What *really* happens when they raise the level cap...

I hope it is a shallow level cap rise, if this game is going the level cap increase route.

A change where the kit you've worked to obtain is obsoleted by the incoming top tier kit is fine. A change where the kit you've worked to obtain is obsoleted by random drops in the first week is frustrating.

The main trick for me for level cap raises, especially in games where many play alts, is to keep content quite high compared to level gain. At present you can pretty much play all of a planet with one character, just storyline on the next, and repeat, then do the reverse with another alt. This means the game takes longer to get boring. They did the same in LOTRO, but every expansion added only just enough content to play through with one character without repeating, heavily damaging the replay value. It's the reason I'm hear paying subs, rather than there playing free (I'm a lifetimer).

In EQ1 , the level cap is currently 95, and will probably hit 100 this year. (The game started in '99 with a level cap of 50). This is in addition to the existence of an "Alternate Advancement" system which is roughly analogous to the skill tree abilities in SWTOR, except that with sufficient time you can earn experience to buy every ability available for your class -- and then some "expendable" (single-use) abilities that are the equivalent of high-end Adrenals.

Raising the level cap, by itself, without any new content has the effect of trivializing existing endgame content, unless it too is tweaked to keep the same challenge. In addition to higher HP/damage etc, SWTOR, if you are 5 levels higher than a NPC, you will resist most of its' abilities and attacks. Some mechanics, and certain scripted abilities will still "land" but not many.

In older games such as EQ1, this was also a way of allowing more casual players to experience the "former" high end raids. In SWTOR, Story Mode was created specifically for this purpose ( although Story Mode Denova is still not "casual" friendly).

On the other hand, if new gear and new content is introduced, it will mean that older "hard" content will be completely neglected. This is exactly what happened with WoW's various expansions, where the end-game heroic dungeons (the hard-mode versions of the level 50 flashpoints, in SWTOR parlance) are only rarely visited, and then generally only once for the sake of completing achievements, or for specific rare drops -- e.g. rare mounts.

Additionally, raising the level cap increases the "bar to entry" of the game. As the game matures, and there are fewer alts being levelled, the low end areas of the game will become deserted, and even Group Finder will not help -- meaning that many levelling worlds will be as empty as on those desolate Origin servers. A new player faced with that sort of circumstances is not very likely to stick around without a lot of encouragement.

Finally, the effect on PVP is also hard to quantify. A new 50-54 bracket would probably be required (assuming new level cap 55), because there is a pretty hefty jump in power at 50 so simply extending the 10-49 bracket would not work. Even there, new PVE gear could easily render existing level 50 PVP gear obsolete, and as mentioned earlier, creating one new level 55 PVP set means having to also recreate the equivalents of the recruit set, changing the existing War Hero set to be bought with a lesser amount of unranked commendations, and so on.

My conclusion is that raising the level cap is fraught with many risks and that the costs may well outweigh the benefits -- it would require a wholesale reworking of the entire game, but using significantly fewer people other resources than were available at this time last year.

I am still amazed how many people focus on a level cap needing to either be the WoW system (where killing 5 boars now gives a more epic weapon then defeating Deathwing did last week), or the EQ system, where you need to do old raid tiers to still have gear to get into the new max level.

When really, everyone seems to ignore the possibility of what I personally considered the best option (and was actually done by WoW as well in Wrath). Make the blue and crafted gear at the end of the new level cap and before the new endgame about equal to the purples you could get at the old cap.

This way, people can just get to max level and continue progression in their current gear, while also allowing others to grind their pre-endgame gear at the level cap and not needing the old endgame to do it (although going back to the old endgame will actually give gear upgrades as well).

Really, everyone is so lost in the EQ and WoW systems, they can't even imagine another system of level caps.

Let's all stop screaming the sky is falling untill we actually have data on the way TOR will increase level caps. We don't even know how many levels yet! Let alone what the gear levels will be like..

the way they did expansions in wow wasnt the absolute worst way possible sure it wasnt anywhere near the best way to do it but it worked, well in my experience with my guild anyways. sure the old gear becomes obsolete thats what happens when you level up new gear comes along and old gear gets dropped, but people seem to forget that this is swtor where in a lot of cases the mods make up the gear not the item itself, if you like a way a piece of gear looks you can just replace the mods with the mods from the new gear, granted this doesnt apply to gear sets. and the argument on ops never being played again would be to add something similar to guild achievements that reward a guild for running the old raids

the way i see it is: if you werent upset that the gear you got from a lvl 10 heroic was obsolete at lvl 20 you shouldnt be upset that the gear you got at 50 is obsolete at 60

When it comes to EQ at least, you're dead wrong -- for at least the last 5 years, EQ has generally made most end-game raid gear obsolete with high end group gear from the new expansion. With their current expansion, they actually launched it in the state that the drops from the first raid in it, a necessary step for progression, was actually worse than the group gear from the same expansion.

The end result is that people who haven't beaten the end-game of the current expansion are wasting their time if they continue to do so when the new expansion comes out. It totally and utterly invalidates all older raid content. This has undoubtedly led EQ to F2P this year, and to the point that there are only 59 guilds that have beaten any raid in the current expansion, and only 13 that have beaten it, now nearly 9 months after it was released.

So, by all means, continue to wear your rose-colored spectacles, and blindly assume that the dev team is infallible. After all, they were so right with Ilum, weren't they?

Yeah 12 months is about the bottom limit, anything less than that and most of your game population probably isn't even at the gear cap.

Everyone gets sick of this model in the end though, which is why more sandbox features would help.

But don't you realize that by giving us NO information, all our "concerns" are based upon pure speculation? We can't possibly give 'feedback' or post any worthwhile concerns when we know absolutely no details.

We appreciate you reading along with us, but I think most of us would prefer some interaction from you, not just acknowledgement that we exist.

You make some good points. Esp about the crafted gear. However, keep in mind WoW goes about 2 years between each level increase. For TOR to be having a level increase this soon after launch is only a sign of how desperate they are to attrach more players.

I...I wasn't being childish. I was actually saying "Thank you." No sarcasm. With all the whining out there about BW not talking to it's customers (I will admits, sometimes I am one of those whiners) It's nice when a Dev posts in a forum to just let you know that they actually hear you, even if they don't have answers at the time.

Yeah, I do not see the sarcasm or childish response in your post.