Due to lots of discussion with my boyfriend about various things today–the issue came up with how the endgame system essentially copied WoW and has the whole “YOU NEED TO DO ALL THIS TO GET THIS GEAR TO MAKE IT SO YOU ARE ABLE TO DO THE FIRST PART OF THIS STUFF” when it is all level 50 content.

It is level 50 content.

And you need to go over the river, through the woods, and down a mountain to even hit the first part of it. And honestly? He’s right–that’s stupid. We hit level 50, why do we have to do all this repetitive stupidity to actually be able to do the content we should be “looking forward” to?

While I’m actually more or less completely geared out until 1.4 officially hits, I will say it is kind of annoying. I wasn’t able to play WoW long (it got boring for me fast) so I can’t comment on their End-game personally, but it seems silly that after you hit level 50, you have to go on some long silly journey to actually do something new at level 50.

HM Flashpoints are barely any different. I would say the biggest change between normal and hard (and this is probably why it has its own tier in Group Finder) is in Lost Island where many mechanics are excluded completely (Droid has no fire come up from the floor, Dr. Lorick’s second phase doesn’t even exist, etc.). HM and NM Operations do have some mechanic differences (though, some you can more or less skip—like Fabricator’s), but I think other than EC, none are really too big of a deal (unless you didn’t blow up the Lightning balls in SM Soa).

I don’t understand why end-game content can’t be special full group things without it being “YOU NEED ALL THIS GEAR OMG.”

It wouldn’t even be such a big deal if only HM and NM did that and those were solely just for a challenge. Kind of like how Ranked was supposed to be. Just a challenge for those who wanted it but they had to go and make all this special ranked requirement gear which really ruins it for me (I’m not good enough for Ranked. Nobody wants me unless they are desperate and I’m not skilled enough to ever get a 2200 rating for that speeder).

I could care less about the harder difficulties in anything. Not because I’m lazy or am looking for something easy, but because I hate repetition. If it wasn’t for the codexes and certain speeders and pets, I wouldn’t bother with different difficulties because gear isn’t my priority. I already have the outfit I plan to wear forever. But yet, I have to bother with gear because I have to. Because I’d be unable to do the content otherwise—not because it is an upgrade and would just help me kill things faster.

It’s level 50 content FOR level 50’s, yes? And yet, there’s so much farming and annoyances we have to do. And before people are all “but then we’d run out of content too fast!!!” I’m sure if they weren’t busy making different difficulties of the same stupid content and just made level 50 content without all the “gearing up” and mountains you need to climb to do so, we could get plenty of normal, story-driven, level 50 content and maybe there’d be stuff like Heroic 8’s which would be all raid-y and operationish. And then that gap wouldn’t be there in the first place. Not to mention then there wouldn’t even need to be different gear for PVP either and expertise could be kicked to the curb already.