I appreciate your input, but there are a few things about your post I don't agree with
Quote Originally Posted by djjdiss View Post
(a) If you wait until 2.0 things will magically get better
Nothing magic about the amount of work they're putting into this overhaul.
2.0 is merely a graphics overhaul, landscape change and a UI replacement. THAT'S IT!
What about the actual dungeons and non instanced stronghold included with the new landscape. Then there's those new towns which are sure to have new quests. And that Crystal Tower they're apparently working on.
Achievements have little if ANY reward for their completion and are more or less aesthetic bragging rights in nature . To tell another player to accept this as viable content that should be completed, is flat out moronic.
Those crowns and tools are the best of their kind. I'd hardly consider them to be of little reward.
To anyone that says a player who hasn't explored every map, has not truly completed the content, needs to be slapped. Why bother exploring a landscape that will be totally changed in 2013?
Well, because it's not going to be there anymore. May as well see it before it goes away forever.

The fact of the matter here, is that most of the games worthwhile content lies in the primal and boss fights. Everything else is either: too broken to enjoy doing it, or is just non-rewarding superfluous extra junk that SE throws in to make the hardcore players happy.
That's really more of an opinion than anything.

As others have stated, this WILL NOT change much in the next year. You will get 7 new jobs with AF armor to experience (most of which are just using the ultimate skills they took away from us in 1.20)
How do you know this? I haven't heard much word on the actual skills available for jobs, so if you have a link I'd love to see it.

I can't bring myself to be some unrealistic wishful thinker who believes this game stands a chance of securing a stable, money-making playerbase with so many odds stacked against it.
Unrealistic thinking can go both ways. This game won't die. It might not be a super popular game. But it won't die. Not for quite a while at least.