My Analysis of GW, and Prediction for GW2.

If you're too lazy to read it, don't bother posting a tl;ldr, I know it's long.
E: If I didn't make it clear, this is mostly targeted to PvE- but the title grind and meta issue is the exact same in PvP.


If there are two things that I believe have ruined this game- and this is of course entirely my opinion- they are the 'Meta' build system, and Titles.

When Guild Wars started, I was about 13, maybe 12. I got it almost immediately after release, and made myself a Ranger/Necromancer, something I had been deciding even before I got the game. I wanted to have a pet and a bunch of minions, that was how I visualized my character. Of course as the game progressed I realized that this wasn't plausible- rangers don't have enough energy to realistically have a decent minion army- but it was still a very fun character, one who I still hop on from time to time, and I kept the /N for a very long time.

Back at the start, there were no builds, there was no grand database of skills you were 'supposed' to use and skills you weren't, there was no wiki that told you every detail of the game. And you know what? It was the most fun gaming experience of my life, without a doubt. Every moment was novel and fun, and you weren't given a free pass anywhere- it was a tough game back then, you had to make your own builds and find your own way around.

As the game progressed in its age, especially with the dawn of Factions, something new emerged- highly efficient farming builds, the first of which I believe was 55/SS. And with this, people realized that they could make tons of in-game money, and buy anything they'd ever need, by running this build, over and over, for hours on end. And that's what people did. Suddenly, Guild Wars isn't what it's supposed to be. Guild Wars has a Level 20 cap for a reason- they want to encourage exploration, not grinding. Yet here many people are, grinding so they can buy pretty armor. I've tried all the Meta farming builds out, and they're actually fun for a few runs, but after a while, what's new? What are you doing different from last run? Why bother keeping it up?

With each new expansion, the problem did nothing but escalate, to the point where one specific skill could render a player invincible to everything in the entire PvE universe. And suddenly, build databases sprung up, where all it took to have a powerful build was copying and pasting a code, and then maybe seeking out the skills and equipment you need. This was the beginning of GW's demise to me.

Part of the issue is that with 1300 skills, there is no realistic way to ensure that there won't be overpowered combinations. But the real issue is that the creative factor of making your own builds was gone. People became more concerned with having the ultimate build than working out fun combinations- the Meta system emerged.

Nerf after nerf came out to combat the issue, but no matter how much nerfing is done, there's always one skill combination that's going to be overpowered. Honestly, I think this all could have been avoided by sticking to a smaller number of skills- not ridiculously smaller, but without any 'overpowered' skills, and without redundant skills (AV/SV, for example).


Enough of that for now, though. Let's move on to Titles. By now Anet had realized that people would, if given a goal that takes a very long time to reach, pursue that goal, even if it's basically worthless hours of the same shit. Thus, titles. Titles are another reason for people to grind the same run over and over, another reason for people to religiously use Meta builds and never actually make their own build.

If there is one thing I pray for GW2, but I know will not happen, it's the removal of titles. The only titles I think GW2 should have are titles carried from GW1.


Finally, my prediction for GW2. GW2 will be a very fun game for a while, and I cannot wait for it. Personally, I think it will be massively better than GW- because it's restarting everything. No one will know the best builds, no one will know the entire map, no one will know where to farm all day. For a while, it will be amazing. And then, the exact same problems will emerge.

I believe that a few simple changes could make GW2 much more fun. One of those is the removal of titles, as I stated before. The point of the game isn't to grind- if people want a grinding game, they should play Runescape, or WoW. GW is designed to be a free-roaming game where you screw around with builds. The other is randomly generated instances- I know this is a very farfetched and unlikely addition, but it would effectively negate the issue of overfarming and meta builds, as well as making the game actually a game, rather than a following of a guide from point A to point B.



Anyways, this is sort of a little analysis I came up with in about 20 minutes of typing, so forgive me if it sounds a bit inane. Hopefully you get the jist of it.

Im afraid thats a lot of assuming your doing there, until we see and have all the information that GW2 has to offer, your getting the impression that GW2 will be just a repetition of GW in terms of skill imbalance and so on.

If I where you I would wait till we see the big picture and play the game proper, only then you will have a better indication if GW2 will fall prey to the same scenarios/problems GW did.

