Congrats on level 50! Now, do you need any help unlocking your character's Alpha slot or other Incarnate powers? 
Really like the link you provided to "gaming addiction" and LOL it was obvious more or less from the get-go that Hey, this game is providing tons of positive reinforcement (reward) almost non-stop: I defeated a villain or completed a mission, I leveled up, I just picked up a badge, treasure drops, new inspirations, etc. How else does one account for the many players with one or more Badge Hunter toons? Just as obvious was the travel time spent getting to and from missions and contacts. Does operant (Skinnerian) conditioning work? Heck, yes it works! Anyhow, thanks for the link and Congrats again on level 50.
aka @Kristoff von Gelmini, leader of small SG bases (Infinity/Victory/Virtue/Protector), member of The House of Tera (Justice) and various others (Champion/Infinity/Victory/Guardian/Freedom).
Thanks! In a perfect world (i.e. the world before August 31st >_>), I would have ran all the incarnate trials, filled each slot and returned to Dark Astoria with the Alpha, Lore and Judgement abilities all at her command for the ultimate Banished Pantheon beatdown. In the real world, I'll just settle for running Ramiel's arc and then rushing off to Captain Nolan, trusting to low difficulty settings and her IO's to see her through the battle.
And yep, this game really does indeed keep us chasing after the shinies. 
(Edit: Case in point! I just did the incarnate thread math and it won't actually be that hard to run an Ephram mission a night to get her all incarnated up...)
"Now, I'm not saying this guy at Microsoft sees gamers as a bunch of rats in a Skinner box. I'm just saying that he illustrates his theory of game design using pictures of rats in a Skinner box."
...hey, ghosts look young for their age.
While most of my characters either don't have a single conflict that needs to be resolved by November 30th or their driving conflict happens to be in the middle of the game, Astorian Shade's story has always been about her going back to Dark Astoria and defeating Mot. I gave up on that possibility when the news broke about the game closing, and then a few weeks I decided to hell with giving up and instead began to level her like crazy with countless hours of street sweeping, task forces, the few AE farms that work for a mastermind, and taking advantage of any and every zone invasion to keep grinding as much as possible. At the beginning of the month she was level 33, and tonight she just hit 50.
Thank you to everyone who helped with the player question thread on how to level up more efficiently, everyone who's cheered her on via tells, and to the teams she joined for the recent Numina Task Force and Ms. Liberty Task Force runs - they were both great teams and really fun to play. Anyway, since this is my first level 50 character, and undoubtedly the last, I just wanted to post it here and thank everyone who helped out with it.
Now, onto Dark Astoria! After that much grinding, how hard can killing one measly death god be?
"Now, I'm not saying this guy at Microsoft sees gamers as a bunch of rats in a Skinner box. I'm just saying that he illustrates his theory of game design using pictures of rats in a Skinner box."