A group of friends and I quit the game around 11 months ago, when we felt that the game was getting stale. At that time, basically all events were essentially similar underneath all the aesthetic changes, and I remember there being a semi big uproar about one of Faye's outfits requiring Valianite to purchase.I know Conquest is out, but is that content alone substantial enough for a group of old players to revisit the game? Do the events nowadays still follow the old, tired pattern that they had in place a year ago? Any new gameplay-wise and/or quality of life changes done to the game?
Thanks.
In your case, I suggest not coming back. There have been quality of life changes to the game and Raid 2's phoenix boss is an interesting and well-thought out encounter but not much else. You can check out another post here about what's wrong with the game at present. Everything else is a downhill slide, especially the blatant focus on getting you to spend money and the same communication flaws as before, causing frustration among players. This game will slowly die but the devs will just move on to a new game after they have milked it for what it's worth.
A pity though as there have been many fantastic suggestions by the community but either they don't listen or take very long to implement (like 7-9 months later) or they have other priorities, like making as much money as quickly as possible instead of making as good a game as they can (and letting the money follow after that).
I personally still play because I find the basic mechanics of the game to be relaxing and good for a break when you're needing to kill time in between work. Oh, and conquest sucks. It's so bad I would just ask them to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. Extremely confusing and not intuitive. 3-way Mexican standoffs are not fun. Rewards not worth the effort. By the time you complete a set, it'll be 8 months to a year later.