An interesting hypothesis...

You know, one thing many of us probably see in Champions, and could very well show up in Star Trek Online, is that there are several people who keep pining and saying there is no endgame. There is nothing to do, there is nothing to get. I keep scratching my head because I know I at least do the endgame content several times in a week, not to include the badge hunting or search for upgrades to improve upon my character. They always keep mentioning WoW, and only WoW, as the difinitive endgame machine (which confuses me more).

So, I've been puzzling over it a few days now and I think I've finally come to some conclussions about the whole matter. It isn't the raids or the time or even the stats that people are worried over in the long run with endgame content. They say it as much themselves and frequently as the sun rises. They have nothing to show. In WoW, they have more and more rediculous looking items that demonstrate with a common regularity that they are the crem de la crem of the raiding world (if that's really a position someone wants to be in) as those items allow them an excessive ability to make people sick as they garishly show off (even turning on helms and capes for brief periods of time) that they've acquired the latest item that can add extra length to their epeen, and they can continue their bragging rights and show off to the world that they are the bees knees.

In Champions Online, that really isn't the case. The items, I dare say, are a match pound for pound in their usefulness and ability to boost up a character as WoW items are, but WoW tiered armor is the only thing that offers the bragging rights to some that waste away hours at a time that want every single person to know, in some distant belief, they are better than everyone else (whether that's true or not is debatable) because they were with 24 other people and either got lucky enough or had enough DKP to get a random drop item.

It's a quandry, that much is certain. Do I beleive Antiproton recognized that when he started itemizing the Nemesis Confrontation lair? Quite possibly since several of the new costume pieces are drop items. But unlike WoW, people aren't forced into wearing an item and unless you can actually demonstrate a little semblance of taste in the construction of your costume, most people will probably wish they could white you out of the world if you come along with some miss matched conglomerate that would make Picasso weep.

So in the end, I don't think the problem is there isn't an endgame. I think the major, major problem is that the people who want to wave around their epeen can't readily do so, because unlike a game like WoW, where the items get more and more rediculous the higher you go, in Champions, people start with a large conglomerate and are free to express what they look like, and though a few items add some neat things here, no one cares in the long run what it looks like. Though those with the Dimensional Destroyer badge are showing off those capes, in the end I think those pining for raids want to be able to walk into the Renn Center and say they did the impossible that no one else could (despite several groups before were doing it already).

Part of my mind hopes that there are raids coming then hehe.