Are you a devotee of the endgame?

"Everyday we take the Massive daily posts and bring them to Dragoon discussions. We would like to thank Massively for their original content."

"The game begins at the level cap." That's the mantra of many an endgame player, with the ironclad belief that all of the leveling and learning and gearing you did along the way to the highest level was nothing but a warm-up. Whether the cap is at 99 or even just 9, or if indeed there's even a hard cap of levels, what ultimately matters is that you've reached the state of power from which you will only grow laterally, not vertically. And from every corner of MMOs comes the less-catchy but equally frequent mantra of the non-endgame player: "Screw that."

For every player who sees the leveling game as a race to the end, there is one who believes that the important thing is enjoying the journey. Maybe you dislike the endgame because you don't like the content available, or maybe you like it because that's the one part of the game where content isn't outgrown in a short matter of time. Whatever your reasons, do you consider the endgame the "real" game or just a fragment of the overall game?

TH

Personally I cannot play an MMO without getting a sense of a need to get to the top level. For me I enjoy the top level, even though it has it's own work alot of times, it's nice to relax without feeling inferior, at least not in the same way as a low level would.

It's never nice for me to be level 21 looking upto level 80s.

TH

"..there is one who believes that the important thing is enjoying the journey"

That quote says it all for me.It applies wholesale to single player games with a leveling system. With MMOs its quite a different story though, as human coplayers are sometimes almost brutal to newbies and I can agree on TH's point of view, but still the whole leveling experience is much more compound with conflicting feelings (not a bad thing imo) while someone struggles to catch up and get rid of the dreaded "noob" status, and that makes it very interesting. You are never bored, sometimes you might get tired... but you're never bored, even grinding with a new found friend is quite rewarding.
I believe the relationships with either friends or foes, while your leveling, are quite more intense and make for a more profound and memorable all around experience.

Got to say i enjoyed the journey more than the end cap, i was only end cap for afew months but seemed abit of an anti-climax. maby i just didn't get around to pve or pvp that everyone else seemed to be doing at end cap, hopfully this time round it should be diffrent with the dragoons and all and im looking forward to hitting it again.