The new permanent content is reigniting my interest in GW2. I
hated the story updates before. Can't stand being forced to log in. This way seems much more reasonable.
For 10 min/month, I can ensure access to all the story content and rewards. If I don't want to, I can pay money later for exactly the same privilege. Seems like a great way to balance needing to keep the population up with people wanting to play for free.
Good news, they started releasing permanent story/content patches/episodes every two weeks. The catch is that to unlock the episodes you need to log in at least once during the two weeks they're active, after that you can replay their content whenever you want. Gw2 is currently on the third episode of this new living story chapter so if like me you missed an episode, know that episodes can be bought/unlocked permanently for 200 gems each, which you can currently get for 20-30 golds depending on that day's going price. With the changes to dungeon rewards, gold is much easier to come by without having to farm. A bunch of features were added and there were multiple balancing passes, some new traits and skills for all the classes.
Seriously?
I thought the whole damn point of it being free to play is so you could play when you felt like it, and not feel compelled to log in all the time.
Then they make you log in all the time unless you want to pay for all the new content?
...I don't know why I care, I haven't logged into the game for at least 6 months now (I got sick of logging in halfway through some temporary content that I'd never get a chance to finish) but for some reason this just really grinds my gears.
I hated the old temporary content too. But this seems reasonable. Like clipping coupons or tracking deals sites. We've got the choice to put in time (log in, farm gold) or money to get a product, or we can opt out of the whole thing i.e. not pay any attention to the story updates. It's a big step forward from where GW2 was. I'm impressed that the devs listened to the players on that point.
Anyone play elementalists or engineers? Have things gotten any better with all the bugfixes and balancing?