Quote:
You were never "finished". Never. And that's how an MMO should feel because isn't that the point of an MMO?
That's pretty much how you create a casual unfriendly MMO that must be played at the expense of other games and maybe even any attempt at life. How one should be viewing an MMO is as a game that is constantly growing and evolving as a result of patches, but I could argue that line is blurring a bit with the advent of things like DLC these days.
The snag, of course, is how a given game chooses to grow. The current trend seems to focus on raiding even though numbers in a given game are likely to put people who participate in those more than once or twice "just to see it" within the minority. That feeling of never being finished MAY be achieved, but usually it is in a more roundabout way like with caps and other forms of gating. If you're not someone who can "commit" to the expected norm of MMO endgame, you either wade along at a much slower pace or generally have to accept that your Game Over just got knocked back a few levels. Of course, this is also why I'm pretty adamant about alternative progression paths being a thing, as avoiding that feeling is integral to wanting to stick around. The more of any demographic you have around, especially in the sub model, is simply going to be better for the game's bottom line.
So, while the devs may have that precarious balancing act to deal with, I am also someone who believes blind loyalty to a single game is dangerous to gaming on the whole. Sometimes people absolutely need to take a break to better gain some perspective. Playing other games can also help one to see what is done right and wrong. Sure, you'll have those who love to bemoan how the MMO has been mainstreamed, casualized, no longer fun, or whatever silly, negative rhetoric they'll prop out to make themselves look the wiser, more sophisticated gamer, but the truth is, on top of being a genre that grows with time, they need to be inclusive with their content, not exclusive. So, that's further why things like lockouts or lacking dynamic content scaling suck. Playing MMOs with others should always be fun and encouraged, but at the same time, it shouldn't be mandatory. Even soloists are a factor in the world regardless of whether or not their presence is immediately obvious.
Maybe one day there'll be a game ballsy enough to break the current cycle, but for the moment, it's pretty much play how the devs intend or GTFO.