Pol

Anet knows that GW had a successful formula, there's no reason they won't basically copy it. Throw in a few new mechanics and it feels like a new game, but it's in basis probably going to be very similra.

That being said, my prediction is just that, a prediction, and I do have high hopes for GW2 to break the mold.

Fissure armor wasn't something "they didn't think of" - the notion of aesthetic grind was in the game from day one. If you remove the aesthetic grind goals, all you've done is remove the aesthetic grinders. People who got bored of the limited content to explore left long before - grind is what happens in the absence of content, for those people who only have that left to do. So simply removing the grind goals doesn't automatically generate content to keep people entertained.

There's also plenty on GW2Guru to make it clear that the game is not GW, it's arguably not even a sequel really. Titles is one of very few mechanics they are actually carrying over (and making fully account-based btw.)

You raise a good point with Fissure armor, but bear in mind that in the early stages before people could invincifarm, Fissure armor was basically untouchable. A handful of people could ever afford it.

Anyways, GW2 does have many new mechanics, but the 'build system' that gives GW its uniqueness is basically the same. The core concepts are there.

Agree with this, GW2 is not going to be the same as GW1 and in many if not all cases its tottaly different, they are breaking the formula however that made GW1 successfull. Time will tell if its a smart move or a disaster waiting to happen I hope for the former.

Pol

Guild Wars endgame was supposed to be PvP, however a lot of people fun the PvE to be quite fun so they expanded on that.

The potential for loot. You might as well ask what drives a player to indulge themselves in hours of multiplayer in any FPS. Some people enjoy the thrill of a rare drop, some enjoy the thrill of competition, it just varies from person to person, game to game, genre to genre. I don't understand all of these posts over on GW2G where players are upset over immersion because it's something I frankly don't care about. Yet it's important to them, it will make the game more enjoyable.

Every game goes through this, it's nothing new. Number crunchers, data-miners, min/maxers, whatever you want to call them they find what is efficient and spread the word (or keep it secret).

Nothing was stopping you personally from seeking out like-minded players who didn't want to run whatever everyone else was. Eventually you were given 3 heroes, twinking half the group to your ideas and seeing how they played out. Unless you never joined a guild and refused to run with heroes/henchmen, I really don't understand the complaint being made here.

I find it odd that you're complaining about titles when they encouraged what you believe Guild Wars' level 20 cap was created for; exploration. Vanquisher will send you through every single zone in the game. Skill capping will send you through most zones in the game. Explorer... well, don't really need to explain that. If you're referring strictly to every single gold sink title, why does it bother you what some people decide to do with their gold?

And again, meta stuff, it happens to every game. But again, nothing was stopping you from finding like minded players who swore off wikis or whatever and just ran what they wanted to (these people also exist in every game). Guild Wars, even the hard modes, did not demand you run the absolute best builds to succeed like other games. There was a lot of wiggle room.

People were 55ing a few months after the release, I would consider that early stages.

I like this... at least I like the randomly generated instances part of this. While I agree that having a meta (in particular a long and stale meta like we currently have) is detrimental to the game, I think you are kind of blowing the titles issue out of proportion. A meta being present affects everyone, but the issue of titles and grind only affects each person individually since it is up to them if they want to title grind.

I hope they bring titles actually, it is something that you can work for if you want, if you don't then don't. Simple as that. I personally would love to work towards something, not to mention it would help with exploring the content of GW2 I feel. Many people in GW1 apparently don't even know there's a town called Maguuma Stade still.

I think titles are fine. It brings a good sense of accomplishment when you do something. What ruined it was that everything was so very solo like. Instanced areas, easy map traveling, henchman, the camera angle, and the compass informing your exact aggro range. It ruined the games atmosphere. The game became viewed as a process- do this, go there, then do that.

As someone who has played this game since release, here what I think caused GW's downfall.

-Heroes/henchman
-PvX Wiki

Oooh and do I hate PvX Wiki. What you mentioned about builds and farming and stuff relates somewhat to that. But there's much more to it than that. PvX has really done a great number over this past year. You have Shadow Form to thank for that; it started getting mainstream around that time, and ever since then the GW community has gone to shit.

I will propose the complete opposite conclusion:

There has been no downfall of Guild wars. The updates have continually improved the game, and the game itself has been getting better and better with time.

However, the game is old and thus most players have already done all that one can do in GW, leaving only a few areas where they can still be active, mostly acquiring high end loot.

