Approaches to Levelling

The other day the subject of how people level came up on Twitter. Or at least it was "the other day" when I wrote the first draft of this post... by now it's been quite a bit longer already. Either way, the point was that I didn't really follow the conversation then, but the subject remained on the back of my mind and got me thinking about my own levelling.

When I first started playing and created Shintar the Commando, I would say my play style was what you could call exploratory. I wanted to see as many different things as possible, including group content and PvP, but I wasn't hung up on any kind of completionism, skipping both Taris and Alderaan in their entirety except for my class story. I figured that being over-levelled wasn't going to be very fun, and there were always going to be alts. I didn't do Taris's main and bonus story arc for the first time until I levelled my Guardian, and Alderaan on my Sage. This way I eventually explored all the game had to offer, sticking my nose into different types of content with every new alt.

Then my pet tank and I became an item, and he infected me with his completionism. We levelled a couple of characters by doing all the quests on every planet, over-levelling be damned. However, eventually he lost his taste for that and when left to my own devices I returned to picking and choosing whatever I fancied at the time, while sticking to the class story as my guiding thread. With XP gains getting buffed, I actually needed to do less and less to keep up with it, but the changes did allow me to revisit some class stories that I had already completed with relative ease. However, there were only so many times I really wanted to replay the same class story in quick succession.

Last year's Dark vs. Light event managed to reinvigorate my interest in levelling by inviting me not to care about the class story for a change and to simply chase levels. For the sake of the achievement I revelled in things like doing lowbie PvP and flashpoints, where I played with the handicap of a limited skill set and unfamiliar specs, and I had a right blast doing so.

However, in the end the whole experience also left me feeling a bit adrift. The class story always served as a sort of anchor for my levelling. I would even say that story is more important in SWTOR than levels themselves. The progression of the two systems used to largely line up, so their separation wasn't that noticeable for me, but nowadays you'll run out of levels to work on long before you've even scratched the surface of all the story threads.

What point is there then in rolling up more alts if I haven't even bothered to re-experience all the stories with my existing ones? If I did want to re-play the consular for a third time for example, I couldn't help but think of the consulars I already have and that haven't even finished their story, even though they sit at high levels. It's a bit of an awkward situation. Part of why I've been able to throw myself into my new flashpoint levelling series with so much vigour is that it's allowed me to level another character with a purpose. If I want to chase levels just for the sake of chasing levels, Galactic Command offers plenty of opportunity for that at the level cap these days.

Sometimes I think that my best bet might well be to try out alt life on another server for a bit - except that there are fewer of those around now than ever. Not having a huge legacy of pre-existing characters lends the whole exercise at least some semblance of freshness, and I suppose I could work towards getting Legendary Player status a second time or something...

What motivates you to create new alts after you've more or less seen it all?