I don’t play anymore but here are my issues that made me stop playing. Read the bold for tl;dr.
1. Public runs are completely unviable
Discords are the major reason for this, but there is also some player unwillingness as the cause of it. People are extremely hesitant to do public realm runs because they know it will be safer and faster to just do them in a discord. I love doing public endgame dungeons with a lot of people. No one in the group really knows if they’ll make it, there’s no organization, and there’s no guarantee that the dungeon will even be finished. The higher risk also makes it more fun. I feel the fear of death has been severely lost with the safety of exclusive runs.
2. Guilds are extremely neglected
Guilds or any form of clan are a good idea in any MMO. The problem is, there is almost no incentive to join a guild other than the free pots you get from Guill, and discords have become glorified guilds. Don’t get me wrong, there are a large amount of guilds out there that are active and do dungeons, competitions, etc., but that is not your average guild, and I would say that, even being generous, only about 5% of guilds do things like this. This is because the overabundance of guilds. People will make one where the only member is themselves, because there is no reason to invite other people or join a different guild.
3. Power creep
This one is pretty self-explanatory so I’ll keep it short. Some items have become so irrelevant that I would rather have the nostalgic dopamine of looking at a white bag sprite than actually have the item inside of it. Early/mid-game whites used to have a purpose, but now they feel pointless, with very few exceptions.
4. The 'community’
People often complain about the community and how toxic or elitist they are and how they gatekeep everything. The issue is that this is the minority of the community, and people often generalize that the whole community is like this. When I posted my shatters HM solo, almost every comment I got made my day and the overall reaction to it made my year. Most people who play this game are very friendly, its just the top 1% of players who speak very loudly and make the community as a whole look bad. However, being a high-end player, I basically had to play around a load of the toxic ones, but this is not an issue for everyone. This is not to say that at times I wasn’t toxic - I definitely was - and there’s really no excuse for it.
note that it is definitely way more than 1% of players
The combination of these four things was the primary thing that drew me away. I know I’ll probably come back to this game in the future, but it definitely wont be for long.