Rest XP, how important is it?

Do you pay attention to the part of your XP bar that mentions if you are rested, or have vitality if you play EQ2, in order to maximize your levelling efficiency? Do you find that the bonus that being rested confers makes you change your playing habits?

As far as I am concerned the answer is yes to both these questions. Having just started to play Warhammer Age of Reckoning, I recently noticed that my newly-minted Magus had exhausted his rest bonus and was only getting normal XP. This kind of thing doesn’t happen much to me because these days I normally play in small spurts, which makes it hard to deplete rest, and also often take long vacations from a given game, which enables me to build up a rather large amount of rest until I come back. So I seldom run out of the stuff.

But this time it’s different, mainly because I have been playing marathon sessions of WAR with a fresh character, which burns up rest very fast indeed ! In this case I found that not having the rest bonus as I was playing really bothered me, making me feel as if I was not getting all that could get out of my play sessions. Even if I am not a power gamer or power leveller by any stretch of the imagination, I was still very bothered by the fact that if I kept going with my ”unrested” Magus I would not be playing in ”optimal” conditions, whatever that means.

So after much soul-searching I decided to park him for a bit and roll up an alt in order to let him ”rest up” for a time. I normally never do this, although I know many who people do this regularly, and I admit that I am a bit surprised. I thought I was above such petty game mechanic manipulations aimed at slowing down character progression in MMOs, but obviously I am not.

Ah the things we learn about ourselves through gaming!