But all this said and done, I can't see myself playing the GWEN dungeons or BMP a year from now.
Which leads me to my point: ArenaNet has some exceptionally talented people making this game, but they seem to be completely off the content-to-play ratio.
That is: time ArenaNet spent on making content and time that people will spend playing said content.
Look at UW and FoW. Those places are nearly three years old now and still booming with activity. They have centralised party formation outposts (accessible to every campaign), a high but still accessible level of difficulty, arguably offer the rarest loot (Eternal Blade, anyone?) and definitely offer the most prestigious (read: expensive) armor in the game.
If we look at GWEN dungeons, the best you can say is that there's a lot of them.
Now let's assume that ArenaNet had added the remaining Realms of the Gods (Melandru, Dwayna and Lyssa) as high-end content instead of dungeons. That's three areas the size of UW/FoW.
Let's also assume that these three areas would drop three new rare crafting materials (one in each, comparable to Ecto and Shards) and a single armor crafter in one of those three domains, requiring (*drum roll*) 120 (or 105) of each of these rare crafting materials.
That's 3x 105 of those new crafting materials, with the obvious 15k crafting cost. And that's it. Most expensive armor in the game, meaning most wanted, meaning everyone and his dog would go questing and farming for it, for a long, long time.
So why didn't the remaining Realms of the Gods happen?
- We needed something new, besides, MOAR = BETTOR
All I can say is: never change a winning team. FoW and UW have always been the most popular high-end areas in the game, eclipsed only briefly by The Deep and DoA when they were still new. Dungeons will go down the same road as the latter. The fact that there's so many of them won't change this in the least, as they're all pretty much copies of each other.
- It would have taken too much time to make
Time otherwise spent on making what? Dungeons? The Bonus Mission Pack? I'd have gladly skipped those for content that would have kept me busy for another year or two, until, say, the release of GW2.
- It wouldn't have been accessible enough to casual players
If anything, it would have been more accessible than most dungeons, at least geographically and numerically. And much easier for them to find a human team for. But no, it's true, playing with people is so 2005.
As for difficulty, well, what can I say. Ursan Blessing?
- More-expensive-than-Obsidian Armor would have been difficult to make and too inaccessible
Dwarven Armor could have easily posed for that, especially since it already features Chaos Gloves. But honestly, an Obsidian reskin would have been enough. In the end, end-game armor is not about how fancy it looks, it's about how expensive it is and how long you had to farm for it. It's a "title" that other people can't possibly miss when they look at you.
As for the more casual players, there would still be the whole range of Norn/Asura/Ebon armors, that are already hard enough to get. If anything, they should have been made more accessible in the first place.
- Well, I'm glad you were able to vent that. Will you please stop whining about Realms of the Gods now?
Yes, thank you, I will.
