Funcom's Age of Conan released its latest patch last Tuesday and 1.07.2 brought with it a new "offline leveling" system.  Details could be found out on the official community forum here.

Oliver 'Tarib' Kunz explains that every active account you have will currently be given 4 free levels to distribute as the player sees fit.  These points can be given to any active toon you have, but the catch is they have to at least be level 30 to enjoy the benefit of "offline leveling".

Additional "offline levels" are gained every 4 days (that's 4 days real time) whether you're logged into your account or not; you only need to have an active subscription to reap these rewards.  So if you're one of these guys that has more alts then they know what to do with, but not much time to play them all, here's your opportunity to catch them up.  Please be aware that once these points are allocated the process is permanent, so pay attention when allocating points.

This update comes 2 weeks before the release of the new expansion Rise of the Godslayer. 

My Thoughts: I'm a little skeptical of this whole process. It seems as if Funcom is not confident in the content provided throughout the game and attempting to rush new players to the end content quickly.  As any MMO fan knows, new players who do not get a whole lot of time to experience their class or learn how to play the character they choose properly, make end game content a bit more difficult for the entire community. Basically now Funcom will be training the new guys on how to play along with training everyone on the new content.  Being an MMO, some grinding is expected, but if just paying for a subscription gives you "free" levels, wouldn't that be considered a Micro-transaction?  Or perhaps this is a new legal form of Power leveling? Regardless, this is a bold move from the Age of Conan team and I am very interested to hear from the Aggrogamer community on their thoughts.  Do you like this new "offline leveling" system? Should this be added to other MMO's? Are any of you still playing Age of Conan?