Yeah bud you're missing a loooooooot.
Since you're a base D2 player at the max then you do have access to the Leviathan raid. But remember that being max level is not the same thing as being max light level. The max level currently is 50 and your light level (LL) is more or less your gear score. It's sort of Bungie's way of gating content that they feel you shouldn't be able to do yet. You've been away a while and the max LL currently is 600 although it'll soon be raised to 650.
To get the latest content you will definitely need to buy the expansion. The packages can be confusing if you haven't been paying any attention to this game at all but it has been simplified a little after the release of Forsaken. To break it down you have:
The year one expansion pass has been rolled into Forsaken so you get that for free if you purchase Forsaken now. Previously, much to the dismay of a lot of people, it was still a separate purcahse and part of a $70 Forsaken bundle. The annual pass is additional content for the Forsaken expansion. There'll be things available to only annual pass owners and things available to both Forsaken and annual pass owners.
- Destiny 2
- Forsaken
- Annual Pass
As for sucking money out of players, this is what it is nowadays. Ubisoft is has one of the "better" developers recently about creating free additional content but that's mostly all paid now.
Thank you so much fir the detailed post. Yeah I haven't really played much since last year. I really liked the single player game, and how it was sort of an MMO, or CoOp type game.
But I will say I got confused on how you chatted with players or firmed groups to run content together. I wish there was a Group Finder type thing like WoW.
So for now, I need to pay $50 for this Forsaken expansion ?
And then level up some more in the single player campaign before getting into the Raids ?