The Issue People Have
Reading a lot of comments on the big announcement, there's one theme that shows throughout all of the complaints. There was too much hype, and x or y did not get announced. I can understand that people who play a specific game mode, such as PvP or WvW haven't seen much content in the last months to years. Overall it would seem that Living World is the focus of updates while add-ons provided real content. It's now been 7 years of Guild Wars 2 with two add-ons and four living world seasons. Asking around my friends, I also found out that any content which is not released by an expansion pack is not considered as such. Well then, what did the announcement do wrong?
What Was ArenaNets Big Announcement?
People joke about the announcement not being a big thing. It covered a lot of topics, so that is a step up from Blizzard about the Diablo franchise. Though having new tournament seasons and mentioning that they're working on the WvW update - first of all - may not necessarily be news and secondly may not feature something new. Build templates show the same issue. This has already been announced, the only difference is that it will come soon instead of the future. The rest of the announcement - aside from merchandise, which I'm not gonna talk about - focused on the upcoming Living Story Season 5. The main event of the event so to say. The story will continue with the Far Shiverpeaks, another area that has been in Guild Wars 1 and as such is appreciated. There will be new masteries, that are gonna work differently, all the previous masteries will make a return and raid-like content as a bridge. The idea behind naming it Saga is a new policy to the updates or a new monetization concept. There's also more detail that is not relevant to the Drama. Such as Charr's background, Norn background, focus on respective characters, Jormag of course, and Scar makes an appearance.
Get To The Point
I think that's enough information for me to take my stance. Actually, there's not that much to say. If you look at the PR stunt of calling the season a Saga and them giving it such a big name, while at the same time not announcing an add-on would make it seem that the Saga is the add-on. The reason the name change was done is either a) due to a new monetization system or b) because they're gonna split the expansion into smaller updates such as the Living Story season updates. Of course, this is positive thinking. As such, the only thing that can be done is to wait for the first updates to see what ArenaNet means when they talk Saga. Maybe it's not as bad as you think. Anyways overall the announcement covered all or most topics of interest but was too ambiguous.
Additionally, ArenaNet mentioned this in 2015, and I agree with it even in 2019. A game dies with its community. Guild Wars 2 has a community, thereby it's not dead. Q.E.D.
Well, afterall, this is just my opinion. I'm not a fortune teller. Oh, wait, technically... Let's see if I guessed right.
Overhyping is an issue, I've seen multiple times. Since it makes me worry about certain games (e.g., Hytale), I should do a post about it.
