Guild Wars 2

ITT biased anecdotes are considered an acceptable replacement for statistical evidence.

Back in the good old days in GW1 there were the talks with Gaile Gray, the Arena.net-blog, the channel on youtube and good informed fansites.

I feel a great silence there now too and I fear it might have to do with NCSoft and therefore ANet are restricted in some ways they couldn’t even talk about.

I mean – the whole blog is not just written anymore but completely disappeared from the empty shell of ANets’ site.

Not even sure if the community managers are still active in fan-forums these days – have to check that.

Besides this, there are only very few tweets and it feels like FB and co are also not that well-managed iirc.
Even on this forum they are felt to be barely seen and the translations of the german site are somewhat behind the english one most of the time.

It would satisfy me if they would only say officially that they are busy on X and therefore has Y, Z, and the rest to wait until it’s finished.

I miss Gaile :/

Nobody cares about the forums. Everyone that wants to play the game is doing so. People just come here to complain.

ArenaNet’s being silent! Even though they made about 20 posts here in the past 24 hours.

Scourge.4317:

Ethics.4519:

I agree. I haven’t completely left yet, but I’m on my way out.

Their silence and lack of communication is a core issue. The neglect of dungeons and focus on a crappy living story is another part.

Lack of communication? This the only MMO where devs actually get in game and play with the community. I have never seen devs care so much about their game as Arenanet does. You have entire CDI threads with the devs talking with the players trying to better the game. They pop up in every now and then on random threads just to let people know they are listening. Why people keep bringing up communication as a problem is beyond me.

I recommend you check out the EVE-Online forums, namely the ‘Features & Ideas’ subsection. Most ideas are published months ahead and involve a lot of player discussion and feedback before the devs publish the final changeset which most people seem to be happy with in the end.

Note that I do not want this game to be turned into EVE, Im just leaving this here because there are infact games/devs that have FAR better communcation. From EVE however, it comes from a series of player protests. Perhaps that is what is required here. Good luck trying to get everyone and everything organised however….

Legatvs.8260:

Back in the good old days in GW1

Arch-heresy! We don’t talk about GW2’s dark and stagnant past here!

I don’t think their silence is the major reason people leave. The game has plenty of issues that amalgamate into a giant boulder of frustration given enough playtime.

Hybarf Tics.2048:

SkiTz.4590:

There is rarely a game developer posting or putting up so called “blogs” like many other forums do. This dev tracker mostly made up of posts by community managers/PR and they relay info from dev to community but only thing we hear is “SOON , we are aware, we are working on it..etc etc”

I can count the number of developer posts on my hand in daggum massive70 page ranger CDI. – That right there shows me they don’t have the answers or just don’t care about informing the community

And please for the love of god, don’t say "well their busy working , etc etc)

This has literally been one of the slowest developing games I’ve ever seen.
The rampant focus on gemstore items + LS story is the only true development they worry about. Everything else is lower priority.
Balancing is at an abysmal state, pvp just got wrecked, nothing has seriously changed from the zerk PvE meta or zerging, so I don’t see the excuse of “their too busy to answer” actually holding up…I see very little actual development the 3 cores in this game (PvE,PvP, WvW).

This! Applause for reading my post. This game is about dragons, do we hear about them? No, an MMO is also about new explorable regions do we hear about those? No, saying for example that there will be 3 new zones in about 3 months time isn’t asking for the world. Saying Morderemoth will come out of hiding around Spring 2015 would be the end of the world but at least I would know for sure it’s time to quit the game and not waste further time here. T o see a video or pictures about what they are working on right now would be a tremendous +, but they have quit keeping us informed and that is what I find unacceptable.

I know a lot of people will say about my following statement that I can’t look at it this way or it doesn’t work like that. How can I not? Think about this the game took 60 months to create 25 zones and 5 cities. That represent 1 full completed zone every 2 months. To all those playing since day one that’s 19 months the equivalent of 9 possible new zones. We saw 1 permanent and 1 they took away after 2 weeks and both had nothing to do with the main storyline of the game, need I say more. One more thing development started with around 150 employees they are now roughly 360 employees. The only rumor I’ve seen but with no confirmation is nothing new is on the way before the end of July not even L.S season 2. Not that we care about L.S anyway. We seem to hear more about what we’re not gonna get than what we will.
That is one more nail in the game’s coffin. The current trend is unacceptable but that is only one opinion among millions of players. I’m only 1 ex supporter of the store and trust me when I say I’ve been a heavy supporter, but my faith and support for this company is now 0%. All that’s needed to renew it is Collins coming here with pics, videos or blogs about something called dragons or explorable zones. Anything less would mean the don’t give a Skritt.

Why do you say this game is about dragons?

This game is about many things, some of which are dragons. I played the original Guild Wars 1 and while dragons did make occasional appearances, the game wasn’t about dragons. We saw precious few dragons in Guild Wars 1.

You’re confusing what a game at launch is about, ie the personal story, and that the continued story of the game is about.

You assumed that dragons would be the only thing the game was about. I didn’t make that assumption.

