Pre-made or grind

For those who plan to PvP do you plan to power level your toon to 20 befre you dive in or do you plan to just go straight for the pre-mades?

Why on earth would you use Pre-mades ? So that you have skills that don't mesh with the rest of your guild ? So you don't get to unlock the Zealous components for your warrior and ranger ? I see no point whatsoever in using Pre-mades.

And by the way there's no such thing as power leveling unless you mean getting help from a lvl 20 character to do the missions with you. This will also take you alot of time.

With any leveling system there is power leveling.

Whatever dude. There isn't power leveling in GuildWars, but it's okay if you don't know that. Really, it is.

*Edit* Go to this link and you'll learn why.

Powerlevelling is a mentality, not a threshold for the amount of hours you spend getting to point X. As long as you focus on optimal levelling speed (getting armour, runes, weapons from others, having your char ran through exploration areas to get to a certain point where you level most efficiently), that's powerlevelling.

Regardless of how inefficient or pointless you consider powerlevelling in GW, it can most certainly be done.

The point of the game is to create you own character, and use that for PVP. The fun of the game is going from level to 20, learning your character, the skills and how to use them properly.

There is no fun in been lvl 20, and not putting any effort into it. Start from scratch, you will enjoy the game more.

The effort you put into pre-made PvP characters is unlocking the skills and upgrades. It simply allows you to change your character around without having to spend a week levelling a new character. For a lot of GW players the level 20 PvP content is the only interesting content, I don't think they care to spend a week re-familiarizing themselves with how Orison of Healing works against monster AI.

Silmor, I didn't know it had a legal definition and you are it's most esteemed author

What you described is merely leveling. What is and isnt' most efficient is relative in facts and point-of-view otherwise. So as far as power leveling being a mentality, what isn't?... Okay, so what's your point? No quams with someone seeing leveling as power leveling in their mind.

Back on point?...

So now in context of GuildWars from the meaning of level, the developers have made it clear that level is insignificant. Thereby the entire use of the word "power" is a misnomer when used with GuildWars. There is "efficient" leveling. And maybe even "super efficient" leveling, there might be some $25 modifiers you could use too but I am none all that intelligent to know those.

How about "uber godly beyond the scope of possible efficient" leveling from hell? In context of how little time it takes as well as how little effort, seeing as the two happen to be very correlated by design as far as GuildWars is concerned, it would appear there really isn't any "power" leveling whatsoever.

I know, it's just astounding. Who would have thunk it could be possible that a gaming company wouldn't stoop so low as to make a game we could quickly level and have fun with whether novice or pro gamer? I am as appauled as you are, we should write Congress to make sure we can keep the terms "power leveling," "grind," "boredom," and "preparing to have fun" from ever being used together in the same sentence, especially in any way that would suggest a synonymous meaning so far as online gaming is concerned.

My God we need to stop the GuildWars revolution at once or we might find ourselves entirely enjoying this masterpiece of programming genius (73k, that's "k' client) and stop seeking to tie it into every game we've ever known and all their conditioned meanings, reflex assumption, and involvments that took us sometimes years to discover only to be outside the purview of the list of great players ever once more.

Hopefully point understood, taken, and enjoyed. I sure had fun.

The guy tries to come off as a know-it-all; seriously learn some humility. He answered the question of the thread creator and in this case a one sentence answer would suffice.

The thread author does care, since he asked the question ...

Sin, the moment a player can influence the speed at which his avatar gains power in the form of levels, a player can strive to optimize this speed, with or without the help of others. It's what constitutes the largest part of player skill in traditional MMORPGs, it plays a far smaller part in GW, but it's still there. What is powerlevelling according to you, if not this?

Sure, you can't powerlevel after you reach the level cap, and in Guild Wars a large portion of the content takes place after you reach that cap, but that doesn't take away the possibility for players to strive to reach level 20 as swiftly as possible. That's powerlevelling in the same way as trying to reach level 99 in another game as quickly as possible. You seem to regard it as a negative thing, and load every negative personal experience with RPGs (grinding, boredom, preparing to have fun) onto it in order to somehow demonize it. I was trying to establish the term, not give my opinion on it, because I doubt anyone cares about my opinion on it.

Until ArenaNet forces everyone to take it slow and have fun (which seems impossible, because most restriction detracts from fun), there will be people who powerlevel. To assist those people who care only for the post-level 20 content, ArenaNet provides premade PvP characters using skills and upgrades you unlocked previously, so a lot of them will choose this option instead of powerlevelling like they usually would in order to reroll a character.

Sin, from the way I see it, you're just wrong, and defending your position against powerleveling vehemetly.

No matter how hard they try, the developers of Guild Wars can't eliminate powerleveling, powerleveling is what is going to happen in any competetive RPG if every character in the world is trying to get to level 20. Powerleveling IS a mentality, and it's the fact that a lot of players are trying to reach level 20 rather then enjoy the game.

What he was describing wasn't leveling, leveling is gaining a level, what he was describing was the process of playing ONLY to get levels.

i am not a mod either but you can be assurred that if the post offended policy it would be gone or moved to another part of the site.
since it was left in peace where it was it seems to have passed muster.

your responce however seens to have caused a bit of friction

I am a PvE man so I guess that answers weither I will start over or just use to pre-made, also you get better skills and weapons to use in PvP by going on quest and Missions so it is in everones best instrest to level up. It will only take about 30hrs

So if you are playing at all, meaning killing anything and doing quests to get exp, you aren't power leveling even though exp is what you are getting and you are gaining levels and that's why you are killing things and doing the quests?

