Please don’t require Ascended/Agony Resistance gear, or anything like it, as the baseline for entry to any new content.
The biggest advantage I see in GW2 is the fact that it doesn’t HAVE to degenerate into a gear grind just to see content. If you want to grind for rare pretties, then that’s great; you’ll look really cool, and I’m glad that the game supports such. You can still go see and do pretty much anything, even without being highly-geared, especially if you’ve got a couple of friends.
I really hope I’m worrying about nothing, but reading Linsey Murdock’s Ascended Gear article left me more worried than excited about the future. If the game moves to a rigidly tiered structure, where this dungeon’s gear is required to get into the next dungeon, then it gives up the accessibility that really distinguishes it in the MMO market. I know I’m not the only one who left other games to abandon the tier treadmill, and it could go a long way in allaying our fears if you could make clearer the design intent and high-level systemic nature of the “item progression initiative” mentioned in the article. Please, don’t freeze out the casual market… keep new content going forward accessible to new 80’s.
I love this game, and the best thing this game has done is challenge all assumptions about what an MMO “should” do, from convenience, to pricing, to progression. Thank you for shaking up the market, and I hope you continue to do so. 