Semantics aside, people opposing many in the list simply are arguing against having more options in the game. There is simply no reason to not add content to the game.
Break every option to its base: Add content. Everything in the list I summed up with two words. And outside of hardware or software limitations, there is NEVER an excuse to not add content to a MMO game.
Disagree? Then name one GOOD reason (not listed below) why that is incorrect. Cause I’d honestly like to see it.
1. It ruins the game.
And that’s all I need? ’K.
Oh, oh, wait, I should elaborate.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “tacked-on”? How about “Afterthought”? “Pushed out the door”? “Doesn’t really belong”? “Distracts from the experience”? “Detracts from the experience”? It goes without saying that a shoddy addition is often less good than no addition at all.
But, let’s assume that ANet can at least produce some quality. So, ever hear the phrase, “Unintended consequence”? This one is the major one.
Let’s look at something that got added recently that only affects a few players. If they want to be involved. Maize Farming -I’m sure you heard of it. Use a consumable to generate free expensive loot from npcs that otherwise have little value to the average player. Innocuous, right?
Except now you have packs of these maize farmers setting up shop in various places dictating to other players that it is now “their spot,” and kitten you if you think you can do anything in that area that might somehow interfere with their means of ‘having fun’ (read: getting gold the easy way). You can’t work on weapon master with ‘their’ ambient critters. You can’t kill ‘their’ critters, not even by accident, without accusations of griefing. And you sure as kitten cannot get them to go somewhere else, not even if you were there first.
Let’s backtrack now to the dueling bit that I snipped.
You think dueling, an inherently aggressive activity, has no means of bleeding over into non-dueler play? GW1 was bad enough when you had PvP players screaming at PvE players because they didn’t play ‘their way’. All you’d need with this system is some dueler (or a pack thereof) needing his kitten stroked to monopolize some resource and demand people to fight him for it. Opportunities for this are limited, but they still exist, as I just demonstrated with maize farming.
Further there is the damage to the ambiance and community spirit of the game. Competitive play was separated from open world for this very reason. When you have to worry that you or a party member might get bushwhacked by some kitten who is dying to compare the size of his kitten, it makes most players leery about who they go near.
You have a very pure conception of these additions, not only in how they will be implemented, but in that they can be shoehorned in with zero ripple effects, that they cannot or will not be the cause of griefing, that they will have safeguards that will always work, that they will have no impact on game balance, and that there is no one gleefully wringing his hands over the prospect of inventively kittening over someone’s day with them. And opting in/out? There’s always ways around it, provided one can find a way to pressure someone else into giving in. This is why even the option must not exist.
It’s going to be a minimum of roughly two weeks for me to find out.