Guild Wars 2

As much as we focus on GW2 as a game, it is in fact the online product of a business that needs to generate revenue to stay alive. To the programmers and devs it is a job that pays their bills. The business must maintain customers to do so, and given its business model GW2 must provide an ongoing series of offerings that we as customers are willing to pay for in lieu of a monthly fee.

I looked forward to the game with great anticipation and after years of paying a monthly fee for warcraft, I went into this more than happy to plunk down some coin every month to support a game that promised a lot of what I wanted in an MMO. I’d be happier spending $20 a month on goodies I want than spend $12 a month just to play. I am guessing that put me square into Arena’s desired customer profile.

As a business owner myself, I want to know when I lose a customer and why, so if I can’t save that customer, I can at least adjust in the future and not lose others like the first. As a courtesy to ArenaNet, I wanted to give you the reasons I left Tyria. I preface all of my comments with the fact that I was an advance-purchase premium edition customer logging on at midnight of launch; so I understood that this game, like any huge massively networked computer program, would have technical issues that stretched on for months after launch. The glitches did not play a big factor into my departure. Here is what did:

1. No Corporate Communication
As a customer I have written letters to companies the size of Sony or Apple and I have always received the courtesy of a company response. When GW2 had the early-on issue where credit card info used for the Trading Post could not be deleted, I wanted to call ArenaNet but found there was no working phone number I could find online or via 411, so I Fedexed a letter to Mike O’Brien, the company President articulating a sincere customer concern that involved my credit security. Although I provided multiple points of contact and Fedex confirmed delivery, nobody at Arena, not so much as an assistant or admin, gave me the simple courtesy of a reply.

2. Forum Silence
After leveling a Ranger to 80 I made a list of the things that seemed either explicitly broken or simply change suggestions that I as one customer wanted to share. Since GW maintains a forum and promotes the notion of community, I expected that in the very least the former would be of interest. Commenting only on my own personal experience, I found that no matter how many very carefully organized and positively-focused a thread post I would make, I never saw a single one receive a comment from an Arena staffer, in fact it was rare at all to see a staffer post in any context. I would have concluded that Arena simply ignored the forums except that a thread that took a negative turn would be terminated by a forum moderator in the blink of an eye, so they were clearly being read. As a player, I would have felt much better if I saw Arena respond to suggestions or questions even 10% as well as they policed negative commentary. (As I logged on to post this I note a couple dev posts made very recently and applaud this if in fact it becomes a trend.)

SIDEBAR: every coin has two sides and to the above I will offer the following observation in Arena’s defense. The GW2 forum community seems to break into 3 camps, the fanboys who fawn at everything Arena does, the moderates who seem reasonable but want a working game, and the venom-spitting lunatics who spew nastiness as if some unwanted aspect of a video game is a life-ending catastrophe engineered by Arena just to make their personal lives miserable. If I had to wade through a river of invectives every day I’d quit responding too. But Arena is in a public business and sadly for them, a segment of the public are rabid megalomaniacs. Nonetheless, when folks articulate a well-reasoned suggestion, or a solid complaint, it would not hurt to have a dev drop a note a little more often and at least say “hey good point, we’ll look at that.” That would leave customers feeling involved, instead of feeling “why bother?”

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3. The Game Giveth and Taketh Away, or it should anyway
As I mentioned, I expected some things to be broken, and maybe remain so for a while. There were aspects of my class I felt did not work properly. Like any player we look forward to patch day to see what Santa is going to bring us. In the case of my Ranger, each patch brought a “fix” that netted us lower capabilities. While it was explained that things were being put to the way they were originally designed, it is disappointing to see and hear nothing about the big problems we felt diminished our games and on patch day we look under the tree to see some chip knocked off something that to our knowledge nobody in the player base really considered a problem. As a suggestion, if you are going to dish out something that players will perceive as a nerf, balance it with addressing at least some popular request, big or small. Oddly, the most recent patch seemed to carry a fix for Opening Strikes (our minor trait that since launch did not work at long range, but our longbows do less damage at shorter range, creating an either/or choice) – but that fix was not reported in the patch notes. That was a missed opportunity to say “OK we took THIS away a bit, but we fixed THAT.” It is just good business psychology.

