Square Enix, please think about both Casual AND Hardcore crafters..

[Cleanse]

Well, we're just a few weeks into Ishgard, it's almost empty besides a few levelers, the rewards aren't worth much, the theorycrafting and rotation chat is long since over, the mb's have crashed, DoH chat channels discuss other things, no one needs a crafter for anything and casual players who tried it have moved back to roulettes. Is this really what we wanted?

Ultimate was cleared in 4-5 days. I think a few weeks of Ishgarde (which probably had more players participating than Ultimate) is a good chunk of content.

Instead of being upset that Ishgarde didn't meet our individual expectations, we should be brainstorming ideas. Reading your post gave me an idea, weekly challenges.

Whether they are tied to Ishgarde or another part of content, it could give you guys a little treat to look forward to every week without requiring people needing to be on 24/7.

Or another idea: Needing "expert crafters" meeting certain accomplishments to advance the construction stages. ie, The big zerg of crafters/gatherers can do the easy stuff in the FATE to participate, but you Liam Harper are needed to craft a difficult item (and X gatherer needs to bring back a high quality collectible) to advance the event to a new phase. After the first crafter turns it in, other crafters have 5 mins to complete the achievement. Same for the gatherers.

[Callinon]

Ultimate was cleared in 4-5 days.

I see this fallacy on WoW forums too and I'd like to address it.

Just because a world first happened doesn't mean the content is dead.

People will be working on that fight for months. Not every group of high end raiders participates in the world first race.

It also didn't seem to be content, just a glorified Rowena's Scrip grind.

That's exactly what I was expecting it to be.

[tdb]

People will be working on that fight for months. Not every group of high end raiders participates in the world first race.

And not every group will ever be able to clear it at all. Even with guides written by those who got the world first.

[Cleanse]

I see this fallacy on WoW forums too and I'd like to address it.

Just because a world first happened doesn't mean the content is dead.

People will be working on that fight for months. Not every group of high end raiders participates in the world first race.

That's exactly what I was expecting it to be.

I should have been more clear in my statement above. My post never mentioned the raiding/crafting content being dead, I was referring to the lifespan of the content.

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The hardcore players beat Alexander in a few days. The hardcore crafters and gatherers profited from the crafting patch because that's what is done during crafting content patches, you profit off of the market's demand. So in both cases, the content has its place of value.

The longer these MMOs are on the market, content additions like this keeps new players within the same space of the veterans. If these additions aren't created, new players may feel alone and quit, then the game will slowly die off. Ishgarde will be a useful and optional catch up tool (there are beast tribes, weekly collectibles as well) for people who haven't been playing since day one, with the carrots being: a cool glam, new mounts, pets, emotes, achievements, titles, etc.

The people who get to experience new content on release get that nostalgic memory that people coming in five expansions later did not. When content is new, especially during a brand new release like say ARR/2.0, the community starts building tools to support the game, optimizations get shared, and players begin playing more "optimally" thanks to informational community members. Here we are now in 5.X and we have many amazing tools at our disposal.