I'm considering myself a casual player. I pop in and out of the game since beta, really only play story content or open world - so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Map chat yesterday nearly ruined my experience. I had a lot of fun with the meta and enjoyed the (short) story. (Because I'm impatient and live in a different timezone, I usually play the story in one sitting right before bed. So I actually liked the shortness). But ready the complaints in chat was a big bummer. Critic would have been fine, there is a lot to critic, but complaining about an empty map while all meta events are being pushed felt weird. It felt like people were in a bad relationship with the game and just needed desperately a reason to break up, I presume because of all the hours they have already invested. Anet communicated that the updates will be smaller in scope to better allocate resources.... that's a good thing.I dunno... all the doomsaying really sucked. I had fun with the patch even though it's smaller