Both the GW business model of one time payment and common sense indicate that the proper solution is to play the game as long as it's fun, and then move on to another game while waiting for the next Anet product.

However, the players are, for some reason, unable to recognize this and think they should only ever play one game and that game should be forever fresh. This is not possible.

I think Guildwars is better then ever in it's current state. Just think back to what it was like originally and it will look like a barren wasteland.

And if you really want to you don't even have to use pve skills or heroes. Everything that was in the game originally is still there. But no way in hell i ever part ways with my seed of life and selfless spirit. I earned those purely by pugging and donating to my guild. I want rewarding gameplay, damit!

Btw, the first thing i will say in chat when i get GW2 is "Enjoy the good old days!"

There have been at least several updates which made the game demonstrably worse.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Game_updates/20081211

just to name one

The problem with GW as with any multiplayer game is the people, the players. Not every one of them, but close. Becouse most of us wants to be better than the most of us, play better, look better. And all this with the very minimum of effort, becouse for most people it is not the hard journey that matters, but the fact that you finaly reached a goal. Which in itself is not a bad thing, but it does lead to exploiting the weaknesses of the system, for that minimum of effort.

A weakness in the system can be a bug, a possible weak chain in the programming, or an overlooked godly combination of the 1300 skills. All these gets one closer to a goal with much less effort than playing as it was meant to be. It is a social thing realy, nothing can be done. As long as there is a goal to reach, this is present, and good luck selling a game with absolutley no goals.

And dont tell me Anet should have/could have done this to prevent this. They cant. If they can succeed in doing so however, then their place is not in the gaming industry, but in politics, for being able to create a working system with no weaknesses to exploit.

Unless you are talking about bugs or the fact that some updates are eventually rebalanced, this is a matter of personal preference. You'll notice that most changes that are not experimental in nature are there for keeps - and many players actually AGREE with these changes.

Don't mistake "I don't like the update!" for "Nobody likes the update!".

P.S.
Note that Anet seems to be quite happy with the game, too.

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Game...gust_7.2C_2008
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Game...ber_11.2C_2008

Nobody whose opinion is informed at all agrees with either of these updates.

I'll find more bad ones if you'd like.

I repeat: just because you and maybe the people you care about don't like it doesn't mean that noone else does.

And kindly try to avoid attaching "not informed at all" tags to people who simply don't agree.

It's not an opinion that those updates did not improve the game. Improvement isn't a matter of individuals liking or not liking it, it's about the effects the updates had on the game and the community.

Yes , and i don't believe removing heroes from pvp , not nerfing some skills , not adding content in pvp , adding codex had good effects on the community. Also , tonight's update , with 50% on storage , looked like pathetic...

Lemming succesfuly pointed the 2 biggest update that i remember, of course there are points in those that proved to be bad ideas. But there are points in there that are valid and working to this day. Saying that those updates failed entirely becouse they couldnt solve all the problems they intended to solve is simply wrong.

Improvement is any update that has a positive effect. The game is feakin 5 years old, at this age the best positive effect is staying alive. Change can bring life into it, and there are no changes of significant size that are only positive or only negative.

star trek onlines genesis engine created randomly geneated instances and those were so much fun. nothing like seeing the 6 areas and mob groups mixed up over and over. Id rather have the devs spend their time crafting a few good instances rather than a crap system like genesis.

I love title hunting, it gives me goals to achieve ingame where id otherwise be twiddling my thumbs wondering what to do. If youdont like it then dont do them, there no need to remove optional content that a large proportion of the playerbase enjoys.

I dont think henchman caused gw's downfall they have always been weak and never reliable in the event of a almost group wipe so people when given the chance would chose humans over hanchies every day. now hero's on the other hand killed any playing with a party what so ever.

The problem in any game where players can choose what build is best for others is that most other players are sheep. Once someone creates a build that works, people flock to it as the holy grail of builds. They usually refuse to accept other builds that even though not as powerful or efficient, actually work. So these players who refuse the idea that there's more then one effective build for a scenario will plug their ear and refuse until the very same people they looked to for the last ultimate build (pvx) present a new one. Then the cycle continues. Even the last efficient build that was accepted widely is now frowned upon. GW was actually a pretty easy game to play pve wise. The chances of failure were pretty slim even with random builds most people would laugh at today. I always thought that GW was based on that. As for GW2, you can bet the same thing will happen. It's just the nature of the community.

