Well as a fellow City of Heroes player let me say... screw that let me say COH is awesome But after that as an answer to your question (this is solely basd on my experiences in WoW and Everquest) a raised level cap is basicaly a reset. They turn the hamster wheel. Your equipment is useless because you get something better in two levels. You have to learn new levels of crafting which means all the effort into rever engienering just the right whatever you put into it now will have to be done again. The purpose of level cap raises is to set everyone back on the same level so the difference between players doesn't get too big. Welcome to the hamster wheel.

Yes , yes and yes. I'm not sure what else to say to this but YES!

"MMO's evolve" Dear god I wish that statement was true. Instead of the mire of stagnant clones we really have. I'm starting to feel like a broken record but if you honestly things that an MMO can not have progress that builds on what you already have instead of rewinding every year or so you only played one very limited type baed on the Everquest/WoW principle.

From a new game perspecitve I can agree with you. I'll still probably slack and just gear my companions blue for the time being. There is a difference between trying to collect the best stuff available and just getting ready to face the new stuff and move on. I'll probably go for that on several alts instead of trying to "finish" one.

All of this is true. Yet I would have though I get more than six month before they already increase the level cap to make the current stuff redundant. I somhow did not expect a raise in level cap for at least a year, possibly more, based on prior experience. The fact is already shows up simply remindsm e of the basic vertical design choice of this game. And that isn't one I care for a whole lot. I'll see the impact soon enough, the speed of PVP queues will pretty much tell me if my current gameplay is affected or not.

I think the whole problem here is that you seem to think I want better gear than what I can get already then in fact all I want is to work with the tools I have without knowing they will be outdated soon. I simply won't reverse engineer all those pruple options knowing I won't need them anymore soon. Because as you say, crafting will go up too and there will be new recipes to learn. Which is fine and might be fun by the time it hits. But in the meantime it leaves me with no motivation to do anything right now.

This is simply very true. I still think it is way too early to pull that move. And if their subscirption numbers drop even more I will do a little dance I claim I called it. And feel very smart and entitled.

You are absolutely correct abotu what this game is. I don't agree that themeparks have to work horizontally, in fact I would argue (someplace else) that a themepark would work even better if it didn't but that's not what this game is. I don't think it is a good decision but it is clealrly what I signed up for here. So essentialy I might have just signed up for the wrong thing. Which would explain why the news of a raised level cap isn't good for my motivation. If that makes sense. As you can see from my project of gearing up all my companions in a long term project I was setitng my own goals horizontally. In a game that does not support this. You could just blame me for this and not be entirely wrong.

Which opens a way more important discussion than anything I wrote in the OP: Are Panda Deathknights or Panda Sith the ultimate goths?

That would be an absolutely valid point. If I farmed ops gear for companions. Which I don't. Are you sure you are talking to me? Because it doesn't feel like it. To make this perfectly clear: What I do right now is reverse engineer gear for compaions. I have all the profesions and I'm trying to make the ideal purple sets for each companion (to the best of my knowledge I probably don't get it entirely right). This is a lot of work and will take months to complete as you can do different specialzied purples for almost all of them.

Yes I have. And not all of them do this. In fact in my book only the poorly designed ones do. But again that's another topic. This MMO does absolutely everything the classic way so of course it does this too. I just say that it is breaking my motivation to play level 50 right now and that I think with the lack of current endgame activity it might not be a good move to make current endgmae already outdated. As for having played MMO's before it is getting amazingly tiresome to hear this from people who have clearly only ever played the Everyquest/WoW pricniple. There are MMOs that work differently. They do not have to be like this. It isn't a law from god.

Thank you for existing good sir For a moment I almost thought I'm talking Chinese because it seemed no one even knew the problem existed. Which isn't exaclty new to MMOs.

I grant you that you clearly did not get my point at all. As such there is really no point in even trying to argue with the rest of your statement which has nothing to do with the fact I'm no longer motivated in researching current high level gear for my companions. How this could be connected to vanity gear or the fact that I don't absolutely need companions in the best possible gear boggles my mind. Of course I don't have to do that. I don't have to do anything. It is just what I'm currently doing at level 50 because I feel like it. With this news I no longer feel like it since it has no point. Which takes my motivation to play and thus pay. It isn't very complicated really.

Again, why the levels are a game breaker to me is alraedy in the text. I just see no reason to play at level 50 right now. The desire to collect shiney pixels is even weaker if I already know they will be outdated soon. As for others MMOs, I have in fact done exactly that. Granted last time it took two expansions until the frustration set in but since I already went through it I don't feel like doing it again. Before you say it has to be like this I'd say I'm still playing COH which instead of adding more and more levels broaden the skill spectrum. Intead of making you replace your gear over and over it instead keeps adding more options. So you are building on the foundation you worked for instead of replacing everything all the time.

I have to heavily disagree with ... actualy I don't disagree with your points at all. I do disagree that new levels are needed for any of that though. First of all I would love more story, even fi I do not gain any levels from it. If they need a sense of progresion, equipment, new companions etc. could do the job. Last but not least you do not need to increase a level cap to introduce new skills. But that is a completly different topic. I'd recommend Taugrim's excellent explanation of vertical vs. horizontal scaling on how classic leveling could be replaced.