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Pre-Rise, I could do all the following even at level 90 and there would be a point :
s1 raids for seals and mats to make/dismantle items for element stones
s2 raids for mats/seals
s2 dailies for ap/scrolls/rings
s1 hero runs for trans/scrolls/ore
Muir/Shakkar/Succubus for drops/seals
Low level arena for easy seals/helping newbies to get seals
(Not counting s3 stuff obviously)
Now the only stuff worth doing (unless you want to farm for accesosries instead of buying them) are s3 dailies, s3 raids and possibly nif (hp inflation + attack cap and most people only want 1 fine gem per slot). Not sure if special battles have gotten easier or harder. Arena has probably gotten harder unless you have a heavily stacked party.
(not counting neam or RRs as they are pretty subjective).
Most of my friends logged on, did a few s2 runs for the novelty factor of getting easy rings/scrolls, then stood around and were like "theres nothing to do now".
RISE was pushed out quickly to sell more runes. It is literally the only update we have ever gotten quickly, and it was motivated purely by a desire to sell runes.
You can currently make a level 90 OJ weapon with 350 seals. You get 1 seal per raid (max 20 a day). It takes a long time to fully enchant gear though, as scrolls are rare, r7 scrolls only have a 40% max chance of succeeding and can break your gear. You need to be prepared to do raids and buy/trade scrolls with other players to get the ones you want. You will be able to slowly enchant your gear that way, but will probably take a few months to fully enchant your gear.
Most new players that I have spoken to find this timeframe unacceptable and want fully enchanted gear in one month or less. They don't want to farm seals to make a OJ weapon either, they want it when they reach level 90, nor do they want to use runes to +10 it.
Level 95 gear will be extremly tedious just to acquire. Everytime a new tier of gear is released, you can't get it in the seal shop (level 90 OJ seal shop mats on release were RNG and you were usually stuck with useless mats), this is to encourage players to run the new content to get the gear. To top it off, the stat requirements for the level 95 boss will assume you have fully enchanted level 90 gear.
Honestly, if the thought of spending time doing raids to get seals so you can get endgame gear is a huge turnoff, you are better off not playing. Same for things like breaking your gear via enhancing/enchanting.
The RISE update will give you a free set of +10 level 90 gear, but the essence will be purple and the enhancement rank will reset to 0 when you upgrade it to OJ. So you still need to put in time and effort to upgrade the gear to OJ, although it will be a lot less compared to crafting it from scratch. And you still need to use runes or find someone dumb enough to use IRL money to buy runes and +10 gear for you.
People will argue that its technically not "required" to spend money on this game, but chances are, you need to. Oh sure, you can get a few runes from events, but are you really going to wait around for events to give you runes before you can make your end game weapon? Chances are, you will get bored and quit while waiting. Or you will use up your free runes then rage quit because you aren't willing to spend money on more runes.
Instead of thinking that this game is "free to play", its probably best to think of it as "pay to end game". Games like WOW charge you $15 per month to even play, regardless of how much you actually play or which point of the game you are at. Games like Vindictus charge you nothing to play, but you need to spend some money to get end game gear. Overall, the latter is cheaper unless you are desperate to make a +15 weapon or get extremely unlucky. Would you rather spend $20 or less to make a end game weapon once every 2 years, or $15 per month while doing boring low level content?
