I decided to make my first post on the forum to agree with the op. I took a break from the game a while back and came back to try to get at least one 80 character(casual player). It has been a really frustrating experience because of everything the op mentioned. I took a break from the game because I couldn’t get my friends to try the game. Now with these changes, I would not want to recommend the game because leveling has become a chore. ArenaNet is insulting players by lvl gating content instead of just making a proper help section built into the game. If you want to hook people into a game you try to give them as much fun as possible as early as possible. Pressing 1 and watching your character auto attack bandits for hours is not fun.