I’m a huge GW1 fan who has been playing the game since beta. As a casual player I’ve played nearly every day, mostly for no more than a hour. For the most part I’ve enjoyed the releases and remained a supporter despite misgivings from the community.
I was very excited about the feature patch even going kitten far to convince friends who have since left the game to give it another try. Upon logging in and combining all my dye and wardrobe inventories and consolidating all my wvw xp pts, I was looking forward to a new chapter.
Today, I am very sad to say I have lost a huge amount of interest in the game and I am not quite sure exactly how. Now mind you, this is not a complaint about how the game is designed or what I believe would be better. This is just one player’s experience. I could very well be in the minority.
Here are the things that have brought me to this point.
1. WvW. Now this is only specific to me and my server. I am mature enough to know that this hopefully temporary and by no means affects all players. But we have had mass exodus to the new tournament. Our server continues to drop simply because we have very few players, and it’s in a system of positive feedback. As more players are frustrated about losing, more leave. Now unlike the others I am dedicated to my server because of it’s origin but it is frustrating nevertheless. Hopefully it will change, only time will tell.
The reason for the exodus began back during season 1. We simply could not hold our own against the others. Some would say this is due to “dishonorable” conduct of other servers to insure a win. In the end though, when this tournament was mentioned many of our wvw guilds could not bear a repeat and moved on.
When I log on these days during what used to be our peak times, there is simply nothing really to do other than to be wiped by the other side. It is ironic because Anet has always strived to build tighter communities, but for ours, these wvw events have destroyed ours.
2. Megaserver. At first megaserver was awesome! It was great to see so many people in what used to be dead zones. I know megaservers are a WiP and will only get better and I am truly optimistic that they will. When I logged into one of my guilds that runs scheduled special events for world bosses it became quite apparent that we had to learn to adjust. It was just frustrating trying to coordinate in what used to be an already effective system. Time will make it better I am sure (I hope).
3. World Bosses. There seems to be some pretty significant bugs this weekend. These too will be fixed I am sure. Surprisingly there haven’t been many people there. They have felt quite lonely. I am hopeful that after the bugs are addressed that they will fill back up.
4. Champ train nerfs. So with not being able to WvW, or run World Boss chains, I decided to waste my little bit of time in Frostgorge. No one was there, again making the game feel lonely. I already knew about the nerf to loot, but hey what the heck, a few cycles of the old train would still give something? With the new times between events I quickly found out why I was the only one there.
5. Balance. So off to dungeons. Because of the scaling and ferocity change I believe, AC felt full of trash mobs. It seemed much easier and less exciting. This too will change I’m sure.
So what now? Well I’ve spent more time typing this than I’ve played the game tonight. I can’t WvW, do World Bosses, Champ Train, and Dungeon runs have gotten boring. I haven’t PvP, so maybe that’s where I will head next. I’m definitely waiting to see how everything with Megaservers and game balance is fixed and adjusted. However, I am frustrated and disappointed that something that was to add features feels to only have further broken something that was seeming to stabilize. Change is necessary in MMO’s and I’m glad, I just hope that this doesn’t kill it for me. I really do like this game and it’s history.
So what’ s your experience so far?