Guild Wars 2

Now this is of personal opinion but it has been put into practice through various means on WoW and Rift, and other games the like. I remember hearing/reading somewhere that one of the high ups in GW2 really enjoys memorable situations and having players go “Hey- you remember that time?!” with one time events. The problem you are currently facing and (in my opinion) you accidently caused upon yourselves is that you have angered a very large majority (including myself, so bias statement….) of your players by doing what you are currently having implimented. The method at which I mean is setting a time, date, and place for a one time- one go deal that happens once and thus far (from the two I have seen in my 53 days of play [at 400+ hours]) was a 5 second clip and a 2-5 hour (??) large event. The first had no significants, no real reward, and in my opinion was a great addition that you did. The second however you have made the graveous mistake.

What you implimented was a large event that had a significant reward (maybe it was just RNG but, hundreds of people have had great RNG in this case with it). Now, the players that were not able to attend due to the time at which your team has selected [stating it is when a large majority of activity is on which I can’t argue about] was unable to partake in the rewards as well as activity and missed out. This is a game and I don’t feel there should be a WoW raid time feel to it where “you make it or miss out on everything”. From a player perspective this was a very unfair implimentation. From a company perspective you can view it as your customers having a very unpleasant interaction from you and in most situations the reason most couldn’t make it was due to either work (which could imply paying customer buying gems) or other side of the world at graveyard hours. Of course that isn’t just the only two reasons possible but, having a negative impact could affect your profits earned from these players (this is simply my opinion so I have no hard facts here).

Now for the solution and my examples… As a long time gamer of WoW (no more) [Hopefully SOMEONE in your development community has played or you can look up some facts quick as I don’t wish to spend hours upon hours typing exactly what happened] I was there for AQ’s opening, The burning crusade’s launch, the lich king launch, cataclysm’s launch, and for Rift I was there for Greenscale’s release as well as the 2nd raid being released. In these situations though there was a ‘one time event’ that many players can attest to enjoying, remembering, and was a positive influence and shaped the community to being “Old timers telling stories of back in the day”. Why? The reason was the time and the method they were implimented. In all of the situations I listed most of the events lasted for roughly a week- some more. In every single method implimented that had some form of reward and some form of gain it gave every player a possibility to partake and enjoy in it.

In more detail lets look at the AQ event, there was a long run event that was similiar to what we had with the karka’s where there were rewards and we could do little things to get some benefit.

When AQ was FINALLY unlocked there was a large event that was honestly random, choosen by the players that it happened. All it was though was the gates opening (a little cinematic event) it wasn’t really important at all and had no real reward minus the once in a life time event mount which Blizzard has admited was a poor design and several thousands of players were upset about but ignore that >.>… Now lets look at BC, random you had a gaint boss raid event spawn randomly outside of a major city that players were caught off guard by- this event repeated every so many hours and at every single city for roughly 2 days giving a extremely large majority of players time to partake, not only that but there was a small event as well you could partake for the week. In the event of Lichking’s release there was a week or two of world invasions where all players could partake of any level due to the large spread of content in the areas and everyone could gain something out of it.

Do you see a trend? Hopefully you do because the point I’m trying to stress is if there is a one time event where it is simply a cinematic or flavor of experiencing but, has no form of statistical value at all its fine to hold that, set a date and have run off for those able to make it. If you’re to provide a reward of any kind or some form of new drops or etc. allow it to have some form of time frame that any players could partake. This can be easily implimented and allow for several people to do. With events such as this also provide some time! Giving everyone simply a single day to do certain things is too far short and in some ways its very easy for some people to miss. This event fealt very rush and unprofessional as it lasted a whole (3 days?).

Now since I’ve stated the background and what you should do a final example may help- in the event of the ancient karka it should’ve been an event that triggered at the time you set. Then repeated roughly 2-3 hours after completion— The rewards given is a one time deal where the players given cannot take again but, should they choose they can do the event again (we saw this in the halloween event with the champion chests). This should last for maybe a day and a half. It allows your players to experience it and enjoy it while giving almost a 99% chance that anyone playing actively or currently on has a chance to partake.

On my closing statement, I am simply a 22 yr old that IS enjoying the game but fealt cheated with the method you took to impliment such an event in such a great game. While my studies progress in MMD I spend time playing GW2 and hope to enjoy it even more and look forward to your content you release. By no means has this event stopped my playing habits but, it has given me a very sour taste of the company and yes- I’ll remember this event for years to come. Though not in the way you want. I may talk about this event in a couple years to some new players but, it’ll be a scornful subject. I hope I can say that the company has improved in massive amounts since then though and it can be more of a “Look how significant of an improvement they have come- they’re really wanting to give us the best gameplay there is! They’re not settling for OK, they’re going for PERFECTION!” Oh- that and I apoligize about any and all spelling ,gramatical, punctuation, and etc. that this post has.

A Happy but, hurt-
Customer

Or in short, Halloween was handled more elegantly.

Ya, was not happy with this event.