The event is garbage. Seriously, who is this event even for, really? Casuals? Even ignoring the difficulty they simply don't have the time for it. Is it for the powergamers? No, they want to play their mains and that's not even an option due to the flimsy excuse of having leaderboards. Those two groups comprise at least 90% of the player base. On the fringes you have some in the permadeath community praising it but only because it forces people to play the permadeath play style, not that it matters because they're not spending any money on the event. I feel like that only leaves the handful of whales rumored to spend absurd amounts of money on these types of events.
The only reasonable conclusion one can make is that it's all just a shameless cash grab. Roll a new toon you don't want and don't forget to buy tomes and inventory/bank space for it. Spend shards on chest rerolls to get duplicate copies of loot you already own. Grab some overpriced xp pots from the store while you're at it since they'll halve the time you have to spend on this nonsense; in fact, buy extras since your pot time is going to vanish into the aether as you twiddle your thumbs waiting for a mote to spawn. Cordovan even speculated in a Fridays at Four that if you'd like to eventually remove the event property present on event loot then you'll probably have to remove any augments and filigrees you don't want to lose from said items; in other words, simply ridding your items of that irritating green border is probably going to be monetized as well. Considering all of this, it's hard to believe that providing an entertaining experience was even so much as an afterthought during the design process.
Hey SSG, I know you're a business and you're trying to make money but the way this thing was engineered is beyond greedy. Honestly, you'll probably make more money if you put the event unlocks in the store. Let the half a dozen people that find this event entertaining play it and "earn" the items the "right way" -- you know, bug exploits, multi-boxing, etc. -- and the rest can just buy the rewards outright so they can skip the punishment.
