I will talk about the raiding first.
This isn’t about the fights themselves. They are well designed and actually challenging. I am talking about the implementation of this actual content. Let me explain:
Anet advertises raiding as one of the huge features of the expansion. They even emailed thousands of GW2 users about it when it was added. BUT, they decided to make it so if you want to be SUCCESSFUL in raids, you NEED ascended gear. Not only one set, but multiple for different builds. They also had the audacity to make ascended gear even MORE expensive to craft. Due to gold already being ridiculously hard to acquire in this game, they decided to make you need MORE of it. Effectively gating content behind more gold.
Now I understand that ascended gear isn’t necessarily required to DO the raids, but if you plan on actually killing bosses and eventually clearing the entire wing, then it is required. That is a fact.
These gates and gold sinks weren’t really in the base game. But they are rampant in Heart of Thorns. I am guessing it is because the expansion itself lacks content compared to other MMO’s.
Anet has essentially doomed the future of the raiding scene before it could really kick off. By making ascended gear harder to acquire and balancing even the beginning bosses around it, New players will have a much harder time going into them. More players mean more recruits for raiding guilds. A new level 80 character will on average have less than 30 gold on them. The player at the stage must either wait behind time gated materials and craft his set over a month or two’s time, OR get out the credit card and buy them straight off the TP so he can actually join his friends without being a liability.
Arenanet has made things so ridiculous in HoT that the only logical conclusion for a new raider who can only log on for raids must use real world money to catch up to his team with gear.
Guild Wars 2 is an alright game. I used to say it was great before the expansion released. But it seems that every “cool” thing Arenanet wanted to implement winded up being executed terribly. From Precursor collections to Scribing. The worst part is that it doesn’t seem to be a mistake. It was a design choice to make things so ridiculous. They must be laughing at the people who pay money for gold just so they can afford to complete one of the new EXOTIC precursor collections.
Overall this expansion has left a sour taste in my mouth and worries me about the future of this game. The game itself seems to lack direction. The fact that there are still thousands of bugs in the expac itself AND the base game that you decided to link HoT collections to is completely unacceptable. The actual content that HoT offers (not features such as Elite Specs) is pathetic. It is really nothing but meta events and experience grinds.
As you can see, Anet has gone silent once again. They have collected our money and their goal is achieved. I would expect another content drought in the near future. I guarantee they will scrap raids like they did dungeons.