TLDR: Anet have ruined their game so terribly since HoT came out, that I’ve had more fun losing weight in RL during that time than continuing to play GW2.
Full version:
In October 2015, Heart of Thorns was released. For a WvWer like me, it was a time of dread. All the feedback about Desert BL to that point had been that it looked pretty, but was horrible to actually play. And since it was replacing my home BL, a place I had stoutly defended for 3 years up to that point, I felt I simply had no reason to play GW2 anymore. So I quit.
But what to do with all my newfound free time? While I also enjoyed a little Elite Dangerous now and then, it wasn’t going to replace GW2 completely. I felt no other game could.
Luckily, conveniently, a solution appeared outside of the online world. I stumbled upon a diet that took me some convincing to try at first, but the results came straight away. It meant spending more time in the kitchen learning to cook the right food etc, which in turn meant time spent researching and so on. It was plenty enough to keep me occupied in the evenings, and I really wasn’t missing HoT at all.
Fast forward several months into 2016 and Anet finally had to concede the general awfulness of Desert BL and brought back my dear old home BL, now known as Alpine BL. So I returned, but somehow it wasn’t the same. Everyone was playing these new elite specs that as a vanilla player, I couldn’t seem to counter no matter what I tried. Guardians that can burn your face off via traps? Thieves and warriors with even greater ability to run away? Rangers that literally couldn’t die? WTF?
Sure, I could have just caved and bought the expansion like everyone else. But why should I have to, just to be able to compete with everyone else? I used to be able to compete just fine. And what else would there be in it for me? I’m not a major PvEer, so the new Maguuma maps held no interest to me. It felt like nothing more than a blatant moneygrab, but for as long as Desert BL wasn’t around, I had admittedly thought about it.
Then, not only did they bring Desert BL back, but in a futile attempt to address the ongoing server population balance issue, they started linking servers. Not “merging” of course, because we can’t all be seen to be playing a dying gamemode, but linking. In a matter of weeks, what was left of my server was swiftly gutted. Our TS emptied, our forums died, our very identity disappeared. Everything was gone.
So rather than reward Anet for utterly burying any reason for me to continue playing, I decided to step back once again. While there are still a couple of Alpine maps I can still at least get my dailies on (sometimes), that’s pretty much all I’ve been able to do in this game for the last few months. Beyond that, no urge to play whatsoever.
Throughout all of this though, my RL health has continued to improve. It’s now been 15 months since I began, and during that time I have lost a total of 50kg, or 110lb. I am literally 60% of the person I used to be. And while it wasn’t exactly because of Anet’s incompetence, there’s no doubt in my mind that Heart of Thorns – and everything else Anet has done since its release – has helped to enable my journey.
Sooo… thanks guys. :P
