Wait a second Raven, why do you say endgame is not appealing? I'm having the fun of my life playing on my level 41 toon. If you do, then good for you but take a second to look at the statistics and you will see there are only 10.000-11.000 level 41 characters in the game and looks just like a handful for a mmorpg scale game. If everyone was active then that wouldn't be such a problem but the amount of active level 41 players is dramatically lower than the total.
So what are the players doing if they are not playing at level 41? Easy answer is most of them are twinking or not playing at all. Let's compare what twinking has to offer in comparison to endgame:
As we can see doing elites is the only bonus for playing 41.
Why are the people twinking? The main reasons are pretty obvious and they include the following:
Cost of gear
Having a maxed out level 41 character takes you to 150m including pets. If you really want to feel OP then maxed out gear won't exceed 20% of that price but the average twink can have fun with a lot less than that(1%-5% of 150m)
Cost of pet food
Some would argue that you should rotate pets but if you want to get serious about it then that's just not going to cut it. Feeding your main pet at level 41 costs 1k every 15 minutes, that adds up and you have to spend more time farming then you would do on your twink.
Lack of noobs
Believe it or not, endgame players are pretty sensitive about their stats and even if they are noobs they will avoid the pvp arena in order to keep their kdr clean. The chance of bumping into a noob and scoring an easy kill (which is always fun) is pretty low.
The only thing that AL offers to capped players is also the most frustrating. Elites are just not rewarding to play. Let's assume 33% of total level 41 players are Mages, if you loot a magmatic totem that leaves you a total of 3300 mages that could be interested in your item. If 90% of the mages already use an expedition riffle and they are happy with it then you can take a guess on why prices on elite gear drop every day.
Other consequences of having such a low player base at endgame:
Pick the winning side
After playing a few weeks of pvp it becomes really easy to determine which side will win in pvp. Knowing almost everyone who plays in the arena along with their overall skill and gear you can easily determine which side will win even before the game starts. This leads to the weaker side to abandon the game very fast due to the other side being too op.
Having bad events makes things worse
The last event drove people away from the game, as a result we see even less people in pvp and the elite legendary gear going way down. In the long run this can prove fatal to the game.
Guild wars and drama
This is self explanatory. Playing with the same people everyday increases the chances of guild wars and drama exponentially. Having guild wars is not necessarily a bad thing as it brings spice to the game but after everyone gets tired of fighting same people over and over again the flaming begins which results in flaming which leads to bans.
What do you think? Is it time to bring some shine on the level 41? In my opinion twinking should be fun but it shouldn't exceed what cap has to offer.
Thank you if you took the time to read all of this.
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