A question for MMO vets

[RachelAnne]

I never played WOW so I'm curious to know what there was to do when your character reached level cap.

 

Just browsing the forums and stuff, I get the sense that when you reached your max level is when the game really started. For the most part I stick to single players games so when the story is over, the game is finished for me unless I really enjoyed it and pay for some DLC down the road.

 

I am really enjoying the game and have played four classes to around 40. I loved IA so much I decided to hold off on my lvl 36 OP and see how the sniper plays. So back to my question. WOW being Theme Park like SWTOR, (again thats just what I am picking up) What was there to do besides wait for the next expansion? Besides rerolling alts and hacking out dungeons you've done multiple times before?

 

Just on a side note I read you could fish in WOW. This makes me wonder if you could just wander off and spend time just fishing, looking for secret or hidden areas, chatting with different people and that kind of social stuff. In SWTOR its seems since this is so about your personal story, you miss out on a lot of social opportunitys besides heroic and flashpoints.

 

Thanks

 

First of all you need to understand that wow is the MMO with the worst endgame content ever in the MMO genre. This ofc applies to WOTLK and Cata, TBC and Vanilla was a lot different.

 

Wow does offer the player on max lvl 2 things. To join a horrible balanced pvp system or to kill the same encounter in 4 different modi every week.

 

Thats pretty much what you do at wow these days and this since WOTLK.

 

A good MMO does offer you the following things at max lvl.

 

1. Working pvp system with a community and true enemys and alliance

2. Working pve that keeps you entertained with challanging content every week.

3. Working crafting system, that supports you at pve and pvp content and does allow you to be a trader only.

4. Working RP Content, such as housing, guild events, world events.

 

and a couple more features.

[-Arcane-]

I never played WOW so I'm curious to know what there was to do when your character reached level cap.

 

Just browsing the forums and stuff, I get the sense that when you reached your max level is when the game really started. For the most part I stick to single players games so when the story is over, the game is finished for me unless I really enjoyed it and pay for some DLC down the road.

 

I am really enjoying the game and have played four classes to around 40. I loved IA so much I decided to hold off on my lvl 36 OP and see how the sniper plays. So back to my question. WOW being Theme Park like SWTOR, (again thats just what I am picking up) What was there to do besides wait for the next expansion? Besides rerolling alts and hacking out dungeons you've done multiple times before?

 

Just on a side note I read you could fish in WOW. This makes me wonder if you could just wander off and spend time just fishing, looking for secret or hidden areas, chatting with different people and that kind of social stuff. In SWTOR its seems since this is so about your personal story, you miss out on a lot of social opportunitys besides heroic and flashpoints.

 

Thanks

 

 

Once you hit lvl 50 (takes about 1 week) you can grind HM's for columi gear (takes 1 week) then your set to jump straight into 16man nightmare and complete all raid content in 3 hours.

 

 

Then game is finished.

[Zocat]

WoW Classic (at start):

- You farmed money for your epic mount

- The endgame 5man dungeons (flashpoints) could be done with 10man (initially you could run them with 40man). You could 5 man it for the quests - but there was no worthwhile reward, so you did it for the challenge. Think of it as a hardmode without better gear

- You could do some reputation grinds for a rare mount, a rare item. Aka sit in one spot, hope there are no other players around you with the same idea, and grind away.

- You could PvP for no rewards

- I honestly dont remember when raids where introduced / which were available at launch (since I am EU and our WoW launched ~3months later). Molten Core got some massive overhauls though (with different loot (no longer T2^^) etc etc). For Molten Core though you farmed fire resist gear, or killed some lv 30 mobs (60 was max in Classic) for some fire protection potions

- Crafting: You could farm bosses and hope they dropped a special / important recipe (the only worthwhile recipe though was only for blacksmithing the Arcanite Reaper)

- Fishing ... for ... wasting time!

