First of all: Alexandra, you were correct in your interpretation of the survey’s intent in 2021.

About the changes… some good, some bad.

Sorcery
Good overall. Personally, I use spells only very rarely, but I like to have the option. The illusion system, the teleportary stone and the new dungeon are great, though. Things that could/should be improved:

  • Demon followers should not count against the follower limit, as it was in the beginning. They’re not very powerful, only temporary and switch sides after a while. As a temporary reinforcement, they were fun. In their currenct form, I just don’t see the use case.
  • Not all attributes can be corrupted. Don’t understand why. Looked liked unfinished work due to time contraints, but by now, that should have been done.
  • The heavy corruption needed for using the higher tier sorcery stuff cripples your character too much. The recent stamina changes have made that even worse.

Purges
I really like the direction. The system seems to give us the NPC siege mechanic that was planned for Age of Conan, which attracted me to the Funcomverse in the first place (among other things, not least the Conan lore).
The currect form is okayish. A bit buggy, a bit weird, but hell, it’s Funcom, what would be expect them to do with such small a team and budget?

What could/should be improved:

  • Will have to wait until the system is finished.

Combat changes
Not convinced. Combat was great at the end of Age of Sorcery. Changed stamina costs in my game to revert the stamina change, frustrated about the hyber armor nerf.

Store
Not a fan, but overall okayish. Some of the items and building sets are good, spent some money on it, didn’t regret it (except for the Vanir set). No pay to win items, no loot boxes, no annoying advertisement - so great in comparison to other games.

Battlepass
Okay overall. Would introduce something to make the daily challenges relevant after completing the Battlepass, e. g. temporary buffs such as +20% stone gathering rate after getting completing the stone gathering task.

Events
Complete no-show in my game. Would like to have them back.

Telith’s Ghost
Hasn’t returned yet.

Verdict
So, in total… positive. Do they try to earn extra money? Yes. Is it done in an honest fashion? Also yes. Assuming one isn’t against capitalism per se, that’s what we want things to be.

Okay, one piece of criticism regarding the marketing: The “discounts” in the shop seem a bit, uhm, unrealistic and would probably be seen as illegal in the jurisdiction I live in. There’s no discounted price without a regular price. But hell, the game is for adults, and I think we can assume a certain amount of experience with marketing tactics. After all, if you feel ready to slaughter the population of a complete town, establish a slave-based economy and sacrifice hearts to heathen gods, one should know how to deal with a “discount” in an online shop.