I am disappointed by this addon and don't really understand where this "best expansion in mmo history" mindset comes from.
All these claims of so much content i can not agree with.
They game has 2 new continents, yes, but for me none of the new zones even remotely reach ember isle quality, not even the quality of some of the good rift classic zones ( shimmersand, freemarch, the guardian freemarch equivalent, IPP).
The zones feel stretched , have a pain in the butt terrain with no decent artistic style and feel like an amateur copy and paste job. The zones are simply way too big for the content they contain and the landscape makes no sense most of the time. It feels like cheese with pits and hills and bushes to me.
Ontop of it some terrain keeps popping and disappearing all the time.
Many of the quests which you receive from npcs require you to visit the same place 2-3 times. I thought such quest design died out with burning crusade...
Now lets get to the item progression system. They introduced an item-upgrade system. Now to get a single expert quality item requires up to 500-700 world event tokens, and you receive like 14 from killing a zone event boss. This along with absurd rep gain simply screams artifical prolonged grind.
I also enjoyed doing drrs with the server, but trion simply inflated the cost for the lures aswell. Now most drrs have all loot reserved or have some bidding system because of this, which in the long term will hurt the community.
I also enjoyed hunting for artifacts, which now in sl with the bad and spread out terrain is simply not nearly as fun as before, not to mention that they forgot to add decent rewards like many classic artifact sets had.
I also enjoyed the puzzles, which in SL are now tied to some artifact collections in order to unlock them, basically killing the fun of it.
I have a level 60 which i leveled the traditional way and 3 alts ranging from 53-56, which i exclusively leveled by doing pvp dailies, crafting quests and a random dungeon here and there, because i detest the new zones so much.
I do think that Sl has very good dungeons+raids and the housing system also seems innovative and fun, but it is simply inferior in all other areas compaired to classic rift to me.
An expansion for me should not be grindier than the original, build on its strengths (Ember isle quality zone design,dynamic content + drr availabillity, artifact hunting, instant adventures, gaming flow) and try to eliminate most of its weaknesses (rep grind, performance problems, itemization, token reward system grindiness, pvp)
In 1.10 i thought the 1 year+ sl deal was good value for money, now i dont and luckily i did not get it...