The game is about Tyria. Dragons are not the only bad things in Tyria, even if they are the largest and most dangerous. For example, I firmly expect, at some point, to face Palawa Joko, who isn’t at dragon. But that’s okay because the game doesn’t have to be about dragons.

what are you doing anet? hibernate?

Blizzard and Anet are taking the same path. Blizzard usually take years to respond and I literally mean years, some of the issues gets solved in 1-3 years.

The only two MMOs that impressed me are from those two companies though.

Having played since beta, I missed a couple of the Living World updates and when I finally managed to get back into the game, I just couldn’t get into it any more and had no idea what was going on.

And I haven’t logged back in since.

Gameplay was ok, but I dunno it just felt “wrong” in some way that I can’t describe.

GW2 remains on my system, and I’ll have a run every now and then, but even the thought of playing it is “meh” at the mo.

It was good while it lasted but it lost me with the whole Scarlet thing.

Developers communicate with the player base, people complain. Developers stop doing as such, people still complain.

There is no pleasing the average gamer.

medohgeuh.4650:

Developers communicate with the player base, people complain. Developers stop doing as such, people still complain.

There is no pleasing the average gamer.

Welcome to the age of entitlement.

People will leave when there is nothing to do. Not because the devs go silent. Infact the devs can have literally no interaction with the playerbase, and no one would care. Fortunately for Anet the grind zombies are satisfied with the Living Story zergfest, so to them the game is still doing well. But they can’t rely on people to grind their lives away forever.

There needs to be some major changes to game. Guild halls? More PvP maps/modes? More incentive to play WvW? New permanent zones? Possibly an expansion leading to another major dragon and/or new continent? I really wouldn’t mind supporting the game the game further with a paid expansion. Infact I’ve spent way more than I had hoped on this, but with the lack of enjoyable content over the past few months, I really see no reason to throw a few quid at the gemstore every month.

Turgut.4397:

People will leave when there is nothing to do. Not because the devs go silent. Infact the devs can have literally no interaction with the playerbase, and no one would care. Fortunately for Anet the grind zombies are satisfied with the Living Story zergfest, so to them the game is still doing well. But they can’t rely on people to grind their lives away forever.

There needs to be some major changes to game. Guild halls? More PvP maps/modes? More incentive to play WvW? New permanent zones? Possibly an expansion leading to another major dragon and/or new continent? I really wouldn’t mind supporting the game the game further with a paid expansion. Infact I’ve spent way more than I had hoped on this, but with the lack of enjoyable content over the past few months, I really see no reason to throw a few quid at the gemstore every month.

Looks like new zones and new dragon are definitely in the works, considering they’ve already basically teased it in game. I would suspect we’ll have at least a couple of new zones, maybe more, and a new dragon to fight. It’s a start.

Alice.8694:

mrstealth.6701:

Alice.8694:

Hybarf Tics.2048:

I’m not leaving but these days I have a hard time staying online more than half an hour.
My main grief as I call it is ANet’s law of silence. I remember the days before launch when ANet needed a player base, there was a multitude of articles, blogs, pictures and videos.

Yup and then players took everything written there as gospel and started demanding that they adhere to their demands.

This is why we cannot have nice things.

You can’t place all the blame on the players, when there were many things stated, then Anet later did the complete opposite. I think account-bound to character-bound dyes is one of the best examples of this. Other changes in design have had very split opinions among players, but account-based dyes was a popular idea that I think most liked.

I certainly can and I will… You cannot have an open development discussion with players if your ideas are going to be interpreted by the players as ABSOLUTELY SET IN STONE. Not to mention all the people who had no interest in GW2’s future and instead used these buzz topics to try and create negativity around the game.

The very nature of game development means that what you planned won’t always turn out exactly how you intended it to be. Arenanet’s dev blog was full of romanticizing language and when making a game your ideas either translate or they do not.

There is quite a difference between something getting changed to not be exactly how it was stated, and something being changed into the complete opposite of what was stated. There has been some undue rage from the players over some instances of the former, but the latter falls back on Anet for making statements about game mechanics that were still open to such drastic changes.

And there reason for the change was pretty much the same as their reasoning for keeping WXP/WvW ranks character-based. They defended and explained that decision for many months, yet still decided to go ahead and change that to an account-based system sometime in the future. Players have generally been happy with that decision to change WXP/ranks, despite it being a complete 180 on previous statements. How players feel about the mechanics is very relevant to what should, or shouldn’t, be changed.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m not sure the disadvantages that came with the previous Account-wide dye implementation would really be so engaging to the community.

Those disadvantages could have been changed, and would likely been much more accepted by players than the decision to make them character-bound. That is the type of change I was referring to above. The point stated in that blog post that stuck with players the most was the idea of account-based dye unlocking. Anet would have been better off to work on altering and tweaking the other aspects, and maintain that key feature.

They might have been making a decision that they thought was good for the game, but in the end what is good for the game (and for business) are decisions that keep your customers happy. The entire controversy could have been avoided, and players kept happier, if the dye system was as it is now, but with a lower drop rate and the unlocking being done account-wide. They would also be likely to sell more dyes in the gem store had they kept that idea.

DusK.3849:

ITT biased anecdotes are considered an acceptable replacement for statistical evidence.

