Yoshida' stance on PL and why it is less than ideal.

[Sephr]

I find it amusing that a lot of the same people that are whining about power leveling are the same people who like to whine in all the auction house threads about how they want to be able to buy stuff right from the menu.

My instant gratification is good. Your instant gratification is evil.

Wha...? I don't see the relationship between the two at all.

Buying items should be instant because, unless you want to be heavily involved in the economy, you should be able to get what you need and then go do fun stuff rather than get bogged down in crappy poorly implemented systems. The levelling process isn't an inconvenience unique to this game and largely seen as a flaw by definition to many RPG players. Personally it's part of the fun for me to have a character grow over time.

If the levelling process had more content and stuff like level syncs I don't think people would be so concerned about rushing to the final cap as there'd be more to do. I think if PLing was balanced so it didn't give such a HUGE advantage over regular levelling it would be fine, just make it so that it roughly gives the same exp per hour as what you'd expect from a normal party or whatever.

I do think side-kick systems are the best way to get around these problems though, being able to buff a friend's level up temporarily or reduce your own seems like a more fun solution than one player doing all the work for another.

Basically:

"People should only be allowed to enjoy the game the way I think they should enjoy it."

I don't really see how that's what he was saying. I think there's more concern that anything below the max level will become irrelevant, making it an unenjoyable experience for new players who'll be pretty much on their own 1-50. What's the point in having levels at all if everyone's maxxed so quickly? It removes a sense of progression and development, we might as well all just have a text menu on screen, queue for groups to instances/battlegrounds and ignore the rest.