I found a lot of things in this review pretty spot on, and am curious if others feel the same. I do still regularly play one MMO which I love (GW2), but dumped all the others I used to play since I got fed up with their obvious shift to practices he discusses here. While Anet may be guilty of employing some, they are not imho deliberately destroying the play experience just to sell you a workaround since in game achievement tracks are still the primary focus.
Subscriptions are a sustainable way to do it, or so it seems from the games that have lasted 20+ years with decent player bases. I get where you’re going though, cash grabs are common in games nowadays and making a game a live service is a great way to do more monetizing, but it isn’t necessary.
I agree that it’s bittersweet to see a game change over time, and that is definitely a trade off of MMOs, but imo it’s not a total negative, a game having visible history in the world, when done well, can be a benefit.
I’d still argue that it’s worse than giving the customers the ability to roll out that history. When your incentive is subscription fees, then you’re trying to keep people playing longer, which means making the game grindier. At that point, it’s trivial to add hours and hours of content, because it takes so long to make the numbers go up. World of WarCraft may have lasted 20 years, but I can’t legally play City of Heroes anymore.