What’s the ideal MMO endgame?

Happy Friday! Today’s Daily Grind question was penned by Kickstarter donor Iain Leishman, and it’s exactly the kind of juicy question that makes me want to kick back and chat all day in the comments, getting no work done at all. Darnit. Here it is:

Does an MMO need an endgame, or should Guild Wars 2‘s style of “endgame” be imitated, regardless of character level, making all content relevant?

I think that, as a game design concept, endgame is the worst thing that ever happened to MMOs. But there are plenty of systems and activities floating around in the traditional endgames of start-middle-end MMOs that I do like and would love to see yanked out and just treated as, you know, normal endless-midgame content. And it’s one of the things Guild Wars 2, among other titles, does extremely well: It keeps players of all levels and time commitments playing together, it trades tedious level grinding requirements for more optional grinds, and it — at least so far — doesn’t undermine too much evergreen content in the early game.


What do you think? Do MMOs need an endgame? Are soft endgames like GW2’s a good alternative? What’s the ideal MMO endgame?

TH