Here's how The Division will handle end-game content

What, you don't like the idea of having half your new gear stolen by a pair of jerks who spam grenades at the extraction point? Fine. If the unique hybrid of PvE loot grinding and PvP backstabbing that is the Dark Zone doesn't appeal to you, The Division will still get plenty of stuff to keep you busy after release.

"We have a tremendous amount of effort and focus on the PvE endgame as well," Ubisoft Massive creative director Magnus Jansen told Mashable. "Not all of it is going to be there when we launch. We're slowly going to be rolling it out for free in the beginning".

Ubisoft previously said that, in addition to The Division's Season Pass expansions, it would also add tough, new "cooperative challenges" to the game in free updates - exactly the sort of thing that Jansen says PvE-focused players will have to "set [their] sights on and accomplish" in the weeks and months after The Division's March 8 release date.

If you're a willing participant in the Dark Zone's Lord of the Flies-style social experiment, you'll find even more to do once your agent reaches the level cap. Before level 30, the Dark Zone is divided into a series of bands corresponding to your level - the higher level you are, the deeper you can go, the tougher AI opponents you'll fight, and the greater rewards you'll find.

"Once you hit level 30, the max level, we create a new instance of it, so players will be entering into this all new Dark Zone", Jansen said. "[It] starts at 30 ... this whole new, repopulated Dark Zone, basically".

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Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.