I came into CE on the tail end of AoS, like…3 months before AoW went live IIRC. I think a lot of the changes are a net positive, and that’s as someone who prefers to play an Authority based build, once I adapted to the Thrall changes I liked it better (though still wish they’d tighten the gap between pets and Thralls).
I also don’t pvp as experience has taught me 2 things: 1) unless there is a lot of active effort to stop cheating, its just a good way to needlessly raise your blood pressure. 2) PvE and PvP are two very different beasts, no developer to date has managed to enhance one, without borking the other, and PvE is significantly easier to code for and profit from.
I was initially surprised and even disappointed that world bosses had legendary weapons in their loot boxes that were from the same table as anything in a dungeon, and IMHO far too easy for what one got from them. Chapter 2’s changes though, are more interesting and I’m pleased to see some elements of Siptah making its way into Exiled Lands (though I’ve not actually played Siptah, I’ve watched several Let’s Play vids and have a decent understanding of its differences).
I’ve kept up with most of the changes via Wak4863 channel, and what he’s shown me about the new purge system is the only thing so far that I think is going to actually flop. One of Wak’s subscribers posted a comment I thought was interesting, paraphrased below:
Lugging heroric treasures is more hassle than its worth and given it’s a survival game, instead of garbage loot most of us throw away, how about more recipes requiring non-grindy drops from certain spawns, areas, and dungeons like how one gets armor scraps? World Bosses could have gems for your treasurer. Add on to the Unnamed City by putting new lore appropriate content that function like Siptah vaults, where you can gather up pages to put together a tome that lets you summon named demons that are like named thralls with their own perk tables?
Besides named demon thralls (a idea I particularly like) there could also be recipes for crafted legendary items, putting star metal to good use with additional components harvested from the vault. Customization of properties like what stat it scales off of, or damage it buffs, health regen, lots of options there that would appeal to both PvE & PvP crowd. And if designing new vaults was of no interest, then adding in such recipes to existing dungeons would make revisiting them regularly worthwhile.