[Atmas]

Like many have said PoP was the peak.

Lore was great and still in step with the original ethos of the game. AAs which were one of the best points of Luclin got further expanded in scope and usefulness. Gear stats and bonuses felt significant and had bonuses that were great enhancements to class abilities. The progression system was extremely engaging. The zones were diverse and pretty well tuned with a few understandable exceptions. New interesting spells, some of them weren't very useful but still exciting.

GoD was a huge disappointment. The zones and enemies seemed so random in design. The zones in a lot of cases looked like lazy heavy use of Ctrl + V. The spells were very uninspired. I played a wizard and the new top nuke was literally just the damage of the previous one +10%. The enemies were ridiculously poorly tuned. I heard later on the level cap had intended to be raised to 70 but they scraped that but didn't properly adjust the mobs.

Part of the reason things declined was because PoP was so good honestly. It's hard to follow up something where you kill the gods in an epic story and make huge gear gains. After that everything will really feel just contrived and like you are just doing the next thing just to get the next percentage of increase. I played a bit of OoW which was much better than GoD but really the game was just no longer the same. I had enjoyed Luclin a lot because of AAs, mounts, and Vex Thal loot (not the zone itself) but I understood how people could dislike it because it was so removed from the original game. Post PoP was really just a very different feel.