AWA is a real generation marker, isn't it.
I'm guessing other than real role players, players who arrived well after it was introduced, just don't even care. The achievement is for the player, not the toon or the alt.
Those who remember the before times on the other hand....
And where's "Hamstrung" - awarded for successfully logging in after update 35?
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but u35 only really had a noticeable affect on the extreme over 100k dps players, and 95% of all player base was really unchanged. I parsed just before u35 and then the day of the patch, and my dps was slightly higher after u35. It is fashionable to bag on u35, but I don't feel like it had any real tangible consequences.
For reference, at the time I was an average dps player.... not sure what average is now.
My point was not that the top end players don't matter, my point was two fold. 1) for the majority of players u35 didn't matter and therefore there was no actual justification to hate on it and 2) the people affected by u35 had so much damage anyway it didn't matter if they got nerfed 10%.... or 20%. A trial team made up of 8 dps doing 125k dps can complete the same content that a group of 8 doing 100k dps can do.
And as far as a mass exodus from the game, the numbers don't really show that to be true. Per steam charts, may of 2022 shows an average of 13,749 players, may of 2024 shows13,795.
Also, they did give lower performers a way to improve... oakensoul.
AWA would have been fine if implemented as initially expected: as an addition to the existing system. But it wasn't, it was at the expense of that system. Apparently, for performance reasons which I certainly haven't seen any improvements in.