What is there to do when you reach lvl 80?

[Kaenroh]

I suspect that WoW's biggest "draw" is the lock-in factor. Players not only have friends in WoW that they could no longer play with if they migrated to a different game, but they also have considerable investment in their characters that they're loathe to give up. I don't think it's much more complex than that.

Don't forget there's also people like me stuck subscribed to it because of the Annual Pass =p

[Crazyjoe]

Actually, that argument does not work for Rift. Rift had an endgame right from the start, and Trion has been considerably better than Blizzard at delivering new content patches.



The problem with that argument is that most WoW players do not actually play the "deep endgame". There are millions of players that have had nothing to do bt the three Hour of Twilight heroics and LFR for the past nine months. Which is very little and very shallow content (especially the heroics that were outgeared in a week or two -- they were balanced around item level 353, rewarded item level 378 drops). WoW has been consistently very bad at delivering non-raid content after the start of an expansion, and only a minority of players raid.

I suspect that WoW's biggest "draw" is the lock-in factor. Players not only have friends in WoW that they could no longer play with if they migrated to a different game, but they also have considerable investment in their characters that they're loathe to give up. I don't think it's much more complex than that.

Pretty much this, wows endgame is a shadow of it's former self when it comes to raiding. Rift is far superior in that department, infact a much higher % of rifts playerbase raid then wows.

[Deleted]

So far I'm working on my "Been There, Done That" title (lvl 75 and 74% map cleared), it will last maybe few days and I will be done. Some people say that you can go back to any zone because of level scaling, but I can honestly tell that I never will, there's not even 1 reason to do it.
I know there are dungeons, dinamic events and PvP ( I'm not much into pvp tbh), but I fell like best part of the game is world of Tyria itself, I love entering some random cave and find few rocks i can jump on, and that actually leads to cool jumping puzzle (I'm not checking any of it on Youtube and stuff). I will be happy to achieve 100% map completion, but same time I will be sad because I finished best part of the game, part there's no going back to.

[Dezerte]

I'm of an different opinion. I think we need more varied MMO's, not a WoW 2.0.

[Deleted]

To nick a list from the gw2guru forums:


1) Competing in WvW
2) Achieving sPvP ranks
3) Playing and making tournaments
4) Obtaining legendaries
5) Obtaining titles
6) Raiding World Bosses
7) Clearing dungeons in all modes
8) Winning jumping puzzles
9) Crafting
10) Renown hearts to get karma items
11) Getting Achievements
12) Completing zones
13) Exploration
14) House decoration
15) Collecting minipets and battling with them
16) Acquiring rare skins
17) Gaining influence for your guild
18) Underwater content
19) Personal stories
20) Minigames
21) Getting Town costumes
22) Becoming wealthy
23) Dailies / Monthlies
24) (to be released) GvG

And that ain't even all of it. Basically, everything except instanced raiding.

[Deleted]

adding house decorations on the list, is like putting dance studio in WoW features ;P

[Deleted]

I suspect that WoW's biggest "draw" is the lock-in factor. Players not only have friends in WoW that they could no longer play with if they migrated to a different game, but they also have considerable investment in their characters that they're loathe to give up. I don't think it's much more complex than that.

There is something about the way you interact with the world that I find quite compelling. I certainly feel the 'freedom' after being cramped up in capsule playing Eve for a while. It's also generally well produced - things like the AH etc work well - and I really like how you can customise the UI.

I think the 'lock in' factor is the way that so much content is time limited. Quite apart from things daily quests to progress, there are events that you are either there for or miss and if you 'miss' the start of a new expansion or tier it can be hard to get back in again. You won't be in the 'top' team any more because you're not geared enough etc and if you miss the wave then the content ceases to be relevant very quickly.

So there's a lot of pressure to play at certain times. MoP is coming up so there'll pressure to level up quickly, get geared up and start raiding ASAP. But there are also more factions than I've seen in a long time so I'm not sure I'd want to get involved in all that - especially as people tend to have a lot more alts than they did back then so all the grind gets multiplied up.

GW2 is almost the reverse. Assuming that the general 'levelling' experience doesn't diminish after the initial rush of players, then to me at least it makes sense to delay a month or so before starting so they can iron out all the issues and hopefully end up with a more pleasurable experience.

