Cheers,
I read a lot of stuff in this thread and see most of it as absolute nonsense, but more about this later.
First of all I want to congratulate you and everything working here on doing a great job with this patch. Of course there are a couple of small bugs, but nobody (at least not me) expected a perfectly finished instance. The first day was a catastrophe for us. Nearly all of our people had their interfaces crashed or couldn't log in, or couldn't load the patch or had problems with their whole UI but you guys stayed pretty calm and helped as much as you could.
Obviously the new instance is the main thing here. but there are also a lot of small changes that make life so much more joyful. I created a new char and saw the new beginners gear. It seems to be really well balanced that you can enter HoS HM, farm stats there and create an income with selling stats or using them for yourself. Also the new beginners bag with 15 megaphones in the beginning is really really nice. Regarding the new talentpoints: 40kk TP is really nice, even though I have only seen it for one class (knight, without any sec class) so far. I don't know if other classes will be well equipped with this amount but maybe there is space for improvement in the future.
Coming to the adjustments in gorge: those are pretty nice, you have to use the boxes now to lit the flames, crit resistance is really low so it is really pleasant now to go through it and farm in the near future. Only thing that really annoys me is a new combination in the Pingou event, that was absolutely unnecessary.
About the game performance: I don't really see a big improvement here. My dc's are still like before, fps is as before that's why I don't see any improvement here. I really hope we will see a much bigger step here in the future (*smirk*).
The new chat colour: I really really hate this change. The yellow is so annoying for my eyes and I really dislike it. Maybe it should be possible to change the colour or swap between the old and new design.
The rework of the transportation book is also not done pretty well. The searchbar is a nice idea but most of my renamed transportation points lost their name, also it's not possible to put your transportation points to your UI anymore which is really annoying aswell.
Now the important part: rofl
The instance in my opinion is absolutely beautiful from design and game mechanics. It is a pure event instance which is what players always wanted. No useless bursting or anything, EVERY boss has his events that HAVE to be played. Proof for that is the progress that many guilds have right now. We have around 6 or 7 guilds (if I'm right) that either cleared the instance already or are standing infront of the last boss. This shows me that everything worked out and that skill and game knowledge is required to clear this instance. Any boosts of any kind of crit resistance or damage or deff are absolutely nonsense. This is not about bursting! It is purely about skill. If you want to make any changes regarding deff or attack of the bosses then you have to take away the weapons that are build so far, because I only see one kind of group complaining here about "too low deff" and this kind of group already has, as of right now, 7+ weapons.
I don't want to spoil anything here in public so I will not go too much into details from every aspect of this instance. But I still try to give as much POV into it as I can.
The trash is really good! You have to use your skills to kill them! Not as gorge with all the stuns and freezes and all this nasty stuff. You either kill them or they kill you. And I like that! An instance shouldn't be for "rushing through everything just to be done in 30 minutes"
Let's start with b1: Eneler is right, you have to play it with 2 tank classes which, in my opinion, is absolute fine. There are so many chain gears for champ on the server and everyone of them with skilled shield can easily tank either the boss or the adds in the second phase. In the beginning we were a little more careful but slowly everything is starting to work out, as it's normal for a new instance.
b2: b2 to me is a pain in the ***. But that's my problem with being sup with not much deff, I can't do the shields close to the boss due to his aoe but that's fine, for that you have a tank or heals. Everything else here is easily to play. I also like the point with the hidden chests and that you have to use some sort of skill that not everyone has (bethomia jumping main speaking here )
b3: this one is the coolest idea I have seen. The idea with appearing in another room is not new (grafu b4) but I adore this, reminds me of the good old days. We have found a nice way to play it and it's a really nice boss to play. And you don't need two tank classes to play this boss. It's easy done with just one aswell.
b4: this is the free loot boss, you need this to boost your morale. it's easy, but not too easy to just burn him down.
b5: my all time favourite EVER. simple, great mechanics, you need a certain amount of damage, you need a good statted tank and some skilled heals and that's it.
now the most frustrating thing: the update system.
There is not a single hint in this instance how to get to this point. One guild was pretty lucky, as it looks like but we have searched every little space in there. Yes we've found the mirror, yes we've found the fairy but that was just out of absolute randomly people jumping in there and scanning the instance for unusual stuff. This is an absolute fail! There should be at least some hints about this at some point and there are none. This frustrates everyone because on one side you make progress with farming the instance but on the other side you don't get rewarded with the "real items". I really really hope some non greedy players will find out that secret soon.
For me personaly I can say: If I find that secret I will share it in forum because I don't want to support a system of greed that damages the server, even though I might risk a kick out of my guild.
The conclusion of all this to me is: This instance is much more than I expected, it contains a whole lot of meme's (cheers Gandalf and Big Shaq) but I think some of those memes will be outdated already by the end of the year and in a couple of years nobody will care about them anymore. Creating an instance that lives much longer than some memes was maybe not the best idea. BUT from fun and game mechanics it is absolutely fantastic.
Greets