Tiresias99

Now that Moon Refuge is in the daily rotation, the absolute terrible design has come into clear focus. Unlike Celestial Basin, which is "quest driven", Moon Refuge is just about grinding. It's boring content at its most boring. You just stay in the same area and repeatedly grind the same mobs until you get your 30 banestones and 4 boxes. The rewards that you can buy with Moonlight Buds are utterly useless to any character with even a modicum of progression. At least Celestial Basin has Treasure Pouches that can be earned at a decent pace, even by relatively new characters. Moon Refuge has NOTHING to purchase that would benefit a character that is even to the point of clearing the weekly dungeons and Raven King. Cache Panda Village is worthless to the very characters that it is designed to benefit: lower-level ones still trying to progress their weapon to catch up. Since it's open-field, non-normalized PvP, the newer characters are just trash mobs to any player that brings in their main. CPV spawns are what make farming Moon Refuge worthwhile, since -- as already mentioned -- there are NO rewards worth purchasing with Moonlight Buds for an even modestly geared character, but the zone itself is the very pinnacle of unfun. Solutions to this problem are so very easy: 1. In addition to the daily quests and box-providing quests, offer quests like Celestial Basin that provide Moonlight Buds. Encourage people to move around the very large zone. 2. Add worthwhile Moonlight Bud purchases. Chests containing crystals would be a good start. Legendary Elements and Legendary Jewels are another good idea. That would allow the zone to function like a catch-up mechanic for new players or people working on alts. 3. Normalize the damage in Cache Panda Village. Just reduce the health of the NPC enemies if necessary to keep people moving along quickly. Now everyone stands a fair chance in a stand-up fight. Invest in some design time with this zone! This should have been done before moving the daily quest from Celestial Basin to Moon Refuge.

The removal happened on an utterly ridiculous timeline. What about the people (such as me) who were experimenting with badges that aren't considered "ideal"? I learned about the change at 1am EST yesterday!

As long as it gets fixed before the end of the week I won't stress out. They really need a better QA / UAT process.

From a US standpoint, not only was the server merge a resounding success (literally no technical problems after the fact) but the increased population means I actually see people out in the world again. I guess it's just a matter of perspective.