First things first, I want to begin by publicly apologizing to Selly, who takes the time to write wonderful comments here and that my spam filter seems to hate. I am sorry and hope you forgive me. On to the main topic.
Edit: BUT WAIT!!!! Bronte remind me I never apologized to him either. I am so sorry! Please forgive me.
I am now level 50 in swtor since last thursday, thus making Swtor the second MMO in which I hit a current level cap. And to answer the big question… YES! There is an actual endgame in Swtor despite what some people might want you to believe. In fact it’s eerily similar to WoW endgame… or rather it’s similar to a cross over between BC endgame and Wotlk endgame. There’s dailies, there’s heroics (hard mode) and there’s gear to be gathered and bosses to be toppled. If you feel a bit loss, Annexxia has a great guide to level 50.
So… is it better? Is it worst than that other game?? Well, like many things in Swtor it’s similar but different. Similar because the general structure of dailies, heroics, crafting is still there. Different because you can get gear pieces using a mix of those methods. For example, dailies will give you epic ear pieces, mods and implants. These slots can also be filled by crafting or drops from heroics so you have more than one way to acquire your gear.
There’s still a lot to try out at endgame so I’ll reserve judgement for later. In fact, my main issue with WoW endgame was that every patch had you start farming anew so I’ll have to wait to see if this is the case here. Hopefully it won’t but in the meantime, I’m enjoying myself.
The endgame is where a lot of MMOs fall down, and one that even Blizz haven’t found a good answer for yet. The challenge is to make things interesting for everyone until the next content patch/expansion comes along. Blizz seems to have accepted that people will take breaks in between, but they have the mass to support that kind of thing. A 30% drop of subscribers in a smaller MMO will hurt a lot more.
In STWOR’s favor, even the dailies are fresh and new. So that buys them a little more time to hustle out some new content.
The one thing that really annoys me is that the armoring and hilt/barrel modifications you can purchase with daily commendations are significantly better than anything the crafters can create. While the mod and enhancement modifications that you get as rewards from the group dailies on Belsavis are the same level as what crafters make, thus giving people the choice of repeating the dailies or crafting/purchasing. However, there’s a pretty significant stat gap between the best crafted hilt/barrel/armoring modifications and the ones purchased with daily commendations. Fortunately, the cost of those isn’t too bad and although the daily quests are pretty abhorrent for soloing, they are not bad with a group (also: social points, yay!) that you only need a couple of days to get enough commendations to kit out your orange quality-gear.
I can’t wait to join you guys at 50. I have a 3 day weekend upcoming (thanks to some extra vacation) so I’m hoping to be there real soon.
You never publicly apologized to me when I got caught in your spam filters!
As or endgame at level 50′s comparison to WoW: six of one seems to me to be half a dozen of another!
OMG! That is true! I will edit the post right nao!
Has Ilum improved at all? When I hit 50 a bit ago, I went to check it out and was aghast at the broken quests and horrid FPS issues. I’ve not really had the inclination to go back … in fact, I went ahead and started plowing through content on my Sith Warrior. Altoholics unite!
I had no problems with the Ilum story quests and dailies, so hopefully they’ve fixed whatever issues you saw when you first visited.
Ilum PVP on the other hand remains pretty broken, at least the few times that I’ve checked on it.
What Wolfsong said. The quests are fine. No major issues. I ventured quickly in the pvp zone. Did notice a small drop in fps and the place was crawling with Imps.. So I don’t think they fixed it yet but at least the bug issues seems to be better.
I look forward to and yet fear hitting 50. I actually really don’t mind the end game grind, but I’m afraid of the story ending, I guess – it’s my favorite part and why I keep rolling alts.
Grats on the 50 though! It’s always really exciting when you hit max level. I hope you took many pictures to commemorate the event! :v
Also, hahah, you didn’t have to apologize, but it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that you did it!
Planning on raiding? Er… running OPs? Is that was these new-fangled Star Wars are calling raiding?!
Bronte sometimes gets caught in my spam filters too. I refuse to apologize, it knows something I don’t LOL!