4. Design Decisions
It took me only a few weeks to hit level 80 with 400/400 crafting in my two skills of choice and make a full kit of crafted rare armor and exotic weapons. I did not make a mad rush of that process, it just happened along the way and it was great fun. Then I turned to see what options I had for a legendary longbow or shortbow. Now I’m not going to debate the good or bad of making bows that look like My Little Pony firing unicorn-rainbows and I can accept that some players like the idea. But as a business decision I think it is a safe bet that easily half of the player base found the idea to be extremely unattractive, perhaps revolting. Imagine your response if, while watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you saw uber-Ranger Aragorn pull out a My Little Pony bow and start plinking with rainbows. Much like LOTR, you created a world in which I could build a rugged, 9-foot tall Norn in biker-pirate leathers and tats who hunts undead for a living; that player is not looking for a joke as a legendary weapon. If you wanted to make the bold design decision to go with flowers and pink unicorns, you should have provided an alternate pathway. I saw no alternatives and lost any interest in legendary weapons.

5. I’ll Jump… for the exit
This is just my personal opinion: I play MMOs to enjoy the whole RPG / combat thing. I love the story, the strategic combat, the team dynamics. If I wanted to play Frogger I would have bought an arcade game. I have no issue with Jumping Puzzles being in the game, but not as barriers to content. If people love jumping puzzles they can ignore the elevator and jump to their hearts content. Instead, I hit points in the game where I turned away from content because I just don’t like JPs. A game is nothing more than a matter of fun, and no group of players should be forced into a mechanic they don’t like just because a different group loves it dearly.

Now I can hear the game elitists ramping up the whole “if you can’t hack it you don’t deserve to see the content” nonsense but to them I point back to the opening premise of business reality. Arena does not have a vested interest in my meeting your criteria of having earned the mountaintop; what they do have a vested interest in is my (and every customer) having enough fun to come back and play / pay more. A company should not go out of its way to set up unavoidable barriers that even 20-30% of the players find unenjoyable. This is much like the Ranger issue of permanently stowable pets: if a player can choose to fight without weapons or armor, they should be able to fight without a pet. No compensating mechanic, if you stow your pet you go without, but players should have that choice. I love my pets but if another Ranger does not, why should I care if they run alone? It is their game to play their way, so let them.

6. The Small Stuff
As I mentioned, I was more than willing to spend coin at the TP, but did not find much worth my dollar. I had thought to collect mini-pets, but on my very first purchase of a three-pack found a duplicate, and upon buying the Halloween set found them to be rather tiny and lackluster, at least from my expectations based on mini-pets in warcraft that were often rather animated and fun. I would have spent money on town clothes if I had the ability to auto-toggle town attire when I entered and left a town. I would have spent money on alternate weapon and armor skins for transmutation, or alternate color schemes for some of my Ranger pets, or even gag items like a tent or campfire I could pitch during idle time. I had no interest in modern world items like boxing gloves and aviator sunglasses.

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The respawn rates in the upper regions made individual play impossible; fighting one mob in front of me I’d get jumped from behind by the respawn of the mob I killed moments before. I like running with my group but sometimes it is nice to play alone. As it was, after a while if my friends were not on, I’d just log off.

The Personal Story also became something of a disappointment on two fronts, first that it really struck me as the Traherne story, of which I was perhaps a significant but clearly secondary character. Glitched quests kept stalling my ability to move through the story.

I never had the big drama decision to quit, I really just took time off to see what would develop over time. Because I had no subscription dragging me back online, it was easier than I imagined to just do something else. But as the months slid by I checked into this forum and Reddit and found no real changes; just repetitions of the same suggestions, the same gripes and largely not much feedback that I could see on the Ranger side. Days off turned into weeks off and I just ran out of reasons to log back in at all. It is a shame for customer and business alike because I so wanted to love GW2 and spend my time and money making it a part of my social life with friends scattered across the country.

Thats one guy’s feedback, for what its worth. Arena, you made a visually stunning world and I wish y’all the best; I hope that this is of some use in your ongoing business efforts.

best,

Graevarg