If this were a one-off thing, I’d be totally fine with it. Games like this absolutely need to make money, and GoW is still comparatively f2p-friendly. But let’s take a look at the updates we’ve been getting for a long time now.
5.2
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Modified the awful Arena to an Arena that is, at best, slightly more playable, and at worse, less playable
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New Arena event which most people can’t stand and is a huge time sink
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Flash offers for doing this time-sink, tiny reward gamemode
5.1
- New kingdom upgrades which are ridiculously expensive, allowing them to incentivize paying for new Book currency
5.0
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Campaigns comprised of time/resource sink and little/no reward for f2p players
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Temporarily paywalled Mythics, pets, weapons, etc
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Notably, this obvious time/resource/money sink was the only notable feature for the “major” 5.0 update
4.9
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Daily deals
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Shop adjustments
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Again, these are the only notable features of this update
4.8
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World Events, which everyone LOVES! Right…?
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Less of the old, boring events which no one likes, such as Tower of Doom… sarcasm intensifies
4.7
- Epic Tasks
4.6 - the last update I was really excited for
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New Explore system
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Medal system
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Elite levels
Point of this list being that few, if any, of the last several updates have had much meat to them. It’s been very much focused on making players pay with their time, resources, and cash.
Hearing that 5.3 is no different is a letdown. An expected letdown, but a letdown nonetheless.