game that I feel has gotten the curve right.

I think UO had the best curve.  Getting from 1 to 70-80ish wasn't really that hard but after that it slowed down a lot.  By the time you did get to that skill range you were strong enough to kill a lot of different things and addicted enough to want to keep going. 

Agreed.

IMO, you should be able to get to maybe 70-80% of whatever the "max" is very quickly, like within maybe 20-30 hours play time...

Then the last 20-30% should take quite a bit longer.

Here is the catch though.

Start the "end game" kind of stuff when you get to the 70-80% point so you have meaningful stuff to do while you work towards max, not save the "good" stuff till max and that is it.

That'd be perfect to me.

Originally posted by mortharx

Originally posted by Sovrath

voted lineage 2. I prefer extremely long leveling goals.

Of which we'll probably never see another one in the coming years.

I don't know.. I'm thinking Blizzard is going hardcore with their new game.

Won't be very good business if they make another WOW now will it?

I can't see them going hardcore. They will just make another accessible game but with a different theme such as sci-fi or the like.

Early WOW, back in the begining before TBC.  Just playing, not worrying about end-game, took 4 or 5 month to get to 60.  I did every dungeon, got all the gear I wanted, did every quest I could find and explored every nook and cranny.  Never felt a grind.  Never felt like I was just killing mobs JUST to level, since by the time I cleared an area, I went on to the next.  Now compare that to WAR recently, where I started running out of quests in T3 and doing the same scenario for a few hours got tiresome.  The public quests ran out since no one really did them past T2.  I sure as hell wasn't going to grind mobs or do the first stage in a public quest all night either..  RvR got tiresome as well since trading keeps over and over again didn't really net that much EXP either.  People didn't give a crap about the dungeons much either sad to say.  Although I did a few of them.

DOAC and older MMOs didn't have a leveling curve.  They had a leveling ocean of pure mindless, tedious grindage=)  I never maxed out in DAOC because there were only so many trees one man could possibly kill before wanting to bang his head into one=)

Originally posted by Sovrath
 
I can't see them going hardcore. They will just make another accessible game but with a different theme such as sci-fi or the like.

"Accessible" and "hardcore" can the same game be.

It's how Blizzard designs their games. Every one. Well, except maybe that cell-shaded adventure game about Thrall...

it might seem odd but i reached max faster on WAR than any other game. I think it was 7-10 days 

The only MMORPG to ever get leveling right was Planetside.   Why?  Because it didn't matter what level you were, you could play with anyone and everyone.  The moment you entered the game in Planetside you were a valuable asset to what ever side you picked to play on.   I was having fun from day one up until I quit.   Game just frakking rock bak in the day.    Next I would say old school SWG pre-NGE - no levels and again I was having fun from day one until SOE unleashed that mess they called the NGE.   Next  I would have to say WoW.  It is a pretty steady climb to get to 80.  

Originally posted by Josher

Early WOW, back in the begining before TBC.  Just playing, not worrying about end-game, took 4 or 5 month to get to 60.  I did every dungeon, got all the gear I wanted, did every quest I could find and explored every nook and cranny.  Never felt a grind.  Never felt like I was just killing mobs JUST to level, since by the time I cleared an area, I went on to the next.  Now compare that to WAR recently, where I started running out of quests in T3 and doing the same scenario for a few hours got tiresome.  The public quests ran out since no one really did them past T2.  I sure as hell wasn't going to grind mobs or do the first stage in a public quest all night either..  RvR got tiresome as well since trading keeps over and over again didn't really net that much EXP either.  People didn't give a crap about the dungeons much either sad to say.  Although I did a few of them.

DOAC and older MMOs didn't have a leveling curve.  They had a leveling ocean of pure mindless, tedious grindage=)  I never maxed out in DAOC because there were only so many trees one man could possibly kill before wanting to bang his head into one=)

Josher must have played a Ranger for the Hibs.  LOL!  

Originally posted by Teala

The only MMORPG to ever get leveling right was Planetside.   Why?  Because it didn't matter what level you were, you could play with anyone and everyone.  The moment you entered the game in Planetside you were a valuable asset to what ever side you picked to play on.   I was having fun from day one up until I quit.   Game just frakking rock bak in the day.    Next I would say old school SWG pre-NGE - no levels and again I was having fun from day one until SOE unleashed that mess they called the NGE.   Next  I would have to say WoW.  It is a pretty steady climb to get to 80.  

I'm going to have to call Shennanigans on that one Teala...

They may not have been called "levels" in SWG but the skill boxes and XP grind to purchase new boxes was pretty much levels with a different name.

You'd even unlock new abilities and titles and access to equipment from "leveling" your professions.

Originally posted by johnspartan

Originally posted by Venger

I haven't played a level based game that I feel has gotten the curve right.

I think UO had the best curve.  Getting from 1 to 70-80ish wasn't really that hard but after that it slowed down a lot.  By the time you did get to that skill range you were strong enough to kill a lot of different things and addicted enough to want to keep going. 

 

Agreed.

IMO, you should be able to get to maybe 70-80% of whatever the "max" is very quickly, like within maybe 20-30 hours play time...

Then the last 20-30% should take quite a bit longer.

Here is the catch though.