Yea, but did you know that not all owls are wise?

For me the problem is they say too much too soon. I’ve known a critical damage nerf was coming for quite a while. I have no idea how much. So I’ve put off the ascended thing for a bit until I see what happens. However, endless waiting is not fun. I much prefer scheming.

We, on our Server, Underworld, made a mass exodus for transfer to other server where there is more people playing WvW and PVE.

There are servers on this game with incredible lack of pops (the very high pop on the world selection is a lie), that causes us to end up on a frustrating gameplay experience, even with guilds, WvW is a lose-lose situation, and PVE failing meta events over and over and over again isn’t just any better (on scarlet fight we had to guest other servers to complete the events).

So i feel bad ANET keeps on this silence and don’t admit this game needs at least a way to get players, playing again, and not feel like a singleplayer MMO like it feels right now specially on some servers, were only guilds are able to try to save this situation.

One fast solution must be the Server Merging, but they need to fix and improve and make this game something we actually want to play, this is not even a Sub Based MMO and it’s losing so many players….

I know this isn’t about the mac client (and that all discussion of the mac client is banished to the mac beta support forum even if it isn’t about a support issue) but Anet’s lack of communication is also readily apparent with respect to the mac beta too. The mac client has been slowly degrading ever since the fall. The last few major patches have made the game progressively more unplayable. First it made the game a slideshow and now we can’t play the game for more than a few seconds (literally) before the game crashes. Between patches the game becomes playable for about a week but then another big patch comes and completely destroys the client again.

The support staff have said a few things and attempted to reassure the mac user base but honestly, no one reads the mac client support forum (probably why everything is banished there). There are mac users in map chat who have no idea why their client is crashing. We need Anet to tell us the truth about the mac beta client. The Chinese beta problems warranted a press release explaining the issues the Chinese had with their beta, why can’t the mac beta users have dialog with the devs too? We’ve been in beta for over a year with no communication, no indication of what they’re working on or what they’d like us to test (the answer is likely test the purchase gem button since that is the only feature they fix quickly). Seriously, Anet. You can justify staying relatively silent for a lot of things. But a year of silence for an entire platform you advertised as holding personal relevance for some of your staff (how you have people who own macs) makes no sense.

Give us an update on the state of the mac client.

what OP said. definitely. lack of communication and follow-through or at least follow-up on empty promises that could have easily been implemented by now, makes me feel like they don’t value me as a paying customer. Ive poured over $200 additional dollars into this game, and i’m a hardcore wvw’er. People have been posting in the ACCOUNT BOUND WVW XP forum in wvw forums for months now, with no response from devs in months. So yes, silence will damage their player base. absolutely.

mrstealth.6701:

Alice.8694:

mrstealth.6701:

Alice.8694:

Hybarf Tics.2048:

I’m not leaving but these days I have a hard time staying online more than half an hour.
My main grief as I call it is ANet’s law of silence. I remember the days before launch when ANet needed a player base, there was a multitude of articles, blogs, pictures and videos.

Yup and then players took everything written there as gospel and started demanding that they adhere to their demands.

This is why we cannot have nice things.

You can’t place all the blame on the players, when there were many things stated, then Anet later did the complete opposite. I think account-bound to character-bound dyes is one of the best examples of this. Other changes in design have had very split opinions among players, but account-based dyes was a popular idea that I think most liked.

I certainly can and I will… You cannot have an open development discussion with players if your ideas are going to be interpreted by the players as ABSOLUTELY SET IN STONE. Not to mention all the people who had no interest in GW2’s future and instead used these buzz topics to try and create negativity around the game.

The very nature of game development means that what you planned won’t always turn out exactly how you intended it to be. Arenanet’s dev blog was full of romanticizing language and when making a game your ideas either translate or they do not.

There is quite a difference between something getting changed to not be exactly how it was stated, and something being changed into the complete opposite of what was stated. There has been some undue rage from the players over some instances of the former, but the latter falls back on Anet for making statements about game mechanics that were still open to such drastic changes.

And there reason for the change was pretty much the same as their reasoning for keeping WXP/WvW ranks character-based. They defended and explained that decision for many months, yet still decided to go ahead and change that to an account-based system sometime in the future. Players have generally been happy with that decision to change WXP/ranks, despite it being a complete 180 on previous statements. How players feel about the mechanics is very relevant to what should, or shouldn’t, be changed.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m not sure the disadvantages that came with the previous Account-wide dye implementation would really be so engaging to the community.

Those disadvantages could have been changed, and would likely been much more accepted by players than the decision to make them character-bound. That is the type of change I was referring to above. The point stated in that blog post that stuck with players the most was the idea of account-based dye unlocking. Anet would have been better off to work on altering and tweaking the other aspects, and maintain that key feature.

They might have been making a decision that they thought was good for the game, but in the end what is good for the game (and for business) are decisions that keep your customers happy. The entire controversy could have been avoided, and players kept happier, if the dye system was as it is now, but with a lower drop rate and the unlocking being done account-wide. They would also be likely to sell more dyes in the gem store had they kept that idea.