Pardon me they sound the same. hahahaha

*Edit* By the way, no one playing the game does this seeking to be less efficient as they do it either. I know it's just mind boggling. Please keep reading what you want to hear into what I am saying, obviously that's helping alot.

It's okay, you all need to hang on to your idea of "establishing a term" or telling someone they're wrong for your righteousness. I totally understand, I was there too once. Believed some things are just cast in stone. Can't wait until you learn otherwise. Really.

Establish away oh great ones, you obviously have a better handle on this than I merely because you say so. hahahahah

Thanks for keeping this respectful and intellectual, Sin.

Dude your desire to read what you want and claim someone elses meaning of things is what you say it is is yours alone. I merely said what I meant and didn't put words in your mouth or suggest I knew what you meant in my own way. That was your doing. So be careful where you derive your sense of righteousness.

What grind? It's only 20 levels.

By the grind he means that a player's main objective will be getting to level 20 as quickly as possible, instead of making it a more natural progression by doing every single quest, completing all the missions, taking the time to explore every area, etc.

Not only this thread. The forums generaly.

To answer the rather reasonable original question.

I'll divide my time and will probably check out the pre-mades a little, especialy if some good ones are on offer and my guild is ready to go, but mostly I will work on getting my first RP character up to level 20 and unlock some stuff and make my millions. Then I'll PvP most of the time.

You make a good point Lamaros....

The "long" way. Gaining skills at no skill point cost, as many will be quest rewards, seems the better way to go so far as ones character having as many skills as possible, especially since the game revolves around skill and not level.

I'll play PvE till level 20. Then will take a dip in the PvP realm... haven't tried it yet . And as for the debate, power levelling is what you deem it to be. You want it to be a mentality, then it's a mentality. For those of us who played an RPG or two from the old days (text based and 2-d). The term itself came from an exploit in those games where higher level characters would take lower level characters in their group and face off against monsters while protecting the lower levels... in those days it was a simple algorithm to define how much EXP the group won... then divide it equally. Like an average. This way it benefitted both parties. Hence, power levelling in its birth stages. We've come a long way since then. Now most games don't spread the exp equally among the party members and there are much more complicated algorithms used in determining EXP on a per person player per group difficulty. Ok, I exaggerate on the complicated, but it's better than an average or something similar. SO, power levelling came from an exploit (if you could really call it an exploit).Be as it may, power levelling in it's first form is not in Guild Wars... as a mentality you could say it exists. But Sin has a point, you can define anything as a mentality... I'm going to work towards getting wings and making my character fly through the levels... that is a mentality... yet it doesn't exist in the game but I can still attempt it. Power levelling is more obscure. As you can probably guess, new users we're intimidated by the higher level characters and the higher level characters used and abused the new users to the point they quit the game for not being involved...

Lansing Kai Don

I haven't liked any of the premades entirely. I don't see taking a character and levelling them up to 20 as a grind. I use that time to learn how my character can be useful in a group. As my character levels and gains experience, I try out different strategies with different groups and monsters. I believe the PvE experience can help in getting your character ready for PvP. While there are fundamentally differences between PvE and PvP, I do believe I can learn alot concerning what my self-built character will perform in PvP.

Each character has its own weaknesses and strengths. I believe by playing all through 20 levels, which doesn't take long, I can be an advantage.

The first few times I make a GW character up to 20 it won't be a grind. After that, it sure will be for me.

You can bet that I'll be powerleveling in every possible way after that. This will change, of course, as each expansion comes out, fortunately. That is, until I play through those maps a few times each also

There is nothing about GW PvE that magically makes repetitively playing through the same maps any less of a grind than any other game that requires repetitive play to achieve my goals.

I'm going to make

Ranger/Mesmer
Elementalist/Monk
Warrior/Necro

So I can unlock most of the useful skills and then my last guy will be my PvPer.

So I'm not going to "GRIND" through PvE. Because PvE is not "grind". PvE is part of the game. Since when is part of a game (in GW) not fun?!

The same way that part of the game in EQ is grinding to 60 by repetitive gameplay, so can any game be. I don't like doing the same maps over and over and most people would agree with that.

Grind means doing the same thing over again rather than exploring fresh content.

I doubt there are much power leveling one can do at all... As they said, you probably hit lv20 within 20-30 hours... The only reason for power leveling is to get ALOT ALOT of skills points... but wth, finishing one quest is like 1000 exp... so it would be power-questing not power-leveling @_@

there are defintely power-hunting =P

I would probably have 3 PvE leveled characters, and leave 1 slot for PvP premade just to fool around with... that might change as time goes.

I think that power-leveling is pretty much always for the same reason. You want to reach your goal as fast as possible because you aren't enjoying yourself.

I like to savor my RPGs, but then, I'm mostly a PvE player. For someone who ONLY really wants to PvP, I can see that pretty much all PvE would want to be power-leveled through as quickly and efficiently as possible. Why? Because they want to get to the PvP that is their goal.

I'll be using pre-mades until I have well established characters. The pre-mades are actually very good builds if you know how to use them properly.

As far as power leveling goes, I'll play my first character through to do all the missions and quests and whatnot, then every character after will be "power leveled" for the sole purpose of gathering skills for PvP.

"Ain't nothin' wrong with a little bump and griiiiind"

I agree, I would much rather quest for my skills PvE than spend my points on them. By doing a natural progression in the game, one is better able to test different builds and skills. I think it will be very interesting to test the effects of gift skills, instead of spending points on skills that you will find not to your liking. The natural progression of levels will just happen, and I belive your character will be that much more apt to handle PvP situations, no matter what they are up against.

to get back on track, i will be leveling as hard as i can and looting at the same time.

perhaps premades after ive unlocked enough skills/items for it to be flexible.