 

skip some years ahead

WotLK (launch):

- You completed all raids in 1 week (~3 weeks for all hardmodes). Farmed those for items

- You could run hardmode dungeons (heroic) and do achievements (when you completed all achievements you received a special mount)

- You could do daily quests for cash / achievements / reputation gains

- Reputation grinds were present, but they were either very easy (you did them while completeing 5man dungeons), or didnt offer any rewards (i.e. Frostborne / Expedition or whatever they're called for Alliance)

- PvP in arenas / battlegrounds and the PvP zone

- Crafting was imho pretty worthless / trivial

- Fishing for achievements / bufffood

- You could run old content (Classic, BC, ...) for achievements or just fun

- Farming flasks / bufffood / potions for raids

[GundamDouble-O]

What's really missing at end game is guild acheivments. Games like Warhammer and Conan have guild ranks (usually adjusted for size of guild), guild levels (that allow the guild to purchase or build special items or buildings), guild housing, guild acheivements, guild alliances, alliance chat channels, etc. Right now, the in-game portion of how they have guilds is nothing more than a social chat channel. With the lack of such dynamics they are missing the key elements to end game guild activity.

[TokyoZeplin]

Why Lie,,,,,,,,,, There's Ilum, Warzones, the heroic instances, and daily/weekly quests (something WoW didn't have for years.??????????? AV, 40 vs 40

 

Oh come on, the quests in AV is hardly what people associate with "daily/weekly" quests these days, and you know it. Not to mention that they gave extremely little reputation, and 0 cash. We both know they weren't the type of dailies I was referring to.

[Phydra]

Its the genre as a whole. Mmo's are on the way out. I blame the community.

Every player thinks they are just so damn good and important.

 

Actually, the decline of MMOs on the whole can be traced to roughly five factors:

 

(1) Stubborn refusal to move away from the monthly subscription model (Secondary markets, monetized or micro-transactions, and free-to-play being viable alternatives that have slowly appeared and, frankly, should have been wholeheartedly adopted in the mid-2000's).

 

(2) Stubborn refusal to embrace solo-play as a viable option in a massively-multiplayer offering (Examples that could be embraced but have not been include the AO mission model; where solo options parallel group/raid formats; another example, albeit poorly implemented, is Sony's dungeon efforts).

 

(3) The increasingly prohibitive cost of designing and building an MMO (i.e.,. roughly 5 - 7 years and most of it burn without return; average start-up and build out costs usually multiple deca-millions).

 

(4) Most of #3 rises from lack of standardization of game/graphic engines or quest engines (every company seems to be laboring under the impression that anything other than re-inventing the wheel is unacceptable).

 

(5) Disinterest in focusing on social and anthropological factors beyond those required to build a nice Skinner box (ref link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_Box) and to maintain the exhaustion-inducing mechanic of bowing to the Red Queen Dilemma (ref link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_Hypothesis aka "infinite progress toward the unwinnable goal).

 

The rest, bluntly, is both nourished and invoked by these things.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Phydra

[Racheakt]

First let me give you my MMO resume (as a vet):

 

UO: Beta Tested, played for two years; GM Battle Mage, GM Thief.

City of Heroes/Villains: 2 years; Lightning Blaster and a Robotic Mastermind Max level.

Asheron’s Call: 2 years, Sword and board. Best Guild system ever.

WoW: From launch to LK; Kingslayer Title 10 man; Hunter, Rogue, Deathknight, Pally all 80.

Warhammer Online: 6 months, spongy controls, drab art, too many bugs.

Lord of the Rings Online: Beta tested, lifetime Sub, Still play off and on.

Star Trek Online: Beta Tested, Still play due to F2P status.

Champions Online: Played for 6-8 months, ran out of content…

Eve Online: Off and on for a couple of years.

Rift: from launch for about 4 months, Cleric (max level). Ran out of things to do that was unique to do.

 

Now SW:ToR

 

The social aspect of of MMOs have been drifting closer to console style community for a while now, no chat, no real interaction just get gear, kill things.

 

The "best" (pure personal opinion) social experience i had was in AC and UO, two game where getting to max level about the journey not the race to get there to start the "endgame". Which gear grind where the average iLevel your gear score replaces the numeric level of your toon as a measure of progress.

