Okay people you need to calm down. It sounds so much worse than it actually is.
You get less AD. YES. The AD you get will skyrocket in Value. YES. Prices will DROP so that players can afford the items. YES.
A mount wont cost 4m AD in AH because nobody will be able to buy it and then the seller wont get his AD. So he will lower the price far enough so people can afford it. So instead of 4m maybe it will cost 400k. This wont happen over a night, but I think this is the long term goal.
And I think they will adjust all vendor/zen prices after time.
I love when people understand how economies work and understand that currency, like any other object, has a supply and demand value attached to it.
Yes, and certain zen and wondrous bazaar items surely follow this supply and demand principle. Let's see are GMOPs price going down? Wards?
Ooops, I think there might be a fixed market economy somewhere.
I would have no problem paying to play this game if content was increasing. But it's not. Foundry has been dead for months and is seemingly abandoned by the devs for future plans. 11 dungeons have been dropped. There are no skirmishes between lvl 60-69. I grinded my way through Sharandar and Dread Ring for lvl 60 only to have to do it all over again. The queue sucks. The game has serious bugs that have never been addressed. They don't pay anybody to clean up and moderate the PE chat. Botters are allowed to run rampant and ruin this game. And what do the devs do? The equivalent of killing spiders in your house with grenades. Botters will find another way, we'll just find another game. Stupid, stupid move here guys. You release amazing content and addition with Strongholds, only to cut it off at the knees a month later. You release VIP with AD incentive only to cut it off at the knees a month later. You release campaign and story content only to remove incentive to play it because players need AD and you're forcing us into the same 3 dungeons and 2 skirmishes over and over to do it. PVP will be a bot campfire nightmare and it's already taken a major hit with Mod 6. Gauntlgrym was cool. Variety was there with content. Now it's recycled and reduced. Big loss for everyone. And you want us to pay for this?? Where is the value for the solo or casual player? It's a NIGHTMARE trying your odds with the queue at night, but at least with focus times it would drive people there. Now that's gone too!
0
bumfluffbobMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 46Arc User
Future Changes Beyond addressing the group content listed above, and the botting issue of Leadership, we are also looking at ways for the solo player to earn this time currency. We are evaluating content like Heroic Encounters and Campaigns as likely places to make adjustments, while watching the above changes to make sure they're having the desired effect on group play.
Why make such a radical change and at the same time tell us that this change will not give us the stability and certainty that happy gaming requires? How are we supposed to create our own gaming strategy when we know that you are just going to change things again 'in the future'?
Can you not at least attempt to implement a change that at least offers the possibility of some stability? This is a big change and big changes will always hurt a lot of players. Unfortunately, this big change comes with the promise that it is incomplete and thus won't be the last.
Also, where's the D&D feeling of finding treasure and overcoming new and refreshing challenges? It went down the drain when somebody decided that a game based on D&D was instead going to become the boring grindfest every other poorly-developed MMO eventually becomes. No new content, content gets removed instead. Everyone is just playing the same dungeons over and over and over in the hopes of getting enough copies of the same items to ding one of many numbers just a bit higher. Then repeat ad nauseam until essentially nothing in the game poses a challenge, and by then the only thing you can do is enter PvP and fight players who have mathematically no hope of besting you.
Leadership was one of the VERY few things that still reminded me of DnD. With the help of some other masters, we created a legacy campaign revolving around a mercenary guild and their exploits. Characters died a few times, but every time the DM just gave them control of another member of the Guild so they could keep playing and also keep immersion, since they had all the reasons for knowing what had been going on.
Back to the game. Having your own group of soldiers at your disposal to carry out tasks and help you gather AD and a bit of other resources was what I liked the most, since it fondly reminded me of that campaign. But making that all but useless, and without even putting any thought on that, just going "This has to go" is just something I can't tolerate.
As allready mentioned, they should combine removing rAD from Leadership with tagging every single profession reward as account bound. That should wake up a few people here...
1) Either drastically lower the cost of GMoP's. 2) Drastically lower the amount of GMoP's required. 3) Drastically increase the amount of AD a player can acquire from these tasks and raise the refinement cap to 100k AD per day. This is the option I like the least as it inflates the prices of everything else. 4) Add GMoP's to the loot table of dungeons
Any of these fixes would resolve the problem, but atm, I foresee in mod 9 a situation where you have the sum total of 10 players with perfect gear, because nobody else, even the mega rich now, will have any AD left.
