I just don't get it.

[Shurrikhan]

It's possible some people find the reward itself fun, because they got something amazing for their effort.

Ever saved up enough money to buy something? Most people don't particularly love their job enough they'd do it for free.

But they want to get that latest model car, or the new clothing brand, or some a new computer.

They don't like making the money, but the money buys the shiny prize they want.

Same for this game for some people. Why mow the grass, if the money you get is temporary but you know better rewards are coming soon.

You're also speaking purely from the perspective of someone who hasn't already done all the content 2000x. Of course you enjoy it when you haven't even done half of it yet.

Is it really amazing though? Would you consider changing your oil and tires amazing, or upgrading a graphics card every few years "amazing"? Because that's what gear amounts to in this game. It's maintenance. Let's not confuse satisfaction of completion with reward quality. They're both important, but also separate.

Why should work be an analog for playing video games?

In many cases its more a coping mechanism than the original objective of employment. In either case, see above.

A fair comparison. So, do all "catch-up" players have unkempt yards (metaphorically)?

That's actually pretty optimistic, though the implication for later makes me wonder what you're trying to defend with all this? Death on completion is the anticlimactic story of life. I would hope the end of endgame would be better than senility and coffins.

In my opinion, it's not about gearing up or anything like that. I genuinely love the game, heck I haven't even stepped into thordan or sephirot ex yet, haven't touched midas, but I enjoy leveling my classes, running dungeons, tomestones is simply a side effect to what I love doing. I think that's the point that a lot of people are missing, because they're so focused on gear. This is by far NOT a progressive MMO. You have to find the niche you enjoy and just do it. So what if new gear comes out 3 months down the road? Are you having fun NOW? THAT is what is important.

I enjoy what may come as it comes as well, I just find it wasteful that we're consistently pigeonholed, by either reward-first mindedness or simply a lack of real rewards for older yet still challenging content (see min ilvl sync), into a successively smaller portion of the total content with each patch. There are a lot of fun fights out there... yet only about 7-11 at a time are relevant, 2 dungeons, and Ex primal, 4 normal raids, 4 savage raids. And I do find myself growing more and more bored of a stale model. That said, I don't think that the game is going to die out any time soon just because of that lacking creativity. But, I do think unless steps are taken sooner than later, that it will be inevitable, and not just in the sense of any MMO eventually exhausting itself after three to six expansions.