This is just part of a disturbing trend with GW2’s ongoing development. When are they going to wake up and realize that players want FUN content, not content so challenging that it ruins the fun for the vast majority of the playerbase.
It’s such an oft repeated cliche in the MMO industry, the decision to cater live development to the most elite of the playerbase, on the assumption that they are a.) worth the nearly impossible effort to keep happy and b.) that that 1% is somehow more important to retain than the other 99% of us. Every MMO that has gone this route has dwindled away to nothingness. WoW may have gone to far in the other direction, but their success shows that mindfulness of casual players is the key to burgeoning success for an MMO.
I think this game has a high percentage of high play hour “casuals”. We don’t want content that can be facerolled, but we also don’t want content that is highly frustrating and most often doesn’t offer rewards any where near worth the frustration. However, we’ve spent several hundred+ hours playing the game because we love it and want more, fresh content and FUN things to do with friends and guild mates. Stop assuming that the hard-core are the only ones you will lose if you don’t find new ways to keep them happy and there are exponentially many players and potentially lost players that are casual than are “hard-core”.
If you want hardcore content, make hard core modes, in addition to normal modes, for dungeons and make T3 guild activities challenging, while allowing normal dungeons and T1/T2 Guild activities to be something “casuals” can actually have fun playing and leave feeling sufficiently rewarded for their time.
It really feels like Arenanet has had a major personality transplant since the game went live and it’s not taking the game in a positive direction. There seems to be a large portion of the company that still possesses the soul of what makes this game great, but it also seems like there is a darker faction pushing to take the game someplace that could tumble the entire wonderful house of cards that 5+ years and 300+ people built!