How old is my character ?(just a think-piece)

Bmitchell64 · 05-02-2009, 02:18 PM

First let me say, I know the game does not have any component that equates to an age of a character . I just was thinking that if all my characters started adventuring around the same age then hold old would they be at the currenty level of development.

My idea uses the base age of 15 (squire, student mage, young adventurer) who has set out to find his/her own life. Since the only tool for aging is the character's leveling then this will be component, but not a straight forward 1yr for every level. A 80 character would end up being 95 yr old .

So, for every two levels the character would be considered to be one year older, which means the 80 character would be a mature 55 years old and considered a master in their field. I don't use the tradeskill for aging since a person could always be more advanced/or less advanced than their age suggests (not all warriors are good at making weapons or armour or mages good at making spells and potions.) But this is getting off track...

So between level 1 to 10 then the character is living his/her teens, learning the ropes as they say, at the ages of 15-19 years old. At the age of 20 years old when the characters, after making Lvl 10, is ready to take on the world as a young adventurer in EQ land (especially since this is when the game goes "no holds-barred on the characters and the player get to learn the hard way about using the adventurer skills.)

As I said, this is just a simple RP think piece that gives my characters some reality and does not represent any real rule for character development;

My senior character is a 60 Guardian which makes him 45 years old

My next favorite character is the adopted brother, a 41 Paladin - 35 years old

The Guardian has a younger brother, 30 Paladin - 30 years old

The distant cousin to the adopted brother, Paladin, and family friend is a 26 Ranger - 28 years old

And the old Guardian is robbing the cradle with a 21 Fury (female) - 25 years old (he may be old but he still gots the moves... every story has to have a love interest... right!!!)

The age of the character is really up to the player, but this is my way of saying, "That young punk (Lvl 20 something) whatever is still wet behind the ears and could learn a thing or two from this experienced (Lvl 55+) blowhard."

Enjoy the idea and nit-pick it to your delight...

Xalmat · 05-02-2009, 02:27 PM

Well, if you use /time you can see the in-game year. And I believe it's approximately 20 years per real life year. So if your character was created at launch, he would be 90 years older right now

Official lore however stays close to real life time: 1 year in Real Life is 1 year in In-Game Lore time. Last year when we had the pre-Shadow Odyssey storyline going on, it was stated that only 3 years had passed at the time (which is identical to the amount of time since the game launched). So not all that much time has actually passed.

Level isn't actually related to lore, but rather an arbitrary game mechanic. It's not used as a storytelling mechanic (there was a dev post on this a few years ago).

If levels were related to age (ie: 1 level per year), Mayong Mistmoore would be several hundred levels, dragons in Veeshan's Peak would be several thousand levels, and the Gods and their Avatars would be infinite levels (as most Gods are timeless).

Keep in mind that some races have a short life span. Humans for example live to be an average of 75 years, while most Elves can live to be hundreds of years old. And as is true for all mercenaries, all adventurers (as we, the player are) come from all walks of life, to the young seeking adventure, to the aged war veteran looking for one final glorious battle, to the middle aged without a cause, etc, etc.

Lethe5683 · 05-03-2009, 06:55 PM

Bmitchell64 wrote:

