On a more serious note: SotO is about to be the first major release after the NCSoft coup of Anet's leadership, and all signs and patterns point at a major disappointment.

Here are a few examples of said signs:

Pre coup: Wedding Attire, 1000 gems, elaborate designs, different per race and gender.
Post coup: Leather Straps, 800 gems, literal leather straps, minor differences if any at all
Pre coup: /rockout, /shiver, /shiverplus and more as ingame rewards
Post coup: /sipscoffee for a 20-30€ merch collab, /serve for 400 gems, /magicjuggle as part of a pack for a 2000 gem deluxe upgrade
Pre coup: big expansions with industry defining features (PoF mounts) and/or complete reworks of the entire fucking game (HoT systems) for like 30€, Living World for free* and paid for by the cash shop
Post coup: Half an expansion for 25€, freemium-design fishing as an expansion feature, no more Living World, cash shop as free extra money
Pre coup: big Living World maps with their own reward structure, masteries, not rarely major releases like Rewinder, Beetle, Skyscale, mount mastery skills that completely change the dynamic, and so on, and so forth
Post coup: half a map, the Strike version of the endboss fight of the flushed second half of the map ham-handedly turned into a Fractal.

So this is a pattern the MMO industry has shown for decades now. These are the signs of a MMO in its twilight years. No, not dead, not even specifically dying. But less content of lower quality for higher prices, and without the care and love that comes with a product with a vision. Instead it's just work now anymore. Shit like action cam, dolphins, SAB? Gone.

So what does that mean for SotO?

That it will be utterly underwhelming. There will be two maps like announced, one will be the not-Dalaran, one will be a rehash of existing assets. That's it.

Anet will concentrate on Skyscale because it's cheaper to consolidate all mounts into one instead of giving every mount its own use and abilities. Classes will homogenise because it's easier and cheaper to balance. Specializations will be replaced with weapons because it's easier and cheaper to create.

Easier and cheaper. Lesser.

It's important to understand the nuance between easier, cheaper & lesser and dying, bad & dead. GW2 is not dying, will not become bad and certainly is not dead.

But this is the end of an era, and there will be no return. There almost never has been.

Bonus info: NCsoft is known to nuke perfectly viable MMOs for not making enough money. (CoH. Never forget. Forever fuck NCSoft.)

My prediction is that like Blizzard is dead and is now ActiBlizz and no matter how disgusting it becomes people won't be able to look past the logo, Anet has been couped and is now NCNet and no matter how far down this new beginning leads down the road, people won't be able to look past the logo.

Five days until Anet will prove me wrong and blow us away with their magic they never lost.

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[–] pory@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, the writing's on the wall here. The only problem with the HOT-POF LS3/LS4 model for players was the release cadence for raids/fractals/new metas. Anet has fixed this by just not releasing those things ever anymore. We're getting single boss Strikes instead of a multi boss raid wing or a boss + event Fractal. Outside of the elite specs, the Dragonfall episode of LS4 alone added more meaningful content to the game than EoD did.

[–] lulztard@lemmy.wtf -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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