Yes, most MMO's focus too much on endgame.  You cant gain anymore base stats so they just make harder content and better gear which is harder to get.

A truly great MMO would be one based on some sort of skill points and not level, where advancement in skill reaches an exponential curve.  Then you "might" see someone who has really achieved a kind of prodigal mastery of his skill.

To me the second most important thing in a mmo is the endgame, first is gameplay.

I could care less about character advancement all it does is screw the new guy, everyone else rushes through it. Why do we need to dredge through all the levels if everyone turns out the same anyways.

My favorite mmo's had no endgame(10six, planetside,wwiionline) because they started at the fun part. This lets people join in late, and old players to come back for one month without having to play catch up.

Originally posted by MarL

To me the second most important thing in a mmo is the endgame, first is gameplay.

I could care less about character advancement all it does is screw the new guy, everyone else rushes through it. Why do we need to dredge through all the levels if everyone turns out the same anyways.

My favorite mmo's had no endgame(10six, planetside,wwiionline) because they started at the fun part. This lets people join in late, and old players to come back for one month without having to play catch up.

That was the point of my post.  With endgame being the major part of the game why even have levels?  Most people don't really care about levels, so why even put them in a game now when they are pointless.

Originally posted by scott21493

Originally posted by MarL

To me the second most important thing in a mmo is the endgame, first is gameplay.

I could care less about character advancement all it does is screw the new guy, everyone else rushes through it. Why do we need to dredge through all the levels if everyone turns out the same anyways.

My favorite mmo's had no endgame(10six, planetside,wwiionline) because they started at the fun part. This lets people join in late, and old players to come back for one month without having to play catch up.

 

That was the point of my post.  With endgame being the major part of the game why even have levels?  Most people don't really care about levels, so why even put them in a game now when they are pointless.

Some folks may look at leveling and the journey that goes with it as a huge amount of fun.  Other's may see leveling as a "paying your dues" sort of thing to get to the end game content.  Still others may enjoy the storyline and things of that nature.  Not sure where I stand, just ideas to throw out there.

Yeah I agree, I like to take it easy, take it slow, I mean I played a mmorpg I'll not tell the name, for a good 4 years and I only had 1 maxxed out player, because I took it easy I enjoyed the game, the socializing, the experience, the killing 1 monster at a time, if you can't enjoy the beginning you'll not enjoy the end, period, there is no holy grail game with a 'perfect ending' these games are built for there to be NO ending that's the whole point on their end, so you keep subscribing every month, so people that actually pay to have their character powerleveled or buy a max lvl character are really gyping themselves, they don't know their cheating themseleves when they cheat because their too stupid to realisie it but that's what their doing.

Originally posted by lumache

Originally posted by scott21493

Reading posts and thinking about the direction that MMOs have been taking lately I have to wonder why people put so much focus on the "endgame" content.  To me it seems like levels in most games are pretty pointless in MMOs now.

Take WOW for example.  They made it so people can level faster so they can get to what is now the actual game.  Evevrything in the middle is useless and no one cares about it anymore.  People only care about the newest content and completely forget about the older content.  No new players will experience the same things that people have been playing since the beginning has because the old raids and instances are pretty useless to most people.

Another example I can think of would be AoC.  Now, I've never actually played the game but hearing how fast it is to get to level 80 seems way too fast.  In a way I think the company trying to rush people through leveling ruined the game in a way.  Well, I'm sure bugs didn't help but when people get to the "endgame" which has major issues within a few weeks (or days) they will be turned off of a game.

So really, why are people so focused on getting people to the end of the game?  Why does it seem like MMOs put the bulk of what people like at the end of the game?  Have we as gamers stopped actually enjoying a MMO as a game to explore, socialize, and just have fun and instead just try to rush through things?

 

Just some thoughts that turned into a post much longer than I originally intended.

 

I think this post brings a VERY murky issue into specific relief.  That issue is this: Nothing we do in most games drastically changes the environment in which we find ourselves.  I mean did beating Onyxia or whatever in wow and seeing her head in Stormwinds entrance really make you feel as if you had done anything other than kick-off a cooldown timer to suffer through until you could go and loot her again?

There is no CHANGE, in any real sense, in most MMOs these days.  In SWG you could build cities and arrange your house with nice little items, but you still had a city looked like a cookie cutter copy of someone elses town.  So you had a stormtrooper helmet in your house, so did 1500 other players! What SWG did offer was a fairly dynamic crafting system that incorporated item decay to foster a viable economy. Then they introduced some incredibly moronic set of patches and pretty much ruined what little was there to cling to, at least for me anyway.  Jedi Holo Grind, to Jedi Quest line grinds, to oh bugger - EVERYONE CAN BE A JEDI. 