Even if they do lower the price of GMOPs, you still have the wards to consider in upgrading equipment or enchantments.
Coalescent wards at their current price will still set the price point for high level enchants.
Wards are a non-factor in this for me. I still gain all the Coalescent Wards and Preservation Wards I need from Coffers and now as well from my VIP lockedbox keys, as I am gaining Tarmalune Bars from those boxes, which I can spend on Coalescents.
Regardless of my personal experience with Wards though, I do feel that all the AD sinks in the game should be evaluated for these AD Changes. Meticulously evaluated and adjusted accordingly.
This really goes to show that the pricing in the Zen shop for the wards is not effective, in that you have stated you gain all your coalescent wards and preservation wards from coffers and VIP lockbox keys. Coffers are extrapolated from your characters, suggesting a number of them in order to, "gain all the Coalescent Wards ... I need". VIP, well, once it's bought, it continues to give for that set time, with no more added investment on your part.
Perhaps that should be another target for Cryptic to make, in order to support their sales.
I have to tell i heard all about this from a guy speaking loud in Legit Channel and bashing us not so wealthy people and he said this will come, we shall see and it really came. Cryptic stop listening to only a chosen few! If you scare us away, who will play your game, a handful whales and a million bots, mostly run by the same whales?
I said a month ago to that guy, he should stop bashing poor people, all i got, Damnacious kicked me for "insulting" that legit player basher.FACT
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Well, even those whales might finally wake up, when they don't have enough real players around to run dungeons, skirmishes or PvP... I'm not even talking about the Stronghold PvP, i doubt that there will be any PvP left on that field after these changes go live.
this might be the nail in the coffin for me- I used leadership as a way to make AD, rather than playing the game to make AD, as most of the time I can only get in the game long enough to do professions. with all of the lag and DC's that plague this game- it is very hard for me to actually play the game to earn AD. go through half a dungeon then get disconnected, all that time wasted. granted the game has been stable for me after the double AD weekend ended (knock on wood)
Well, even those whales might finally wake up, when they don't have enough real players around to run dungeons, skirmishes or PvP... I'm not even talking about the Stronghold PvP, i doubt that there will be any PvP left on that field after these changes go live.
Spot on!
I told this all in PVP alpha test, but no, of course nobody listened to me, i even got i was a boring academic, now here we are and this boring academic tells Cryptic, whales will leave too, cause if they have nobody to look down or slaughter in their precious playfield, called PVP, they will soon leave. Just think again please.
We, normal players can't do anything againts them now, gap is already huge. Actually an action contrary to this would be much more appreciated for legits, so we could close the gap. The whales/exploiters sit on tons of Caturday exploited AD/ZEN, it will yet again only hurt us, decent players.
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Just gonna leave this here and just point on the 24h task vs the 4h task. Also, want to thank Cryptic for really thinking this one through before rolling it out. *two thumbs up!*
maybe neverwinter become a strange "reality" show - neverleave - and the last in the game will receive one million of dollars.
Just gonna leave this here and just point on the 24h task vs the 4h task. Also, want to thank Cryptic for really thinking this one through before rolling it out. *two thumbs up!*
So basically they just took the existing Leadership professions and removed the AD reward. Wow. Really putting in the effort there, devs. Regardless, thanks for helping me see the light, Cryptic. I wont be spending that much time (or money) in your game anymore.
Well, the ZEN in the ZAX is not generated out of thin air, it is bought by other players with real money. AD in the ZAX is more or less time... and this system was and is working.
Cryptic/PWE gets money. The players get either AD or ZEN.
And all they have to do is go after the botters with real GMs. It's not that complicated... and if they don't improve qualitiy of the rewards from Leadership not only up by a lot and let it be unbound, this change will blow up in their face really bad.
