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Killing [[monster]]s of about the same [[Character level|level]] as your [[character]] will gain your character more experience, while monsters are worth a decreasing percentage of their full value as they get further above or below your character's level. It's likely that experience will be gained from [[quest]]s as well, similar to how it works in [[World of WarCraft]].
Play testers from the [[BlizzCon 2008]] demo build (October) reported that the level up speed, from 5-10, was about the same as it is in [[Diablo II]], or perhaps even a bit faster. How well the progress rate in that demo of the game will correspond to the final game is not known.
===Experience Rewards===
Experience is often given as a quest reward, in Diablo III. In previous games experience came only from killing monsters, plus the huge bonus from the Ancients quest in Diablo 2. In Diablo 3 lots of quest rewards, at least in the early going (which is all anyone outside of Blizzard has gotten to test yet), grant an item and something like +7500 experience. In many early quests, the experience reward is worth many times more than the experience gained from killing the monsters required to finish the quest, making these rewards an essential part of leveling up a character.
==Maximum Character Level==
During most of Diablo III's development, the max level was said to be 99 or 100. The [[D3 Team]] seemed set on repeating how that was handled in Diablo II.
That changed during development in 2010, and in September of that year the developers announced that level 60 would be the highest level possible to attain in the initial release version of the game. This is the same as World of Warcraft allowed in the initial version, before adding 10 to the level cap in each of the first two expansions, and 5 in the third. It seems a fairly safe bet that the Diablo III team has something similar in mind for their planned expansions.
The explanation of the level 60 change was quite lengthy; here's a partial quote. [http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/diablo-iiis-maximum-level-announced-60]
::The 60 level cap we’re working with came from a lot of time and thinking about our content and how we want the experience to feel at every level. It so happens that it works for us really well.
::Of course it all comes down to an XP curve. We could, for instance, say the level cap in Diablo III is 60 and then pace that curve and gain out over what we estimate it took someone to reach 99 in Diablo II. Of course we wouldn’t do that but it should help illustrate that the time from 1-60 in Diablo II does not equal the amount of time it will take to reach 60 in Diablo III. 60 levels versus 99 levels doesn’t mean less content or less powerful characters, etc. These aren’t uniform levels of power that move from game to game. And in fact we are pushing a longer game than Diablo II and I’d argue our characters feel way more powerful.
::The leveling experience is always going to stop somewhere because the real game is the item hunt. So, instead of letting it drag out to a less meaningful 80 or so levels like most people saw in Diablo II we have 60 levels of awesome; at every level you’ll get a meaningful and noticeable increase in power. It has a ton of other benefits and fixes a lot of problems a higher cap causes.
The design theory behind this change (besides allowing them to include a higher level cap as a feature in expansions), is that characters gained very little from the last 10 or 15 or 20 levels in Diablo II. A character was basically done with their growth by 80 or 85, and levels after that took a long time to achieve and didn't provide much character benefit or change. Lowering the max to 60 allows the developers to make every level up feel important and valuable.
The theory on character progression is something like 30/50/60, when ending Normal/Nightmare/Hell difficulty. This means the highest level will be achievable without endlessly repeating areas. The developers are also promising extra content, beyond simply replaying earlier areas.
::[[Bashiok]]: We also have types of content that Diablo II did not have. That’ll remain mysterious for now.
==Level Up Bonus==