In WOW it was roughly the same, only to a far less engaging degree.  We had the head of onyxia or whatever and a couple of swords that took so many materials to craft only the leader of a guild with a group of cronies sacrificing everything to him would ever be able to make and wear. As for actually changing the world everyone lived in through actions or achievement, WOW offers virtually nothing in this area.

Then there is AOC. It was to say the least, the worst of these two above arch-type games.  The crafting was worse and less usefull than WOW's (if thats even possible) and the game is so linear and rigid that you get the feeling youre playing whilst in a straight-jacket and tethered to a story string. Again AOC offered the BATTLE KEEPS and whatever else, requiring enormous resources to create, but your stuck in an instance somewhere thats not really part of the game world and most people, unless they were there to crush your little kingdom,  would never happen past your keep and drool. Add in the annoying crash to desktop bugs, gem nerfs, class in balanaces and basically what you have is a game in which, every now and again, youre treated to a bare chested woman giving you a quest. WHOOPIE!

Again there is no control of territory, no world changing events - that make your server completely unique based on the level, quality and determination of the folks calling that server HOME. 

This is really the key to all new MMO development, IMHO of course.  Give us a sculptable world on both micro and macro levels. That is what would truly draw me back into a game.  Not that I can get some uber sword because I was arrogant enough to start a guild, manage a website, install and moderate forums and call myself GUILD LEADER. Rather a game that offers the effort to provide eventual rewards for one, some and ALL players. A world where servers were vastly different due to decisions made by players, mistakes made by players, achievement made by players etc.... I would go back to wow in a heart beat if horde could SACK and run Ironforge for a week or so at a time and it was my characters job to team up with others on alliance and win it back! Ironforge in FLAMES - nothing so motivating as that!

Two cents - I want CHANGE, in the MMO Genre of course!

-Lum

Yeah, really. Most games you can't change anything. Well, most MMORPG's you can't change anything. In RTS games you can. I'd like a game where you fight for territory like in an RTS, but in an MMORPG.

I've only found one game so far that is like that, but it has other problems. The game is Magic of the Gods. (MotG) You definitely can make changes that permanently affect the game world for everyone else. Changes like that happen all the time in MotG and there is no instancing and only one server so it affects EVERYONE. Even if you just kill a monster it's gone forever.

The problem is that the game is still in beta (though it's a free open beta) and the game needs a LOT more work, especially on crafting. MotG has graphics about on the level of EQ1 even though they keep promising to make them better any day now.

Apparently the game developers were so obsessed with the sandbox idea they figured the players would provide all the content. For example, you can create your own crafting skills -- so they figured they didn't need to create any to start with. You can create your own magic spells -- so they hardly had any to begin with. Now that some of the players are creating good spells, it's getting better, but crafting is still unbelievably weak. Practically nonexistent, really. Until crafting is developed, there's virtually no economy.

I won't say it sucks, but it's like unfinished. Don't get me wrong, they've made a lot of progress just since I've been playing it and someday it will probably be a truly great game. Well, some people won't think so, but some of us who've been looking for a real sandbox game will finally have one. It's like the picture on the box says "THIS IS THE GAME YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!" and then in small print it says: "some assembly required" and you know what that means.

Actually the game developers admit this. On their website they say something like, "we're looking for gamers who are more interested in what the game can become than what it is now." On the other hand, I found that after I got bored of it because it seemed too undeveloped, when I came back a month later, it had changed so much it was like a whole new game.

If anyone knows of any other game like that out there that's more finished, I'd love to hear about it.

It should only be about end game. 

Leveling should be about learning how to play the game not delaying you from reaching end game.

You can't tell me that you needed the 180 hours (of pressing 2 buttons) in order to learn your  skills and abilities.

I hate when people say "the game starts after _______"

I hope more fun perpetual and cyclic game design is added to MMORPGs not more levels and grind.

Originally posted by Wickersham

It should only be about end game. 

Leveling should be about learning how to play the game not delaying you from reaching end game.

You can't tell me that you needed the 180 hours (of pressing 2 buttons) in order to learn your  skills and abilities.

I hate when people say "the game starts after _______"

I hope more fun perpetual and cyclic game design is added to MMORPGs not more levels and grind.

MotG actually abolished combat levels recently. So you're at "endgame" as soon as you start. They're talking about adding combat skills soon to make up for it. In the meantime, combat seems to be determined entirely by weapon and armor types, magic, tactics and how many people you have on your side.