Looks like you may be getting your wish – Account-wide dyes. With the restrictions such an implementation brings. People are already commenting that the current design for attaining dyes may be preferable. You can never tell what people will really want. =)

This entire thread is like every single online game forum ever.

“It’s dying!”
“No it’s not! Me and my 2 friends play!”
“Me and my 2 friends left!”
“I got a guild of 1000000000 and WE still play!”
“Your guild only has 12 people logging in!”

People leave. People replace the people leaving. People swarm to the newest content leaving older content for dead. New people come in to newer areas, claim game’s dead because nobody’s in newer areas, people defend it because the newer areas are booming forgetting that the rest of the game is desolate.

There isn’t a single game out there you will play every day for years on end and there isn’t a single person here who can say if the game IS dying or not. Don’t let your personal feelings get in the way of facts. A “The game is dying” thread has solved a grand total of zero issues in any game ever.

Scourge.4317:

Ethics.4519:

I agree. I haven’t completely left yet, but I’m on my way out.

Their silence and lack of communication is a core issue. The neglect of dungeons and focus on a crappy living story is another part.

Lack of communication? This the only MMO where devs actually get in game and play with the community. I have never seen devs care so much about their game as Arenanet does. You have entire CDI threads with the devs talking with the players trying to better the game. They pop up in every now and then on random threads just to let people know they are listening. Why people keep bringing up communication as a problem is beyond me.

Yes, they have CDIs. It’s mostly people giving suggestions or opinions, while the devs go “oh, interesting. I’ll talk to the team” And that’s usually about all you hear.

The fractals community was shot down during the fractured update, even though they were “gathering feedback”. And it ended exactly how we thought it would, the thread expired and we never heard any communication. During the CDI about progression we brought up this fact, and how resetting our levels was a slap in the face to progression. The dev said he would talk to the team and that was the end of it.

Obviously they do a good job of acting like they communicate, as they have fooled you.

“This the only MMO where devs actually get in game and play with the community” Also, this is just hilariously wrong. You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.

Stinja.9612:

Core issues were left unfixed for a long time it doesn’t shock me people would want to leave. Silence is all you can really do as a company because if you miss the deadline or it has to be pushed back nothing can save you from the wrath of your player-base. Also you have to have things cleared with marketing and management before you can really disclose information and not all things are finalized. I personally wasn’t impressed with living world i think i only really enjoyed the SAB and gauntlet.

Gw2 still has the best combat/art in the industry the only thing that looks better imo is Blade and Soul which is another ncsoft title.

Kinda off-topic, but just wanted to point out that GW2 isn’t a NCSoft Title. NCSoft NA Publishes it on the ocidental world, but they have no call on the Art or the game mechanics (i.e. They have no call on development decision and tasks, that’s all on ANet).

Also, Blade and Soul is developed by NCSoft KR, which, apart from being a mother company to NCSoft NA, doesn’t necessary work together with it.

Players from Lineage 2 know what I mean, as with things gets implemented on the Korean servers but take months to be localized and, sometimes, are split into multiple patches, while all suggestions from ocidental markets are just ignored.

Legatvs.8260:

Back in the good old days in GW1 there were the talks with Gaile Gray, the Arena.net-blog, the channel on youtube and good informed fansites.

I feel a great silence there now too and I fear it might have to do with NCSoft and therefore ANet are restricted in some ways they couldn’t even talk about.

I mean – the whole blog is not just written anymore but completely disappeared from the empty shell of ANets’ site.

Not even sure if the community managers are still active in fan-forums these days – have to check that.

Besides this, there are only very few tweets and it feels like FB and co are also not that well-managed iirc.
Even on this forum they are felt to be barely seen and the translations of the german site are somewhat behind the english one most of the time.

It would satisfy me if they would only say officially that they are busy on X and therefore has Y, Z, and the rest to wait until it’s finished.

I miss Gaile :/

I too miss Gaile. I miss seeing/talking to her character in-game in GW1 and reading her “Talk:Gaile Gray” page in GW1. I wonder if she is an active GW2 player.

The problem with the recent events that showed a distinct lack of balance was that the constantly failing events have convinced a lot of people that this game is lacking players. I saw a lot of comments in chat about how this game must be doing badly since they obviously don’t have enough people for their events. Some of us tried to tell them this was more about badly planned events than population, but no one really seemed convinced.

Luxiel.3240:

Stinja.9612:

Core issues were left unfixed for a long time it doesn’t shock me people would want to leave. Silence is all you can really do as a company because if you miss the deadline or it has to be pushed back nothing can save you from the wrath of your player-base. Also you have to have things cleared with marketing and management before you can really disclose information and not all things are finalized. I personally wasn’t impressed with living world i think i only really enjoyed the SAB and gauntlet.

Gw2 still has the best combat/art in the industry the only thing that looks better imo is Blade and Soul which is another ncsoft title.

Kinda off-topic, but just wanted to point out that GW2 isn’t a NCSoft Tittle. NCSoft NA Publishes it on the ocidental world, but they have no call on the Art or the game mechanics (i.e. They have no call on development decision and tasks, that’s all on ANet).

