New Ascalon

I've been slowly building my Elementalist up from level 1, I'm only at level 10 now. Out of curiousity I started a level 20 character and noticed that all of the hard work was already done for me.

My question is, is there any real point, or benefit, to painstackingly taking a character throughout the whole world other than gratification? Or is it meant more as a simple tutorial?

Starting at level 20 is indeed easier, but this is by and large a BWE convenience. Since people only have one weekend a month, the option to create high level characters is there for people who want to see more content in the limited time frame. Come release, though it hasn't been cemented one way or another, it seems unlikely that we'll be able to start off at level 20 right off the bat. So in that perspective, starting from level 1 is more than just about the experience, it's a more accurate representation of how we will have to progress our characters and play through the game.

I don't think you'll have the option to simply create a level 20 character once the game goes live. You can make a level 20 Ready-Made character, but they have a fixed skill set and cannot upgrade anything or do any PvE. Think the devs are letting people make a normal level 20 now just so they can try it out.


Edit: Gah, Spooky beat me by seconds once again! I wonder who is stalking who here...

I gotcha, that makes more sense then, but it brings up another question, will the level 20 characters that we make now during the beta periods still be available come the final release? if so it would give us a pretty huge advantage over those who didn't get the beta release, but if not it would be a waist of time for people working on their level 20's right now.

Everything will be wiped for the release (except saved character names). So don't get too attatched to your chars, this is only a preview of things to come.

Damn, thats kind of disheartening, I was hoping they were at least going to let us keep the lvl 1 starter characters, but oh well, i guess it makes sense.

If they'd let everyone keep their custom characters, the people who have just purchased the game would have a huge disadvantage against the people who played the BWE, so I guess it's only a logical decision from ArenaNet.

That problem will also arise if you buy the game a month later.
It is inevitable that there are lvl 20's who are futher along than other chars.
Not that I mind ppl having a higher level char or that pre-orders can play a day in advance, which by your own words would result in an unfair advantage.