Let’s have some provocative fun this morning. Let’s imagine that your favorite MMORPG suddenly decided to kill its entire endgame. The devs are shaving off the last couple of tiers of levels, skills, dungeons, raids, crafting, everything. It’s gone, poof, just like that.
The neat thing about this thought experiment is realizing that while some MMORPGs would be crushed by such a decision, others would be just fine, and it’s not always the ones you think. Guild Wars 2, for example, is a famously level-agnostic game, which means that getting rid of all 75+ content would cripple most of the world because the endgame is at this point almost everything. By contrast, the endgame-elitist World of Warcraft could get rid of its current endgame and still offer plenty to do in terms of midgame gameplay. (Of course, it’d also result in a seismic shift of power and prestige in the playerbase).
But the question here is “better,” so let’s ponder: Which MMO would actually be better if it killed its whole endgame? Which games would survive and thrive if they doubled-down on their midgame, and which games would fall to pieces?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
