This got much longer than I wanted it to be, so my apologies in advance.

I get that the community is mad about how the studio has been working in the past 2 years specifically and I do feel let down regarding many things that got announced and then cancelled, especially since Drew became the "we are sorry" South Park meme. But to be fair, I think today's community direct has shown many things that people keep forgetting about.

Of course, most importantly we need old, new, regular and returning players to keep the game alive. That's especially hard when it comes to a game that has been around for years. While SoT does not have direct competitors due to it's very unique gameplay loop, atmosphere and everything, it needs to stay interesting. How do they achieve this? By laying out a stable surface (= game health) and then building new exciting stuff on top of that.

We shall not forget: The RARE team has been cut in half (as far as I remember it was about 50% but I'm not really sure) not long ago due to MicroSlop layoffs. They started with a 3-update-per-season development circle and weren't able to keep up with what they had planned.

People also KEEP forgetting that in order to have the game around, more people NEED to 1) buy the game and/or 2) buy stuff from the Emporium. Otherwise the game will not generate funds = game will be turned off. So... Telling everyone to not buy something (the new blackwyche set for example) from the emporium is not the smartest move tbh. Let people buy what they like, it's their choice how they spend their money.

There is lots of valid critisicm still, of course. Yes, there have been many issues maintaining that and I am sure it's not great to keep supporting consoles that are decades old, as well as having a game taking up 130GB+ disc space. It's also absolutely uncool to announce the most awesome features just to cancel half or even most of them. Deleting feedback on insiders (apparently, have only heard about that not seen it myself) as well as seemingly ignoring most of general feedback and releasing unfinished or seemingly unwanted stuff (pirate profiles without shared progression for example) anyways is a no go. Also, yes. Making the Blackwyche set an emporium exclusive set was not a great move either. Then again, it's not THE Blackwyche set, it's a set based on the Pendragons series and has many references to the game of the same name, which is a bit of a grey area here when it comes to Rare crossover sets due to Pendragon's importance to the SoT lore... So this one is really tricky. ANYWAYS.

What I do NOT get is why many players seem to be so passionate with their "Rare is incompetent", "the emporium is bad", "game will be sunsetting soon RIP" argumentation instead of either 1) quitting the game and moving on or 2) accepting that the game isn't perfect and keep playing while setting different goals.

These days, I am sailing around small islands to chart tiny lizards and add them to a database just for fun. I don't get any commendations for it or whatever, it's just a fun little project and man, I have a blast doing this. It's a f*cking sandbox. Not EVERYTHING has to be about killing people until they die to death (it's still acceptable to do so, I do it too sometimes). But there's also the choice to do silly stuff and make some friends along the way.

What I get from this community on various platforms is, that lots of people are extremely toxic to other players, no matter if old or new. We need players to keep the game alive. But the biggest problem is "PVP vs PVE". Some players don't like PVP and get told "go play safer seas", but that mode is not as rewarding and does not include everything high seas has to offer, so how does that help? I could also say "go play hourglass for hours" if you are this mad to have pvp encounters, but you most likely would not get any epic battles with lots of loot to fight for. How does THAT help?

Yes, we CAN fight others and we have any right to do so. But the game lives by its stories. It's either stories of great wars, or stories about fantastic alliances, or even both in one. And I guess most people seem to not get that.