Winning the game

Over at Kill Ten Rats, I came across this post about finishing a game like World of Warcraft (WoW), in this case City of Heroes (CoH the comic book, superhero mmorpg that introduced me to this genre of gaming). I think CoH's level cap is still 50, and WoW's cap is currently 60, but soon to be 70 if you buy the expansion.

I had a conversation with a friend last night about why is it we feel the need to "complete" a game like WoW? Why do we play it like we are playing a game of Mario Bros as if it has an end point.

WoW *should* be played where we enjoy it for the here and now, instead I think I, and many others, play it to get to that next level, and the next and the next til we hit 60. And I, like many others, find getting to 60 to be anti-climatic and after running around wondering what to do (or raiding) you realize maybe you shouldn't have pushed it so much.

When I heard the expansion was coming out I started playing my alt more in hopes to get it to 60 - forcing myself not to waste time trying to role play in Stormwind, but instead killing wolves. When I heard there was a chance to fight some higher-end bosses in beta, I started forcing myself to get quests done, instead of just exploring all the new areas. In other words, I started sucking the fun out of the game.

So when those people who find they no longer have fun playing a game and they quit at 59.5 in WoW or 48.7 in CoH, we shouldn't look at them puzzled, instead we should envy them a bit for being able to know when....to say when.