Unimpressive Anniversary Content

Stumme has been trying to hype up all the "secret projects" they've been working on, but now that we've seen a few of them, I can't help but feel underwhelmed

Pretty Neat:
-Players who have completed "Finding a Purpose" can now change Razah's profession.
-PvP in Guild Wars is now globally affected by Flux. Interesting, but not at all impressive. It's the first month and already we're seeing direct multipliers to damage dealt and taken. That's like RPG-101.
-"The Villainy of Galrath" is now available as a Hard Mode quest. Ok? Are there any new incentives to these quests besides experience and money?

Ok:
-Added costume and festival hat vendors to Pre-Searing Ascalon. This is the natural order of things, not very exciting, just something that was bound to happen anyway.
-Added the option to use high-resolution textures in outposts. Same thing here. In fact this is hardly new or revolutionary.

Why:
-"The Villainy of Galrath" is now available as a Hard Mode quest. Ok? Are there any new incentives to these quests besides experience and money?
-Embark Beach now permits qualified leaders to enable Hard Mode for missions. This could have been put in any maintenance build.

This is awful:
-The Friends List now displays locations for mutual friends. There is this thing called talking to people, it can help you figure out where your friends are. This is completely unnecessary, and a tremendous waste of time. You added the minion window because minion builds were tedious and hardly enjoyable as a player. What kind of creeper was incapable of asking his friends where they were and if they wanted company? This effort should have been put towards something actually useful like an away message, or an auto-response, or any other damn thing to be honest.

Everyone here has such great eagerness to be dissapointed in everything.

Incentives? You mean like... besides the fun of a quest that was awesome and a challenge when I first started and always wanted to play again when it'd be a new challenge?

Why does new stuff always have to have some new item for people to get? I thought the game was supposed to be for the fun of playing it o.O

Also, Razah as a changeable primary is awesome. That can shut out much of the complaints about mercenaries while providing nice advantages and flexibility in many builds.

Friends list seems to be more of a preliminary for GW2 style content. It's not awful, it's just not usually useful in this context of a game.

Flux is an interesting change in PvP intended to shake up the meta's and not require the team to continually balance skills. Instead, the game can move following advantages and disadvantages favoring different styles of play instead of solely dev balance changes.

I'm sorry ANet didn't deposit new items in your inventory personally for your sole benefit, but I'm rather enjoying the update.

To be fair, WoC is still in the wings.

Okay, I must ask.

Are you ever happy about anything?

Is complaining your crack?

Did you miss one thing? Its a six year old game and they are still adding things. This is impressive for non pay to play.

I think it's left overs from last year's anniversary, where there were more content and updates because it was the fifth year, that this year seems not as great. To be honest, it's quite interesting. The Razah update, especially, was welcome.

I expected more than just one quest given a Hard Mode boost. That's my only problem.

Shinta I like all of it. Maybe some of it is just not your thing.

What really would please you?

Half a glass of water is halfway to being a full glass, or you can complain the glass is half empty. Two very different ways to approach life.

I got a free everlasting tonic!!! Who's complaining?!

I haven't been in pvp since new flux, so I can't speak to that. The rest of the updates I would classify as 'that's a nice change. A little more, nothing big, but I don't see why I should expect anet to do anything big, so its all gravy, or icing if you prefer (hopefully not both) Many people think that the friends list should have been a toggle function, doesn't matter much to me but I think if enough want it that way, it should be that way.

The only thing I personally feel disappointed about is the 6th year tonics. Great that they mixed them up, but why heroes? I would much rather have turned into generic ghosts, centaurs, tengu, kournan guards etc, and when we become specific npc's to have been more one's like mad king and shiro. That in my mind would have been incredibly cool, but the greens are that way at least so its all good. I'd classify this not as a complaint, but a 'next time you do something like this, maybe take it in that direction'

I agree some of the things that were added are things that should have been there all along anyway, though I do think they are nice little additions (better late then never). As for the friends list thing though, I fail to understand what the big deal is. If there is someone who I think is "creepy", or who I don't want knowing where I am, they probably aren't someone I want on my friends list anyway, and would simply...remove them from my list. Guess I just don't understand why it's a big deal...about people knowing where I am.

Ok the celebrations never have been much to start with.
1st only remembered because the mini's were pure epicness when they first came out.
2nd added the boardwalk games and rollerbeetle racing.
3rd brought us new weps and more of the same.
4th was fantastic because it brought a lot of new stuff. <- BEST!!
5th was only remembered because of the WiK stuff which wasn't even part of the celebration.
6th looks more like the 4th because multiple things were added to cater to all.
PvP thing, Graphics thing, Friendslist thing, HM quest thing aaaand NEW gifts.
It's no boss aura or partyhat but still this makes for a lovely celebration which lasts almost 8 days, unlike the 5th >
Now if ArenaNet only unlocks that grey 4th year storage tab so my guildies are happy too

^this. this game is 6 years old. im surprised its even still running, let alone having stuff added to it! so i wouldnt complain about anything we get now-a-days tbh.

Advice for the OP:

/Uninstall Guild Wars, /Reinstall WoW.

Bye bye.

In the coming weeks i'll be able to save REAL MONEY on stuff in the store that i've wanted but been unwilling to pay the overpriced (imo) normal price.

That's enough for me.

Agreed.

The mutual friends thing is dumb but everything else makes sense and is ok.

I thought ANet had set themselves a precedent of making anniversary content worthwhile, thorough, and expansive since we got nice anniversary content the 4th and 5th years.

I am mistaken.

They clearly didn't try at all this year.

Maybe their focus lies elsewhere with PvP revamp, WoC, or profession fixes.

Nevertheless, the expectation was high for the anniversary content and ANet failed to meet expectations.

If they would simply just said something along the lines of, "We aren't releasing expansive content this anniversary. Instead, we'll focus on other upcoming patches to be released soon."

Your communication to this audience sucks. Fix that ANet.

Honestly, it's not really overpriced imo. It's the main source of their income on the game, because there's not a significant amount of new players, and the average player doesn't buy multiple accounts. It's probably 30%+ of their income (I'm pulling numbers out, I'm not sure, but I'd wager it's a fair amount).

Considering having a full live team working out on WoC earning full pay, along with the server costs.. I can't see the profit margin being that high. Unlike WoW, they don't earn money monthly from all of us.

However, with my limited funds I'm looking forward to the sale too. I'm a poor college student, and as much as I appreciate what they do, I can only pay so much!

^this. Multi-purpose hero that they didn't have to release at all. Also, they did the tonics and that is very cool.