I love how the 4hr quest is the same as the 24hr quest, but with 3x the XP. And why oh why does a lvl 25 leadership quest give you leadership XP to begin with? Give us account bound GMOPs in a lvl 25 week long crafting task. Or account bound Peridot and Pearls and Blood Rubies. I don't want AD for anything other than refining, so skip the middle man and give me account bound refining stuff! That's all I want!
Until I want to upgrade my companion and it takes me a year to earn 750K AD to do it, that is...
if this is the new stuff they really need to think it through. we do NOT need more gold. we need more ways to make RP. take away AD. but have supply RP. make this the new DHE and make it bound to account.
What use do all RPs in the world have, if you can't afford the GMOP to upgrade when the item is full?
Exactly, if they announce GMoP's will no longer be required, similar to the arti gear model, I'd wager many people who find this change repulsive would be content with that. Coal wards are another issue but as Zeb stated VIP would be the middle ground with trade bars.
Just gonna leave this here and just point on the 24h task vs the 4h task. Also, want to thank Cryptic for really thinking this one through before rolling it out. *two thumbs up!*
maybe neverwinter become a strange "reality" show - neverleave - and the last in the game will receive one million of dollars.
This is a problem. Simply put. But it's a symptom rather than the disease. Namely the complete lack of trust between the Devs, the community moderators, and whomever the Powers That Be at PWE are. I and many others have brought this to you when you made the apparent kneejerk reaction to boost mob hitpoints by 50% back in the tail end of mod 6, on the grounds that it was "we found it too easy". We saw it in the account wide companion debacle in the wake of the Second Anniversary. We saw it in the attempt to sneak in a doubling of the 60 to 70 XP requirement during an x2 XP weekend in what many (rightly or wrongly) saw as a blatant attempt to force people to buy more $50 XP boosters.
And now, based off the statements you yourself have made it, it looks like the Devs are going off on this half-cocked, without a plan, and with no idea if it'll actually work. Look at that screenshot. Look at what you've said. "We're looking into. We're looking into." Repeat ad infintium. The last time we were fed that line, it took three months for the appropriate solution (the fixing of some truly outstanding AP bugs, and the nerfing of Mob damage without shooting their HP into the stratosphere in such a way that those of us without access to the "bottomless wallet" artifact could actually best in a meaningful period of time) to actually come about. Three months. Three months while the game hemorrhaged players and your own forum polls told you that 85% of your player based openly despised what you'd done. I've dealt with bank foreclosure law firms that looked downright agile by comparison (which anyone who's ever dealt with them will tell you, tend to be bloated, bureaucracy choked morasses whose response times can charitably be described as "glacial.").
We can't see any evidence that you're going to introduce something worthwhile to compensate from suddenly introducing the biggest professions paradigm shift since this game left beta. What do we need XP for? At that point, the toon should be well past 70, and the XP you get is a paltry drop in the bucket for what you need to get an overflow level. Gold? Gold is useless in this game except for buying potions, node kits, and injury kits, and the game already provides you with more than you possibly know what to do with.
Now I apologize if I seem like I'm being unfair to you. I don't want to heap this all on top of you, as I know you're not the one responsible for this decision. But the corporate masters here have so damaged the trust between them and their player base that people are calling this as they see it: a blatant bait-and-switch, the latest in a long line, for no other purpose than to squeeze them for even more money. They see your bosses as stripping them of their primary means of advancing in game, with no evidence that there's even a a framework of a plan in place to address the sudden shortcoming and absolute uselessness of the leadership profession as it will be by this time next week. They see promises of "we're looking into it", which they've come to see as meaning "we may or may not get back to you and address your concerns and the gaping problems this creates at some point before the Universe suffers its heat-death."
I love this game. I want to stay with it. I want to see it succeed. I've found a wonderful guild to take in me and my friends and I'm enjoying the SH module. And as someone who wants to see this game succeed, for all my vitriol and snark, please, please, try to rebuild the trust with your players. Please respond to this quickly. Please, don't let this game die with a whimper, as a desiccated shell of what it once was and could have been.
Luckily I only had one character I ever spent effort in Leadership on due to the annoyance factor, however some ideas to help fix with AD generation: The 24k rough AD cap needs to be raised, there needs to be more ways to earn AD in game, whether that's dungeons, skirmishes, pvp, or even Foundry quests which still waiting to even hear on when that intends to be fixed. Aside from that, Salvaging epic equipment currently is almost pointless as the amount of time spent in earning it does not justify its maximum of 10k salvage cost.