Kind of like Racthoh said, if you want to play that game with fun builds etc. you have to find a good and fun guild. And really it isn't that hard (maybe now it is, dunno, I stopped playing with guilds since I can't play every week).

And the wiki and the farms were there in the early stage (around July at least). Sure, it wasn't as detailed as now, but people didn't complain about it then because not everyone knew about the wiki. (Same thing for farming. Remember 55 monks with prot bond ? ettin farming ? griffon farming ?).

And a few weeks after Sorrow Furnance, builds started emerging (ss, BiP, echo+MS).

The titles topic has been beaten to death, so...

In the end, I still find GW fun, even if in the past there's been so bad updates. And even 5 years later, many people don't know everything about it.

i understand where you are coming from OP, but you can still play GW the way you want. You don't have to use solo farming builds, you don't have to play meta and you don't have to listen to the people that whisper "nub" because they spent more time looking at what you were running in PvP than worrying about killing the enemy. I run what sounds fun to me regardless of what people think. Granted, I don't go into RA running around being a nuisance but I also don't feel the need to squeeze out an extra 2 DPS if I don't feel like running the latest cookie-cutter pvx biz.

I think that was the main design mistake they made with GW1. They didn't do their market research to figure out that most PVE'ers prefer to stick with PVE. The other one was having too many skills. 1319 or however many they have now is way too many to keep balanced with the staff they have.

I don't think there's anything wrong with titles. Without titles you wouldn't have more players doing non-grindy things; you'd have more players not playing.

I agree that it'd be nice to have more randomness in the instances. All there is in GW1 is very slight variation in the placement and composition of a small percentage of enemy groups.

First problem is largely solved by no secondaries, half your skillbar being fixed, and there being much fewer skills in the game.

Second problem is largely solved by making ALL titles account-wide. Just play whatever you want, you'll make progress in something.

From what i understood following similar posts in the past years, things went like this: the game started as a PvP (GvG in particular) game, with a little PvE tutorial, also connected with PvE through lore/tombs and favor of the gods which opened UW/FOW (still can't figure out what was the deal with Fissure armor..something to do when relaxing from PvP maybe? Then they planned to release a new campaign every 6 months, so maybe there were some PvE path in their original design?).

However, the PvP momentum kept growing (making GW's initial great success) until ANet guys found themselves low on cash after the big GvG tournaments with real world prizes. When no new big tournament were possible any more, most of the PvP playerbase left, making PvP to start his downhill road. The only possible solution left to the developers was to focus on PvE (since more people are willing to play the relaxing PvE than the hardcore and difficult to learn PvP, expecially if PvP has no real-world prize...sports' way of thinking seems to be absent from the web), and since this is a F2P game, they had to give people cheap but "addicting" things to do, which basically means titles, and rare-fancy items which you have to farm for hours to find.

Keeping people into the game, in my opinion, is a cheap and clever marketing solution to advertise the game: the more people keep being enthusiastic of the game, the more they will spread the voice and bring new people in (who have to pay the starting price, the same thing imho is true for micro-transactions: if you like the game you buy new slots, name-change etc.).

Then, since there aren't money left, nor developers to design and implement new quests, areas, elite missions, etc., it's rather obvious that the PvE will start to become boring and repetitive, which caused the introduction of hard mode/zaishen things/nicholas, and the increasing focus on titles (EotN, Zaishen).

As far as heroes are concerned, i think that their introduction was ment to give casual players (those who can't rely on guild/ally nor PuG to play because they play really rarely) a reason to have fun (read: to purchase the game), too. However, i agree that this thing actually killed the multi-player aspect of the game, and i don't know if this has been foreseen when they were first designed.

Regarding the meta/PvX thing, i rather agree with other posters that this is something "natural" that happens in games because since there are rewars, people will find a way to obtain them in the easier way possible, there's no solution to it, other than maybe keep rocking the meta changing skills on a regular basis.


