First of all, I want to say that I think the new zone is absolutely awesome! The layout is a ton of fun, and the various new monsters are well designed, dangerous and properly balanced. The art is great and the sound is equally impressive. The art I have seen from the Fractal is equally as impressive and I hope to enjoy all it has to offer before too long.
The issues I have are with the large-scale events and buggy quests. I think there is a consensus among the players that the execution of these events was sub-par. It is a wonderful idea, don’t get me wrong… the main city in the game being besieged and the citizenry forced to fight off the invading menace is good in-game story telling. The problem comes down to the fact that the delivery of such a story was so lag ridden, so buggy and so generic that it took a lot away from what could have been awesome.
There was never a sense of “danger” as much as there was a sense of annoyance and frustration. That same feeling translated to the broken and bugged quests that were supposed to give us a sense of discovery, and instead gave disappointment. I don’t want to descend into hyperbole and vitriol, but I feel as those these are accurate words to describe the feelings of most people who attempted these events.
As a suggestion, I would say that you could have taken a lot better advantage of your instancing system, creating a version of LA that was essentially a dungeon for maybe 20-30 people, plus a gaggle of NPC types. This would allow the initial wave to “overwhelm” the first line of defense, forcing a general retreat and regrouping, then moving through the city to clear out the infestation. The “main town” would then be the damaged, smashed up aftermath, with the supplies used to rebuild that. The damage as it is, comes across as superficial and unconcerning. That is just one idea for how to handle it… and that method also allows everyone who wants to to experience the “one time event” or opt-out as they so choose. Take advantage of the instance system you have in this game more heavily! I think that would be awesome.
The underlying issue is that this event felt extremely rushed. You had just come off the Halloween event, which set the bar rather high, and so nothing until a winter-tide event would be totally understandable. Honestly, if you’d waited until after the Holidays and put some deep polish into the various parts of this, it could have been truly spectacular. I personally would rather you have less events with more refinement then a hurried and broken event every month. Please… take your time, do it well! I promise that even if I stop playing for a bit, I’ll come back to enjoy these events, as long as they are fun! The more buggy and underwhelming they are, the less likely they are to be able to draw me back in as my interest in current content wanes.