[Nezera]

adding house decorations on the list, is like putting dance studio in WoW features ;P

I am pretty sure that is referring to decorating your R/L house with all the GW2 merchandise!

[Deleted]

I will probably too get a bit bored after I finish leveling since I am a progression type of a player who continually wants to make my char stronger and better and care less for achievements, collecting and exploring. WvWvW is quite fun now although the constant back and forth zerging is starting to get a bit old and what's lacking there is a sense of personal importance since you can't see anything you have done as an individual player.

Not having open PvP in the regular world makes it a bit less exciting for me too since I know that I can’t be jumped or that a camp will never get attacked and so on and I enjoy that thrill.

But for now, I’m enjoying the game and since it’s a no sub game I don’t have to feel obliged to play if I get bored and hopefully they add more content later on. All in all GW2 is a solid game so far and for being a +1 week old or so it's looking promising.

[Manabomb]

Epicly long amazing quote from page two

Finally... someone that speaks logic and reason of whom I couldn't agree with more. Thank you... So very much for restoring what little faith I have left in this dribble known as mmo gamers.

[Deleted]

Great post OP, thanks for sharing your opinion even if I disagree several points. One thing I wonder about though (this is the tech nut in me).. you say:

I have to ask - what resolution were you running WoW in? Seeing as you only mentioned buying a graphics card and not a new monitor, surely you were already playing WoW at 1080p (ie, 1920x1080)? Certainly, higher resolution textures (actually, recent textures in WoW are just as high-res but don't have anything in the way of normal mapping, which makes a visual quality difference) can give the illusion of higher definition graphics, but 1920x1080 is always the same "definition" no matter what game you're playing. ><

Or in other words, 1920x1080 in WoW is 1080p already. There's nothing new or shiny about playing GW2 in 1080p as well. If you meant the graphics are better in GW2, that's certain. But it's not because of the resolution. It just erks me when people think better graphics = better definition. It's almost as bad as the people who think "higher resolution" = "higher definition". >< (Frequently, higher resolution DOES mean higher definition if viewed on the same monitor, presuming the higher resolution is native, however all the time I see people resizing a low resolution video to 1920x1080 and calling it HD and it kills my life :P)

Hahahahahaha relax bro I'm a techie at heart too. I've always had the same 24" 1080p monitor and yeah, I've always run all of my games in that definition. I know the difference between graphics quality and definition, and I was just trying to say that looking at Tyria in highest graphic options at HD is not the same as looking at Azeroth in highest graphics options at HD. Also, an incredibly nice feature of GW2 is the option to render the graphics at a higher resolution than your monitor's and then display them at your monitor's resolution, resulting in an even better looking picture. Did you check this feature out?

[Artorias]

If a newbie player asked me what was there at lvl 80 in Wrath of the Lich King I would have told him: "Oh wow listen there's so much you can do man! You can either go PvP or PvE or a little bit of both. In any case you can do Battlegrounds, get honor and complete your PvP set. Get a good arena partner and achieve a high rating. You can do dungeons and get nice pve gear so you can then move on to Raiding. You can farm reputations to get cool pets, items and titles. You can do Achievements for many types of rewards. If you get a good guild you can do Heroic Raids for the best loots. You can level your professions and make some money, start saving up for that 16k Bike! Etc. etc. and so on.

And I see basically the same problem in Guild Wars 2. The Leveling experience is awesome. There's no denying it. But when I reach lvl 80 what do I do? What if I've never liked PvP in MMO's? What if I don't want "different"-looking gear? Where is my incentive to play if all gear will have theh same stats? I will log in, click on my character and enter the world. The map is already 100% complete. What. Do. I. Do.? Please, am I wrong? Someone please tell me I'm just wrong and there's plenty of things to do out there. And don't even start with Dynamic Events. Every zone has a 1 or 2 different dynamic events per Renown Heart. It's not like you can't memorize them once you've done the content once. So what exactly is there to do? What is the endgame? I really really really want to like and love this game because I don't want to go back to WoW. But I just don't see it, I simply can't see it. Please help me see it.

tl;dr: just gtfo if you're not gonna read the whole thing, you will simply not understand my position and just post irrelevant bs.

