Minor Profile Level Changes
Community News - If you had a GameSpot profile level between 16 to 23, level 46 & 47 and > level 70 you will notice a change in your profile level.
The way that levels are assigned changed somewhat today for users between the levels of 16 to 23, level 46 & 47 and > level 70.
There has been no point loss and the total number of points needed to reach level 23 has not changed. Let me repeat that. There has been no point loss. Only the number of points needed to reach a level has changed.
The back story:
I'm sure by now those of you around (or past) level 20 have heard of how level 20 was called the h*ll level. I don't know the joke or the game, but I've been told that this was a an obscur reference to an older game (if you know which game, please post the link) where level 20 was practically impossible to get past. Over the years the joke stopped being funny and level 20 just became a level on GameSpot that everyone hates.
Over the last couple of months there has been a lot of discussion in the office around levels and how they should be assigned. That hasn't been worked out, but what did come out of it was that we didn't like level 20 either. 
What this means:
In order to make level 20 less… well… insert your bad remark about level 20 here… we re-weighted the number of points needed to get past it to levels 16 - 23. This means that some levels are now easier to get to and some are more difficult. For example, you used to be able to go from level 16 to level 17 in a day or two. Now that journey takes a little longer but is not significantly more difficult. Level 20 on the other hand will no longer take 4x as long as going from level 24 to 25.
However, keeping somewhat in the spirit of the original joke, level 20 is still more difficult than the surrounding levels. It just won't drive you nuts anymore.
For those of you already past level 20, please do not get upset. As I mentioned above, the total number of points needed to reach level 23 are exactly the same as before. If it took you 3 years to reach level 23 it will still take the next person 3 years to reach level 23 (assuming they use the site exactly as you did of course).
Level 46/47 are now real levels. Through some sort of typo or long lost break in the fabric of time & space it took 0 points to go from level 46 to level 47. This essentially bypassed the level. This has also been changed.
Level 71 is no longer the max level available. Because of this, level 71 was given a new name so that the new max level can stay the king. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
I can't get into exact details of the required # of points for each level (that'd be cheating) but I hope this helps clarify what is going on.
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