What happens at endgame?

[Brightamethyst]

So the question is.. What DO I have to look forward to at cap? Is it rewarding or will I have already experienced the best the game has to offer?

That depends mostly on what you want out of the game. Some people live for the hardcore raiding, and for them hitting the level cap is just the beginning. Some people don't care about endgame at all, and spend their time leveling other jobs, doing quests, crafting, gathering, etc. There's no right or wrong answer here. If you want to just keep living in the world and ignore the raid scene entirely, you can. There are always more jobs to level, items to craft, fish to catch, treasure maps to find...

It's easy to forget out here in internet land where people like to have technical discussions about endgame content, but very few people are actually pushing progression. The vast majority of players spend the vast majority of their time not raiding. Most of us wouldn't still be playing if raiding was the be all end all at level 80.

[Holymoly]

That depends mostly on what you want out of the game. Some people live for the hardcore raiding, and for them hitting the level cap is just the beginning. Some people don't care about endgame at all, and spend their time leveling other jobs, doing quests, crafting, gathering, etc. There's no right or wrong answer here. If you want to just keep living in the world and ignore the raid scene entirely, you can. There are always more jobs to level, items to craft, fish to catch, treasure maps to find...

It's easy to forget out here in internet land where people like to have technical discussions about endgame content, but very few people are actually pushing progression. The vast majority of players spend the vast majority of their time not raiding. Most of us wouldn't still be playing if raiding was the be all end all at level 80.

Regarding your last comment, that's where FFXIV tends to diverge from "old school" MMOs then I guess. My memories of EQ2 are spending 4 or 5 hours a night with guildmates raiding the vast amount of end game content. It never seemed repetitive as the progression was quite competitive with the other guilds on the server (and worldwide). In those games it was the journey to cap that was the grind. I guess I'd better slow down and begin to smell the flowers then as one thing that kills MMOs for me is grinding the same instance for gear, especially if there's little point to it once the next expansion comes out and makes it all redundant anyway.

Still, I'm enjoying it atm.