Wait they never went back to unfuck the Zhaitan fight?! It was so horribly boring and underwhelming I'm a little boggled to hear they never touched it up in all these years.
It's become a meme in GW2 circles. If someone asks about starting the GW2 story it's mandatory to apologetically warn them about it.
I'm not going to defend the Zaitan fight but it does seem to be the epitome of too little too late. Assuming they keep to their timeframes, GW3 at least in beta will be available within months and we all know they will be desperate to get GW3 out of beta and generating income ASAP. I can see a significant part of the then still active GW2 playerbase going back (once and once only) out of curiousity/completionism but is fixing this fight really going to result in meaningful numbers of potential new players buying and paying GW2? Seems far more likely that any new GW player will just dive into GW3.
TL;DW After VoE story is over they say they will spend the following year patching/changing old content, like the Zhaitan fight and a new WvW map. And AFTER GW3 release they will keep yearly expansions going.
So far I'm not hype for Guild Wars 3: Highward 2. I just hope its closer to GW1 so that it doesn't cannibalize too much of the GW2 player base.
I don't doubt that a proportion of the GW2 playerbase will stick with it but, unless GW3 is an abject failure, I don't see how the vast majority of GW players won't move over to the new game. These games are time sinks so the numbers of those "fully" concurrently playing GW2 and GW3 (ANET's ideal) will not be significant and if the choice is between GW2 and GW3, again subject to GW3 not being crap, the vast majority will choose GW3. And that is what ANET want and will subtlely push. If ANET didn't think they could extract more money from more players from making GW3 as opposed to just continuing GW2, GW3 would not be happening.
My expectation is that GW2 will wither on the vine with ANET pushing for GW3 to be it's replacement for most GW players. It will become a niche within GW which is itself a niche. How quickly that happens will largely depend on how good GW3 is at launch and in the year or two following but I'm sure "that's the plan".
The talk about continuing GW2 expansions and especially the talk about revisiting GW2 sequentially fixing/patching old problems I see as primarily a PR exercise as ANET try to whip up excitement for GW3 without killing player interest (and expenditure) on GW2 - it's not a dead game, honest guv. I don't doubt that they will be true to their word at least until GW3 is established and fully expect the Zhaitan fight to be reworked. "Fixed" I'll reserve judgement on! But, and it's a big but, I will be astonished if ANET has not significantly scaled back this exercise after a year or two and certainly well before they get to the second half of Icebrood Saga which requires far more "fixing" than Zhaitan ever did.