What are you playing now, mid 2017 edition.

I'm tempted. It was on a discount earlier this month but I couldn't decide whether or not to buy because some of the reviews made me skeptical. I think 'ill grab it if there's a deal this summer sale.

Except all the fancy stuff that beside better looking gives you faster gathering, faster leveling, higher luck stat not obtainable any other way, faster monster knowledge obtaining (that allows you drop rare items faster), consumables that you cannot obtain other way than through shop that increase chance of upgrading gear (halving cost of upgrade or allowing to upgrade twice depending on how you look at it), faster boats, faster fishing (basically making your income per day much higher) more chances of getting better horse from breeding saving your time on failure, more storage that allows you passively gain more money (by workers crafting), higher weight limit in inventory (almost twice as big) allowing you to take less brakes in farming (which means that no one may try to take your farming spot while you are away and you can carry more money-making junk), etc.

Pretty much game is full of things that allow you gain better gear faster than everyone else if you have money. For example you as a "f2p" player (after you b2f2p) have a chance of enchanting your gear. Let's say one enchant consumes 100,000,000 silver (obtaining Memory Fragments that allow you repair weapon/gear, obtaining black crystals that are quite limited and expensive, and making failstacks that increase your next chance by 0.01% each or buying same weapon to restore it durability faster) and your chance of succeed is at most 1.5% (with max failstacks - which are the number of failed enchants. Most commonly you would want to get 30 of them before you try to upgrade your main gear and 60-64 is max. After 30 failstacks each next increases your chance only slightly and it's quite risky as you can waste them on upgrading your failstack fodder. Whole sequence look like this - Buy 15 cheap gloves from market/blacksmith, try to enchant them 9 times, go back to blacksmith, repair glove with other gloves, try to enchant 6-7 times, repair again, then buy some more expensive and harder to enchant weapon and try to enchant it 15 times repairing in meanwhile. If by a chance you'll enchant that fodder gear, you would have to start again from beginning with your money AND black crystals wasted). Without failstacks you would have 0.01% of succeeding.
Now... if you want to farm that amount of money you have to spend for example 3 days.

If you compare it to guy that bought things from store you'll find out that he had to spend 2 days on farming money, used artisans memory from item shop to decrease cost of repairing and with higher luck he dropped another copy of said gear from boss to repair it even faster. Meanwhile he dropped 5 ogre rings (rare accessory) while spending the same time there as you while you have got only one spoiled ogre ring ring (thing that you get ogre rings from - you have 0.20% chance that you'll get one ogre ring from it). Because he have so much more money now he decided that he will not spend weeks on upgrading his weapon one level up and instead he we'll buy it from market from other player for 11,000,000,000. Now, so to say... at the beginning of the day you had the same performance in pvp but now, when he got his weapon 1 level higher than you he basically 1 or 2 shots you. Sounds fun.

I had to drop the game few months ago even if I bought preorder because of power creep, never ending farming that heavily favors people who buys stuff, streak of bad luck in RNG heavy game that put me months behind other players even if i have played it daily for 3-5 hours per day. I felt like useless shit in guild wars when just a few weeks ago I was in the top in terms of gear. 1 level is enough to create big enough difference that you'll loose 9 out of 10 fights with same or even less skilled fighter.

If you think that you'll ignore pvp and focus on world i have a bad news for you...
Any player can attack you when you farm. They'll force you out of your place easily, especially when in group. Now... you don't loose anything anymore by dying (Although they may try to make you loose your gear/gems and exp by almost killing you and letting the mobs finish you. You'll loose 2-3 hours of heavy farming this way) and they'll loose their karma... but it means nothing for them. They'll regain their karma in 2 hours of farming and you'll have to farm in a place where you're getting maybe 15-25% of exp and loot that you would get in a first place. If you remember my example with enchanting gear it took (as example of course) 3 days... now you would have to farm there for another 10 days to get you money needed for enchanting...

1- Happy Fathers Day.
2- How old is your son?

Thanks! Gonna wait and see how low it goes on this sale :p but likely a priority pick :)

Hello new and improved backlog.