b k.1648

That's what LoD is for. You can use lower-detail meshes and textures for other characters until you get close to see the difference (or not at all, if you choose). To have the player's own character rendering at highest detail all the time is not a significant hardware burden.

There's a third flaw to the season model - an individual player is rewarded over an outcome they have almost no ability to influence. World restructuring might prevent the servers being as lopsided as they were in 2014, but you'd still have to be in the right place at the right time to get the best loot.

Reworking this game to be more like one you haven't played for 16 years is an interesting thought exercise.

Agreed it'd be preferable to make the missiles more effective - the only thing I currently use it for is large AoE splash, which is situationally useful in WvW for applying pressure on wall siege. Maybe it could find another purpose, but for me, I'm not sure removing its only use case is helpful.

I note that back at launch, Moa wasn't considered that good, even though it had a longer duration then. It has a more significant effect against builds that can't stay alive without cheese, so it tends to be a mirror of how broken the game is at the moment.

Skyscale add-ons were nice. I also liked seeing the alternate reality fractals, and the character writing for Isgarren. Otherwise, this wasn't really my expansion. Hoping the next one has something I can get into.

Someone's been digging through a certain Irish artist's catalogue, I see.

Dead game

Henchmen, or some other system with a similar result, to make much of the dead content in the game playable again.

You need a longer production schedule to make a bigger expansion. ANet might not be capable of delivering a larger expansion regularly, regardless of price.

I think someone misplaced the pillar again

That, and the number of drops you get from WvW gameplay is a tiny fraction of what you get from PvE meta-events.

I would like to see participation adjusted (5 min is not much in low pop timezones) and some reason to ever go to EotM would be a plus. Other ideas seem like they'd have problems with exploits (extra pip), or I find them a bit unsatisfying as an incentive (overwhelming, King of the Hill), or in the case of the environmental hazard, I like the reasoning behind adding it but I'm not sure I'd find that kind of design enjoyable. We have already got a champion grub and that spirit tree thing, which act as environmental hazards though. If they were actually worth fighting over, that could be a bit of fun.

They actually do, although without a fixed number of factions. Partially true, but only for Australia, and most of the latency still comes from the international cables even there. NZ has full fiberoptic through urban areas now. Even with that, it's still a 140ms ping at minimum to the US west coast, and ANet's servers are on the east, where I'm getting 190-220ish. Note that the distance across the Pacific is over twice the distance across the Atlantic, so Europe-NA is not really a good comparison. For games that have servers on Australia's east coast, I get a ping of 20-40ms despite the hop over the Tasman. The difference is so significant I just won't buy online games that don't offer Aus/NZ servers anymore.

If playable tengu are a realistic possibility in this game, they're probably already in development - ANet have been aware of the demand for years. It'd be a very long-term project, due to needing to accommodate enough customization options to be a viable player race. It's possible they'd be an expansion-only race, as well, with no access to older content that wasn't written or voiced for them.