The biggest problem I have with this expac is the repeated, crushing disappointment I get from trying to explore and find new, fun things. From the get go in Verdant Brink, before leveling the gliding Mastery, mushroom bouncing and gliding thermals the zone was a tedious, boring chore to slog through.
Yet even when all those were unlocked, the zone was no better. Sure I could go places and explore, but why even bother when all the places I could find were gated off by needing even more masteries? It honestly felt like scrabbling over a tall, oil covered, barbwire wrapped wall, expecting green fields and candy only to be greeted by a big excrement covered boot to the mouth and an even taller wall of pain and misery to climb.
By the time I had made it to Auric basin i no longer cared enough to appreciate the zone aesthetics , music , story , unique feel or specialized content. I knew for fact that most of it was going to yet again be gated behind Masteries that were going to take me weeks to farm up, so why bother getting invested in any of it?
The feeling of huge, open world freedom that vanilla Gw2 had was dead and gone , replaced by an extremely claustrophobic sensation of being caged in a tiny little portion of the world until I had beaten my head against the bars long enough to break them whereupon there was nothing more exciting or interesting awaiting me than a slightly larger cage to start pummeling on. Repeat ad infinitum et nauseum.
Just my opinion on how this expansion feels and the problem I have with it. I’m still going to play as there’s few people in the world as masochistic about grinding the same boring events for the thousandth time for that next millimeter on my exp bar as I am, but compared to how I felt and what I loved about vanilla Gw2 , HoT is an extremely poor successor.