I think people are seriously overreacting. From what I see all changes seems to be done with a positive intention (not saying that the balance will be better or worse, but their intention is to make it better)

They have been struggling to find a good and sustainable content delivery system since the start of the game, this is just the latest idea. And there is no aggressive monetization in it, it's still the cheapest model between all the main mmos. Expansion/content ratio got a bit more expensive compared to before, true, but it's hardly aggressive or expensive. To be honest we had it way too cheap until now compared to the average market prices, it's understandable. And until now they always offered super cheap bundles for old expansion after a bit, if someone prefers to wait a bit and save money.

And I'm having a hard time to see how more weapons on all elite specs + new core weapons can be negative in any kind of way (outside of balance concerns, but I haven't seen anyone worry about that) The new combat changes don't even require the new expansion from what I got...

And the new reward system is just daily/weekly/monthly achievements but hopefully done better.

If anything they are showing interest in making the game better and more stable

Not sure I agree with most of this, though I do feel one part sounds about right and that is the part about making the classes homogenized.

Feel like heal scourge got a big hit from that with latest patch. Alacrity at a bad uptime at the cost of good reviving ability, because all other heals offer alacrity or quickness so this one must too rather than being it's own thing

There are definitely a lot of changes going on these days, but I don't think they're all that negative.

I'm actually happy to see them charge for yearly content releases now, as only paying once for three substantial releases (PoF, S4 and IBS) is not at all sustainable. This is more in line with other games, but still quite affordable. Hopefully, this approach benefits the health of the game in the log run. We'll see.

Don't forget making sure that even the people in full purple need to buy the newest expansion to stay meta in their old content. You think your (for example) condi willbender build is going to be any good whatsoever when you can't equip FB axe? You thought when overpaying 2000 gold for a set of legendary runes that your full purple account with 30+ characters would be able to change to whatever the developer chooses to implement in the future? Fuck you, new slot, already confirmed that you need to do account bound grind for a build based upgrade.

I know we like to indulge in some FUD but I feel like you could have made that argument at any point after PoF, we've had very little changes to core gameplay besides balance since then. And it might not be necessarily a bad thing either if their current team can't support it - we'd all love 9 perfectly balanced classes with each elite spec being useful and completely distinct but it is kinda obvious to anyone that this is just not possible, and maybe it never was in the first place.

If anything, I feel like the relic changes and addition of new weapons for every class is a pretty big change to the game, larger than what we've had in years. They are focusing on the skyscale and griffon for a flying sky-themed map, but that just says to me that they are finally focusing more on mounts and flying rather than making another formulaic ground meta-map where everyone just raptor-dashes or roller beetles around.