On the Subject of Endgame

Jennifer Love Hewitt

A thought occurred to me this morning while I was idly thinking about MMO purists and especially those particularly execrable individuals who consider MMOs to be all about raiding. The journey to the level cap is merely a tiresome inconvenience to these individuals who are constantly whining about "endgame", and usually the lack of it.
Of course 10 months into the game and Vanguard still lacks any raid content, or any other endgame content for that matter. Since it's largely populated by the MMO "elite" as I've previously described, any self-respecting Vanguard player has long since reached the level cap and has spent the remaining time bemoaning the lack of endgame, in between scoffing at players who are yet to reach the cap.
A quick aside at this point. It is common for players who have reached the level cap to comment that no one in the low-to-mid levels really understands the game. This is false. Nothing in Vanguard changes from about level 15 onwards, with the exception of the stats of weapons, skills, armour, foes and quests. It's just the same old shit, with bigger numbers, in different locations, over and over again.
But it made me think, what is "endgame"? Surely the very word suggests that all content has been completed and you have reached the end. Of the game. So racing to get there and then complaining about what it is seems particularly futile.
Of course in practice it means some lazy grindfest designed to offer some pretense of gameplay for those people who have exhausted the primary content. It is therefore necessarily repetitive and tedious. That's the problem with level caps; they create an unnatural barrier to further game progress. Compare that with something open-ended like Animal Crossing where the game is essentially designed to allow you to continue doing what you enjoy doing for as long as you enjoy doing it, no more, no less. That's what I'd like to see in MMOs, rather than the ultimately vacuous "achievement" of having ground your way through the game for long enough for your level number to reach some arbitrary limit. Way to go, cappers, you are "teh 1337".
An interesting contrast is Guild Wars (a game often dismissed by purists as shallow and simplistic). Even in the first (and best) chapter, Prophecies, the game is designed such that you reach the level cap approximately two thirds of the way through the game. Thereafter the game is simply about storyline (and loot, naturally). Sadly subsequent chapters have incorporated new and by no means improved mechanics like titles which have introduced a sad and largely unwelcome grind element to the game. If that trend continues I have little hope for GW2, currently in development.