Less content of worse quality, but much more aggressively monetized? Half the content at the same price?
Anet axed Living World, rebranded it as “Mini Expansions” and is reselling it to us at full price. Complex mount system gets sidelined in favour of A mount to rule them all. Class skills and mechanics that have existed for years and years and years without issue are suddenly a problem and get gutted, dumbed down or removed. Classes get homogenised and simplified. Very little actually new systems get created, instead the existing game gets switched around as a much easier alternative. More focus on easy and cheap to develop daily/weekly content for whatever the current’s expansion faction is.
I know that pattern.
I also know another pattern. SquareEnix. ActivisionBlizzard. NCNet.
There are definitely a lot of changes going on these days, but I don’t think they’re all that negative. I’m actually happy to see them charge for yearly content releases now, as only paying once for three substantial releases (PoF, S4 and IBS) is not at all sustainable. This is more in line with other games, but still quite affordable. Hopefully, this approach benefits the health of the game in the log run. We’ll see.
Oh, they’re absolutely not all negative. A legendary armour free from raiding or WvW/PvP as a gatekeep? Great. But the pattern is the usual pattern of MMOs that enter their twilight years. Less actually created systems and innovations, more re-shuffling already existing stuff. More aggressive monetisation, less and weaker/easier content. The addition of dailies and weeklies as a main feature is striking.
The old model not being sustainable has no basis in reality, I feel. GW2 always made a hefty profit, but NCSoft is known for shutting down perfectly viable games for not generating enough profit, e.g. CoH. (Obligatory Fuck NCSoft at this point.) Rebranding their Living World as Mini Expansion and selling them to us at full price is the exact Twilight Years thing to do. Up until today the Cash Shop paid for Living World. But that profit isn’t enough profit anymore. Gotta get a slice of that ActiBlizz cake.
I expect that gonna be gated in other ways because they won’t give away leggy armor that easy. Probably a set of achis inside strike missions will be added retroactively.
I agree it does kind of signal a new, less ambitious phase for the game. I’m hoping they pump out enough new content with enough consistency that the game continues to be fun for a while. You’re certainly justified in your concerns that we’re going to run into the same problems as WoW where everything feels the same from expansion to expansion.
I like that phrasing.