Guild Wars 2

This is my honest opinion: Are you guys ok? I know the next raid wing is in a week but…….why release it in 3 different languages and not a single word is said? even worst its literally 8 seconds of…….teaser? I’m no raider but now I am seriously worried about the new trailer for LW S3 when it comes out. A trailer is to get you hyped, that guy exploding tells me nothing.

I suspect the fact that you don’t raid is the problem.

It’d be like watching a teaser for the next episode of a TV show you’ve never seen. Nothing in it would mean anything to you – some guy says “I need to tell you something” to some girl…so what? But if you’ve been watching the show the same scene could be a huge revelation about the direction of future events.

Having said that I haven’t gotten around to playing the raid either so I’m not sure what the teaser is showing beyond what the description tells me (this is the first boss of the next wing). I think the overall story is something to do with the bandits and the Mursaat, but this thing looks more like the possessed statue from the charr tutorial instance.

This is now the new method they are taking. Mo said something along the lines about the hype train staying at the station. It’s no longer accepting passengers.

I miss the hype train.

Silas Eorth.7348:

This is now the new method they are taking. Mo said something along the lines about the hype train staying at the station. It’s no longer accepting passengers.

I miss the hype train.

Sooo, the new way to keep people from logging off and going elsewhere is to put them to sleep with boring dailies and no hype?

Well, if it works it works. ^^

I think it’s supposed to be the new way to stop people thinking Anet have promised that the next update will be the most incredible thing to ever happen to the game and that obviously means every single thing they personally have ever wanted will be implemented in exactly the way they wanted it…

Then getting furious that they deliberately lied and broke their promise when that proves not to be the case.

If they don’t tell us any more than the basics – new raid wing is coming, this is what the boss looks like – then it’s a lot harder for anyone to read too much into it. Whether that will work, and whether it’s better than the alternative, is obviously debatable.

Although once again I’d point out that I’m saying this as someone who doesn’t raid, so maybe the trailer has a lot more meaning than I can see in it.

No point in hyping anything when they’ll be at E3. As for the raid, most people simply don’t care considering only a small percentage raid in most MMOs. Perhaps the numbers are showing that hyping it like they used to has no effect, or even a negative one considering it was nothing but raids for so long.

That “small percentage” isn’t actually as small as you think. I raid usually 4 times a week and really enjoy them. Anet did a great job with designing the raids, and I absolutely encourage them to continue to make more.

Like the above posts have said, if you don’t raid or know the lore of Guild Wars, the new teaser may not make much sense, but it makes enough sense for me. As well as encourages some interesting speculation.

Raid wing 3 just further confirms that the white mantle are going to be one of the main focuses for living story 3; the old enemies that were present in gw1. And since this is the last wing to the entire raid we should be seeing legendary armor finally being introduced into the game soon, as well as living story 3. Maybe in july.

I got all that, just from this small teaser. And the fact that most of you don’t know that just means that whether you hate it or not; you are all missing out.

Dragon.8762:

That “small percentage” isn’t actually as small as you think.

Well in WoW it was around 3 – 5% of the population got involved in raids, Obviously this depended on the raid, so it’s pretty small. Even if Anet said their numbers looked good, it’s most likely not going over 10%. Abet, on a personal scale, that can feel like a lot of people, I mean, when you think about it, 10% of the entire population of GW2 is still potentially a few thousand people, so to an individual, it can feel vast, But from a numbers stand point, it’s still a small minority of the population.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Silas Eorth.7348:

This is now the new method they are taking. Mo said something along the lines about the hype train staying at the station. It’s no longer accepting passengers.

I miss the hype train.

Sooo, the new way to keep people from logging off and going elsewhere is to put them to sleep with boring dailies and no hype?

Well, if it works it works. ^^

It doesn’t work

Dragon.8762:

Raid wing 3 just further confirms that the white mantle are going to be one of the main focuses for living story 3; the old enemies that were present in gw1. And since this is the last wing to the entire raid we should be seeing legendary armor finally being introduced into the game soon, as well as living story 3. Maybe in july.

I got all that, just from this small teaser. And the fact that most of you don’t know that just means that whether you hate it or not; you are all missing out.

How do you know all that from an 8 second clip? As far as I know the raid and LS are completely separate. And believe me I wish I could raid. But sadly I don’t. My only source to get Asc armor is fractals and right now im working up my AR lvl so I can tier 4.

STIHL.2489:

Well in WoW it was around 3 – 5% of the population got involved in raids,

I’m not sure what WoW has to do with any of this, but I’m curious: Where are you getting this information from? It’s very inaccurate. A vast majority of WoW’s population gets involved in raids.