If a newbie player asked me what was there at lvl 80 in Guild Wars 2 I would have told him: "Oh wow listen there's so much you can do man! You can either go PvP or PvE or a little bit of both. In any case you can do WvW, get glory and complete your PvP set. Get a good sPvP team and achieve a high rating. You can do dungeons and get nice pve gear so you can then move on to Raiding God Temples. You can farm karma to get cool pets, items, and titles. You can do Achievements for many types of rewards. If you get a good guild you can do Orrian raids for the best loots. You can level your professions and make some money, start saving up for that 40k PER PIECE God Armor! Etc. etc. and so on.

Is there an equivalent to WoW Raiding? No. Is there an alternative? Yes. There is A LOT TO DO, so please don't say there is nothing to do until you hit level 80. If you are obsessed with the idea of raiding, just take a look at the threads on these forums saying how freaking hard explorable dungeons are. Have fun.

Guild Wars 'endgame' has always been obtaining 1: Gear and 2: Titles.

This. Isn't. WoW.

[Donair]

Sadly, people used this argument for Rift, Aion, SWTOR and Diablo 3. "But there's nothing to do when you reach max level" "What do yo expect its the first iteration, Wow wasnt good at the start either, etc."

We've seen what happened, people just quit and went back to WOW / LOL / some console game.

At this point, it's pretty much clear to me : for any game to challenge Wow for real, it has to have a DEEP endgame immediatly, or else people will just go play a game where grinding matters. That was SWTOR mistake. It was seriously the funniest leveling experience I ever had, but when you reached endgame, it was not good.

I don't even think that's possible. It clearly doesn't even need to have DEEP endgame content immediately to challenge WoW's pathetic release schedule for new content. Theoretically a new MMO contendor would only have to release a new raid with 5-8 bosses every 10 months to compete with WoW's endgame. Then dial that timeframe down to 5-8 months to actually surpass WoW's speed. And then of course have a slew of vanity outfits, pets, achievements, and a few long drawn out asian style grinds ala Insane title and voila: WoW contender.

BUT. Emphasis again.. BUT. As we've seen time and time again, that isn't enough. WoW has evolved into such a beast it is now more similar to a massive interactive FB social network app. I came back with a scroll of resurrection recently and found most of my guild mates online via remote chat. Not even playing the game.. yet staying connected with it and their friends. It's been like this nearly every evening I've been on minus a couple nights when they were raiding. How brilliant is that? That Blizzard can get away with running a slightly (emphasis on slightly in the games current state) beefed up version of FB and charging 15 bucks a month for it?

There is no game that can compete with this level of insanity. The bonds of friendship within the game combined with devout long time warcraft lore fans and the means for them to stay connected at all times within the game has reached a level that allows Blizzard to really do whatever they want or don't want to do with the game. Release lukewarm content every 10 months to save on development costs?? No problem. They can get away with it because most of the people I've witnessed since coming back briefly aren't even playing the game anyway. Just blindly paying 15 a month to socialize with their friends and do the occassional raid. It's madness. NO GAME CAN COMPETE WITH THIS.

[Shampro]

WvW and 5mans. nothing else.

[Puremallace]

different strokes for different folks, some people gotta have those raids

Raids were made to make pve guilds viable. GW2 removes raids, hence removing pve guilds from the game. Sorry but this is just one area where I have been correct since January 2011 when GW2 hype really went overboard and GW2 fans shoved this game down everybody's throat.

This is a pvp game with a little bit of pve tacked on plain and simple. The problem is you cannot unsub to send a message to ArenaNET that they made a incomplete game. So enjoy the Buy to play crap pay model.

[Artorias]

Raids were made to make pve guilds viable. GW2 removes raids, hence removing pve guilds from the game. Sorry but this is just one area where I have been correct since January 2011 when GW2 hype really went overboard and GW2 fans shoved this game down everybody's throat.

This is a pvp game with a little bit of pve tacked on plain and simple. The problem is you cannot unsub to send a message to ArenaNET that they made a incomplete game. So enjoy the Buy to play crap pay model.

None of the Guild functions have been implemented yet, outside of WvWvW.

