June 2025 Version Update

There are two reasons I think it ruins things

Firstly:

A new patch creates excitement in the community to figure this new content out and find the rewards, and people would be in the game trying to grind stuff to be the first to take the pics to add to posts as a community effort. The thread would be full of people trying to get all the information as a group effort, instead it is just reacting to the OP full of information where it has all been figured out before you even log in.

Developers in all games often go to great lengths to hide what is in a patch, because they want the community to have fun trying to figure it out. This builds the community, gets people to interact.

Ultimately it robs the community of the content in a combined effort to "solve the puzzle" of the new patch.

The rewards are the most important part of a patch, so it is giving the game away and removing a community effort that used to exist. Since the rewards are the most important thing in a patch to mmorpg players, it's also removing the possibilities and daydreaming of what could have been added.

Imagine what patch day would be like if the tools no longer worked, would it be more mysterious and woulds more people be trying to figure stuff out?

XI used to be one of the games that had the community hustling to figure everything out, that is largely gone now (other than strats to kill stuff). Even if you don't click the thread, everyone else did and so the community hype on the forum is still gone.

People often complain about the game being solved, and this is the issue. The moment it's not solved and they add new things, someone instantly solves it with dat mining.

A recent example: the Prishe boots, that was largely not spoiled by dat mining and so people had to figure it out, and it was fun and lots of people got involved to figure it out and running around to get to the next step.

People enjoyed that, and it was just a pair of boots. They enjoyed it because it wasn't solved for them, they solved it.

Secondly:

Have you ever heard JJ Abhrams talk about the mystery box?

Imagine I give you a small box, and tell you there is something precious inside it. That box at that moment would have immense value, it could be a diamond or it could be a boiled egg. You not knowing makes it have a lot of value and it's exciting to think of the possibilities of what is inside the box.

A patch for a game you're invested in is the same, if the secret of what is in the patch is fully revealed there is no mystery and no excitement.

There is a reason people are always in a mad rush to join a new mmorpg or rpg on launch day, when there are no wiki pages, no information, no meta, no guides.

There is fun in not knowing and not "following the guide", but if there is a way to know people will almost always look at the information even if doing so ruins the experience.

The problem with gamers (mmorpg and rpg) is they love the mystery, but they also have a desperate desire to know everything. So they will read the spoilers, watch the guides, have everything ruined and then be sad or not enjoy the game at the level you did when there were no guides. There is no mystery or wonder as there used to be, before wiki sites / dat mining became industrialized spoiling machines.

Again, this I think is why the developers stagger release of content and reward all the time (as I said I fully think they intentionally have not added the proper stats, to keep the mystery for months before adding the proper augs /additional stats). They have to do it this way, cause they know the wealth of tools that exist that would spoil everything if they released it all today.

I'm suggesting some restraint is all.

In a game that is having less content added, the value of ewhat is in it is even greater and should not be laid bare every patch.

As Eiryl said though, it's kind of pointless to argue this when the Pandora's Box is opened and the tools are wiki sites exist and everyone "wants to know". Someone else would just do it anyway.