The problem is, they DON'T WANT you to make any AD in game. They want you to buy them for Zen which you should buy with cash.
Although that in itself is not a problem, they have to monetize the game somehow, it's the game breaking, destructive, dump, unimaginative and plain childish way they try to force that down our throats while killing the game by driving so many players away.
This. The ruse has been up for long, but it was forgiven solely because nobody thought they would go as far as to restrict AD sources until the game basically became a "Play this way or stay poor" kind of game.
There is another online game, whose name I will not mention to avoid drama and polemics, which I used to play and of which I'll say, off the top of my head, the kinds of things you can do and that help you progress in it: -Do daily quests in more than a dozen endgame dungeons -Do quests to recruit new companions -Play the Skirmish or Strategic missions, which feature a completely different combat system based on other skills. -Join a Raid with other players, and potentially get huge rewards -Join a Guild dungeon where the collective effort is rewarded with prizes given out at the guild master's discretion -Fight in an event area which is open once a week, can only be accessed for 30 minutes and has an insane Exp and Drop rate, which cuts on grinding time -Join the hourly PvP tournament, which has HUGE nerfs that both make purely offensive and purely defensive tactics less useful than in PvE, factoring in player skill -Join the weekly PvP tournaments and gain prizes even just by participating. You'll get curbed by someone with better gear and skills than yours eventually, but there are enough participants to make the challenge rise at a steady pace -Partake in crafting thousands of different items, all of which are useful because the demand for gear of all levels is always high, and most of them can be refined into higher-level items. -Set up an expedition and let your companions fight on their own. You can let them do their thing or choose to watch them fight, which is pretty entertaining in itself, and once they get back you get any loot they found -Build and decorate your home, which gives you a substantial "utility" boost and also provides you with a place to store your belongings and have stat-boosting parties with friends. -You want to pay and support the game development? You can choose between grab-bag boxes (which sometimes contain very rare and extremely valuable items, but nevertheless contain lots of stuff you can't normally get in the game) or a multi-use item whose value is pretty much stable in the market, which you can immediately exchange for currency. You still have to raise and manage your character yourself, so it's more of a financial bump to overcome small cash gate than a "instant win" option.
Now, let's compare it with what I can do in NWO. Which should be more impressive given that I'm currently playing it. -Join one of TWO endgame skirmishes...which is always the same enemies, same places, same tactics, up to the bosses whose only gimmick is "Tons of HP, one-hit death to anyone not geared enough", which means you either whittle their health away, get curbed, or curb it if you happen to have a 3k+ in your party. -Join one of THREE endgame dungeons...same thing as skirmishes, but with more class imbalance: every "ideal" group just wants four DPS and someone to keep them alive. Support classes are out of luck. -Go toe to toe in PvP with no balancing system, meaning it's all down to numbers. No skill involved besides knowing which overpowered powers to spam, if you are weaker than your opponent you die, period. -Grind the same 4-5 quests in the same 4 campaign zones over and over and over, until you get the boons and only have to grind again if you need some campaign currencies for your guild or for converting into keys. -Foundry...oh wait, it's not coming back. Strike that off the list. -Craft tons of useless items to max out your profession skills, wait entire days so that you can have higher-ranked workers, and repeat until you can get the one thing that matters for that profession (Jewels/Rings/Armor Kits/Alchemy components)
Really seems like the people who decided to make this major change did not employ any critical thinking whatsoever as this will only increase the amount of bots in game. This will also increase the demand for black market AD. The bots will be rolling in real life cash for the short period time this game will exist if this actually hits the live server while the devs just scratch their heads over what to do next.
Maybe the developers just wanted more free time around the holidays...that is when the layoff notices will be hitting their mailboxes as the player population will tank very quickly. *shrugs*
I still cant understand why you don't simply DELETE accounts using BOTs. BOTs seem to be the root of all evil here, so why don't you just say hey bot meet the BAN HAMMER....
I still cant understand why you don't simply DELETE accounts using BOTs. BOTs seem to be the root of all evil here, so why don't you just say hey bot meet the BAN HAMMER....