Also, Blade and Soul is developed by NCSoft KR, which, apart from being a mother company to NCSoft NA, doesn’t necessary work together with it.

Players from Lineage 2 know what I mean, as with things gets implemented on the Korean servers but take months to be localized and, sometimes, are split into multiple patches, while all suggestions from ocidental markets are just ignored.

I need to correct you here. NCSoft is the parent company, and all decisions made by them are implemented in game. It’s not a matter of them making suggestions. If they pick a course to follow, Anet listens. However, they give creative freedom to the team to do what they need to, but most likely within some predetermined guidelines. In the Cantha thread somewhere, one of the Devs commented that NCSoft is one of the better companies to work for in terms of that creative freedom.

Back on topic, because NCSoft is a publicly traded company in Korea, they release earnings reports. With the amount of money being generated by GW2, this pretty much ends this thread’s debate: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Luxiel.3240:

Stinja.9612:

Core issues were left unfixed for a long time it doesn’t shock me people would want to leave. Silence is all you can really do as a company because if you miss the deadline or it has to be pushed back nothing can save you from the wrath of your player-base. Also you have to have things cleared with marketing and management before you can really disclose information and not all things are finalized. I personally wasn’t impressed with living world i think i only really enjoyed the SAB and gauntlet.

Gw2 still has the best combat/art in the industry the only thing that looks better imo is Blade and Soul which is another ncsoft title.

Kinda off-topic, but just wanted to point out that GW2 isn’t a NCSoft Tittle. NCSoft NA Publishes it on the ocidental world, but they have no call on the Art or the game mechanics (i.e. They have no call on development decision and tasks, that’s all on ANet).

Also, Blade and Soul is developed by NCSoft KR, which, apart from being a mother company to NCSoft NA, doesn’t necessary work together with it.

Players from Lineage 2 know what I mean, as with things gets implemented on the Korean servers but take months to be localized and, sometimes, are split into multiple patches, while all suggestions from ocidental markets are just ignored.

I need to correct you here. NCSoft is the parent company, and all decisions made by them are implemented in game. It’s not a matter of them making suggestions. If they pick a course to follow, Anet listens. However, they give creative freedom to the team to do what they need to, but most likely within some predetermined guidelines. In the Cantha thread somewhere, one of the Devs commented that NCSoft is one of the better companies to work for in terms of that creative freedom.

Back on topic, because NCSoft is a publicly traded company in Korea, they release earnings reports. With the amount of money being generated by GW2, this pretty much ends this thread’s debate: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

ANET = Developer/Creator(child & parent) : NCsoft = Publisher/Marketer([i]nursemaid & disciplinarian[i]).

Wildstar is now in the center of attention the next big thing we let gw2 in dust….. who care about new things we will get another year a slap in the face with a boring endless zerg and ap grind living story before we got at least in release with 1 week in front what will be next now nothing after the patch you get or from trash gaming websites infos about what will get.

Lack of communication? There is no such thing.
I guess people expect the communication between community and devs to be more like a conversation. A conversation that yields a response to decent feedback in form of further conversation or asap implementation.

Whether that’s a successful dev’s behaviour aside, MonMalthias disribed why commutication with Anet doesn’t feel like a conversation.

I think it boils down to

• A playersuggestion is made
• Anet intents to reply with it’s (non-)implementation
• However, this takes very long time (up to several years in some cases) so the player -if even still playing- cannot relate their ‘reply’ to his feedback anymore.
• The player instead takes their ‘silence’ and long reaction time as a negative reply.

Anet’s management should start dedicating more development ressources on bugfixes, balance, QoL changes and child issues of the game, as well as revisiting flawed mechanics. I wouldn’t even suggest more conversation with the community in the meantime, because they’ve talked enough about changes. Actually doing something is the next step.

goldenwing.8473:

IndigoSundown.5419:

goldenwing.8473:

IndigoSundown.5419:

If there is an exodus from the game, it is more likely to be from dissatisfaction with the new content, the state of balance, and many other factors. I don’t believe developer silence is high on that list.

Spend time on the WvW forum. You might find it is.

That’s a good point that I hadn’t considered. WvW has seen some modifications since launch, but has received nowhere near as much attention as PvE. I tend to have blind spots relating to game modes I don’t care for.

Thanks for the response. That’s totally understandable.

I just happen to play both.

The following is only my summary observation of the state of developer-customer relations regarding WvW. It is not meant to be a complaint/rant/whine.

With the latest patch, and the continued silence from ANet regarding numerous issues over a long-dry period, the conclusion within a large part of the WvW community (right or wrong) is that ANet does not value those WvW customers enough to communicate with them.

On-going lack of attention to hacks, bugs, issues and very little content added, does indeed start to add up to create a negative experience. Many customers there still were holding out hope. The “final straw”, so to speak, that deflated a lot of that hope, was the absolute silence on account bound Wxp with this current patch. (It would have been good marketing, or at least a good will gesture on the part of ANet, if someone had issued a statement acknowledging last November’s statement of intent, the missed addition of that content in January and reassured those customers that the content was indeed being worked on, and that they were not forgotten.)