1. PvP side: Guild vs Guild.
2. PvE side: Hmmmm I wonder what they will do here OH I KNOW MAYBE IT WILL BE RAIDS.

[NightZero88]

Raids were made to make pve guilds viable. GW2 removes raids, hence removing pve guilds from the game. Sorry but this is just one area where I have been correct since January 2011 when GW2 hype really went overboard and GW2 fans shoved this game down everybody's throat.

This is a pvp game with a little bit of pve tacked on plain and simple. The problem is you cannot unsub to send a message to ArenaNET that they made a incomplete game. So enjoy the Buy to play crap pay model.

I think you're confusing GW1 with GW2. Otherwise you have no idea what you're talking about. I never played vanilla WoW but I'd say GW2 has just as much PvE content as vanilla WoW did if not more from what I've read in this thread. GW1 on the other hand WAS a PvP game and was advertised AS a PvP game with a small amount of PvE thrown in. GW2 as a game is very very complete.

[Lolsteak]

Don't look at me, I haven't played WoW in more than a year because I don't like the game; but I'm not going to go around and say it doesn't have content. It does have, and taking 3-4months (and more if you're in a less serious guild) to clear a raid is more content than what GW2 offers. WvWvW will only be fun for so long -- believe me, I felt the same about TOR. "Oh, I'll just PvP! That's fun!" 2 months later it's like forcing myself to drink cold coffee.

Have you cleared all of the temples in Orr? have you crafted atleast one legendary for your class? have you completed the explore mode dungeons?

Feel free to repeat what you wrote AFTER completing that content.

[Alianthos]

I don't even think that's possible. It clearly doesn't even need to have DEEP endgame content immediately to challenge WoW's pathetic release schedule for new content. Theoretically a new MMO contendor would only have to release a new raid with 5-8 bosses every 10 months to compete with WoW's endgame. Then dial that timeframe down to 5-8 months to actually surpass WoW's speed. And then of course have a slew of vanity outfits, pets, achievements, and a few long drawn out asian style grinds ala Insane title and voila: WoW contender.

BUT. Emphasis again.. BUT. As we've seen time and time again, that isn't enough. WoW has evolved into such a beast it is now more similar to a massive interactive FB social network app. I came back with a scroll of resurrection recently and found most of my guild mates online via remote chat. Not even playing the game.. yet staying connected with it and their friends. It's been like this nearly every evening I've been on minus a couple nights when they were raiding. How brilliant is that? That Blizzard can get away with running a slightly (emphasis on slightly in the games current state) beefed up version of FB and charging 15 bucks a month for it?

There is no game that can compete with this level of insanity. The bonds of friendship within the game combined with devout long time warcraft lore fans and the means for them to stay connected at all times within the game has reached a level that allows Blizzard to really do whatever they want or don't want to do with the game. Release lukewarm content every 10 months to save on development costs?? No problem. They can get away with it because most of the people I've witnessed since coming back briefly aren't even playing the game anyway. Just blindly paying 15 a month to socialize with their friends and do the occassional raid. It's madness. NO GAME CAN COMPETE WITH THIS.

You know these are excellent points, and I wholeheartly agree with you. I barely scrached the surface with the "end game" thing, the social aspect is indeed very important.

[Moinaldo]

Vanilla WoW always had a million things to do for me.

Dungeons took alot of planning and effort to complete.
There was vast World to explore that took a long time because of no flying mounts.
World PvP was immense fun and killed MANY hours.
Gold farm and crafting items took AGES.
Raids took months and months to finish, if ever.


Enlighten me how you had little to do in Vanilla WoW.

Please enlighten me how these are different.

-Dungeons take time to complete, in fact people think dungeons take too much time to complete
-To complete all vistas and POI takes a long time because of not even ground mounts.
-WvWvW can give you endless hours of PVP if you are into PVP.
-To get all of the recipes by discovering them and crafting custom equipment take ages.

Raids could be the only thing I could not compare, but you can not give them as an example of """things to do""" because just a few could go and raid and not everyone with the kind "progress" that was needed in WoW... so it was definitely not a thing everyone could do.

The biggest mistake people have made, is trying to play this game as if it was WoW... I play both of them, and I like both of them, because they are different...