Got five alt accounts that farmed log-in rewarsds. After the change I dropped them. Then my cogs startet turning. Then I gave it a try. And earned a fucktonne of money for very little effort. I think farming the champion at the end of skipping stones or how it's called was the worst.
Good news: most gold you get isn't repeatable until it maybe resets 75 days later, we'll see. Still a thouand gold until then, probably.
As much as I would enjoy that direction, after seeing how NCSoft handled their last storyline, I'd rather they stay away from the dragons and specifically Aurene.
That is hilarious.
Never play on a patch day.
Ya. Reddit. :D
Hmm. I find no changes beyond the text.
"Clean your inventory, it's a mess."
Goddamn...
Didn't need to call me out like that...
cHalLenGinG ConTenT never has been worth the manpower in history of MMOs. Difficulties, story mode, implementation of the Fractal-system would all have been ways of varying effort to make it worth the investment, but raiders and developer both were very outspoken against filthy casuals staning the hallowed halls of raiding with their unworthy presence. I'm very clearly remembering both reddit as well as dev posts. While I'm not surprised to see that opinion in the active-on-social-media part of the playerbase, I was quite impressed that the devs would unironically rather stomp the entire content branch and replace it with strikes than to give access to raids to a wider audience. While I may not agree, I can respect them being consequent in their design philosophy.
But yeah, those things won't be an issue anymore. Extrapolating the path taken since IBS I doubt that Anet will ever put that much effort into the game again. And what you said about 406 is both hilariously true and absolutely mind-blowing.
I've thought about it, and I tend to flirt with the opinion that we lost 90% of the effort. The overwhelming majority of SotO is rehashing existing stuff and the rest is consolidating too broad a game into more narrow, easier to manage paths. E.g. classes, mounts, etc. It's crazy to think back that once upon a time Anet put so much time and effort into the game that their devs had the room to solo things like Action Cam or SAB. Bloody hell, Exordium alone is worth like five EoD legendaries. Nowadays the best they can come up with are fishing, more skills for Skyscale and decoupling T6 rune boni. Makes that 90% unreasonably reasonable.
GW2 will be able to exist for years on this level, but it's going to be just another MMO.
Well, let's see if my prediction comes true, we'll know more after the SotO release.
Edit: damn, that turned into an essay. Apologies! :D
When NCSoft ousted the leadership, the leadership left behind a hand-picked replacement, who mysteriously vanished and got replaced with some new guy under whom the game development has been nuked from orbit and utterly restructured. You can see it happening during the phases of Season 4 -> IBS -> EoD.
This entire thing is such a fascinating, if flabbergasting, case study. Living Story was paid for by the cash shop, expansions were paid for by the box price. Then Anet drops expansions, repackages Living Story as "mini expansions", sells them to us for full price and keeps the cash shop because free money.
And everyone cheers.
Content creators cheer.
Nobody is bothered. Zero care.
I remember when it started with horse armour, and culminated into Diablo Immortal. "Players" as a homogenous mass are like schizophrenic borderliners with an abuse kink. Yes they will throw their tantrums and bitch and whine, but everytime the industriy shits in their mouth along every step of the way from horse armour to Diablo Immortal, "players" ask for more.
The "expansion" is great for what it is and the resources that have been put into, but the underlying patterns have my hair stand on end. The studio barely got enough budget to create anything at all, everything has to be re-used ad nauseam, the fucking "hit stuff, fly and gather orbs, hit stuff again" design loop alone has more reruns per event than the bloody Beatles!
Proof that there is zero permanence and future-orientation in consumers.
I know all of that sounds harsh, but it's really just the very nature of our entire species. Case in point: the entire human fucking history.
Watching it so laid out clear as day right into my face though genuinely boggles my mind.
Well, that's how things are. Still enthralling to watch, though.