Guild Wars 2

I have a theory that I’d like to share on one of the more significant factors of creating the feel of end game. That theory is quite simple.

Every form of progression will lead to a feeling of endgame.

It really seems so obvious now. Players in many MMOs wonder what they are going to do after they are done leveling, or done gearing up, or done with the story. It’s like power progression is the game, or the story is the game, and while you’re on the cusp of reaching the pinnacle or are at that pinnacle the game becomes end game. And let’s be clear, end game is what players do in game after they’ve completed most if not all of the challenges and story of the game, and basically are all funnelled into the same end point of content/grind.

This isn’t supposed to be a comparison of GW1 to GW2, but more about the driving concepts of the different genres they’re a part of. I’m not sure how many of the forum goers played Guild Wars 1, but the “end game” seemed different to me. It wasn’t that end game started after power progression. It started after gaps in story progression, playing while waiting for the next game/expansion.

Basically in both genre’s we see a clear progression of something leading to end game. In Guild Wars, it was clearly story and lore. In normal MMOs it’s power progression. Sometimes it seems like these progressions are all there is in the game too, and maybe that’s somewhat true.

The question is what is Guild Wars 2’s progression? It’s a lot of power progression, it’s a lot of story (granted the storytelling/lore tie-ins can be improved definitely). The Ascended gear and Legendary gear are both pretty unrealistic for a casual player, especially if they have alts. So the power progression is heavily endgame (as the concentration of players doing the same thing increases), but fortunately the power progression is fairly shallow, unfortunately it has a heavy impact on fractals due to agony resist.

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Story is also a pretty significant part of the endgame due to the living story. It has been somewhat lacking, but fortunately of late we’ve seen improvements in both quantity and quality, which is honestly really impressive. It’s so obvious the living story is end game, because of the enormous concentration of players doing the same thing. However, it’s extremely different (and better in my opinion), because it’s new content and added challenges/story progression.

So to bring it all back together, no matter what you do endgame is a guarantee (unless there’s literally nothing to do at somepoint, which some people may feel is the case). If a game is largely about power progression, it will lead to endgame. If a game is largely about story/lore it will lead to endgame. There will always be content implemented into online RPGs designed to be a funnel for the playerbase to start walking through muddy terrain. It all goes back to the dissapointing truth that developers can’t create quality content faster than it can be consumed.

Honestly one of the simpler ways to solve this is to hide it well. If you can spread out the playerbase through your world as part of endgame it won’t feel as much like a funnel. If you can give them different lore/story elements to progress in those areas you disperse them too you’re building your world and your IP with them. If you can allow them to progress their character at the same time, you’ve got an incredible system. If you can make them want to replay content, they’re happy. If you can do all that at frequent enough intervals, you’ve solved the content consumption rate problem.

Is Guild Wars 2 entirely endgame? No, because when you start there’s a pretty clear starting point and there’s incentive to go everywhere. As you start to go everywhere and progress in the game you realize there’s really incentive to only be in a few places. For many people that’s, champ trians, dungeons, fractals, or living story. Each of which there are multiple, so while Guild Wars 2 isn’t entirely endgame, it has more endgame than a lot of other MMOs, maybe the most endgame (and without a subscription!!!). In my opinion though, Guild Wars had even more endgame than Guild Wars 2 (but we can thank Hard Mode for most of that).