Endgame: Hope for the Future

This topic is one that's being covered a lot lately and with good reason. This post is just my two cents and I will try to keep it brief and without repeating a lot of points already made or veering off into a rant. So, here we are, a month into the game and a lot of people have hit a wall of sorts, myself included. Before I start in on this topic, let me first say that I still love Guild Wars 2. I think it's a fantastic game even with it's flaws and I am not giving up on this game.

There seems to be two trains of thought when it comes to Guild Wars 2 and it's endgame: those who have wholly embraced the idea of getting off the gear treadmill and taking a laid back attitude towards leveling and simply enjoying the game for all it's beauty and splendor and those who rush to level 80, finish all maps quickly and then are unhappy when there's no gear to pursue or raids to keep them busy.. or anything to keep busy with, honestly.

No matter which side you're on you may have begun to feel the emptiness I have felt nipping at me. The lack of draw to log in each chance that comes along. I could play every day but I don't as often as I did in the first few weeks. There's things I want to do in game, sure. I want to get my crafting skills to 400. I want to get my map finished. I want to make my Legendary. I want to level my other characters. I have so much I want to do but I feel no pull to log in and do them. Why?

I think Tr1age and the gang at ALTTABME.COM have some great thoughts on Endgame in their podcast and I definitely recommend it for anyone looking to come at the issue from all angles. (Warning: there are a few Zhaitan spoilers in this video.)

What some people may not realize, and I certainly didn't as I never played the first, is that Guild Wars 1 has a lot of the amenities that we lack in Guild Wars 2. What does that mean? It means that in the future we can look forward to ArenaNet adding in things like guild halls and possibly housing (which could mean the inclusion of a carpenter tradeskill, I hope!) because the infrastructure is already there in the game. We may see something like the Hall of Monuments and actual titles we can display, collections that give rewards, new achievements, et cetera. We know that they can put in these things, and I believe that they will and that they will make good on their commitment to adding new events Live to change the feel of a zone.

At the moment, Guild Wars 2 feels incomplete and released before it was ready but I have hope that in the coming months patches will alleviate a lot of that feeling and give me even more reason to log in every chance I get. It's that knowledge and that hope that is going to keep me in this game for a long time to come.