I'm not sure whether this is entirely true or rather whether this is true for the more casual MMO player. You are describing the traditional Until Death Do Us Part way of playing MMOs. But GW2's (mostly) lack of vertical progression makes it really easy to return to the game after taking a break or playing something else (another MMO, e. g. GW3), without feeling that you have missed out on a lot.

By the way, this is one of the things I do not like about the new daily system (wizard vault), because it kinda discourages playing something else or taking a break, unless you are able to ...

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds ... 🎶

I mean, it's possible that they are currently doing all the refactoring and cleanup that has been neglected in previosu years. This would also explain, why they are not able to produce more content at the moment (and why it's so costly). If this is actually the case, then there might be light at the end of the tunnel, i. e. future additions to the game might become less complicated and less likely to produce bugs/regressions.

Also, why would GW3 lead to players abandoning the franchise? This is not what happened with GW2, or did it? I always thought that a lot of former GW1 players are now playing GW2 and some maybe even still play GW1.

My theory is that whatever ArenaNet had in the working during IBS was not good/finished enough or too far off from the current francise that NCSoft pulled the plug and "condemned" ArenaNet to continue releasing content for GW2 (with a much smaller development team on a code base which is increasingly hard to maintain).

Yep, that's what I'm saying all along. The GW2 code has become a nightmare to maintain and ArenaNet desperately wanted to start from scratch with a new game (not sure that it actually was GW3), but they weren't allowed by NCSoft.

• Our current team size is roughly what it was during the development of Living World Season 4 and about 15% larger than it was at the release of End of Dragons in 2022.
• From our experiences with Secrets of the Obscure alone, we’ve adjusted development schedules, review processes, dev resource allocations, documentation and communication practices, and more. All of these contribute, to some degree, to improving the quality of what we deliver.

TL;DR: The code is already a proper mess, We are now inflating administrative overhead to further decrease efficiency. Our goal is for every new line of code to produce at least one new bug and involve at least 100 members of staff.

I've completed my bullshit bingo card not even half through the interview ...

I'm working on no longer caring about being efficient.
Ignore daily tasks and the vault while listening to Bob Marley's Redemption Song ...

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds ... 🎶

Can't remember and probably by accident, because it's a travel hub I avoid, because it removes the Jade Bot Offensive/Defensive Protocol Buffs and Battery Charges I usually stack on my open world characters.

I didn't even know I had one or rather I could get one. Thanks, now I have a new Mini.

According to the GW2Wiki the Participate in 1 Defense Event is still in the list of WvW Daily Tasks. And with only 9 tasks total the chance to get this as 1 of 4 WvW dailies is still about 45% (1 - 8/9 * 7/8 * 6/7 * 5/6).

Well, at least we can skip 1 task now (as opposed to SotO launch).

Yeah, it would really help, if the people selecting those tasks would play their own game. The old daily system was the reason, why I tried out WvW afterall as a non-PvPer. I used to be there pretty much every day at least for the dailies and sometimes a lot longer, e. g. if I bumped into a friendly squad. I'm still a pretty terrible WvW player, but I learned a lot about a game mode I otherwise wouldn't know at all.

I also wish there was more variety and that the tasks were more balanced effort-wise, e. g. Spirit Vestibule is an extreme outlier in the daily category.

Last but not least I wish that Anet would stop treating Events like Quests/Tasks. The old daily system did that, too. And even worse, they abused them again for the New Hero Jump Start. I can not overstate, how much I hate this. I want to bump into events by accident and not (desperately) look for them.

As long as I still have a character which does not have map/heart completion everywhere I don't mind some actual progress while doing the daily.

By the way, the GW2Wiki maintains a list of easy daily/weekly objectives. Of course it does. 😄

since greatsword is long range on Mesmer, rifle should have been a melee weapon

😄 That's exactly what I was thinking, too.