The game is more dead than it was pre-3.1

[Alberel]

I just wonder then why we continued to play 1.x and 2.x but losing interest in 3.x?
Did they do something different in 1.x and 2.x?
In 1.x we had ACTIVE gamemasters doing some interesting quests and they were TALKING with players, even in 2.x we could meet sometimes the "reporters"
In 2.x it started fine with darklight gear and stonefarming, it was balanced... but in 3.x its just a mess with all that different currencies and stupid "payments" or "requirements" - try to craft ifrit minion or other things...
In 2.x we could get minions from chests in dungeons 100% and it was fun - i have seen players trying to get them even one year after the dungeon was released... and we could give them for friends who just started to play, it was not locked behind ridiculous droprates and RNG

The problem is that they didn't really do anything truly different with the expansion. Instead they took the exact same content styles and made them grindier.

People were already starting to burn out around the 2.4/2.5 mark but the promise of the expansion kept them playing. When the expansion just gave us all more of the same a huge number of players lost faith in the development team to keep us entertained. It's clear the added grind elements were introduced to try and keep players interested longer but instead for many it has made things entirely unobtainable (look at crafting/gathering for example).

What this game desperately needed with 3.0 was a new character progression system. Some form of alternative advancement. Almost every MMO I have ever played introduced something like this with its first expansion as it gives players long-term goals and an overarching sense of progress beyond all the individual repetitive dungeon runs. Some more interesting equipment stats that makes players genuinely excited to get a drop wouldn't hurt either.