First let me say, I know the game does not have any component that equates to an age of a character . I just was thinking that if all my characters started adventuring around the same age then hold old would they be at the currenty level of development.
My idea uses the base age of 15 (squire, student mage, young adventurer) who has set out to find his/her own life. Since the only tool for aging is the character's leveling then this will be component, but not a straight forward 1yr for every level. A 80 character would end up being 95 yr old .
So, for every two levels the character would be considered to be one year older, which means the 80 character would be a mature 55 years old and considered a master in their field. I don't use the tradeskill for aging since a person could always be more advanced/or less advanced than their age suggests (not all warriors are good at making weapons or armour or mages good at making spells and potions.) But this is getting off track...
So between level 1 to 10 then the character is living his/her teens, learning the ropes as they say, at the ages of 15-19 years old. At the age of 20 years old when the characters, after making Lvl 10, is ready to take on the world as a young adventurer in EQ land (especially since this is when the game goes "no holds-barred on the characters and the player get to learn the hard way about using the adventurer skills.)
As I said, this is just a simple RP think piece that gives my characters some reality and does not represent any real rule for character development;
My senior character is a 60 Guardian which makes him 45 years old
My next favorite character is the adopted brother, a 41 Paladin - 35 years old
The Guardian has a younger brother, 30 Paladin - 30 years old
The distant cousin to the adopted brother, Paladin, and family friend is a 26 Ranger - 28 years old
And the old Guardian is robbing the cradle with a 21 Fury (female) - 25 years old (he may be old but he still gots the moves... every story has to have a love interest... right!!!)
The age of the character is really up to the player, but this is my way of saying, "That young punk (Lvl 20 something) whatever is still wet behind the ears and could learn a thing or two from this experienced (Lvl 55+) blowhard."
Enjoy the idea and nit-pick it to your delight...

Interesting but I would not want my character to be 55 years old.

Cusashorn · 05-03-2009, 08:13 PM

I once asked this question back in EQlive on the monkly-business forums. If you take into account that 1 minute in Norrath is 6 seconds, you can pretty much figure out how old your character is with the right conversions.

You would have to calculate the age of your character non-stop from the day and hour you created it. You would not factor in any server downtime in that process.

Lethe5683 · 05-03-2009, 08:31 PM

Cusashorn wrote:

I once asked this question back in EQlive on the monkly-business forums. If you take into account that 1 minute in Norrath is 6 seconds, you can pretty much figure out how old your character is with the right conversions.
You would have to calculate the age of your character non-stop from the day and hour you created it. You would not factor in any server downtime in that process.

If I did that correctly, and assumed my character was ~18 at creation they would now be ~26. (How long do Ratonga live anyways?)

Meirril · 05-04-2009, 04:14 AM

Tying character age to level doesn't work out right. Especially considering that if you have a buddy bonus going for you I've seen characters level from 1-80 in two weeks. Crafting is almost as fast.

More reasonable is assume your character is any starting age you want him to be. Then add one year for each Frostfell you've seen. If you like, tack on an extra year or skip one. Nobody's going to ask to see your Birth Certificate unless your trying to /claim vetran rewards...

Cusashorn · 05-04-2009, 08:30 AM

Like I said, every 6 seconds in real life is 1 minute on Norrath. You can easily factor in your character's age if you do the right calculations non-stop from the moment you created your character.

Meirril · 05-04-2009, 11:28 PM

Cusashorn wrote:

Like I said, every 6 seconds in real life is 1 minute on Norrath. You can easily factor in your character's age if you do the right calculations non-stop from the moment you created your character.

So Kosiv, created the first day that AB was up just to lock the name down, has been on the isle of refuge for 40 years? Huh, talk about an under achiever. I think he's still a "fighter".

More to the point, Justin and Meirril would both be 58 assuming that both Barbarians and Halflings begin their adventuring careers at the age of 18. (ok, probably should be a bit younger, but 18 is a good age to arbitraraly pick) Barbarians arn't exactly a long lived race. Assuming I keep playing and one real year = 10 "Norrathian" years then in another 2 years does Justin get a walker for a vetran reward?

For the short lived races at this level of conversion we can outlive the race's expected lifespan without any physical deteriation. Indeed, we stay physically exactly the same as the day we started. No significant improvement, no deteriation at all.

Then again, we also die a lot and come back for no apparent reason. Maybe I just come from a long line of very determined and suicidal paladins who take up the quest that killed their clan member but meer moments ago? Its a game mechanic, it doesn't have to make sense?

