Here’s my revisionist history showing, so maybe someone can correct me:
All someone has to do is look at how they treat their own Gems of War Anniversary.
One of the earlier years, 2017, they had a dev Q&A stream near their Anniversary and they announced everyone was getting big gifts! It was 2 new hero class Bard and Dragonguard, (and I think new weapons too? but I don’t remember). Doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it actually was since new hero classes weren’t being pumped into the game at a monthly basis. The players were given a week of celebration gifts and overall it was a fun week.
If you need a reminder of those times, I’ll plug Tacet’s video (I miss the older Dragon’s Eye. Judging by the video, it gave 1:1 on its destroy and didn’t have the “nerf” of forcing an empowered baby dragon in the last slot. Heroes still don’t have a decent destroy weapon to this day, just explode):
This celebration and release of hero classes is pretty much a stark contrast compared to the hero classes towards the end like Barbarian and Diabolist which felt like they were released solely to fit into a schedule by the number.
Anyone else remember the 12 days of Gems of War Christmas mail rewards? That was fun to look forward to, even if most of them were pointless stuff like common troops. Its infinitely more interesting than the daily login calendar, even if the login calendar occasionally has more useful items in them.
Fast forward a few years later, in a year where they gave a free copy of a cosmetic pet to all players for most random event weeks via calendar mail (like Talk like a Pirate), the team wouldn’t even send a copy of the Birthday pet in the mail to everyone. So if you couldn’t do the Pet Rescue, you’re SOL on their anniversary week. There were streams then saying how they couldn’t send us a copy, but there wasn’t too much of a celebration going on. (revisionist history, correct me if I’m wrong)
Basically, something like International Dog Day was more important to them than their own Anniversary. Sure, I guess.
This year, 2020, they fixed that… sorta. There was a new pet rescue for a anniversary cosmetic pet, a copy got sent in the mail, and even had one of the older anniversary pet rescue on Saturday. Hurray? Not in my opinion… There’s hardly a mention of their anniversary this year. The only thing I could find was that IF I looked at the New Pet: Compact Cookie page, then I could see an image that says Gems of War Anniversary (and that was only to describe the time period for the pet).
No stream hyping the Anniversary
No forum posts mentioning the Anniversary
No in-game celebration event besides the Pets, which are basically on a schedule anyways. Not even a Battlecrasher!
Their game, they can do what they want, but they couldn’t take the time to even write a few sentences thanking the players for playing their game for the many years its been going and keeping their dreams alive on working on this game/passion project?
You know what’s funny? There shouldn’t be any criticism. They gave access to obtain a copy of The Ghost Queen (can’t say its free, when the last battle wasn’t exactly easy for a new player) that’s easier than normal on Halloween! When’s the last time they did that?
But now I’m thinking, OK, so Halloween during a global pandemic where people should limit going out and mingling is more important than their Anniversary? Sure, I guess.
TL;DR: Think of the comparison as getting a personalized Birthday Card with handwritten text and a piece of candy from a second cousin once removed to getting a blank white Birthday card with Times New Roman font stating Happy Birthday with a Machine stamped signature to getting a blank white Birthday card with flowery printed borders with a Machine stamped signature: but now you have to go pick it up at the local post office instead of getting it delivered to you.
One only really needs to read these 2 opening posts to see how much care used to the game.
Back then, things actually had a rhyme and reason. Nowadays, they won’t even tell you what they fixed in a bug fix. That’s like the most basic thing most game companies I’ve seen do to pad out their patch notes to look like they did a lot of work between patches.
So how does this tie to their long term?
They’ve done almost nothing to fix the pure faction delve problem. Yes, you can get more faction hoard stats and yes its easier to complete because of that, but no, it doesn’t actually change how problematic the concept is.
The Adventure Board for Deed Tasks is still totally flawed.
They released 2/4 Book of Deeds in 11 weeks when each of the 34 Kingdom needs 29 books.
Their long term plans looks unpleasant/unfun to the average player.