Are or were they ever?
I came to this game two years ago. I had no idea what LW was and it was never mentioned on the purchase site. Felt like I was blindsided or tricked or both. The marketing is horrendous honestly. This is also what turns away some new players.
People who constantly say "Just farm gold and get gems and buy em" are clearly missing the point. Yes I get it, it's a DLC, but it SHOULD be stated beforehand that aside from the expansions, there are some DLC content. They should also offer complete pack bundles of expansions AND DLC included instead of blindsiding people.
I used to treat this game the same I do with subscription based games -Top up every month but stopped due to the lack of direction and transparency. There is no communication or interaction with the community when it comes to bugs. Out of the blue account blocks because of VPN usage, favoritism with balance patches, content creators have a heavy influence on what patches are addressed, etc. I bet if Teapot or Muk complained or experienced the character select hang bug, ANET would fix it in less than a day.
It's a great game, but people need to stop treating it as flawless. It's far from it. Especially when it comes to transparency.