In the January 6-8th installment of USA Weekend, the weekly gloss insert published in local newspapers nationwide, World of Warcraft didn't make the front cover or even the feature callout on the sidebar. That much was to be expected. Between parenting tips, pop star gossip and the NFL playoffs, MMO gaming is still small potatoes, culturally speaking. But imagine my surprise when, flipping through the pages over a bowl of cornflakes, I discovered a small story sandwiched between half- and full-page ads entitled: "Is It Cheating? Casual gamers pay to advance to higher levels." Paul Bond, writer for the Weekend, queried Rob Bartlett on the cool million his wow power leveling service Power Gamers Matrix made for him last year. The article was somewhat of a letdown; Bond never explored the question asked in the headline, but simply scudded along the surface, measuring how much it costs to level a character to sixty (over $1,000) and how long it might take a gaming purist to "cap out" (18 days, playing 24/7). That got me to thinking... is paid wow power leveling cheating, or are the indulgent only cheating themselves?

Not to get all "bitter old man" on you, but I remember the days when unpaid power leveling was the raging debate. A significantly higher level player would equip, heal, and otherwise augment an inexperienced player, enabling the character to take on much tougher mobs than he or she could otherwise and thereby garnering loads of bonus experience and level faster. Games like Dark Age of Camelot and Anarchy Online arrived on the scene in 2001 and promptly ended the heyday of wow power leveling, instituted experience limits based on the relation of your player to the highest player in the group. The difference between then and now is that powerlevelling in games like EverQuest Live, power leveling (or PL) was something a higher level character did out of the goodness of their heart, presumably to advance you to a level where you could group with them and actually contribute something to the group. It was a social thing too; you had to be bodily present, playing your character. With today's commercially available wow power leveling, the standards instituted with DAoC and AO still apply. You're not forking over cash to play along with a higher-level character, you're paying someone to actually play your character around the clock and level him up. To paraphrase Bartlett, his service is for people with more money than time.

We at TenTonHammer have just finished pulling all the "gold ads" (advertisements from companies that make profit off of selling virtual cash for real money) from our network. Most of us are opponents of the "secondary market" -- a broad term which might be applied to power leveling and gold-selling alike -- if for no other reason than it ruins the spirit of the game. The biggest draws of an MMO is the carefully-crafted uniqueness of your individual character, and the tangential social opportunities the game provides. The fact that you're going to run into people you don't know in-game is what makes the game massively-multiplayer. You can certainly avoid them, either going it alone to sticking close to players you know, but a lot of players enjoy coming out of their shells a bit and discovering that there are people with similar geeky interests out there.

It's no surprise then that the target demographic of MMOs is somewhere between college and kids; what might be described as the social doldrums of life. I first began to play seriously when, fresh out of college, I accepted a job that transported me to a little corner of Indiana, a long ways away from family and friends in the mid-Atlantic states. Here I knew no one, worked long hours on odd days, found no quiet bars or coffeehouses like my usual college haunts, and had little interest in local pastimes like Euchre, bingo, and tractor-pulls. On top of that, I expected another transfer at any moment to a location even farther removed from loved ones. In short, I tried not to put down roots, and resorted to a community that was easy to interact with no matter where I was, geographically. Though I've played just about every big-name MMO to come along, WoW is my latest obsession. And, even though today's MMORPGs certainly cater more to the casual gamer, the community is still more than the glazed crust on the gaming pie.

I'm a big fan of what World of Warcraft has done for the genre. The game has become a cultural phenomenon, and continues to grow by the million every few months. I don't remember seeing an MMO mentioned in the mainstream print media prior to WoW. While some believe that powerlevelling is simply buying yourself the fame, fortune, and opportunities of a higher level, I see it as a tawdry shortcut to a higher level community. Problem being, one of the things that make WoW great is the fun you can have even at the lowest levels. Want danger and excitement? Try tackling a set of level-stretching quests solo inside one of the non-instanced enemy-stuffed mines, camps, towns, and fortresses scattered across Azeroth. Tired of going it alone? Shout out the quests you're working on in guildchat or general chat; odds are you'll have a set of companions in less than a few minutes. Want the challenge of player vs. player combat? In the matter of a few days of determined play, you'll be ready for the first of WoW's PvP battlegrounds: Warsong Gulch. Sign up in the nearest city, go back to your errands, and you'll be transported to the battleground when enough Alliance and Horde players have joined up.

Bottom line, paying for wow power leveling is a lot like paying for sex. It's quick and dirty, and if you have the spare cash (or even a credit card) it's certainly possible. It even sounds like a good idea beforehand. But if you go ahead with it, you'll probably find out that your situation, generally speaking, isn't much improved. You might be disappointed to find that life is still life, and a game is still a game, and in the end, it only matters how well you've played. I'm sure, after you pay for PL, you'll be able to learn to play your character just fine. But all the intangibles-- the patience, the group dynamics, the hard work, and the simple courtesy it would have normally taken to get there-- won't be in place. I imagine that, unless you already have friends to group with, you'll get bored with playing the game fairly quickly at your newly unearned level. The journey is still, in fact, more than half the fun.