Bots aren't the problem from Cryptic's POV. People playing the game for free and not paying real money for Zen is the problem. The real problem that is at the root of this entire decision. Bots are the smokescreen put up to us as the bogeyman, like Dubya did with Saddam Hussein.
Comments
Ooops, I think there might be a fixed market economy somewhere.
Can you not at least attempt to implement a change that at least offers the possibility of some stability? This is a big change and big changes will always hurt a lot of players. Unfortunately, this big change comes with the promise that it is incomplete and thus won't be the last.
More hurting for us to look forward to.
Leadership was one of the VERY few things that still reminded me of DnD. With the help of some other masters, we created a legacy campaign revolving around a mercenary guild and their exploits. Characters died a few times, but every time the DM just gave them control of another member of the Guild so they could keep playing and also keep immersion, since they had all the reasons for knowing what had been going on.
Back to the game. Having your own group of soldiers at your disposal to carry out tasks and help you gather AD and a bit of other resources was what I liked the most, since it fondly reminded me of that campaign. But making that all but useless, and without even putting any thought on that, just going "This has to go" is just something I can't tolerate.
That should wake up a few people here...
Perhaps that should be another target for Cryptic to make, in order to support their sales.
I said a month ago to that guy, he should stop bashing poor people, all i got, Damnacious kicked me for "insulting" that legit player basher.FACT
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
I'm not even talking about the Stronghold PvP, i doubt that there will be any PvP left on that field after these changes go live.
I told this all in PVP alpha test, but no, of course nobody listened to me, i even got i was a boring academic, now here we are and this boring academic tells Cryptic, whales will leave too, cause if they have nobody to look down or slaughter in their precious playfield, called PVP, they will soon leave. Just think again please.
We, normal players can't do anything againts them now, gap is already huge. Actually an action contrary to this would be much more appreciated for legits, so we could close the gap. The whales/exploiters sit on tons of Caturday exploited AD/ZEN, it will yet again only hurt us, decent players.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
really guys... that is not a simple detail.
AD in the ZAX is more or less time... and this system was and is working.
Cryptic/PWE gets money.
The players get either AD or ZEN.
And all they have to do is go after the botters with real GMs.
It's not that complicated... and if they don't improve qualitiy of the rewards from Leadership not only up by a lot and let it be unbound, this change will blow up in their face really bad.
Until I want to upgrade my companion and it takes me a year to earn 750K AD to do it, that is...
This is a problem. Simply put. But it's a symptom rather than the disease. Namely the complete lack of trust between the Devs, the community moderators, and whomever the Powers That Be at PWE are. I and many others have brought this to you when you made the apparent kneejerk reaction to boost mob hitpoints by 50% back in the tail end of mod 6, on the grounds that it was "we found it too easy". We saw it in the account wide companion debacle in the wake of the Second Anniversary. We saw it in the attempt to sneak in a doubling of the 60 to 70 XP requirement during an x2 XP weekend in what many (rightly or wrongly) saw as a blatant attempt to force people to buy more $50 XP boosters.
And now, based off the statements you yourself have made it, it looks like the Devs are going off on this half-cocked, without a plan, and with no idea if it'll actually work. Look at that screenshot. Look at what you've said. "We're looking into. We're looking into." Repeat ad infintium. The last time we were fed that line, it took three months for the appropriate solution (the fixing of some truly outstanding AP bugs, and the nerfing of Mob damage without shooting their HP into the stratosphere in such a way that those of us without access to the "bottomless wallet" artifact could actually best in a meaningful period of time) to actually come about. Three months. Three months while the game hemorrhaged players and your own forum polls told you that 85% of your player based openly despised what you'd done. I've dealt with bank foreclosure law firms that looked downright agile by comparison (which anyone who's ever dealt with them will tell you, tend to be bloated, bureaucracy choked morasses whose response times can charitably be described as "glacial.").
We can't see any evidence that you're going to introduce something worthwhile to compensate from suddenly introducing the biggest professions paradigm shift since this game left beta. What do we need XP for? At that point, the toon should be well past 70, and the XP you get is a paltry drop in the bucket for what you need to get an overflow level. Gold? Gold is useless in this game except for buying potions, node kits, and injury kits, and the game already provides you with more than you possibly know what to do with.
