I’m in agreement with your post. Of course, I never hold interest long enough to get to the end-game, so it hasn’t been a problem for me. And I don’t run instances much. I certainly won’t ever be part of a 40-man raid. Doesn’t really bother me. I’m always pissed that they don’t add more low-level content. Or at least change some of it. Advance some of these quests a bit. Barrens is huge – add another outpost or an open cave dungeon. Just like any big-world game, the company focuses on size, not content. They have some great plot elements in the game – it’s just the plot never advances. You help the Undead work on their plague but then it never has any noticeable effect. It should decimate Dalaran and as a consequence infest it with spirits. Or the Scarlet Monastery could break away from its perch and slide toward the ocean – suddenly it is twice as large and filled with nasty sea creatures as well as the Scarlet Monks.

MMOs should be embracing the notion of micro-episodic content. Little events they can trigger in-game that will happen at different times on different servers or in response to in-game actions. AQ is a good example, except that it completely excluded lowbies and probably a good portion of casual players.

Is the creator of a game obliged to (a) provide a satisfactory ending to a character’s story? or (b) provide an infinite storyline?

“End Game” as a concept is fine for games with a defined end – chess, Zork, Ultima IV – but must it really apply to every game? What was Elite: Frontier’s end game? Is there a suitable end game for The Sims? Space Invaders? Grow RPG? Was Diablo II’s end game defeating the big bad demon, or did that mark the beginning of the end game (revisiting the same country, fighting the same monsters again for valuable prizes)?

“End Game” as used in a MMORPG setting is another way of saying, “I have experienced this game’s finite amount of content. Now what?” Isn’t the appropriate answer going to occasionally be, “Good for you. Play a different game.”? Isn’t that what we do with those other fine storytelling mediums, books and movies? “Well, I’ve finished the Picture of Dorian Grey. I guess I’ll keep reading the last chapter over and over again until the author writes some more.” “Well, those three Lord of the Rings movies were good, but I can’t wait for the next one: 60 Years of Gardening with Hobbits.”

As you point out, what’s missing in nearly all of these games, and perhaps what our characters feel incomplete without, is life’s own end game: death. Imagine WoW for a moment where your character has an expiration date 6 months from creation; you’ll start out strong and kind of dumb, but will end up wise and kind of weak. Suddenly, there’s more content than any one character can experience – just like life – and you have a charcter arc. How will you end your days? Are you still sitting in your home town, disenchanting a few odds and ends for distant relations? Did you actually get to fight the evil necromancer that almost no one lives long enough to challenge? Have you seen the flowers that bloom at the ends of the earth, or were you too busy defending the homeland? When your time came, were you relaxing in your private villa with friends, or did you fall with a sword in your hand fighting to the end?

Of course, we’re told that no one wants a game where their characters die a permanent death. Where our items eventually wear out and break. Where we can’t seamlessly pick up where we left of a few months ago. Perhaps it’s too much like life, or maybe some companies are disinclined to do anything that doesn’t keep the player locked into their world.

I think ultimately the “end game” problem is a problem of definitions. When we can define the experience that we think “end game” is supposed to offer, we’ll better know how to bring that to persistent worlds.