As an old EotM player and long term commander, I have to disagree with this. It isn't that pips in and of themselves ruined the game-mode, but it certainly was the last nail in the coffin. No gliding, no mounts, and no pips (which meant no real rewards) all soured a lot of EotM players' views on the game-mode, especially its health moving into the future. EotM, for a good 2 or so years, was a healthy game-mode that was doing its own thing. Somebody like me loved fights and so that's what I did for a long time. But once the natural population decline started speeding up with the above triumvirate of no gliding, no mounts, and no pips coming into play (or not, actually), the game-mode that I, and many others, played for fun rather than rewards, just wasn't fun enough anymore to justify coming back in. Again, did pips in themselves ruin EotM? Yes and no. It's funny because a lot of the old WvW elitists when WvW was perfectly populous and healthy hated EotM and its relative success, treating it like a cancer holding the One True Game-Mode back. Now, WvW is getting the EotM treatment and guess what? Continued player decline, continued decline in player quality and commander acumen, continued bungling of class balance by Anet; the list goes on. In my mind, Anet has systematically amputated almost every major and minor game-mode in GW2. Despite what some others might think, EotM was good for the game and provided a pretty substantial playground for players to play in. The game is worse off without it, and it's not the fault of EotM players or WvW players that both game-modes are now in the gutter. It's Anet's for not realizing what they had in both game-modes and them refusing to take the proper steps in keeping up with the game. Anet didn't, and aren't, doing this, and so now everyone is suffering, including the story-line PvE folks. Nobody's winning right now. At some point it's not about rewards. I will play, despite poor rewards, if the game is still fun. This was the case in the past. It's barely the case now since I've become a "proper" WvW player the last few years. Anyways, cheers. I think we all just want WvW to be better, whether we disagree on the game's history, or its future. Hopefully there is a future, at the very least...