• Tier 18 (Current tier, current expansion)
• Tier 17 (Previous tier, current expansion)

If you want to check out last expansion:

• Tier 16 (Previous expansion, final tier)

For people who do not understand what’s on this web site, at the bottom it displays % of players who have done M and H difficulty bosses. (Heroic & Mythic) WoW has 4 difficulty modes: Raid Finder, Normal, Heroic (H), Mythic (M). (Increasing difficulty in ascending order) So many players complete Normal and Raid Finder that this web site doesn’t even track the data because it’s somewhere between 70%-100%+. It’s difficult to analyze, but some web sites try. (MMO Champion)

I have no idea how many people raid in WoW but considering that the lower levels are called welfare raids, I doubt that they would be considered true raiding. They’re more like dungeons for large groups at a time than true raids, with their bosses dumbed down to the level of the casual player. So that 70-100% isn’t telling the whole story. WoW’s end game is essentially running dungeons for gear so dungeon difficulty raids are going to be done at high percents. It doesn’t tell you what numbers of people do the upper, true raid difficulty content.

Edit: link to site discussing numbers MMO Champion

One post
“Roughly 70% of players participate in LFR, with 50% completing it. 40% tried Flex, with under 20% finishing it. Normal was between 25-13%, and Heroic was 10-1%. Note that Siege lasted longer than any other raid tier, so it’s participation is significantly higher than others. If you look at WoWprogress numbers, at most 10% of players have downed Kargath on Heroic (30604 × 30 = 918,120, slightly under 10% of the 10 million subs). Mythic is easier to pin down, being on a fixed raid size: 8815 × 20 = 176,300 Mythic raiders, which is under 2% of the playerbase”

Comment: LFR is Looking for Raids. The dumbed down version referred to as welfare raiding.
So in a game where the endgame is doing dungeons and raids, they are calculating 2-10% of the players complete the upper levels of raids.

STIHL.2489:

Dragon.8762:

That “small percentage” isn’t actually as small as you think.

Well in WoW it was around 3 – 5% of the population got involved in raids, Obviously this depended on the raid, so it’s pretty small. Even if Anet said their numbers looked good, it’s most likely not going over 10%. Abet, on a personal scale, that can feel like a lot of people, I mean, when you think about it, 10% of the entire population of GW2 is still potentially a few thousand people, so to an individual, it can feel vast, But from a numbers stand point, it’s still a small minority of the population.

One easy way to know if there are tons of people raiding or not is to see if the company, in this case Anet, touts raiding as an unqualified success. If more than 50% were raiding, I am sure they would post those numbers. They can easily tell how many have set inside a raid. Since they have remained characteristically silent about game numbers/percentages you can infer that Raiding is not the blockbuster they might have hoped it would be.

It’s like any aspect of the game. They could easily publish stats like:

X number of people spent an average of y number of minutes inside Raid n on this day.
X number of people on this server spent an average of y number of minutes in WvW.

They have these numbers. They just don’t publish them for whatever reason.

Nokaru.7831:

I’m not sure what WoW has to do with any of this, but I’m curious: Where are you getting this information from?

It was mentioned in the AMA by the Anet Devs.

STIHL.2489:

Nokaru.7831:

I’m not sure what WoW has to do with any of this, but I’m curious: Where are you getting this information from?

It was mentioned in the AMA by the Anet Devs.

It’s also close to the same stat mentioned by other MMO companies for their games and have used it to show why development for raids was severely cut in their franchises.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

So in a game where the endgame is doing dungeons and raids, they are calculating 2-10% of the players complete the upper levels of raids.

WoW!

(Thanks for the link, the analysis, and the neutral paraphrase to explain the context.)

Nokaru.7831:

For people who do not understand what’s on this web site, at the bottom it displays % of players who have done M and H difficulty bosses.

It’s guild based and they only track active players, which they define as a player at level 100 that has killed something in tier 17 heroic mode, or is in a guild that has.

eduardo.1436:

Dragon.8762:

Raid wing 3 just further confirms that the white mantle are going to be one of the main focuses for living story 3; the old enemies that were present in gw1. And since this is the last wing to the entire raid we should be seeing legendary armor finally being introduced into the game soon, as well as living story 3. Maybe in july.

I got all that, just from this small teaser. And the fact that most of you don’t know that just means that whether you hate it or not; you are all missing out.

