The "Heart of Thorns" expansion pretty much killed off Guild Wars 2 for a lot of people, myself included.
It launched with only four new maps (which were super buggy, confusing and largely on-rails), broken story instances (some, like the last boss, weren't fixed for months), no new group content (dungeons and such) to speak of, a shitload of largely passive horizontal upgrades that arbitrarily locked you out of content until you could grind them out, and tons of features missing (some, like the second set of Legendary Weapons, still aren't done) They replaced the big World vs. World map everyone liked with a new, terribly designed one, added new sub-classes that took way too long to unlock and broke PvP balance (which hurts worse for players who didn't buy in because they couldn't compete with the new overpowered builds), and so much more.
All of that after 9 months of nothing, followed by 6 months of nothing (and if you didn't like raids, it was actually another 9 months). It dialed back so many of the things that made the game unique among MMOs, like abandoning the big, exploration-oriented maps full of dynamic events in favor of maps where there's a single big meta-event that runs at scheduled times (so if you want to play in that map when it's not scheduled, you can't progress very far; it's like standing in line for a ride).
We used to have a GAF guild where 20-30 people would be on at all hours and 50+ on Saturday nights for guild missions, and the OT for the game was pretty active. Last time I played (about a year ago) we had trouble getting more than 10 people ( and 12 is the fewest you should have to get things done comfortably) and the OT goes days or weeks without a post. The game's profits have also been declining regularly since the expansion came out.
Such a shame.
It launched with only four new maps (which were super buggy, confusing and largely on-rails), broken story instances (some, like the last boss, weren't fixed for months), no new group content (dungeons and such) to speak of, a shitload of largely passive horizontal upgrades that arbitrarily locked you out of content until you could grind them out, and tons of features missing (some, like the second set of Legendary Weapons, still aren't done) They replaced the big World vs. World map everyone liked with a new, terribly designed one, added new sub-classes that took way too long to unlock and broke PvP balance (which hurts worse for players who didn't buy in because they couldn't compete with the new overpowered builds), and so much more.
All of that after 9 months of nothing, followed by 6 months of nothing (and if you didn't like raids, it was actually another 9 months). It dialed back so many of the things that made the game unique among MMOs, like abandoning the big, exploration-oriented maps full of dynamic events in favor of maps where there's a single big meta-event that runs at scheduled times (so if you want to play in that map when it's not scheduled, you can't progress very far; it's like standing in line for a ride).
We used to have a GAF guild where 20-30 people would be on at all hours and 50+ on Saturday nights for guild missions, and the OT for the game was pretty active. Last time I played (about a year ago) we had trouble getting more than 10 people ( and 12 is the fewest you should have to get things done comfortably) and the OT goes days or weeks without a post. The game's profits have also been declining regularly since the expansion came out.
Such a shame.
