Does it exist?

I know all of my deepest experiences in CF always came from playing characters who took their time and heroed in 150-200 hours. But my recent experiences have left me with feeling that it's not really possible anymore. With the condensed playerbase, all the fun is at level 51. Maybe I should just unlearn the unwritten rule.

Thoughts?

I love me some power leveling, and I try to with every char I play. I also tend to do a lot of theory crafted builds with warriors or rangers, which tends to require hitting hero range for full access of terrain/expertise/legacy/spec fun.

The biggest thing you need to remember is that you should be playing this game for what makes it fun for you, whether that is power leveling or taking 200 hrs to build and develop your char.

I don't think anyone really cares, as long as you're not that guy who keeps sending the lowbies retrieving their cabal item from them faux-IC tells about how they need to level.

The flip side of that is, don't expect to get promoted/leadered/empowered/whatever'd fast just because you're hero already, either.

I feel that being a lowbie means you can expect never to get leader, or else that newer chars that rush to hero can expect to get leader positions more readily.

edit: And I don't like that this is true.

I don't think lowbies should get to lead, no matter what they accomplish, because the challenges they face can be selected by them in such a way as to render the challenges minor. For example, killing many people as a lowbie unshifted shifter is actually no challenge at all to someone that properly understands the mechanics of lowbie pk.

I would restrict leadership to those at hero but also expect people to prove themselves at hero. As leaders and not just pk'rs. Otherwise you've got guys that can't even convince their guild to rank them highly being made preeminent elsewhere.

I hate seeing lowbies made leaders, because I can't think of a single case where they've demonstrated themselves to be worthy by that point, bearing in mind that they've probably exploited sweet spots to accomplish things easily.

I did try this fairly recently. I don't think I considered it a real success. I'm not opposed to doing it again. I think people want to see longevity in a leader and you never know if you're going to get a keeper at low levels. You don't at hero levels either but once someone has put 100+ hours in and effort into their RP and seems to be enjoying the experience, it's a lot safer bet that they'll lead for a while.

I'm not sure if it puts it in perspective but right now 23% of the mud's population is between levels 41-51. 15% is 21-30 and 95 covers the range between that.