It is Tuesday and that can only mean one thing: The greatest day of the week, at least as far as lunch is concerned. Taco Tuesday will always stand as the best day because it has something everyone can enjoy, whether you prefer beef, chicken, vegetarian, or even fish. Now, someone once asked me “Omali, do you ever wish Taco Tuesday could be every day?” And I said no, homeless man who walked into my high school cafeteria, I don’t wish Taco Tuesday was every day. Because then it wouldn’t be special, and tacos would simply revert back into meat in a shell.
And I feel that the same should apply to TERA, or any video game for that matter. If you hadn’t heard, En Masse Entertainment recently announced an event called “No Sleep Til 60.” Running from March 12th through March 26th, new accounts (does not include existing accounts) will be rewarded the further they are able to level their characters.
The event, open to anyone who creates a new account after 12:01 a.m. PDT on March 12, will help get you and your friends ready for TERA’s exciting endgame. To enter, all you have to do is start a new TERA account. (Existing players can certainly help the new folks level up, but they can’t start new characters to earn prizes.)
So sixty levels in fourteen days to hit the highest tier. Considering how well my past power leveling stunts have gone, I’ve decided to preempt the inevitable and sit this one out. More often than not for me, these power-leveling events wind up becoming more of a job than a game (which already happens enough writing for MMO Fallout), losing much of the fun of playing it in the process. By setting a goal and forcing users to play in a style that is likely outside of their norm, you risk running the player ragged and burning them out on your game much earlier on than if they had simply joined and started playing normally.
The other risk factors are the players who do reach level 60 by the time the promotion ends, and then they either burn themselves out or run out of things to do and quit anyway. Of course, you also have the risk in cases like this of alienating your existing community by excluding them from an event that could potentially reward $60 worth of cash shop rewards, which En Masse apparently recognized because they completely backpedaled on the terms of the offer and not only included existing accounts and characters but also dropped several rewards from the event entirely.
Then again, I could be entirely wrong on this. If TERA is truly one of those games where the first fifty nine levels are just there to add fluff while the real gaming starts at 60, this could be incredibly successful.
MMO Fallout 
From one point of view, rushing through levels in order to get the rewards seems to undermine the game on many levels. However, I plan to level many different classes (at least 4) in Tera, so if i skip a bit of content in order to obtain the rewards on one character and use my other toon to see the story and enjoy content during the 2nd or 3rd run through the same levels, I am ok with it. Now that it was open to all accounts not just the new ones, events like this will generate good will with the customers one way or another. So I am not upset about anything and i believe that many Tera players feel the same about this issue. Tera is fun and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in trying alternative to WOW MMO game. I think it also very suitable for ex-COH players in particular, because it has very similar power/balance/casual feel to it.