Unfortunately, we're losing the sense of character progression that XP rewards provide—the sense that the combat and quests you're prevailing through are leading to tangible improvement to your character and companions.
I don't care about levels, but whenever I hit a level cap and no longer gain XP from actions, I begin to lose interest in continuing fairly rapidly.
I'm only at Level 25 now (still in the early stages of Jaws), but I'm really not looking forward to hitting the ceiling, and I don't know how long I can maintain interest if there's nothing to take its place in the epilogue DLC.
Playing solo on SWTOR helped break me of that. I would play some Flashpoints (?) for the stories, which required me to be over-leveled and gain very few XP. But as long as they were entertaining, the XP mattered little.
Now my characters need all the abilities they can gather, and then some. The two added in JoH are extremely helpful, and Focus abilities are oft drained, so something needs to fill that slot, too.
On Topic - That was an informative session, but reminds me of my internal twitching about crowds.