So, from my point of view the tide turned after ANet gave up (for serious reasons it seems) with the high-end PvP part of the game (that with real world prizes), since a F2P game seems hardly able to maintain PvE updates, like P2P's do, such as WoW etc. Updates to PvE mean new areas, quests, monsters etc..all difficult and expensive things to implement, while updates to PvP mean regular skill updates, setting up of monthly tournaments and their monitoring, which seem to be cheaper tasks to accomplish, so from this point of view the first idea of the developers was nice: "let's do a PvP F2P game which is easy and cheap to maintain". This also had the power to bring GW at a similar level of WoW, regarding competitiveness, because WoW's PvP seems to be not so impressive, while i heard a lot of people saying that GW's one is way better than that of a lot of other games. However, this couldn't last forever.


In the end, so, i really don't see how things could have been gone differently. I don't like titles and PvX wiki existence too, but the other face of the coin is that they probably kept this game alive, in terms of people actually playing. Maybe if developers didn't spend so much money with big tournaments, while instead focusing on maintaining regular automated tournaments and PvP skill updates, they could have reached their starting goal making a long, stable PvP game.

However, i don't know if web's people would have brought GW's PvP that up without real life prizes (i always see people stating that they play to win or to get material rewards rather than for the fun of the game and the competition, which doesn't require winning or being payed for, and if you ever played sports in real life you know what i mean).

Probably there's a good chance that i've missed out and misunderstood a lot of things in my description of GW's history. I would really appreciate that better informed people enlight me up on this subject.

GW was originally supposed to have a little more focus into the PvP aspect as you might compare to WoW or something along those lines, but not just entirely PvP. It did become the same thing, most likely with titles and with titles came restriction. That's why there are rank 10+ groups in Heroes Ascent. They will only team with players of their rank/experience....no one else outside of the guild/friend zone.

What I think really ruined the game is the unrestricted skill bar and PvXwiki. When I see a new player ask for some build ideas, all I see are people saying "Look it up on wiki"...I know there's many people who have builds that blow Discord necros out of the water in terms of damage and healing, but will they post it on wiki? No, because then every man and their dog will be using it in a few days. But in all honesty who hasn't used wiki on an occasion? Occasion I feel is okay, using it for every new pvp character you make? That's where it needs to be different for GW2, else it will turn into the same thing as here.

My input

It's not, that's what I'm trying to get at. The most important skills you will use and re-use again are preselected by your weapon class. The skills you can choose have huge recharges and thus don't change your playstyle greatly. There is some min-maxing to be had with traits and stuff, but it's not going to have as dramatic an impact on playstyle the way mixing up your GW1 bar does. GW2 does retain the concept of being able to "respec" fairly quickly and effortlessly, but there is more affinity to the limited specializations that are pre-built for classes found in other MMOs, than really making your "own" build from scratch.

So...your analysis is that while GW1 is a good game, there were issues, and that you think GW2 will be fun. Correct?

STUNNING DEVELOPMENT!
You, my friend, are a master of observation and deduction.

I honestly don't care about GW2 at all.

Unless I wake up tomorrow, find out that in order to understand the beginning of GW2 is to read those books they'll be producing between last year and when GW2 comes out, then perhaps I might be concerned.

You are very articulate for a teenager. Kudos on that. I believe the "meta" issue will not be solved by having less skills. Meta results from intelligent players coming up with an efficient way of doing something, then passing that info on to others. So meta builds will always emerge for certain activities. The only thing that will stop that is if the players decide that pugs should be flexible... an anti meta theme. I'm afraid greed is powerful, though. So I don't see meta dissappearing.

As for gw2... They have released a decent amount of info with respect to race, professions, traits, skill mechanics, and dynamic events. Check out the gw2 guru. I am very excited for the game. I don't know if I'll love it. But I do know it is hard not to be burned out with gw1 at this point. So for me and many others, it is time for something new. Which brings me to one more point... If gw was heavily populated with players, it would have more life. gw2 is surely going to give us a game with life.

The mass exodus of burned out WoW players will begin on the launch date.

I think the point should be made that if pugs are seen by the community to be flexible, then that constitutes an implicit message to Anet that either PvE is far too easy or that skills are perfectly balanced (which is unlikely, all things considered).
Metagames are vital for games to remain consistently interesting.

Codex PvE, limited but different skills to play every week or so. I can hear the cries of anguish already.

As for 55's that build existed long before Factions. I obtained Obsidian armor for my Ranger by farming with my monk. Troll/Giant runs outside Droks and Snake Dance, and 55/SS in UW.

