I have around 1650 hours in this game. I have played quite a lot. Im a bit worried about the direction the game is taking currently. For every patch, I feel that this game goes further and further away from the PvP sandbox survival game that it once was and advertised to be. The horses are fun, but Thralls are becoming way too important for my likeing. Now you can just sit on your horseback and watch your lvl20 danisila snowhunter just completly destroys everything. The player dont have to lift a finger anymore. The Thralls are way too owerpowered imho. In pvp you have to have a thrall, there is no choise at all. Thralls do all the fighting for you. Only thing that lacks now is that thralls can build bases and gather resources, then we can just sit AFK in base and do nothing at all.
Im curious what plans Funcom have for the expansion that is coming later this year. I really hope that they change things around so that we dont need to have a thrall with you at all time. I hope they ramp up difficulty, and I hope that add more hardcore survival mechanics I like the game used to have. I like this game a lot but, I personally think this game was more fun before they added the follower system. Horses are good, I really enjoy those, but the thrall system has taken too much focus. Its fine to have them guard your base but I think they should just be guards at the base and nothing else.
My wish for the new expansion is that they ramp up the survival mechanics and make the game much harder again like it used to be long time ago, because currently the game doesnt feel like a pvp survival game anymore.