Cerinthe · 06-05-2009, 10:16 PM

I know back at Launch, (when almost all my characters were created) you could set a slider that "aged" your characters appearance. My gnome gal, my main, entered the game looking at least middle aged for a long lived species and I never associated levels with age SMILEY . I figured they were measures of proficiency, as they clearly are in tradeskills, or status or some other thing, but nothing directly to do with her time on Norrath.

Did we loose that option? Do we all have to start out as fresh faced, dewey eyed newbies and never in the middle of the story? Did that go away with the idea that we were refugees rescued after a cataclysm and learning to live in a changed world? I don't have a slot open to check with another character, but my gal still looks her age to me. Acts it too, so I kind of hope she doesn't look like the Ingenue to everyone else SMILEY .

Cerinthe

steelbadger · 06-06-2009, 06:17 AM

Urm, I think the age-slider was a gnome only option anyway, I certainly can remember being showed it back in the day and it was deffo an option when I made my early characters but I can't remember a slider for my first character (erudite) or second characters and onwards (all ratonga).

Meirril · 06-06-2009, 07:13 AM

The age slider only made your character look dirty. It didn't make you look older. I think that got dropped before the game went live, but I'm not 100% sure. Its been almost 5 years hasn't it? I'm fairly sure that the age slider was dropped at some point.

Paladin776 · 06-15-2009, 06:17 AM

Meirril wrote:

The age slider only made your character look dirty. It didn't make you look older. I think that got dropped before the game went live, but I'm not 100% sure. Its been almost 5 years hasn't it? I'm fairly sure that the age slider was dropped at some point.

I had to create a human paladin earlier in the week and the age slider is still there, at least for humans. It's in the section "Body" under the size slider.

Cusashorn · 06-15-2009, 12:19 PM

The age slider was only available for certain races to begin with. Mainly, Humans, Barbarians, and Dwarves.

05-02-2009, 02:27 PM	#2
Xalmat EQ2Achieve.com Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 5,895	Well, if you use /time you can see the in-game year. And I believe it's approximately 20 years per real life year. So if your character was created at launch, he would be 90 years older right now Official lore however stays close to real life time: 1 year in Real Life is 1 year in In-Game Lore time. Last year when we had the pre-Shadow Odyssey storyline going on, it was stated that only 3 years had passed at the time (which is identical to the amount of time since the game launched). So not all that much time has actually passed. Level isn't actually related to lore, but rather an arbitrary game mechanic. It's not used as a storytelling mechanic (there was a dev post on this a few years ago). If levels were related to age (ie: 1 level per year), Mayong Mistmoore would be several hundred levels, dragons in Veeshan's Peak would be several thousand levels, and the Gods and their Avatars would be infinite levels (as most Gods are timeless). Keep in mind that some races have a short life span. Humans for example live to be an average of 75 years, while most Elves can live to be hundreds of years old. And as is true for all mercenaries, all adventurers (as we, the player are) come from all walks of life, to the young seeking adventure, to the aged war veteran looking for one final glorious battle, to the middle aged without a cause, etc, etc. __________________ EQ2Achieve - Your guide to all EverQuest II Achievements

