Guild Wars 2

The following post is entirely speculative and has absolutely no grounds or any rumors to withstand itself.

That said, have you guys heard about the Lead Systems Design Greg Street leaving the giant Blizzard? I stopped playing WOW pretty much the day i saw the manifesto video prior to the release of Guild Wars 2 and haven’t been disappointed since. Only stuff i kind of miss about WOW is the Auction House balance (most of the time crafted stuff was more expensive than the mats it took to craft them at least) and a little bit of tanking (in the old trinity sense).

This post is being made on this section because obviously the point is to focus on the second part of my nostalgia. So what do you think? Do you believe that if Anet/NCsoft was to hire such an influent personality from the competition would be a blow that really bumps Guild Wars 2 to a higher degree? I can see it being offered the formerly known Ghostcrawler, to direct a division at Anet and hopefully rely on his expertise in sailing the dungeon part of GW2 to a higher degree?

Don’t mean to offend anyone currently at Anet, as i am one of the biggest fans of your entire work, just check my post history, i’m like one of the most bias people around, since you can’t imagine how the vision of this game pretty much filled all the complaints i used to have about MMO’s, that manifesto… gave the chills as i started to salivate imediatly.

Either way, keep up the astonishing work, thank you for guild wars 2.

I think they could do with someone at the top who can give a really popular and clear direction to the game. Beef up the storylines. Give purpose to the world events with good scaling and well thought out rewards. Give some strategy to character progression rather than just grinding gear and gems bought cosmetics. Speed up the support cycle for game world bugs and exploits. Resolve long standing problems like targeting, instance closing, and graphic flare that continually ruin ambitious content.

At the moment the game direction seems ill thought out and hidden from the player base. Potentially popular content like Tequatl is bogged down by poor implementation rather than the limitations of the game engine. Better leadership can deliver more.

No one will replace Hrouda.

Funny you mentioned the ranger extraordinaire Robert Hrouda himself, but that’s the thing, since he left the company no really sounding voice has emerged in the dungeoning side of things.

The idea is not for Greg to fill in his shoes. Hrouda’s legacy lives on and it can be enjoyed whenever one step into the instance part of the game, instead a new era could emerge, giving gw2 that much of an edge, without really changing the course of the game’s direction. What i mean is maybe another game mode, in a sense as we can consider for example fractals and dungeons being two distintict game modes. Maybe, who knows i’m just spit balling here, a cross section between mechanics we can see in wow raids with how active gw2’s combat is…

I don’t know these are the sort of designers that can push the boundaries of what we perceive to be the mmo experience.

Looks like he was ‘laid off’.

‘Hey everyone. Today marks a sad day for me. I’ve been laid off from ArenaNet, and currently unemployed.’ – Robert Hrouda

He was the last person that cared for making real dungeons and as such his presence was not desired.

‘Today marks the release of the last bit of content I built for ArenaNet. I had always hoped my last hurrah would be an epic dungeon that would stand the test of time, and provide entertainment for players to the very end… but instead it’s an instance that will only persist for two weeks, and then go away.’ – Robert Hrouda

As you can see there was a very clear difference in visions here. Hrouda wanted to make new epic/long term dungeons, but Arena-Net and/or possibly those at NCSoft were not interested because living story is more profitable from their point of view. Driving casual players back into the game to drop cash on their gemstore is the new priority.

No one will replace Hrouda because nobody is getting hired regardless. They have wiped their hands of a dungeon team entirely.

Whenever I think of Hrouda I feel an aching knot forming in my stomach…
With that move, they made clear what their intentions are.
Now tell me, give a good reason in hell why this guy you talk about should join Anet. They don’t care about “bumping to a higher degree”, in fact, seems quite the opposite, unless you consider adding green quaggan backpacks as raising the standards of a game. And please, don’t tell me you seriously believe they want to “push boundaries”. Have you recently seen anything that “pushes the boundaries” of this incredibly fun and refreshing combat system, for example? or this deep, involving lore? Beautiful graphics? No? Well, they surely pushed the boundaries of my patience; they pushed the boundaries of Scarlet; they pushed the boundaries of temporary content and achievements… should I go on?
They had such a gem in their hands, I’ll never get tired of repeating this. Such an ambitious, daring game…
Then I think about “gems” and cringe.
If you want a suggestion, I think you’re posting in the wrong section. These are just a bunch of opinions, my opinions of course, but… yeah, I feel like a good portion of the hobby dungeon explorers here is a bit bitter. Disillusioned.
I’m sure someone in the general discussion is still positive enough to hope for a different future. I’m simply trying to enjoy the company of my friends ingame, repeating the same old content…
… and cringing everytime I think of all the potential… Ok, ok, enough.
P.S. The reason why crafting isn’t profitable is because it shouldn’t be profitable in the first place. It’s mostly a gold sink. Like 80% of this game. The rest is champion farm and some dungeon running. I don’t think your Greg would be able to fight an entire system on his own. “Hey guys, today I had this idea: I want to make a gigantic, open instance that is very challenging but very reward…”
“You’re fired.”