The Daily Grind: Why don't you like the endgame?

Count me in the don't like the end game group. I like MMOs for the journey, growing a toon, seeing the world, dungeons, story etc. End game means that's all over. End game means seeing the same world, dungeons for gear growth over and over until you reach that cap and sit around waiting for the next patch/exp. Thats not fun and I tend to roll an alt to fill in the time. WoW's DF feature somewhat mitigates the dullness by making doing the gear grind a button away and taking away the worst part of any raid/event.... the waiting on other people.

That said, once I've seen the Cata raids, heroic versions etc... I'll be jumping to something fresh... again.

I don't like the endgame of most MMOs because they tend to be full of arrogant snobs who look at you as completely worthless and a waste of their time until you gear up to a certain minimum (which is generally well beyond what you'd have from actually playing the game).

And once you *do* manage to gear up to their minimum expectations, you're *still* dirt and, in games with player-distributed loot, not going to get anything no matter how good your performance because you're only "filler" for the core endgame team for a long time to come, even if you all belong to the same guild/clan, and therefore your reward is to have the privlige of joining the High Muckety-Mucks on their adventures.

Personally, I don't need that crap.

Yeah, I play MMOs for the journey, exploration and community, but sadly none of that exists in about 95% of all MMOs now. Its just a rush as quickly as possible to the cap where too many players think an MMO starts, but all you do is raid, and repeat daily quests. All for some magical new gear, but for what...so you can do the next tier of raids...woo joy!

Where has the story and lore gone, the camping of mobs, unexpected and deadly trains, annoying yet some of the best fun ever corpse runs, and overall being social with the community...all gone! There doesn't appear to be a single developer with the balls to try something new, erm well old in this case and see how it goes. There are a plethora of us elder MMO gamers longing for the days of old, and quite a few that started less than 6 yrs ago already severely bored with the quest after quest after quest grinding with nothing else to look forward too...

If ya can't tell already I despise the end-game, unless its FFXI cause there are so many unique events, dungeons, NMs and storyline missions to work through its overwhelming, but in a very good way. Yes the content can be exceptionally difficult and even harder then ever to find a party for some of it this late in the game, but if you can get that covered its an exceptional ride! Then on top of all there is to do, you can expand ones char through merit points, and weapon & armor upgrades and special synergy crafting...its endless char growth, but it takes time and a whole lot of patience, and that's where being social with the community comes into full swing.

I honestly don't understand why developers even build a world full of pointless quests, that make you level so fast and instantly reward you with so much gear & gold, when all they and most players care about this generation is being at the cap for end-game...why don't they just make an MMO called End-Game with an I-Win button on the char creation screen that instantly levels one to the cap and immediately start raiding. Its not like anyone grinding through quests solo for a few weeks learn how to play their char or class by the time they get to end-game anyway...might as well start to learn everything there and be done with it...Argh!

Depends on the game. But MOSTLY, due to the Raiding/gear grind/reputation grind nature of most MMORPG endgames, I usually stop playing the game shortly after I hit cap.

Only one game really made me happy since the leveling process itself was filled with tons of stuff to do. Funny you mention it in the article and I had to go what FFXI is this author playing? I don't know anyone who rushes to endgame in FFXI. That's the beauty of the game. The game world itself is so immersive that the main drive isn't endgame but just playing the game itself.

Other MMOs would be wise to take heed to the power of world immersion and stop making everyone rush to the end.

Lotro end-game

For encouraging the spawning of massive numbers of players who believe the endgame is "the real game" "the only game" "where it's at" and wish to race/min-max/optimize their way through the journey. Said players also tend to espouse elitist attitudes, dismissal and lack of patience with newbies and folks still learning the game, or indeed any part of the game that isn't endgame.

Endgame also fosters a 'moar phat lewt' mindset, where gear and progression by getting incrementally better gear becomes more important to the individual than any relationship or community-building. Other players become a means to an end, little robotic slaves or passing acquaintances on the way to getting more itty bitty incremental rewards.

Said rewards also foster childish e-peen comparison behavior such as preening and showing off with every opportunity how cool or prestigious or awesome their avatar looks due to the chance favor of the RNG. Developers who encourage this with exclusive endgame-only rewards with nice art assets also help to foster jealousy and peer pressure to keep up with the Joneses, leading to negative emotions and addictive obsession/compulsion to keep playing the MMO and the consequent possibility of RL issues from the MMO seeping in.

And to make matters worse, most endgames involve long structured sessions of gameplay with many other people, learning complex cooperative movements that are repeated with precision time after time. Having soloist introvert tendencies, this is not a desirable state of relaxation or challenge in-game... I often end up wondering if I should just take up dance classes or martial arts or join a sports team in real life instead, same time of rehearsal mindset, but at least my physical body would benefit from the exercise.

Endgame = repetitious dungeon grinding/daily quests as an artificial mechanism to keep subscribers subscribing. Bleh.

Most endgame content is tedious, boring, and populated by too many arrogant snobs. Not interested.

it's not necessarily the end-game I dislike, but rather the in-accessibility of it. I play for story and lore, by the time you hit end-game the *vast* majority of what little storyline exists is locked away inside instances which means:

gear grinding... yay, but what's worse than gear grinding is co-dependency gear grinding, which is to say that you can't grind the gear on your own... which leads to a big mess. Can't grind the gear on your own, but any "end-game" guild / group expects you to already have the gear...

Raiding, by the gods I hate raiding... it's like herding cats, heck I honestly think herding cats would be *EASIER*. I tried it in WoW and after 3 times I told myself never again.. and why was it that bad? because of...

end-game "communities", which all tend to suck. Oh don't get me wrong they're mostly good *Players*, pity they tend not to be good *People*. In general I prefer to game with people I enjoy, even if it's the same content it's the people that make it fun, *IF* the people themselves are fun as opposed to someone you'd sooner kick in front of a passing bus.

To date the only MMO with an end-game I enjoy is GuildWars. All the content in the world can't make up for having to PUG or deal with a guild full of annoying people just for the next shiny.

I'll echo those that find that the endgame is really less appealing than the journey. I recently quit WOW for the final time, and am considering quitting MMO's altogether after almost 11 years because the entire genre seems to have stagnated.

It's so hard to quantify my feelings on the matter. I think a large combination of factors led to my disdain for the "endgame" in most MMOs. For instance, in an effort to appeal to the widest base possible, risk was all but eliminated. Artificial mechanisms, like RNG (random number generator) are favored in an effort to stretch content. Repetitive quests were coupled with rep grinds to keep people paying month after month in pursuit of temporary rewards. Achievements were yet another way to extend subscription lengths without adding any new content. In all, the theme park MMO frenzy that has taken hold since the advent of WOW has mutated the "adventure" of MMOs into a pure "job" that you perform once you hit the level cap.

It's my hope that the future of the MMO will be dynamically-generated and user-generated content within a sandbox environment. When the TRUE next generation of MMOs arrives, perhaps the need for tunnel runs, RNG, dailies, and rep grinds will at last come to an end and that the adventure needn't end once we hit the level cap.

Just putting my hand up to say I love the gear, dungeon and raiding grind.

I don't know why, exactly, but, yeah.

That's easy: The repetition.