Still going strong myself. Still lots to do and the nice thing is, nothing is new anymore. I know what to do by now after 32+ months
It is basically the title hunters left in the game.
There are still new people starting every day, which is also strange, to a degree.
We are Kurzick now and will be joining an alliance soon. We should be able to get into 2nd or 3rd biggest alliance. These alliances are very busy and chat is always active which is nice, since the other alliances that are not very big, have no drive and simply die with nothing happening in the alliance chat.
I can understand why ANet are changing and applying changes to certain skills. It makes sense. There are skills that are just too strong and then others again never get used and then after a buff you see them being used in builds, after being in the game for 2+ years without seeing any use.
The PvP / PvE skills split was way overdue, they should have done this from the beginning. SF was way too strong in PvP and also in PvE, after the buff on the enchant length. Every class could farm with perma SF. Ecto prices dropped to less than 4k each. This is not good for the economy, since ecto is a currency being used.
They recently buffed Visions of Regret. The buff was because this elite was almost never used in any builds, cause... well, it was useless. This is now the preferable build in certain pvp arenas. With this build whether you do anything or not, you take damage, simply due to your skillbar you are running with VoR. If you have VoR and Backfire on you as a caster, you take +-250damage with the use of a single skill. if you see a mesmer in RA / TA / AB, you can put a safe bet on them running a VoR build.
They will be nerfing VoR tonight a bit I bet because of this. This past weekend with the arena bonus, these guys wreaked havoc. I was almost tempted to play my mesmer and go and cap the freaking thing (since I don't buy the tomes) to pwn someone with this build. Cause, you know, it rawks to see 250 dmg in a single action.
As far as the loot scaling goes, it is not that bad and did not impact me that much. It was aimed at the gold farmers / bots, and they have done this very well imo. There are still lots of people that does farming on a daily basis.
Just check the raptor cave outside of Rata Sum on double-drop weekends for sweets / booze. People farm this spot during normal times as well, for gold drops, bones, etc.
It is how and where you farm that is the difference. If something gets killed or changed which affects you, then change or find an alternative.
and trying to study 