How do you know all that from an 8 second clip? As far as I know the raid and LS are completely separate. And believe me I wish I could raid. But sadly I don’t. My only source to get Asc armor is fractals and right now im working up my AR lvl so I can tier 4.

Because Anet said Living story 3 would come out soon after Wing 3 of the raid was complete. Most people are speculating it’ll come out in July.

I expect a huge number of people set foot into the first raid initially because they wanted to see what the first GW2 raid was like. I’m not sure how relevant that is.

How many people do still spend how much time in raids now? How many people have beaten the two raid wings?

Personally, I’ve beat my head against the first one to finally beat the Vale Guardian once and not any more since.

ekarat.1085:

I expect a huge number of people set foot into the first raid initially because they wanted to see what the first GW2 raid was like. I’m not sure how relevant that is.

How many people do still spend how much time in raids now? How many people have beaten the two raid wings?

Personally, I’ve beat my head against the first one to finally beat the Vale Guardian once and not any more since.

Just look at the raid finder and see for yourself. Or join a guild that advertises for raid runs. My guild, including myself just beat all of Wing 1 in under an hour. It could have been done faster if we didn’t wipe a few times. But its totally possible. I’d still highly recommend looking up the mechanics of the raids first, as they introduce some stuff not seen anywhere else in the game.

The rewards are really good. High tier crafting drops, ascended weapon drops, shards (which can be used to get ascended armor without having to craft them) and more.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I have no idea how many people raid in WoW but considering that the lower levels are called welfare raids, I doubt that they would be considered true raiding. They’re more like dungeons for large groups at a time than true raids, with their bosses dumbed down to the level of the casual player. So that 70-100% isn’t telling the whole story. WoW’s end game is essentially running dungeons for gear so dungeon difficulty raids are going to be done at high percents. It doesn’t tell you what numbers of people do the upper, true raid difficulty content.

Edit: link to site discussing numbers MMO Champion

One post
“Roughly 70% of players participate in LFR, with 50% completing it. 40% tried Flex, with under 20% finishing it. Normal was between 25-13%, and Heroic was 10-1%. Note that Siege lasted longer than any other raid tier, so it’s participation is significantly higher than others. If you look at WoWprogress numbers, at most 10% of players have downed Kargath on Heroic (30604 × 30 = 918,120, slightly under 10% of the 10 million subs). Mythic is easier to pin down, being on a fixed raid size: 8815 × 20 = 176,300 Mythic raiders, which is under 2% of the playerbase”

Comment: LFR is Looking for Raids. The dumbed down version referred to as welfare raiding.
So in a game where the endgame is doing dungeons and raids, they are calculating 2-10% of the players complete the upper levels of raids.

I played WoW for years. From launch on, even have one of the old Vanilla pvp titles and can recall the days when Scholomance and Stratholme were hellish and challenging for the masses and Onyxia was a wretched quest chain attunement to be able to go and fight her in her lair at level 60 – when Kharazan required attunement as well at 70. I played a long time…and left shortly after WoD launched because I couldn’t stand garrisons anymore. Yes, LFR is indeed Looking For Raid and isn’t generally used for the harder content. It might be used to round off a guild needing a single pugger when they land short on raid night (usually Tuesday reset), other than that, you can expect for it to be filled mainly with content that has been figured out and done many times over and is essentially just a gear ladder to go on to the next tier. If you see a group in the highest level, they’re usually wanting your firstborn or you better have gear from that raid on you and chievos to prove you’ve done it before (likely both), or you’re a placeholder till a guildie gets online, whether they inform you of this or not.

Further, in WoW you’ve got people checking your gear, enchants, gems, your achievements, your credit score, your mothers maiden name.. okay, maybe not the last 2. I played a healer for all but the first few years of WoW (yeah, I was a hunter, but at least I was the one that knew how to lay a frost trap , and knew how to kite a mob properly when a rogue broke a trapped mob with a poisoned dagger no less, not allowing me to re-trap till it wore off and you’re trying at all costs to keep it off the healer) and most healers worth their salt didn’t have a hard time finding a good raiding guild to play with. It also helped that my husband always played a tank. DPS is a dime a dozen and they languish in LFG/LFR with long queues for normal and heroic dungeons as well as raids, unless they have a pocket healer or tank.

I saw alot of the raids in my time in WoW, but it is very true that for a good while, it is the higher end guilds doing that content. It trickles down, but very slowly, and there are many players that only saw some of the level 70 raids for the first time when they hit level 90.. if that says anything..

