Sightseeing...

[Buff_Archer]

The enjoyment I've gotten out of this game has definitely been on a bell curve, and despite all the quality of life changes that I'm happy about, this quest is pretty much what's brought my enjoyment back down to an all time low and made me question whether this is where I want to spend time that's supposed to go towards things that make me happy vs. my job for example where I'm alternatively miserable, stressed out or bored. The relic animus/novus and sightseeing quests remind me of this obviously hypothetical situation (but in my mind it's the perfect analogy):

A new restaurant is slated to open in town by a world famous chef; tables are booked months in advance. After much anticipation, the eager diners show up on opening night to find a menu listing a variety of intriguing dishes suitable for a broad range of tastes. After an initial wait spent nibbling on various appetizers and such, the main courses arrive and the diners find that mixed into every entree is an entire rainbow of brightly colored shards of broken glass. "But, I didn't order broken glass in my coq au vin!" exclaims one diner. Similar sentiments echo from various tables. The waiters have a standard reply- "The chef put those there to ensure you properly enjoyed this meal at the pace he intended. If you very diligently remove the shards of glass from each bite with the magnifying glass and tweezers, which you'll note have been provided free of charge, you should be able to make it last all the way up through when dessert arrives." Reactions are varied. Some diners find that removing the glass from each bite is taking so long that they remain just as hungry as when they arrived, and ask if they can have an entree that doesn't have broken glass in it. "What do you expect, this isn't a fast food restaurant, GTFO!" exclaims one lady, who had already planned to remain at her table for the next 36 hours. "Check, please!" is heard from increasing number of tables as more and more people realize they're not engaging in the activity they desired.

What the animus/novus/sightseeing quests have in common for me is, like the story above, they all had one unnecessary component that completely ruined them and made me give up. By the way, I do love solving puzzles and riddles, but seeing half a dozen lvl 50 players standing/sitting in one spot obviously doing nothing but waiting kind of defeats the whole purpose, don't you think? As I stood in one such group last night while a healer spammed Withdraw from duty roulette resetting the queue every time, I finally had enough of both and decided- ENOUGH SENSELESS WAITING, I could be doing other things right now- and shut off the game.