 

In UO it was about living in the world, I loved trying to steal items from players (you could do that!) ya i got a bad rep on that toon but sure what petty criminal had a good rep?

 

In AC it was about haning and helping others level at the high end or in my case I hunted Crystal Golums (Source of great loot) and explored -- the game world was open and huge!!!

 

Warhammer Public Quests came close to bringing back that old school community, the game itself had too many issues to overcome the one good thing.

 

Rift's Rifts are great for a dynamic world, but it too was a small world a gear grind to grind more gear.

 

What drew me to WoW for as long as it did? The community of friends that I had formed in UO and AC went there, we played had fun; Truth be told, the lack of corpse runs and the posibility of losing all your stuff was a bis selling point -- anyone who remembers dying at the feet of a big mob and getting help from friends to help you recover your crap. Also the Blizzard name, the high standards they set for their games.

 

I guess i was younger and felt different then, I enjoyed hanging in those games -- the games now are level rushes, there just seems to be a loss of some soul to these games now.

[Bomama]

First let me give you my MMO resume (as a vet):

 

UO: Beta Tested, played for two years; GM Battle Mage, GM Thief.

City of Heroes/Villains: 2 years; Lightning Blaster and a Robotic Mastermind Max level.

Asheron’s Call: 2 years, Sword and board. Best Guild system ever.

WoW: From launch to LK; Kingslayer Title 10 man; Hunter, Rogue, Deathknight, Pally all 80.

Warhammer Online: 6 months, spongy controls, drab art, too many bugs.

Lord of the Rings Online: Beta tested, lifetime Sub, Still play off and on.

Star Trek Online: Beta Tested, Still play due to F2P status.

Champions Online: Played for 6-8 months, ran out of content…

Eve Online: Off and on for a couple of years.

Rift: from launch for about 4 months, Cleric (max level). Ran out of things to do that was unique to do.

 

Now SW:ToR

 

The social aspect of of MMOs have been drifting closer to console style community for a while now, no chat, no real interaction just get gear, kill things.

 

The "best" (pure personal opinion) social experience i had was in AC and UO, two game where getting to max level about the journey not the race to get there to start the "endgame". Which gear grind where the average iLevel your gear score replaces the numeric level of your toon as a measure of progress.

 

In UO it was about living in the world, I loved trying to steal items from players (you could do that!) ya i got a bad rep on that toon but sure what petty criminal had a good rep?

 

In AC it was about haning and helping others level at the high end or in my case I hunted Crystal Golums (Source of great loot) and explored -- the game world was open and huge!!!

 

Warhammer Public Quests came close to bringing back that old school community, the game itself had too many issues to overcome the one good thing.

 

Rift's Rifts are great for a dynamic world, but it too was a small world a gear grind to grind more gear.

 

What drew me to WoW for as long as it did? The community of friends that I had formed in UO and AC went there, we played had fun; Truth be told, the lack of corpse runs and the posibility of losing all your stuff was a bis selling point -- anyone who remembers dying at the feet of a big mob and getting help from friends to help you recover your crap. Also the Blizzard name, the high standards they set for their games.

 

I guess i was younger and felt different then, I enjoyed hanging in those games -- the games now are level rushes, there just seems to be a loss of some soul to these games now.

 

Loved UO. Jumped on the Pacific server a little before they added Baja. Thing is, mmo's were brand new to so many of us, we immediately had something in common. It was cool just to be able to interact with an actual person. We had zero expectations, and in a way it was all magical. Community was the endgame.

 

No MMORPG has captivated me that way since. In fact, it isn't even close. I still enjoy mmo's, since they give me the opportunity to play with like minded people. Maybe one will come along that realizes all players are not equal, and are not entitled to the same rewards.

 

But I digress...as I am not a hardcore player, and not even lvl 20 at this point, I can only speculate that this game will basically attempt to emulate wow endgame in every way...future patches appear to support this conclusion.