Long-time MMORPG players are no stranger to having their gear obviated by new expansions, and if console fans want the genre to catch on in the living room, it's something everyone's going to have to accept. But nobody should sit idly by as all their hard work and grinding is rendered pointless a mere three months after a game's release. For all intents and purposes, every piece of gear obtained between Destiny's September 9th release and the December 9th release of The Dark Below is utter crap. This isn't normally the case for MMO expansions; ordinarily, you'd still need your old raid gear in order to take on the new challenges. However, the merchants of Destiny have wrecked that idea. After TDB, Tower vendors now sell Legendary weapons and armor with better stats than "original" Legendaries, including Vault of Glass raid gear. In addition, all Exotic weapons obtained after the expansion will automatically be boosted to 331 attack whereas pre-expansion Exotics must be upgraded via a ridiculously convoluted and random system involving merchant Xur. It'd be one thing if existing gear was automatically brought up to speed with the new tier of Legendaries, or if you could only beat existing gear by playing the new raid. But you don't have to; you can just buy it - without putting in an ounce of effort, you can just buy it. So what was the point in playing? Why are early adopters being punished for their patronage? It doesn't matter what comes to the game if the entire thing is rewritten with each add-on; "new expansion" will just mean "cull the player count", because nobody is going to stick around long enough to play it.
A freelance games writer, you say? Typically battling his current RPG addiction and ceaseless perfectionism? A fan of horror but too big a sissy to play for more than a couple of hours? Spends far too much time on JRPGs and gets way too angry with card games?
Well that doesn't sound anything like me.
