A growing trend in several MMOs ever since Eve Online popularized the mechanic, has been offline training: skills and abilities that level even though you are offline. Eve Online and Alganon are just two games to utilize this feature, with Age of Conan recently joining the fray:
In games like Eve Online, considering your character is not under a level system, the research done into your character can make a difference in what ships you can pilot, your weapon loadout, replacing the traditional leveling system. In Alganon, your offline research tree has more to do with small boosts to stats than anything else. Extra damage with certain weapons, extra defense against certain elements, and more. The offline progression doesn’t have a make-or-break impact on the game, but it is nice to have any advantage you can.
If Age Of Conan is one thing, it isn’t subtle. Rather than opt to give players simple stat increases in an alternate training tree, Funcom wants to give you levels while you are offline. Every four days you will receive a level in your account, in order to distribute to a character of your choice. Your account must be active, and the character receiving the level has to be at least level 30.
This should help casual players with hardcore players just seeing it as a small help. Despite some claims, there isn’t much danger of this “replacing” grinding for levels, as it only replaces one level every four days. For those who don’t want to take part, you are always free to leave the levels to accumulate, and use them on an alternate character one day, or just let them rot.
More on Age of Conan as it appears.
MMO Fallout 
I quite like the idea of this off line levelling. It means if I have a character I’m stuck with, I can roll an alt. and play with that one whilst awaiting the levels to build to be used on my main.