I will miss bone-spoils, seeding in catas for mats, farming aa, poling cata-rooms here and there etc etc etc.
Just one of all the bad decisions they made with Goddess of Destruction to remove Seven Signs IMHO :(
Catakomb was for me a place to make money and a place i had secret appointments for xp far away from enemys ,an underground world inside the world of L2,i loved this hide and seek -wc gate :) -
Is the 7signs quest line going to stay ? I'm newcomer and i really would like to finish it someday when i get to 76+ i find it interesting.
PS: Tbh I'm glad that NCSoft are turning back to the original storyline about gods and giants
PS: And no I'm not going to miss the Lord of Dawn neither Priest of Dusk ^^
7Signs sure made sense back then during the start of C3.
Cruma lost it's choke-point capability as much as Eva's garden for easy grouping. DVC / LOA as much as TOI didn't provide large enough space for leveling. Esp. Toi was to big and to expensive to travel around which always crippled it's capability for being the hotspot for random grouping.
Catas been somewhat cheap to create since they didn't need to design each individually nor add huge landscapes to the world. The Lobby created a hotspot for Grouping and PVP, even been easy to access for anyone.
Also there are the Dusk & Dawn benefits. (This system is heavy underused in NA). Not just for sieging but also to lock out certain parts of the Player base. However the penalty been to big for "casual" players that's why we always get one side to win.
But the most important change been AA. They needed to slow down the money inflation.
Providing hunting spots with low Adena, a second currency as 'payment' for mammon.
Lorewise it's all been meh to me. I certainly didn't like the design of the Necro and Catacobs either. Sure AOEing, 6 Rooms at once been fun but we could have had it on a different place too.
Overall the 7Signs served their purpose. I will miss the Lillith and Anak raids and also the countless training of Bots and Wartags. But i hope they never ever will create such a small narrow hunting ground again. If i wanted to spend months in a shoe box i certainly wouldn't play a fantasy game. (I'm currently AOEing Stakato Nest, oh the irony)