The message being sent (whether intended or not), is that WvW is being deliberately ignored. In essence, many customers feel they are being told they are not wanted. Therefore, many have concluded they should not stay where they are not wanted.

I’ve rarely seen that message conveyed so strongly in a game outside of Jeff Kaplan’s blatant dismissal of customers (a blunder that cost Blizzard dearly).

I just don’t understand it.

And I’m sure that it is totally unintended. Perception is a powerful thing, though. It creates reality (in spite of any contradicting data). And can be corrected with open communication.

The amount of silence in the WvW area is quite high compared to PvE, making it one of the factors regarding attrition. In WvW, ongoing silence is apparently damaging the GW2 brand.

It hurts to see that happening. To both those customers and ANet.

Thanks for the precis. If I had to sum up ANet’s public relations skills in one sentence, I’m sure I’d include “ill-considered.” While I don’t expect a AAA MMO studio to communicate much, I think it’s a mistake to promise something and not follow up either by providing said something or acknowledging the delay or inability to provide. I could also point to gaffes in Anet statements, including Lindsey Murdock’s “…we have found that our most dedicated players…” and the statement about small guilds being able to participate in other guilds’ missions without explaining what their rewards would be.

Honestly, I think Anet would benefit from either adding a psychologist to their staff, or replacing the existing one if they already have one.

chemiclord.3978:

Ya know, it’d be easier to believe Chicken Little if he hadn’t been screaming that the sky has been falling for the last year and a half. No matter how many times you repeat it, it’s not going to make it any more true.

The game’s not dying, no matter how much you wish it would. Arena.net isn’t going to come crawling back to you with the GW1 with updated graphics you want, even if GW2 were to die. I’m sorry.

Let me rephrase his point:
The hardcore PvE community interested in raids and other endgame content.
The sPvP community.
The hardcore WvW community.
Even the roleplayers.
They are all dying. People are leaving by the day without replacement. You’d easily see this if you talked to people that fit those needs. The only thing left by ANet’s own admission is the Living Story.

Anets’ biggest mistake it seems was creating these forums in the first place. Those people enjoying the game will probably never bother posting here, so all that’s left is a lot of noise from people who think the devs should cater solely to the conspiracy nuts, gankheads and the so-called “hardcore”.

I attribute the silence partly to Anet just having no idea what they are doing in many cases. There have been too many complete reversals in direction, and there doesn’t seem to be any unified course for the future of the game. Defending the decision for WvW ranks to be important character-based progression for so many months, then suddenly deciding that it was against their design philosophy. Rebalancing a dungeon’s bosses to make it easier, then only a couple months later totally redesigning the boss encounters to make them more difficult. Announcing changes to promote build diversity and deviation from a zerker-only meta, then adding new content that is explicitly designed as a zerker-only DPS test. Just pick a design direction and stick with it. Flip-flopping around in a feeble attempt to appease everyone at once only results in everyone being displeased.

I’m not sure how they can communicate anything to us when they can’t even decide on a general design direction or philosophy among themselves. Their statements are contradicted by their actions, and their actions contradict their other actions. I don’t know what is going on within Anet, and I’m not going to start throwing around wild theories or conspiracies. It doesn’t really matter (to us players) what the source of the issue is, just that it needs to stop because it only damages the game and the company’s reputation.

uknortherner.2670:

Anets’ biggest mistake it seems was creating these forums in the first place. Those people enjoying the game will probably never bother posting here, so all that’s left is a lot of noise from people who think the devs should cater solely to the conspiracy nuts, gankheads and the so-called “hardcore”.

That would fix the actual problems the game has how? Or was your post just some fanboy venting?

Jamais vu.5284:

uknortherner.2670:

Anets’ biggest mistake it seems was creating these forums in the first place. Those people enjoying the game will probably never bother posting here, so all that’s left is a lot of noise from people who think the devs should cater solely to the conspiracy nuts, gankheads and the so-called “hardcore”.

That would fix the actual problems the game has how? Or was your post just some fanboy venting?

Ah, yes, the usual conspiracy nut standby – the “fanboy” scapegoat. If my answer is not to your liking, or vaguely appears to support the game wholeheartedly, then I must be a fanboy.

uknortherner.2670:

Anets’ biggest mistake it seems was creating these forums in the first place. Those people enjoying the game will probably never bother posting here, so all that’s left is a lot of noise from people who think the devs should cater solely to the conspiracy nuts, gankheads and the so-called “hardcore”.

This is the most arrogant post in this thread.

There have been lots of constructive discussions in the past. Plenty. Not everyone who comes here is a big mouthed blithering fool. There are plenty of people who post reasonably intelligent debate, and pretty interesting discussions. I won’t lie that you get the odd real foolish person, but most people on these forums have a reasonable amount of smarts.

If you feel that hearing other people’s opinions is unnecessary, I recommend you look for the little “x” at the top of your browser and practice what you preach? If you have nothing about this game to complain about, criticise or feel needs to be improve upon, and the only people who come to these forums are complainers of various flavours, than why are you even here? To show off your pedestal?

