Good post from the OP. Shame the rest of the thread's got so bitter.
There's no right way to play the game I guess - it's all down to personal preference. I've done it old school and I've also used boosts to get me through some of the more grindy levels.
So long as you are having a positive experience with the game and playing within the game's constraints, all is good.
Thelonious Monk
See, for me, how the toon got it's levels is rather irrelevant to my enjoyment of said toon. I will give a few examples;
Crimson Charlatan: This is my Fire/Kin/Stone Controller. He gained levels 1-50 in the Atlas Park Architect building. He was created once i14 hit live. I grinded those levels out and self-farmed with him all the way to 50. I then specced into a build that soft-capped my defenses to Smashing/Lethal and proceeded to use him to PL my friends' toons. And I love this toon. I love his concept; the Brutish Mage-Warrior from another world, forced to flee when the world he ruled with an iron fist rebelled. He's definitely going villain. I ran the Praetorian arcs with him after hitting 50. I've done many TFs with him. My accelerated 1-50 leveling did nothing to reduce my love for this toon.
Black Bellatrix: My Claws/Dark Scrapper. She was born as part of a duo and leveled through normal missions and got all the way to 42, pre-i14. Where she stalled, until I found out about the Theft of Essence: Chance for +End proc. Then I finished leveling her and now, with the enhanced mission difficulty options, new life had been breathed into her. She was leveled old-fashioned and again, this did not reduce my love for the toon.
IGNIS v0.84b: This was my Fire/Rad controller that was part of a Fire/Rad superteam. He gained the levels quite fast, being part of a Fire/Rad superteam, and once the team fizzled out, he was neglected until I finally needed the character slot. I had no attachment to the toon. There was no story, I hated the costume and I hated the name. AE syndrome. He got deleted, like I said.
Acro Bat: My MA/SR Scrapper. He was my main. I love his costume, I love his story and I had fun playing him. Until I got into the upper 30s. I played him through lots of different arcs and played the 'traditional way' with him. Now, every time I go up against a Tank Swiper or a Rikti Soldier, I cringe as my anemic damage wears down my endurance bar faster than their health bar. He's been pretty much shelved as a result. If he was on my current main account, he might be due for recycling.
So, as you can see, in my case, my toons origins and how they got their levels had nothing to do with my enjoyment of the characters. In fact, I find I get a lot less enjoyment out of playing now that I have a bunch of sub-20 toons that I love the concepts of but have to grind out those boring pre-20 levels. Especially since they're heroes and I have to play terrible content I've played a thousand times before or pretty good content that I've played about a million times.
/rant 1
Well, hopping into this subjective discussion, I joined the legions for a while with the whole AE PL thing. I tried out lots of combos and concepts that I thought might be fun, and they were for a brief period, but a lot of them were culled from the list of my actives.
Why is this? Well, not some moral choice that "these characters are wrong" but just under the simple fact that leveling was so easy, I thought nothing of what I threw into the ding-machine. A lot of it was simple concept experimentation. I came up with a backstory, ran around busting random mobs to see how they look and handled, then headed out to AE to see how they shape. A lot of the leveling and 'effort' was fruitless, but I did get some characters and builds I ended up liking and sticking with. I still play my Fire/storm corr and ice/psi blaster with great frequency.
They're fun and interesting, and that's ultimately what matters. It's a game, if it's not fun and interesting I probably won't be willing to do it. Before AE I did get more attached to the characters I made, but that's partially because I really scrutinized what I would bother leveling up with. I didn't experiment much because I knew it might be lots of time consumption that could go nowhere. Many characters I made before AE went nowhere fast as well, and were just a general pain for me to play, I ended up deleting those too.
Natural part of the process really.
To re-iterate:
It's a game, I play it. If it's not fun and interesting, I'm not very willing to do and will probably do away with it when given the chance. For some this means skipping the first 20 levels because they don't find it as fun or interesting anymore, or hopping straight to 50 where there's lots of room to toy around with things and see how the character ultimately holds out.
Is it wrong? well, no. If I don't think something is fun or interesting I shouldn't feel or be forced to do it. We all play game's because we enjoy them on some level. Just because someone enjoys the game post-20 but dislikes the portion pre-20 doesn't mean they dislike the game, they love the game, but not _all_ of the game. Loving _all_ of the game is hard to ask of anyone. PLing gives many people the means to get over the parts they aren't loving.
The people behind the PLed toons or "AE'd" toons and their sometimes apparent noobness is another thing entirely, but PLing in-and-of itself is nothing shameful.
/rant 0
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