05-03-2009, 06:55 PM	#3
Lethe5683 Loremaster Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 5,351	Bmitchell64 wrote: First let me say, I know the game does not have any component that equates to an age of a character . I just was thinking that if all my characters started adventuring around the same age then hold old would they be at the currenty level of development. My idea uses the base age of 15 (squire, student mage, young adventurer) who has set out to find his/her own life. Since the only tool for aging is the character's leveling then this will be component, but not a straight forward 1yr for every level. A 80 character would end up being 95 yr old . So, for every two levels the character would be considered to be one year older, which means the 80 character would be a mature 55 years old and considered a master in their field. I don't use the tradeskill for aging since a person could always be more advanced/or less advanced than their age suggests (not all warriors are good at making weapons or armour or mages good at making spells and potions.) But this is getting off track... So between level 1 to 10 then the character is living his/her teens, learning the ropes as they say, at the ages of 15-19 years old. At the age of 20 years old when the characters, after making Lvl 10, is ready to take on the world as a young adventurer in EQ land (especially since this is when the game goes "no holds-barred on the characters and the player get to learn the hard way about using the adventurer skills.) As I said, this is just a simple RP think piece that gives my characters some reality and does not represent any real rule for character development; My senior character is a 60 Guardian which makes him 45 years old My next favorite character is the adopted brother, a 41 Paladin - 35 years old The Guardian has a younger brother, 30 Paladin - 30 years old The distant cousin to the adopted brother, Paladin, and family friend is a 26 Ranger - 28 years old And the old Guardian is robbing the cradle with a 21 Fury (female) - 25 years old (he may be old but he still gots the moves... every story has to have a love interest... right!!!) The age of the character is really up to the player, but this is my way of saying, "That young punk (Lvl 20 something) whatever is still wet behind the ears and could learn a thing or two from this experienced (Lvl 55+) blowhard." Enjoy the idea and nit-pick it to your delight... Interesting but I would not want my character to be 55 years old.

05-03-2009, 08:31 PM	#5
Lethe5683 Loremaster Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 5,351	Cusashorn wrote: I once asked this question back in EQlive on the monkly-business forums. If you take into account that 1 minute in Norrath is 6 seconds, you can pretty much figure out how old your character is with the right conversions. You would have to calculate the age of your character non-stop from the day and hour you created it. You would not factor in any server downtime in that process. If I did that correctly, and assumed my character was ~18 at creation they would now be ~26. (How long do Ratonga live anyways?)

05-04-2009, 11:28 PM	#8
Meirril Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 3,552	Cusashorn wrote: Like I said, every 6 seconds in real life is 1 minute on Norrath. You can easily factor in your character's age if you do the right calculations non-stop from the moment you created your character. So Kosiv, created the first day that AB was up just to lock the name down, has been on the isle of refuge for 40 years? Huh, talk about an under achiever. I think he's still a "fighter". More to the point, Justin and Meirril would both be 58 assuming that both Barbarians and Halflings begin their adventuring careers at the age of 18. (ok, probably should be a bit younger, but 18 is a good age to arbitraraly pick) Barbarians arn't exactly a long lived race. Assuming I keep playing and one real year = 10 "Norrathian" years then in another 2 years does Justin get a walker for a vetran reward? For the short lived races at this level of conversion we can outlive the race's expected lifespan without any physical deteriation. Indeed, we stay physically exactly the same as the day we started. No significant improvement, no deteriation at all. Then again, we also die a lot and come back for no apparent reason. Maybe I just come from a long line of very determined and suicidal paladins who take up the quest that killed their clan member but meer moments ago? Its a game mechanic, it doesn't have to make sense?

06-05-2009, 10:16 PM	#9
Cerinthe Server: Oasis Guild: Freedom Flames Rank: Prince/Princesses Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 26	I know back at Launch, (when almost all my characters were created) you could set a slider that "aged" your characters appearance. My gnome gal, my main, entered the game looking at least middle aged for a long lived species and I never associated levels with age . I figured they were measures of proficiency, as they clearly are in tradeskills, or status or some other thing, but nothing directly to do with her time on Norrath. Did we loose that option? Do we all have to start out as fresh faced, dewey eyed newbies and never in the middle of the story? Did that go away with the idea that we were refugees rescued after a cataclysm and learning to live in a changed world? I don't have a slot open to check with another character, but my gal still looks her age to me. Acts it too, so I kind of hope she doesn't look like the Ingenue to everyone else . Cerinthe