Edit; regarding the OP itself, I am inclined to agree to some degree, but I feel the lacking is in action more than it is in response. It’s past 5 am and people have already posted what I’m essentially talking about so I won’t go into details.

uknortherner.2670:

Jamais vu.5284:

uknortherner.2670:

Anets’ biggest mistake it seems was creating these forums in the first place. Those people enjoying the game will probably never bother posting here, so all that’s left is a lot of noise from people who think the devs should cater solely to the conspiracy nuts, gankheads and the so-called “hardcore”.

That would fix the actual problems the game has how? Or was your post just some fanboy venting?

Ah, yes, the usual conspiracy nut standby – the “fanboy” scapegoat. If my answer is not to your liking, or vaguely appears to support the game wholeheartedly, then I must be a fanboy.

Or is it the fanboy standby – the “conspiracy nut” scapegoat? (/sarcasm) We could go in circles over that, but it would get us nowhere.

There are players that are perfectly happy with the game, and never post.
There are players that are very unhappy, and never post.
There are players that continue playing till their unhappiness get to the point where they stop playing, and never post.
There are players that are happy, and do post.
There are players that are unhappy, and do post.
There are players that have already stopped playing, yet still post.

The only factor really coming into play on whether or not someone posts, is how much they actually care about the game and how strongly they feel about their opinion of it.

Jamais vu.5284:

chemiclord.3978:

Ya know, it’d be easier to believe Chicken Little if he hadn’t been screaming that the sky has been falling for the last year and a half. No matter how many times you repeat it, it’s not going to make it any more true.

The game’s not dying, no matter how much you wish it would. Arena.net isn’t going to come crawling back to you with the GW1 with updated graphics you want, even if GW2 were to die. I’m sorry.

Let me rephrase his point:
The hardcore PvE community interested in raids and other endgame content.
The sPvP community.
The hardcore WvW community.
Even the roleplayers.
They are all dying. People are leaving by the day without replacement. You’d easily see this if you talked to people that fit those needs. The only thing left by ANet’s own admission is the Living Story.

Those are quite the unsubstantiated claims, considering my guild has only grown in number with completely new players.

What it actually sounds like you are trying to say. Is that “hard-core” players are leaving. Yea, that is very true. Hard-core players are actually leaving EVERY MMO. Hard-core MMO players are simply getting burnt out on being hard-core, hate to break it to you. WoW, Aion, GW2, you name it. Hard-core MMOing is on the way out and casual playing is on the way in. That’s the paradigm shift in MMORPGs and it’s a fact that it is taking place. I used to be a hard-core raider in WoW for years. You know what MMO literally all of my 20+ hard-core raiding friends are playing right now? Nothing. Some play the occasional GW2 here and there, but overall, nothing. The average age of gamers is increasing and all of the hard-core players from MMOs “golden age” are now in their late-twenties with jobs and lives and simply cannot be hard-core.

If GW2 sheds its hard-core players, so what? They are the minority of players and traditionally hard-core players are less likely to purchase from an MMO store because they can obtain a lot of that stuff simply by being their normal hard-core selves and grinding/running content for it. Casuals are the players that will dump cash into a game because they don’t have the time to be hard-core anymore and so if they can use real life money that they grind for in real life to convert to fake money to buy something shiny they are more likely to do so.

Also being a casual player means it will take them longer to hit the same burn-out wall that a lot of the forum complainers are complaining about.

Jamais vu.5284:

Let me rephrase his point:
The hardcore PvE community interested in raids and other endgame content.
The sPvP community.
The hardcore WvW community.
Even the roleplayers.
They are all dying. People are leaving by the day without replacement. You’d easily see this if you talked to people that fit those needs. The only thing left by ANet’s own admission is the Living Story.

1) You’d have no way of demonstrating ANY of that bitter spiel, other than your own confirmation bias, which unfortunately for you doesn’t pass any objective test.

2) The few numbers that ARE provided (via revenues) suggest you could not be more wrong. The game is doing just fine, and in fact has exceeded Arena.net’s expectations.

The game’s NOT dying, no matter how much you wish it would. I guess you’re just gonna have to keep on being disappointed you didn’t get exactly what you wanted out of GW2 while it moves on without you.

Exactly. Without having any subscription fees, Guild Wars 2 is the second best revenue earner for NCSoft, behind Lineage.

uknortherner.2670:

Ah, yes, the usual conspiracy nut standby – the “fanboy” scapegoat. If my answer is not to your liking, or vaguely appears to support the game wholeheartedly, then I must be a fanboy.

It looks like you are just coming here to troll. Have fun baiting someone else.

Draknar.5748:

What it actually sounds like you are trying to say. Is that “hard-core” players are leaving. […]

I don’t know your definition of “hardcore”, but it definitely does not match mine. For PvE I imagine WoW-like endgame/raids (minus the gear grind), or generally what you see in most high-profile MMOs. For PvP I imagine something akin to LoL, DOTA or Battlefield.

Those examples are not exactly the definitions of niche. They are wildly more successful than GW2.

chemiclord.3978:

1) You’d have no way of proving ANY of that, other than your own confirmation bias, which fortunately doesn’t pass any objective test.

