Hello there,

Firstly, I apologise in advance for my ignorance, but I haven't had the time to check through many other threads about this subject, bar "They dumbed down my WoW".

In a nutshell, I consider myself to be a fairly hardcore PvE player of World of Warcraft at the moment. However, as is told in that afformentioned thread, due to player base demands, it has been dumbed down significantly with the relase of the "Wrath of the Lich King" expansion.

While I still enjoy the game, there is little for me to do at the moment (I do still raid and PvP, and play the game, and I believe I will continue to do so since I have many friends on there, and I will wait it out until the Ulduar content at least), but I feel like Blizzard have lost direction with the game.

So, to the point of this post: I was wondering if anyone could recommend to me any different games to try out that might satisfy my desire for endgame PvE.

Specifically I'm a fan of challenging and well-designed encounters (The kind of which were seen in Vanilla WoW and TBC - C'thun, Vashj, Kael'Thas, M'uru for those who know WoW) that are still there for a more "hardcore" community (if that doesnt sound too elitist).

A couple of names that kept popping up in the thread I read were EQ2 (which some of my friends on WoW used to play), Lotro (something I would consider, but I have never been a fan of that franchise), and Final Fantasy 11 (something which I have always considered, loving the offline games, but have never known enough about to make a decision).

Thanks in advance for any advice or help you can give me.

You might want to try Runes of Magic. It reminds me a lot of WoW, it has dynamic dungeons (Never the same twice), dual class system (Rogue/Scout for the win) and you can level all the crafting and gathering skill to a limit then you have to choose which to spec in. Graphics arn't half bad either and it's f2p. 

For information on end game just do a search on these pages for the word raid:

Lord of the Rings Online: Possibly returning couple questions.

Everquest II: Looking for some insight in regards for EQII

Final Fantasy XI: FFXI's endgame.

Dungeons & Dragons Online: What is DDO?

Lineage II: Starting Lineage II, Need Advice

Since you're looking for more of a challenge and more raid content I'd suggest FFXI or L2.

Thank you for the replies.

I will definetly have to check out Runes of Magic since its free to play, I shall see how that goes.
And thank you too spinach8puff... I get the feeling you do this a lot don't you, sorry I couldn't have found this out for myself to save you the trouble :)

I shall definetly try to find out more about FF11, it's something my old guildmaster on WoW used to play so I can ask him about that. Linage 2 also sounds like a nice bet, though I will have to find out more about that too... and as for Everquest, I used to be in a whole guild full of re-rolled Everquesters, so I'm sure I can find out something from them ;)

Thanks again

Of all those games you mentioned.

The most "hardcore" of the endgames are FF11.

There are a few reasons for this, the one you should be concerned with the most however is the extreme level of toughness to boss fights, and the amount of teamplay involved in downing one.

The boss fights inside FF11 can sometimes take many hours on a single boss. The amount of teamwork it takes to down these bosses are prolly unsurpased in any game to day.

FF11 is truely for the "hardcore" gamer as casual gamers typically do not make it very far in FF11 unless they are there for the pure social value of the game which it has plenty of.

I to recently went back to FF11 after the recent fixes to the grouping/party system allowing high level players to level down to level up their jobs faster with lower downtime to party waits.

If you want "hardcore" I would go get a copy of FF11 now, the Vanadiel 2008 collection is $20 bucks now at most game shops.

It would be the best 20 bucks you could ever spend as a hardcore raider.