Now I apologize if I seem like I'm being unfair to you. I don't want to heap this all on top of you, as I know you're not the one responsible for this decision. But the corporate masters here have so damaged the trust between them and their player base that people are calling this as they see it: a blatant bait-and-switch, the latest in a long line, for no other purpose than to squeeze them for even more money. They see your bosses as stripping them of their primary means of advancing in game, with no evidence that there's even a a framework of a plan in place to address the sudden shortcoming and absolute uselessness of the leadership profession as it will be by this time next week. They see promises of "we're looking into it", which they've come to see as meaning "we may or may not get back to you and address your concerns and the gaping problems this creates at some point before the Universe suffers its heat-death."
I love this game. I want to stay with it. I want to see it succeed. I've found a wonderful guild to take in me and my friends and I'm enjoying the SH module. And as someone who wants to see this game succeed, for all my vitriol and snark, please, please, try to rebuild the trust with your players. Please respond to this quickly. Please, don't let this game die with a whimper, as a desiccated shell of what it once was and could have been.
There is another online game, whose name I will not mention to avoid drama and polemics, which I used to play and of which I'll say, off the top of my head, the kinds of things you can do and that help you progress in it:
-Do daily quests in more than a dozen endgame dungeons
-Do quests to recruit new companions
-Play the Skirmish or Strategic missions, which feature a completely different combat system based on other skills.
-Join a Raid with other players, and potentially get huge rewards
-Join a Guild dungeon where the collective effort is rewarded with prizes given out at the guild master's discretion
-Fight in an event area which is open once a week, can only be accessed for 30 minutes and has an insane Exp and Drop rate, which cuts on grinding time
-Join the hourly PvP tournament, which has HUGE nerfs that both make purely offensive and purely defensive tactics less useful than in PvE, factoring in player skill
-Join the weekly PvP tournaments and gain prizes even just by participating. You'll get curbed by someone with better gear and skills than yours eventually, but there are enough participants to make the challenge rise at a steady pace
-Partake in crafting thousands of different items, all of which are useful because the demand for gear of all levels is always high, and most of them can be refined into higher-level items.
-Set up an expedition and let your companions fight on their own. You can let them do their thing or choose to watch them fight, which is pretty entertaining in itself, and once they get back you get any loot they found
-Build and decorate your home, which gives you a substantial "utility" boost and also provides you with a place to store your belongings and have stat-boosting parties with friends.
-You want to pay and support the game development? You can choose between grab-bag boxes (which sometimes contain very rare and extremely valuable items, but nevertheless contain lots of stuff you can't normally get in the game) or a multi-use item whose value is pretty much stable in the market, which you can immediately exchange for currency. You still have to raise and manage your character yourself, so it's more of a financial bump to overcome small cash gate than a "instant win" option.
Now, let's compare it with what I can do in NWO. Which should be more impressive given that I'm currently playing it.
-Join one of TWO endgame skirmishes...which is always the same enemies, same places, same tactics, up to the bosses whose only gimmick is "Tons of HP, one-hit death to anyone not geared enough", which means you either whittle their health away, get curbed, or curb it if you happen to have a 3k+ in your party.
-Join one of THREE endgame dungeons...same thing as skirmishes, but with more class imbalance: every "ideal" group just wants four DPS and someone to keep them alive. Support classes are out of luck.
-Go toe to toe in PvP with no balancing system, meaning it's all down to numbers. No skill involved besides knowing which overpowered powers to spam, if you are weaker than your opponent you die, period.
-Grind the same 4-5 quests in the same 4 campaign zones over and over and over, until you get the boons and only have to grind again if you need some campaign currencies for your guild or for converting into keys.
-Foundry...oh wait, it's not coming back. Strike that off the list.
-Craft tons of useless items to max out your profession skills, wait entire days so that you can have higher-ranked workers, and repeat until you can get the one thing that matters for that profession (Jewels/Rings/Armor Kits/Alchemy components)
Maybe the developers just wanted more free time around the holidays...that is when the layoff notices will be hitting their mailboxes as the player population will tank very quickly. *shrugs*