That said, when a game presents no avenues for goals, boredom is going to set in and those connections are then literally all that keeps you in the game. That can sometimes be enough: think of the number of WoW guilds that either got bored of farming content cap or really couldn’t get there yet lingered between content patches anyway. This can breed some resentment though, or even inspire those friends to pack their connections up, as it were, and try another game.

Personally, for end game goal-avenues I really instancing; the co-op/team aspect has always appealed to me (its why I favor games like League of Legends and Left 4 Dead over more traditional RTSs and FPSs) and – for all the flak it catches – the trinity (and more recently with Rift, the foursome with dedicated non-healer support) gives us a well known variety of roles to fill in a team set up. (I’m game for alternatives, but I have yet to see any I really like.)

No (or little) ship customisation. If ships were actual houses, on a planet, and could therefore have NPC vendors and people would see them, fine. But although they’ve been sold to us as player housing, they’re really not – they’re just a (in)convenient way of getting from A to B that happen to have bank access and are somewhere to have conversations with your companions. 50 levels in on my main, and 28 additional levels on various alts, and I’ve not seen the inside of someone else’s ship.

(I, and it seems a lot of the playerbase, wanted more ship and customisation in STO, and got it, and I ran through it once. The devs had wasted a lot of time providing that rather than content).

*Guild* housing (space stations), now – that’d be awesome; something that takes a lot of effort to put together, maybe a bit of effort to maintain, and has big enough spaces for people to interact. Which obviously means they need reasons to be there in addition to just being social… possibly “shared” space stations, between several guilds – each guild gets its own private customisable “floor” or wing, and there’s a common area allowing jumpoff to flashpoints?

Actually *do* something with the guild ally/adversary registration. At the moment, allied/adversary guilds don’t even show up as a different colour, as far as I can see, and apart from a designation as allied/adversary on a now-defunct section of the SWTOR website, that appears to be it. Ideally, they’d bring in something like Ultima Online’s guild system (no red vs blue there) where guilds could declare themselves at war with other guilds – which would allow interaction beyond the social, even with same-side guilds.

And yes, something to let us create our own content. Ok, there’ll be no voice acting, but meh. STO has managed it, and some of the player-created stuff is quite good, by all accounts.

Something has to change. It must. WoW didn’t lose a boatload of subscribers for nothing.

Let us buy real estate. Give us ongoing ship projects (decorate/upgrade/get vanity plates for/get registered so you can skip visiting the space dock at planet x and go directly to the surface). Let us join organizations and work our way up the ranks with procedurally generated quests. Let us form our own groups and societies and have in-game mechanical support for the same. Let is set up trade routes between planets. Let us smuggle spice, and fight off boarding parties. Let us race various vehicles against both players and NPCs.

Most of these are obviously just ways for players to create their own content, but in a way that’s tied to the narrative of the game.

In other words… let us find ways to continue the story ourselves.

Depending on how the legacy system evolves, this might not be entirely true. Which is to say, it’s possible that the legacy system could be a clever fusion between “more game” and “things for capped players to do”. On the “more game” side, we’ve been led to expect new races via the legacy system, which obviously provides motivation for some people to start over. On the “things for capped players to do” side, there have been hints of new powers and options for existing characters.

I like the Guild Wars approach, which only has a bit of early leveling, pretty much only an extended tutorial period. The rest is just the game.

The problem, of course, stems from the gluttonous consumption of solo content. What used to be sold as expansions and new versions in retail boxes is demanded in exchange for subscription money.

If the actual character progression and accumulation of power/knowledge/wealth in these MMORPGs was deep and long enough, then these end game discussions wouldn’t happen. Players would merrily play the actual _game_ for months without reaching “level cap”. Then developers could extend the breadth of progression rather than constantly adding levels or better gear.

But players won’t stop to smell the roses if 1) the margin power gain between “levels” is great; 2) time to next “level” is short. It’s a simple matter of time efficiency. Either I do the content in a challenging context in 2 hours, or I spend 30 minutes to gain more levels and then breeze through the content I originally intended to do in 20 minutes. “gotta get the next level. gotta get to max. gogogogo”

Dear Devs: SLOW DOWN YOUR GAME

In any event, “endgame” as a term is something of a misnomer; it implies that it comes after “beginninggame” (forgive me) and, therefore, is more important. I remember reading Belghast’s commentary about there simply being “game”. As in, no levelling structure whatsoever, just the type of content that people want to get involved in. It’s understood that this would have an impact on any tutorial that exists, but it’s hardly as if the levelling in World or Warcraft teaches players anything about what’s going to hit them at endgame.

In fact, I reckon that’s where the heroic-hate came from last January.

To answer the question conventionally, though, endgame has to be meaningful. A series of disconnected mini-games doesn’t seem to work, so it has to be something that is tied into the world and works as a part of it. For me, that’s where professions come in and it pains me to see how they’re currently implemented (particularly in Star Wars).

It just has so much potential; I’m a huge fan of housing, and think of what professions can do there. Secondary professions, in particular, are simply overlooked as fluff because they don’t actually serve any real purpose. What’s the point in maxing out fishing? It’s just a grind. What’s the point in maxing out cooking? It’s just a grind. What’s the point in maxing out archaeology? It’s just a grind.

But if you start making it worthwhile to be proficient in a profession such as fishing, beyond simple buff food, then you’re onto something. If you start making those same professions link together (like fishing up a bottle with archaeology fragments, or digging up a cooking recipe), then you’re moving better still. If you make this progression directly tied into guild housing, and you’ve created a completely different strand of endgame for players that don’t just want to grind gear or HK’s.