First, let me state that I really do like this game. The art is beautiful. I find the movement and combat to be one of the best I’ve ever played in an MMO. There are numerous things to love about this game and they keep me playing.
However, Anet has been seriously dropping the ball lately. There’s been a decline in quality with an increased emphasis on the gem store and some questionable practices. I’m going to highlight a few of the more recent and significant ones here. I’m sure there are more and others are free to post them. But the general theme is the same. Less quality for us, more money for Anet.
1. Halloween. It’s broken. Anet has admitted that it’s broken. I can accept that these thing happen. However, Anet has also said they are not going to fix it this year. Sure, they have an excuse. But it’s an excuse that no one outside of Anet can validate. What’s worse is that it rings similar to their poor response to the over-hype Mordrem Invasion event not too long ago. There they admitted that they screwed up, but also said they weren’t going to fix it. This is becoming a highly discouraging pattern.
2. Anniversary Sale. Sure there were some items that people were happy to buy again. However, very few of them were among the highly requested (were any?). Those items that people have been waiting over a year for never showed up. Why were people waiting for these items? Because they were pulled from the gem store to create artificial scarcity among several other items. This along with Anet’s tampering with the gem-to-gold exchange last year made a lot of us seriously consider whether they had improving the game on their list at all.
3. Heart of Thorns. This is the big one. This is the one that Anet should be hanging its hat on. It’s the one that often used as the excuse for everything else. Living Story 2 short and lite on content: HoT. Bringing back popular events/festivals: HoT. Fixing broken events: HoT.
When the prepurchase for HoT started, many people reasonably pointed out that the price seemed very high for what Anet had told us was in the game. Others pointed out that we might not be seeing everything yet. Yes, in a way, they were right. There were some skins that we hadn’t seen yet. But does HoT look like $50 worth of content today?
Let’s look at what we did see during the beta weekends. We got full elite specializations available. We got smooth access to the maps that they wanted to show off. We got the impression of a game that appeared to start out strong and could only get better. People were excited to start playing their elite specializations and explore the new maps. And they thought (maybe wrongly) that this was just the tip of the iceberg of HoT. Rather the beta’s were the end game of HoT. What you could expect to play after hours of grinding hero points and masteries. Not the thrilling beginning we were promised, but a disappointing end state that doesn’t live up to the hype.
Frankly, I feel scammed. The game that was presented to us over the past 10 months and in the betas was very different from the game that was actually given to us. I see kitten expansion padded with tedious grind and gates to cover up that there is really only a $15-20 game underneath.
What’s worse is that I don’t see anything changing. There has been this continuing pattern from Anet from at least as early at the NPE. It’s simply a company that I can’t trust anymore.