WST -- Ill-conceived.

Main features of the Alpha slot as I see.

The amazing new abilities to change your slotting and the level shift.

2 new TF's? Pfft.

Wow, so 25% of the player base has such a debilitating social disability that they can't (note: not don't want to) participate in task forces?

Methinks the datamining might come up with a different stat, especially since I see people lining up to do these WSTs.

All else aside, forced teaming is bad game design and especially so in a game which has always promoted and prided itself as being solo friendly.

MMOs have a financial stake in being 'sticky', so yeah it's in their interest to encourage teaming and hopefully create communities of players. This game has so far done a good job encouraging teaming while very rarely making it mandatory.

There are plenty of things that're tedious to get solo but fairly trivial for teams. That's the incentive to team- you can get it yourself, but it's faster and easier on a team. There's less of a time investment, and as I'm fond of saying time is the only real currency in any MMO.

With as many examples of this design philosophy as we have in the game right now, I'm not sure why anyone would choose incarnate access for soloists as their hill to fight and die on. The community has many players who don't like to team, don't want to team and resent being forced to team- the reasons are irrelevant, they're here and they pay their sub like everyone else. So give them a slower, less efficient alternative to TFs they prefer not to run.

I didn't mean to imply that introverts only interact socially because we "have" to, and apologise for delivering that impression.

Also, introversion and extroversion are scales, so there's degrees to it all, and "a break" could, potentially, be as little as five minutes.

However, I don't think that linked studied proves anything about the introversion/extroversion of the population of gamers. That wasn't one of the attributes they measured - all it shows is that gamers are "social", which might imply extroversion, but does not necessitate extroversion (and the fact that a minority call video games a "family activity" implies the opposite.)

The devs do a lot of datamining to get gameplay stats and trends - the fact that the Incarnate system seems to be focusing more on team play than soloing seems to be a pretty big clue that their data feedback shows them that this is the way to go.

[duplicate post]

I just don't like it when people insist that 100% of the game must cater to their play style. 97% of this game is soloable, but that's not good enough, is it? No, it must be 100%, no less, or else the game is so crappy, either it is going down the tubes or I'm going to ragequit. Screw all the hard work the devs have put into it in the past, screw all of the 97% that does cater to my play style, screw all those throngs of players lining up in the WST contact zones who are delighted with the update, screw the possibility (arguably likelihood) that there will be a way to solo it in the near- to medium-term future.

No, forget all that. Because I'm so incredibly petty that I can't spend a couple of hours out of the hundreds or thousands I play tolerating other people, or because of some weird line in the sand on some misguided principle based on some questionable at best perception of some "slippery slope" we're going down, I'm going to get all worked up because there's one reward in the game I want that I can't get 100% my way.

Now, don't get me wrong. Despite the ad hominem attacks on me, if you want to state your opinion that you don't like the WST idea, by gummy, go for it. I've actually heard and pondered the rational arguments in this thread, and I've come to the conclusion that they're simply not convincing to me for reasons I've already stated. If the devs provided some alternate way to get the reward, I really don't care, more power to them. However, if they don't, I'm fine with that, too, and I think anyone raging over such a decision, resorting to irrational demands and meaningless threats to leave is being extremely arrogant and childish.

For the more rational people out there, I will say this yet again. I have seen the exact "I can't get rewards/play style" arguments here applied to other rewards. It almost invariably arises when discussing how one must enter a PvP zone to get Shivans, nukes, and one of the Rogue Isles history badges. I've also seen it applied by badge hunters who don't want to do task forces.

Sometimes, I even empathize with those people. I don't like PvP. Still, I frequently venture into the PvP zones to get the rewards. Sometimes, I get my butt repeatedly handed to me, and that's not fun at all. Nevertheless, it's part of the game, it's not how I have to spend the majority of my time, so it's no big deal. (And believe me, getting those Warburg nukes can take me as long or longer than a WST task force!) And even though I don't like PvP, I've even played in some Arena matches now and then anyway, usually during some player-run event, just because once in a blue moon I'm in a funky "what the hell" kind of mood to do something different.

So please, to the QQers posting here, enough of the melodrama. The devs aren't out to persecute you. The game isn't going to die in the near future because of this. The vast majority of people love it, or at worst, are indifferent to it. Matt and Melissa aren't losing any sleep at your threat to quit. If you really are as miserable as you say you are, that's too bad, but I don't have any sympathy. It's a state of mind that you are choosing to be in, not the horrible injustice you're perceiving.

Now if you'll excuse me, this thread is officially boring now. I'm going to go do something more productive because these posts have gotten very silly.