Start the "end game" kind of stuff when you get to the 70-80% point so you have meaningful stuff to do while you work towards max, not save the "good" stuff till max and that is it.

That'd be perfect to me.

20-30 hours... why bother?!?  How about 10-12 hour or maybe they should just start you off at that level or skill... I guess we all play MMO's for differnt reasons and for me its about the journey as much as the desination.

Originally posted by johnspartan

 

Originally posted by Teala

The only MMORPG to ever get leveling right was Planetside.   Why?  Because it didn't matter what level you were, you could play with anyone and everyone.  The moment you entered the game in Planetside you were a valuable asset to what ever side you picked to play on.   I was having fun from day one up until I quit.   Game just frakking rock bak in the day.    Next I would say old school SWG pre-NGE - no levels and again I was having fun from day one until SOE unleashed that mess they called the NGE.   Next  I would have to say WoW.  It is a pretty steady climb to get to 80.  

I'm going to have to call Shennanigans on that one Teala...

They may not have been called "levels" in SWG but the skill boxes and XP grind to purchase new boxes was pretty much levels with a different name.

You'd even unlock new abilities and titles and access to equipment from "leveling" your professions.

 

Hmmm...OK...I'll grant you that, but the cool thing was, it wasn't like you were grinding...the game really never felt like a grind in most respects.   I mean sure you could go grind, but I had so many different things my character could do I was always doing something.    Making things, exploring, running my speeder business, tending the bar at the Brass Bantha - dancing - tending harvesters, mining, fighting Imp's...OMG you name it.
 

Originally posted by Teala 

Hmmm...OK...I'll grant you that, but the cool thing was, it wasn't like you were grinding...the game really never felt like a grind in most respects.   I mean sure you could go grind, but I had so many different things my character could do I was always doing something.    Making things, exploring, running my speeder business, tending the bar at the Brass Bantha - dancing - tending harvesters, mining, fighting Imp's...OMG you name it.
 

Personal opinion is personal opinion.

To me most of SWG felt like a long grind.  The fun stuff I wanted to do was always lockd away behind a pointless grind.

I tried to become a crafter in SWG but the grind to skill up was just too much with the crappy interface they had for it.  There was so much cool stuff I was supposed to be able to make and I could not get to it because my hand would get numb after 15 minutes of pointless clicking and very little actual progress.  That left me with the combat professions which meant the mission terminal grind.

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by Josher

Early WOW, back in the begining before TBC.  Just playing, not worrying about end-game, took 4 or 5 month to get to 60.  I did every dungeon, got all the gear I wanted, did every quest I could find and explored every nook and cranny.  Never felt a grind.  Never felt like I was just killing mobs JUST to level, since by the time I cleared an area, I went on to the next.  Now compare that to WAR recently, where I started running out of quests in T3 and doing the same scenario for a few hours got tiresome.  The public quests ran out since no one really did them past T2.  I sure as hell wasn't going to grind mobs or do the first stage in a public quest all night either..  RvR got tiresome as well since trading keeps over and over again didn't really net that much EXP either.  People didn't give a crap about the dungeons much either sad to say.  Although I did a few of them.

DOAC and older MMOs didn't have a leveling curve.  They had a leveling ocean of pure mindless, tedious grindage=)  I never maxed out in DAOC because there were only so many trees one man could possibly kill before wanting to bang his head into one=)

 

Josher must have played a Ranger for the Hibs.  LOL!  

Nope, an Armsman.  Autoattack and 1 usefull special ability, since the others didn't actually work or do more damage than autoattack=) 

Voted WOW, but I like COX's curve best of the P2P's I've played.

Basically at a certain time investment you'll have reached max level in WOW, where you stop getting new abilities and progression is purely loot-based. Whereas in COX at the same time investment you're still leveling and still gaining new abilities (albeit gradually.)

If COX had had a loot system comparably addictive to WOW's that would've helped tremendously. Despite so many superbly-designed systems, COX inevitably gets pulled down by the systems which weren't so strong.

Kinda supprised me how many people voted for FFXI, I woulda thought that most wouldn't have voted for it. Hmmm

The best leveling curve is the one where you are having so much fun and are so "into" the game that you forget you are earning experience and forget to even look at your exp bar and leveling catches you by a surprise.

Sadly, since that level of fun is  a rare thing in today's MMO's, I am not sure I can even begin to say what games has it. For a brief time, AOC and WAR were this way but it ended really quickly.

Honestly, I would have to go with DAOC. Yes it was a grind and yes it was old-school in terms of today's MMO's, but I loved the game so much and had so much fun while playing, I didn't care about levels.

And for the record, I played a Thane. :)

The problem with level based games is they don't offer enough mini milestones.  The only form of reward players get is that one little ding to the next level.  This is why recent mmos have sped up leveling so fast.  No one like playing and playing and .....................................  with no feel of reward.  Perfect example is look at how most of us get paid weekly or bi-weekly.  How would you like to get paid monthly or quarterly?

Originally posted by hean0224
I voted Guild Wars, and I'm speaking of Nightfall. It took probably 24-40 hours playtime to get to max level. I won't play anything that will require more than 150 hours to reach max.

This just shows how different people are who play these same games. Averaging say 20 hours a week I'd want max level (say 50) to take about a year :p

1000 hours does sound weird now i think it aloud.