This has nothing to do about whales, whales will get endgame anyway in a matter of hours, theres a huge content gap due tho how ags changed the game which literaly prevents normal people from progressing in a proper manner.
All this already happened in KR/RU.
(And no im not T1/T2, 1370 f2p)
Simply put, it does have something to do about whales, AGS is hesitating about the roadmap because if they make you happy, they lose the whales.
That makes no sense whatsoever, normal people will always take longer to progress trough content. By simply eliminating content and raising the bar your creating an artificial roadblock where people will just quit. (Which is already reflecting heavily in the current numbers)
Whales are in no way a sustainable income in an mmo, its simply short term profit (which looks nice for the books) vs longevity.
Amazon: Yes.
Jokes aside, this game is amazing, the good foundation is there. If I’m being greedy, I will milk the whales first, then come up with something good for f2p guys because I have confidence in this product.
main issue that there is a loot of systems that are actually not intuitive and not properlly introduced at all,
who new in game may know that islands give tons of honing mats in t1 & t2 without outside reasearch 
and its just one thing, knowing that you can farm maps & archeology for breaths to up your chances at t1 & t2 to 70% (if i rmemebr correctly) at 14->15 transition is huge difference from just burning crystals and leap stones
why you think ppls are reporting 150-200 fails up to 1100 while some have 20-30 in same range,
im at 1363 and just get achi fo 150 fails (alts included although it may be 10%) im just waiting for event books and farming extra chance increasing mats where posible, they are doing the job 
Without checking outside sources i would even know that using chance increasing mats also increase artisan energy gain for faster pity
there is gold vendor for unas tasks, there is map vendor for chaos gate shards (i evend havent know im getting something like that untill last week)
if they would make some good introduction to systems and especially sources of various mats + increase honing chances a bit, the whole experience would be so much less frustrating and im the guy that have plenty of time to do reasearches and activites what are feelling ppls that log in for 2-4 hours a day to just play a game 
If it has already happened, why did they make the same mistake again?
The problem is that there wont be any players left if its done that way. Especially if they keep changing stuff in a way that holds back players progression.
Dont ask me, but theres alot of KR players being absolutely livid against what they did as it already happened in the exact same way there. The topic for it was deleted though. (Which is another issues on here)
Heres a snippet of their board;
Yeah this is what i meant, skill and will to learn the game issue, i see no mmo where you don’t need outside research actualy
AGS exists
Also because all of the malding abt the game, ppl can’t stand to wait and progress as it is intended to at some point
tbh im addicted player (im trying various games, a loot) and i cant think about another game with so much complexity out of boat,
if we dont count mobiles as they to flood you with currencies in hope you will swipe before you understand what you are buying
ussually “will to learn” let you sqize some extra from your time in game not allow you “progres normal” way
You haven’t played BDO, Tera or FF14 or what ?
This is the actual fuck up that they didn’t foresee. And I’ll explain the reasons.
…
And now “the tutorial is not good enough” is not even on the list of the shit they need to fix, there are just too many fuck ups one after another lol.
nah bdo is not a good game so i tryed it for week or 2 and forget about it
ff14 is actually good game but it havent hooked me up somehow, had some issue with casts animations and general combat feeling but maybe i had bad mood at that time hard to remember:)
BDO is a good game, and yet again you’re telling me that you never got far into complex game, sounds like a u issue
no bdo is not a good game
its nice visually but not good for player experience and vallet
yea you hit 2 games where one is just bad and second i havent liked whare its my issue?
i can like double your examples out of the bat with games that dont overcomplicate things for no purpose and if they do it its done slowly so you can acomodate with various systems (somewhat i think its ff14 case to as i dont remember hiting “what i should do now” wall in it)
Comparing NA/EU to KR/RU version is exactly like people getting tilted by whales. T1 and T2 along with the islands are actual great content, much better than BDO in my opinion.
AGS: we “want” to get all players to Tier 3 asap, season 1 contents are not important.
Also AGS: just be patient, enjoy your “horizontal progress”, you are already faster than KR was.
AGS again: what do we do at this point, nothing will make them happy, so I’ll do nothing and wait kek
Do you know why ppl cried, bc they released the evens after argos when they should have been released before, they simply released argos when there was still content before, imagine if we got the mats events before argos? No one would be crying about it, so yes AGS fucked uo
This is where I think one of their biggest mistakes lies, and where a decision and mindset like this will kill a f good game
I think if I worked at AGS/SG, I’d be pretty embrassed by the fact my superiors appear to be lacking common sense and mmo market knowledge.