How [much] long[er] will the content drought be for?
The Chinese New Year patch was the last content update for the game. [Note: No, April Fool’s Day was not content; it was messing with camera and character animation in order to promote a later created Gem Store item. There was no actual content to it at all.] So the CNY happened mid February and ended at the end of the month. That patch contained one rehashed even -Dragon Ball- and a few dailies involving lighting fireworks and spending gold for “luck” and more gold.
Since then we’ve had a single day of open testing of the sPvP Stronghold map and the Beta Portals scavenger hunt. Neither of these are content, but both relating to testing for Heart of Thorns. One was actual testing of content and a sneak peak of said content when it releases. The latter was a “play old content for a very slim chance at testing some unknown for Heart of Thorns”
Oh alright, back on point. Today is May 12th, 2015 and we still have yet to get a release date for Heart of Thorns. This is a retail expansion, so the developers need time to get pre-orders, ship to retailers, etc. Pre-purchase for GW2 was open in April of 2012, with the game releasing on August 28th 2012. I will yield to the fact that the official release date wasn’t announced until June 28th 2012, so there is some time. That is still a 2 month gap between announcement of and actual release.
Given that, the players are still looking at late July at the earliest for release of the HoT expansion. That is 5 to 5 & 1/2 months between content updates for the game. And that is without the most predictable release date that is floating around: end of August, at the 3 year anniversary of the game. With that expectation, it would be 6 & 1/2 months since a content update for the game.
And it used to be a bit sad -and prospectively funny- of those playing WoW Mist of Pandaria between its last patch and the release of Warlords of Draenor. That was over a year long stretch that they were paying a subscription to get no new updates for a LIVING WORLD that is an MMORPG.
Here we are in Guild Wars 2, a self-proclaimed champion of the Living World/Story, and we’re following suit of what other games are doing? Prolonged periods of nothingness followed by a single box release and possibly more periods of nothingness.
Worse is that there is no recycling of events for the game. At least in the previously mentioned competition they have cycled events that happen from month to month or week to week (talking about the STV Fishing Tournament and the Dark Moon Fair). Why isn’t there a turning on of the Super Adventure Box for a week or month? Why must the Queen’s Pavilion still be locked away? Can the Consortium not throw another Beach Bash just because? Not even a relocation of the famed Moa Races?
Oh, and don’t even get me started on how long Lion’s Arch has been in shambles since Scarlet’s destruction of it. At least the rebuilding of the Lion’s Statue was progressed through months after Mad King Thorn destroyed it; same goes for a new Light House post-Ancient Karka smash. However here we are with the city having tons of builders -some without hammers too- doing absolutely nothing to rebuild the city.