As for titles they didn't ruin the game, like others said meta builds are bound to happen regardless for whatever reason. All titles did was give people something to grind for rather than just virtual gold and rare weapons.

Basically if you let other people's play styles ruin your fun, you should probably be playing another game. The only way any of those things can ruin it for you is if you actually care about competing in PvE for epeen. Want to compete go play PvP, otherwise find a nice guild that has a similar mindset about running "fun" builds over "efficient"

The only problem those updates were designed to solve was the GvG end game, and the problem was not even close to being fixed. All it did was make a dumbed down and even easier to abuse endgame mechanic.

The skill changes in those updates weren't done to address balance issues. They were done because the people in charge viewed the job of skill changes as a way to "shake up" the meta, rather than as an attempt to balance it and promote skilled play.

At that point in time the game was already in a degenerate abusive state, and those updates made the game exponentially worse off than the state it was originally in. To make matters worse, after fixing the biggest mistakes with the first Elite Skill update, they showed they clearly didn't learn their lesson and created that second one.

Those two updates pretty much eliminated any hope of this game ever shifting toward a balanced skilled play meta game, and pretty much forced everyone to accept the reality that the game would for now on just be, abusing degenerate dumbed down skills and not have to worry about anything but sliding their face against a keyboard and hoping you did it better than your opponent.

Throughout the history of this game it has been proven time and time again that the best way to manage the game was always to allow the players to change the meta on their own by coming up with counters to the current meta, and then counters to the counters, and so on. The only updating that needed to be done, was the occasional nerf of an overpowered skill or concept that promoted degenerate play, or very small skill tweaks that change up the game a little bit and keep it fresh without creating anything that can become abused. It is easier said then done, but those two Elite skill updates were so far from minor skill tweaks, that it is just pathetic that anyone could have thought those changes would have been good for the game. The foresight of the people who have been involved in the skill updates throughout the years is nothing short of pathetic and has led to the majority of the community realizing it is foolish to assume they will change anytime soon.

I can tell you the exact moment that GW1 ceased being fun. It's when suddenly SF sins were running everywhere, doing everything, and ruining the economy.
While I appreciate the Anet staff for being measured in it's nerf, it should have been nerfed completely.

The same goes for the Ursan period (I missed most of that, taking my time doing EotN)

It's created an environment that encourages everyone, every time a large single profession buff happens (get your dervs ready everyone) to rush out and quickly get a character in that profession with the uber meta OP'd skill to do elite areas with.

How many rits are now out there with no other skills than SoS and Glaive? You might find a few who were intelligent and have Signet of Ghostly Might and Soul Twisting, but for the most part they only have SoS.

Now mesmers weren't as bad, and it's scary how many of them are not running Panic LOL

However it just keeps going and going.

How about this, if any Team build (non hero, don't touch my Discordway LOL) calls for 5 or more of a single profession all using the same elite...nerf the crap out of it.

Let's go back to one tank, 1 offensive minded melee, 1-2 midline physicals, 2 healers, and 2-3 utility casters.
Isn't that how FoW SC's are done, and most SCs for that matter?

Problem is that adding dhuum and other made it almost impossible for non-perma teams in uw for example ( i know it's doable , but it takes very long, and you still need a very exped group.., while any pug perma team can clear it in half an hour...). But yes , GW ceased to be fun after almost 3consecutives fails : SF nerf failing , Removal from heroes in PvP and its consequences ,and the recent promises ( new HA map , skill updates , dervish content ) not appearing .....
Although i got to say Battle in lion arch and items after it were nice , the rest of WiK was by far too repetitive after you did it once ( especially Wanted quests...)

SF sins and 55monking(invented in the begining of the game) is exactly the same concept. So SF sins didnt kill the game. GW stopped being fun because people have played it for a long time. There are Other games out there, really really good ones like WoW, gears of war, Halo, uncharted, Resident evil, Call of Duty. GW stopped being fun when it has been out competed by other games with new content for your enjoyment.

Final Fantasy 7 was sooo fun, I spend 300hours on it and then I realized I did everything I wanted to do in that game.

Counter Strike was sooo fun until I realized thats modern warfare.

All of you guys probably spent thousands of hours in GW. That is fun enough.

AGE and lack of new stuff to do killed this game, not the updates or power creeps.
PvP stopped being "competitive"(pretty loose term) when theres no more real life rewards.