05-02-2009, 02:18 PM	#1
Bmitchell64 Loremaster Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 38	First let me say, I know the game does not have any component that equates to an age of a character . I just was thinking that if all my characters started adventuring around the same age then hold old would they be at the currenty level of development. My idea uses the base age of 15 (squire, student mage, young adventurer) who has set out to find his/her own life. Since the only tool for aging is the character's leveling then this will be component, but not a straight forward 1yr for every level. A 80 character would end up being 95 yr old . So, for every two levels the character would be considered to be one year older, which means the 80 character would be a mature 55 years old and considered a master in their field. I don't use the tradeskill for aging since a person could always be more advanced/or less advanced than their age suggests (not all warriors are good at making weapons or armour or mages good at making spells and potions.) But this is getting off track... So between level 1 to 10 then the character is living his/her teens, learning the ropes as they say, at the ages of 15-19 years old. At the age of 20 years old when the characters, after making Lvl 10, is ready to take on the world as a young adventurer in EQ land (especially since this is when the game goes "no holds-barred on the characters and the player get to learn the hard way about using the adventurer skills.) As I said, this is just a simple RP think piece that gives my characters some reality and does not represent any real rule for character development; My senior character is a 60 Guardian which makes him 45 years old My next favorite character is the adopted brother, a 41 Paladin - 35 years old The Guardian has a younger brother, 30 Paladin - 30 years old The distant cousin to the adopted brother, Paladin, and family friend is a 26 Ranger - 28 years old And the old Guardian is robbing the cradle with a 21 Fury (female) - 25 years old (he may be old but he still gots the moves... every story has to have a love interest... right!!!) The age of the character is really up to the player, but this is my way of saying, "That young punk (Lvl 20 something) whatever is still wet behind the ears and could learn a thing or two from this experienced (Lvl 55+) blowhard." Enjoy the idea and nit-pick it to your delight...

05-03-2009, 08:13 PM	#4
Cusashorn Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Cheeseland, USA Posts: 14,919	I once asked this question back in EQlive on the monkly-business forums. If you take into account that 1 minute in Norrath is 6 seconds, you can pretty much figure out how old your character is with the right conversions. You would have to calculate the age of your character non-stop from the day and hour you created it. You would not factor in any server downtime in that process.

05-04-2009, 04:14 AM	#6
Meirril Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 3,552	Tying character age to level doesn't work out right. Especially considering that if you have a buddy bonus going for you I've seen characters level from 1-80 in two weeks. Crafting is almost as fast. More reasonable is assume your character is any starting age you want him to be. Then add one year for each Frostfell you've seen. If you like, tack on an extra year or skip one. Nobody's going to ask to see your Birth Certificate unless your trying to /claim vetran rewards...

05-04-2009, 08:30 AM	#7
Cusashorn Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Cheeseland, USA Posts: 14,919	Like I said, every 6 seconds in real life is 1 minute on Norrath. You can easily factor in your character's age if you do the right calculations non-stop from the moment you created your character.

06-06-2009, 06:17 AM	#10
steelbadger Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 816	Urm, I think the age-slider was a gnome only option anyway, I certainly can remember being showed it back in the day and it was deffo an option when I made my early characters but I can't remember a slider for my first character (erudite) or second characters and onwards (all ratonga).

06-06-2009, 07:13 AM	#11
Meirril Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 3,552	The age slider only made your character look dirty. It didn't make you look older. I think that got dropped before the game went live, but I'm not 100% sure. Its been almost 5 years hasn't it? I'm fairly sure that the age slider was dropped at some point.

06-15-2009, 06:17 AM	#12
Paladin776 Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Missouri Posts: 501	Meirril wrote: The age slider only made your character look dirty. It didn't make you look older. I think that got dropped before the game went live, but I'm not 100% sure. Its been almost 5 years hasn't it? I'm fairly sure that the age slider was dropped at some point. I had to create a human paladin earlier in the week and the age slider is still there, at least for humans. It's in the section "Body" under the size slider. __________________

06-15-2009, 12:19 PM	#13
Cusashorn Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Cheeseland, USA Posts: 14,919	The age slider was only available for certain races to begin with. Mainly, Humans, Barbarians, and Dwarves.