Endgame

[Miltiades]

Much of TOR's popularity will stand or fall with how content after the main story is handled. It's a vital part of keeping an MMO strong, and keeping the player hooked to the game. As we have seen in other MMO's recently, the content (or lack thereof) delivered after the main story is largely going to determine its success.

Are PvP, Raids, achievements and all that going to be enough? Will they be the main focus after the main story is done? Are you going to be forced into creating a new class to find the excitement back you lost at some point during a PvP game?

So what needs to be done to keep high level players playing their character? What can be learned and taken from other MMO's, what should they stay away from? Are there new kinds of elements you think would work? Or is it just a matter of regularly getting more (story-based) content from the developers?

[Jeff]

I still haven't figured out how I think raids will work. They have said there will be raids, but I just don't see them being in the same style as WoW. I don't know anything about how SWG did endgame, but you don't typically see 25 Jedi and soldiers going up against 1 boss. That said, however they do raids or any other endgame events, they will almost certainly be repeatable like in WoW and presumably other MMOs, I imagine that is how they will keep players coming back.

[Saenjaina]

On the other hand, 5-man (or more) expeditions would fit quite well into the game. Dungeons much like those in SWG. I think it has become too conventional that a MMO game has to contain elements requiring 20+ people. This of course has its pros, but I definitely don't find this fundamental.

When I played games like SWG or COH back in the days, I rarely even entered a dungeon at all. This was probably because of the game style being all that new to me. I didn't know what the game had to offer, but I enjoyed myself so much.

My point is, I hope that TOR will offer something new to the MMO experience. There must be something that can keep people busy, without having it to be late night raids on scheduled week days. Though, I'm not keeping my hopes up too high about this, since most new MMO games are just concerned with obtaining a level of competivity with WoW.

WoW also did keep me busy for almost 4 years, but when I now am going to start something new, I'd be sad to see something all too similar with WoW.