Faowri

If A.Net would come out and say that the gear we have now will always be the best gear available, then I'd go with ascended stuff. But since they haven't, and I imagine better gear will be available, I'll probably just waste the laurels on dye.

The concept is great, the implementation is bad, really really bad. It should be more than a few rifts (yes rifts, like in RIFTs) opening up, crapping out mobs that just sit around doing nothing. It should be more than a few collectibles that just give you achievements and a little reward for turning them in.

To make it feel actually living, A.net should give these living story portions of the game branching consequences. For example if you've done enough to help the refugees, they would have enough strength and manpower to build new settlements where you could probably help them gathering materials and building new home, and later they would become new towns with vendors. And if you don't, they'd probably integrate into existing settlements, you'd see new vendors, or join the forces to take back their homes, you'd see new npcs during the reclaiming sequences.

Regarding the rifts, well, A.net could have learned from Trion. If there're too many rifts and you don't close them down, they'd build up into a massive invasion force that will take over the entire zone and begin to threaten other zones before the chapter ends, you'd have to gather forces to liberate them at the start of the new chapter. If you close enough of them down, at the start of the new chapter they'd still launch an invasion to take over the zone but you'd have a massive event to defend the zone and once you've succeeded, you could launch a counter offensive to erase the presence of Molten Alliance forces from the entire zones right away.