Ok, so we all know that this game started as a full loot pvp game. And you can tell, because there is gathering levels, specializing tools, crafting levels, random atributes on gear, etc.
The problem is that non of that works with gear droping out of thin air and without any form of gear sink.
Sadly, in this attempt of appealing to a bigger audience they made this shift to a pve style with instanced pvp, they put themselves in a ugly position, they now have to choose between two parts of their playerbase. They attracted players that would hate their shiny sword to be broken forever, and they attracted players that would hate their shiny sales not working because gear is eternal.
Clearly their attemp was to ignore the pvp/player-driven-economy complaints and focus on the pve side of things, and hope that some items would retain value due to consumables being crafted and people trying to craft the perfect weapon. But that didn’t happen, all the servers and their mothers are crafting consumables, and since the markets don’t work level 60s don’t have any way of income, so they don’t buy stuff to craft the perfect gear either (they expected them to be getting good money by gathering stuff and crafting in the original design, that’s why there is no ways of making money on late game).
So what was the otucome of this whole shift? a themepark mmo, with a player driven economy tag slaped on the title (but dead forever), with annoying features for a themepark MMO, such as; limited storage, cost for fast traveling, separated storage and markets, etc. On top of that, end game players are broke if they don’t own one of the central cities because there was no source of income for they with the exception of the AH which is dead.
It’s pretty clear in all servers, that ironically the gold makers are some of the starter towns, the central ones, why? because they are in the middle and people will sell and buy almost exclusively there. In fact in advanced servers, owners of central cities are rich while owners of other cities are broke and want to give away the cities.
What have this to do with the pvp/themepark dichotomy?. In AO there are separated markets and storage for each city but guess what, each market works perfectly, because they are all in a circle with one central town, one where suroundings pvp is enabled all the time (full loot) and there are better resources, everything is expensivier there (opposite from this game). Also you can fast travel in AO to other cities by paying a fee for the items you are carrying (a expensive one) and you can travel naked for free. In the central city you can’t fast travel with things, period, only naked. So yeah, is riskier to get stuff to sell there, but you are rewarded for it.
Right now they need to make a choice, the player driven economy and pvp or the casual themepark style without player driven economy. This put us players in a tough spot, because there is not a single one way out that would not hurt the enjoyment of other players, there is absolutely no way that they can fix the economy of this game without bleeding players like crazy, is either those who want a player driven economy, or those who want to do quests and have shiny items forever.
So let’s try to understand that, understand the situation, and keep pushing for our own side, because we all want this game to be great for our playstyle, but let’s avoid fighting, we need to KNOW that there are two completely different playstiles in this comunity, playstiles that sadly can’t live together, and we all have the right to speak our opinions and hope they choose our side. Because they HAVE to choose a side, there is no other way out.
I personally believe they will choose the themepark/pve side, because the game breaking bugs recently found in pvp are not that important outside of pvp, since there is no active competition between players, it doesn’t matter if they take a month or two on fixing them. I hope I am wrong, but that is what I believe.