For what it’s worth (i.e., not much), I saw a post in one of the raid threads earlier which cited a dev comment in a Reddit thread saying that about 30% had tried GW2 raids. That would of course have to be 30% of those who bought HoT, which is (by my reckoning) somewhere around 20-35% of the 1.5M monthly active accounts cited in the Fortune article about ESports.

If true (No, I’m not looking it up. I might if search actually worked), that doesn’t seem like a bad stat for content that is produced by a small percentage of the devs.

Everyone should go have a gander at this Reddit thread about raiding.

Dragon.8762:

That “small percentage” isn’t actually as small as you think. I raid usually 4 times a week and really enjoy them. Anet did a great job with designing the raids, and I absolutely encourage them to continue to make more.

Like the above posts have said, if you don’t raid or know the lore of Guild Wars, the new teaser may not make much sense, but it makes enough sense for me. As well as encourages some interesting speculation.

Raid wing 3 just further confirms that the white mantle are going to be one of the main focuses for living story 3; the old enemies that were present in gw1. And since this is the last wing to the entire raid we should be seeing legendary armor finally being introduced into the game soon, as well as living story 3. Maybe in july.

I got all that, just from this small teaser. And the fact that most of you don’t know that just means that whether you hate it or not; you are all missing out.

That is humorous. I’m missing out, and glad of it!
Don’t misunderstand, I’m glad the content you enjoy is available for you, just like the content I enjoy is available to me.

This is still, content only a small percentage of players even care to do. Anet will make one last attempt to push this because the difficulty ties in with e-sports. That push will be gating legendary armor behind this content. Think the Forums and Reddit will explode when the first few pieces get seen? Maybe. Think this will push more players into raids that will succeed in that content? Unlikely.

I believe a much larger, and less vocal, percentage of the playing population would like to see the gating of rewards, behind specific content, removed from the game. Content should stand on it’s own,

Tumult.2578:

I believe a much larger, and less vocal, percentage of the playing population would like to see the gating of rewards, behind specific content, removed from the game. Content should stand on it’s own

Weird thing to believe but ok..
We call “gating of rewards behind specific content” – rewards and achievements.
Do you want dungeon tokens from anywhere but dungeons? That would be weird, right.
Airship parts from Harathi Hinterlands moas?
I’m going to assume you want legendary gear but don’t want to raid because you feel it’s too hard for some reason. Might be wrong about your needs but raids aren’t that hard. Join a guild that does training and clearing and usually as long as you have exotic or higher, some kind of voice comms and a raid build from metabattle you’ll be able to get on raids.

General Health.9678:

Tumult.2578:

I believe a much larger, and less vocal, percentage of the playing population would like to see the gating of rewards, behind specific content, removed from the game. Content should stand on it’s own

Weird thing to believe but ok..
We call “gating of rewards behind specific content” – rewards and achievements.
Do you want dungeon tokens from anywhere but dungeons? That would be weird, right.
Airship parts from Harathi Hinterlands moas?
I’m going to assume you want legendary gear but don’t want to raid because you feel it’s too hard for some reason. Might be wrong about your needs but raids aren’t that hard. Join a guild that does training and clearing and usually as long as you have exotic or higher, some kind of voice comms and a raid build from metabattle you’ll be able to get on raids.

I get dungeon tokens from PvP daily rooms, so alternate means are already in the game.

It’s not about hard. Nobody will admit that a video game is hard — it’s a mark of shame. I learned this when people kept calling Dark Souls “easy”.

I know what it took for me to kill the Vale Guardian once, so don’t tell me how hard it is or isn’t. I can judge that for myself from my own experience.

How about this? I don’t find it fun. I beat the first boss, and I didn’t enjoy it. Stop arguing about whether or not it is hard.

Dragon.8762:

ekarat.1085:

I expect a huge number of people set foot into the first raid initially because they wanted to see what the first GW2 raid was like. I’m not sure how relevant that is.

How many people do still spend how much time in raids now? How many people have beaten the two raid wings?

Personally, I’ve beat my head against the first one to finally beat the Vale Guardian once and not any more since.

Just look at the raid finder and see for yourself. Or join a guild that advertises for raid runs. My guild, including myself just beat all of Wing 1 in under an hour. It could have been done faster if we didn’t wipe a few times. But its totally possible. I’d still highly recommend looking up the mechanics of the raids first, as they introduce some stuff not seen anywhere else in the game.

The rewards are really good. High tier crafting drops, ascended weapon drops, shards (which can be used to get ascended armor without having to craft them) and more.

This ignores what I said.

My point is that a lot of people may have tried the raids at one point but may not be doing them anymore, so be careful with the metrics you appeal to.

