State of the Game prior to Liveletter

[Jeeqbit]

Everyone is gushing over Criterion (Savage) when literally nothing was shown on how difficult it is nor meaningful descriptors. Can't rez? O no, anyway.

Rez makes extremes easier and no rez made BA harder.

only 3 Criterion dungeons over the entire expansion? Uhh, not so cool. Not cool at all. Lackluster I'd say.

Do you expect enough new content to give you a brand new experience 365 days a year? Armies of developers would struggle to achieve that. That's how many work on a lot of AAA games. Unless you find something to do such as mount collecting or RP, the only way to get a year's worth of content is to play other games as well.

Why is Island Sanctuary which was billed as a major expansion content STILL not out? Why is it releasing with 6.25 and not 6.21 or 6.2?

New content types from the patches of an expansion are advertised in the marketing for the expansion. It's always been like this. When content was not staggered over smaller patches, it overwhelmed players and forced them to prioritize, then created a patch lull that didn't need to exist if content was staggered.

Why is all the content revamped content or boring upscaled fights I've already done when it was current (Unreals) which are now even easier by virtue of having a more extensive toolkit?

Not everyone has done them. A lot of newer players asked for the old fights to be made relevant again so they could enjoy them. You don't have to do them and you can buy the rewards off the market board instead.

And looking at the blurred out Island Sanctuary picture again. Even that looks disappointing. The vast majority of the picture is just blurred out water. Unless there's verticality to the island with valleys, climbable mountains, and caverns/caves underneath the land, it looks far smaller than I would have hoped.

The island looks massive and I think they were implying that we will slowly gain access to more of it over the expansion.

Serious question how are they catering to the hardcore player base even more?

Criterion dungeons and criterion savage.