Can someone from devopment explain why Eureka was delayed for so long?

[AmemeAmeklin]

all the things

Yes, I noticed all of this last night! I think it is a great feat of programming that they did an excellent job of disguising (somewhat to their detriment, clearly). I don't approve of datamining since it takes all the mystery out of the game and spoonfeeds content to people. It's like skipping to the end of a book to see what happens.

I come from super old school MMO land, so I'm more of the opinion that we should remain patient and work our way to the top of this new content before we start judging. I am curious where the story will lead us. It's like in EQ...you start out killing bats in the newbie areas, but end game has you fighting dragons and dodging AoEs (which don't have AoE markers and you can't tell what the dragon is casting without looking at the spell particles :P ).

[Vidu]

It's like in EQ...you start out killing bats in the newbie areas, but end game has you fighting dragons and dodging AoEs (which don't have AoE markers and you can't tell what the dragon is casting without looking at the spell particles :P ).

Honestly, I feel this part of the problem with Eureka aswell: We already did that. We started out killing bats and rats and little crabs in newbie areas. Eureka is meant to be part of the end game that has you fighting dragons.
Its funny how they spend the last 4 years making the normal leveling process easier and, more importantly, filled it with more variety than FATE-grinds (leveling roulettes, increased exp from dungeons, beast tribe dailies, PotD, hunts, the challenge log...) because people (rightfully if you ask me) requested to be able to level in different ways than just mob zerging and now Eureka seems to have turned the clock back in the worst way possible.

I tried Eureka with my paladin - Royal Blade and Holy Spirit at level 70 can hit for 10k. Now, in Eureka, I'm thrown back to hit rats for 1k if I'm lucky. Eureka, in a sense, took away my progress and told me "You know what? Start at zero again!" and thats a bad idea.
When you enter Eureka, you are at endgame. You're not a newbie adventurer who needs to learn the ropes by killing bats.

I know that we need to level up our elemental level because of all that corrupted aether lorewise. Okay, I can roll with that. That doesnt make the whole "grind mobs again" a good gameplay mechanic though - and as much as I want to see the story and like the hidden bits, I'm also not fooling myself over what the core-gameplay here is: Killing bats.