You’re saying the world is exactly the same as it was before that content but now we have to vote to get the old content to return to the game rather than maintain it as a permanent addition to the game, bolstering the permanent experience?
If someone comes back to the game this month after not being here all year they will find out they missed out on four weapon sets (Flame and Frost one, Karka one, Dragon Bash one, the SAB ones) two dungeons (Molten Facility, Aetherblade Retreat – both of which were only around for a couple of weeks), one mini dungeon (Canache’s Layer), several mini-games (Crab thing, Dragonball, SAB), lots of back items and a several plots. They can’t access these things.
I think that this is an important distinction in a lot of these discussions. What we’ve seen so far is a world that changes and then reverts back, changes again and reverts back again. If you are a player that has consistently been in the game over the last few months, then you’ve had a variety of new experiences that weren’t available when the game launched. However, if you are a returning player the game hasn’t added very much at all in terms of new playable content.
To be fair, the game has changed a lot over the last few months with the laurels, dailies, achievement rewards, etc. But those are things that affect your character when you play through the content…..they aren’t new content to play through.
Now the game released with a good number of dungeons and they did add a new permanent one since it released less than a year ago. As someone who works for a software company I find it incredible that they are able to release new content as fast as they are. If you would have told me in August that within the first year the game would have seen a new permanent dungeon, 2-3 new sPvP maps, a new playable zone, and a plethora of new in-game systems (dailies/monthlies, achievement rewards, WvW leveling system) I would have been excited. The fact that we’ve also seen the incredible amount of other content that has been released as temporary is, in my opinion, stunning.
The disappointing thing for players like me is that there is significant amount of playable content that I will never be able to experience because I didn’t login for a brief period of time. It’s like “hey, we did these awesome things….too bad you’ll never see them!”
It’s very possible that ArenaNet is working on large permanent content as we speak. Obviously there are a number of elder dragons out there other than Zhaitan and new zones to unlock. If we end up getting those types of changes somewhat regularly, then it will help to lessen some of the disappointment in missing other content. If I was getting permanent content every so often and then using the temporary content as a way to hold me off in-between I could definitely live with that. Like I said, that could be exactly the plan but since that hasn’t been explicitly stated I can only talk about my opinions of the current temporary content release design.