That does not make it any less true. Tell me, how could one “prove” how many potential players of said game elements there are, versus how many actually play them? It’s impossible. You can just gauge the general sentiment. And that is clearly pessimistic.

2) The few numbers that ARE provided (via revenues) suggest you could not be more wrong. The game is doing just fine, and in fact has exceeded Arena.net’s expectations.

The game’s NOT dying, no matter how much you wish it would. I guess you’re just gonna have to keep on being disappointed you didn’t get exactly what you wanted out of GW2 while it moves on without you.

I don’t know what exactly you’re replying too because it’s definitely not my post. My whole point that only a (important) part of the game is dying or dead
and that it remains a fine LS cash cow apparently flew over your head hook line and sinker.

DusK.3849:

ITT biased anecdotes are considered an acceptable replacement for statistical evidence.

They don’t provide nearly as much statistical evidence as they used to. The numbers they do report, usually copies sold, has little to no reflection on the numbers that currently still play.

Cash shop sales have a little more indication, but still nothing close to “hourly average playing” or anything like that. My guess is if the number was good, we would know it.

All that’s left are people’s feelings and anecdotes, so that’s what is mainly being described.

Ethics.4519:

All that’s left are people’s feelings and anecdotes, so that’s what is mainly being described.

My own observations are that many areas have definitely seen a decline in players. On my server Queensdale champ trains are often only a few players, or non-existent. World bosses like the Frozen Maw or Jungle Wurm (Caledon) sit untriggered for an hour or more, at times when there were previously at least 15-20 people around to complete them. I’ve seen Claw of Jormag or Shatterer fail many times in the afternoon (EST) because there were simply too few people around to complete it within the time limit.

I would like to be able to explain that by saying that everyone was in LA, but even LA was nowhere near overflow during these times, either. I don’t know where these players have gone, but they are surely not where you would have found them just a month or two ago.

The last Guild Wars 2 living story trailer had about 6000 views. 6000. For an MMO that’s quite sad. The community doesn’t care about the story or the game.

I think it reflects how much the developers care about their own game.

Calae.1738:

The last Guild Wars 2 living story trailer had about 6000 views. 6000. For an MMO that’s quite sad. The community doesn’t care about the story or the game.

I think it reflects how much the developers care about their own game.

Not sure what trailer you’re referring to, but the latest LS-releated trailer on their official Youtube channel (Battle for LA, 3 weeks ago) has over 40,000 views. But it is a sharp decline from the trailer before that (Escape from LA), which has over 130,00 views.

mrstealth.6701:

Calae.1738:

The last Guild Wars 2 living story trailer had about 6000 views. 6000. For an MMO that’s quite sad. The community doesn’t care about the story or the game.

I think it reflects how much the developers care about their own game.

Not sure what trailer you’re referring to, but the latest LS-releated trailer on their official Youtube channel (Battle for LA, 3 weeks ago) has over 40,000 views. But it is a sharp decline from the trailer before that (Escape from LA), which has over 130,00 views.

I didn’t even know they had a youtube channel.

Now I can clearly see a sharp decline in interest in the game.

Nageth.5648:

I know this isn’t about the mac client (and that all discussion of the mac client is banished to the mac beta support forum even if it isn’t about a support issue) but Anet’s lack of communication is also readily apparent with respect to the mac beta too. The mac client has been slowly degrading ever since the fall. The last few major patches have made the game progressively more unplayable. First it made the game a slideshow and now we can’t play the game for more than a few seconds (literally) before the game crashes. Between patches the game becomes playable for about a week but then another big patch comes and completely destroys the client again.

The support staff have said a few things and attempted to reassure the mac user base but honestly, no one reads the mac client support forum (probably why everything is banished there). There are mac users in map chat who have no idea why their client is crashing. We need Anet to tell us the truth about the mac beta client. The Chinese beta problems warranted a press release explaining the issues the Chinese had with their beta, why can’t the mac beta users have dialog with the devs too? We’ve been in beta for over a year with no communication, no indication of what they’re working on or what they’d like us to test (the answer is likely test the purchase gem button since that is the only feature they fix quickly). Seriously, Anet. You can justify staying relatively silent for a lot of things. But a year of silence for an entire platform you advertised as holding personal relevance for some of your staff (how you have people who own macs) makes no sense.

Give us an update on the state of the mac client.

I completely agree. The lack of urgency in repairing the now unplayable Mac beta is troubling. But what is even more disturbing is that a patch that crashes the client for almost all Mac users was even released. Surely basic testing would have caught this.

Calae.1738:

Now I can clearly see a sharp decline in interest in the game.

Not really, the Escape from LA video has even more views than the previous two living story trailers (Edge of the Mists and Origins of Madness). The low view count on Battle for LA is likely due to fact that it was a continuation of the LA invasion story arc, while the Escape From LA video was announcing the start of the chapter. There are more factors to the number views than interest (or lack of it) in the game.

Mossy Gargoyle.3274:

But what is even more disturbing is that a patch that crashes the client for almost all Mac users was even released. Surely basic testing would have caught this.

There are a disturbing amount of bugs that make it into the live version of the game, period. Gamebreaking/progress blocking bugs that should have been obvious had even a single testing playthrough been done.