Bobby Stein has posted a thread here addressing some concerns on issues regarding raids.

I was pleased to see he’d done so. Here is what he had to say:

BobbyStein.2315:

Hey there. I’ve been seeing some comments regarding the story and lore in the Forsaken Thicket raid, and how that fits into Guild Wars 2. We appreciate your enthusiasm! Just wanted to clarify a few things:

• It will not be necessary to play Forsaken Thicket—or any future raid—in order to complete Living World or expansion stories. Raids do not gate main story progress.
• Raid stories can—and should—be thematically tied to Tyrian lore and enhance the game.
• If any lore information from the raids is relevant to storylines in other content, we’ll make sure that information is also available in that other content.
• Raids present story in a different manner than elsewhere in the game. They are not a replacement for Living World, expansion, or Personal Story.
• Output from the raids team isn’t coming at the expense of other projects in development. Raids are made independently of Living World. We do communicate regularly with that team (and we share some resources and assets in both directions) but neither team prevents the other from doing its job.
• The Forsaken Thicket story will conclude with the release of Stronghold of the Faithful on June 14.
• Raids are not part of our Living World episodes; they are separate game elements.
• More information regarding Living World Season 3 will be announced in the future. As always, content will be released when it is ready to ensure the optimal quality for our fans. Hang tight.

I hope this helps people understand things a bit better. Thanks!

We’ll probably be advised to take concerns over to that thread soon, so I thought I’d come give you guys the link and whatnot.

ekarat.1085:

My point is that a lot of people may have tried the raids at one point but may not be doing them anymore, so be careful with the metrics you appeal to.

your point equally makes claims with zero metrics to back it up.

Re dungeon tokens from daily pvp rooms. Really?
WIki should be updated then, I thought these were from the dungeon reward tracks
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascalonian_Tear

No idea why you think it’s a mark of shame to say something is hard. I beat Doom on hard would be a good thing to say. My opinion on raids is if you want to do them, get a raiding build and join a raiding guild. I’d rather make the hard content easier for myself but you may prefer not to do that.

General Health.9678:

ekarat.1085:

My point is that a lot of people may have tried the raids at one point but may not be doing them anymore, so be careful with the metrics you appeal to.

your point equally makes claims with zero metrics to back it up.

Re dungeon tokens from daily pvp rooms. Really?
WIki should be updated then, I thought these were from the dungeon reward tracks
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascalonian_Tear

I’ve completely filled out 3 dungeon collections and parts of all the rest from doing dailies in the PvP daily rooms (and having those reward tracks going, of course).

Dragon.8762:

That “small percentage” isn’t actually as small as you think. I raid usually 4 times a week and really enjoy them. Anet did a great job with designing the raids, and I absolutely encourage them to continue to make more.

Like the above posts have said, if you don’t raid or know the lore of Guild Wars, the new teaser may not make much sense, but it makes enough sense for me. As well as encourages some interesting speculation.

Raid wing 3 just further confirms that the white mantle are going to be one of the main focuses for living story 3; the old enemies that were present in gw1. And since this is the last wing to the entire raid we should be seeing legendary armor finally being introduced into the game soon, as well as living story 3. Maybe in july.

I got all that, just from this small teaser. And the fact that most of you don’t know that just means that whether you hate it or not; you are all missing out.

That ‘small percentage’ should be called differently – a niche, this game is played in 90% by casual players which don’t wanna or don’t have time to spend 40h weekly online and raid require alot from player starting with gear which needs to be grinded through experience on how to beat bosses to finding competent people to play it.

Also lore in MMOs… well its like saying that you need to be pagan to use “services” if you know what i mean. I don’t give a skritt about lore that requires me reading books when all i wan’t is to smack monster in a head. Even more when story that we have ingame is rather poor. (but what to expect out of mmo…)

White mantles in gw1 – ok but still GW2 has little to do with GW1 if you take a closer look – regions and mobs from 1st and 2nd as comparison. I would not count on it although who knows…

If the raid team is like 6 people, (plus some support), the average Dev makes around 50K a year, Raids have been in the works for a little over a year, so, given some lesser paid positions, that would around 300K invested into raids, just from the 6 core dev’s assuming they were only making that much.

I wonder how raids will generate the ROI of that monetary investment.

STIHL.2489:

If the raid team is like 6 people, (plus some support), the average Dev makes around 50K a year, Raids have been in the works for a little over a year, so, given some lesser paid positions, that would around 300K invested into raids, just from the 6 core dev’s assuming they were only making that much.

I wonder how raids will generate the ROI of that monetary investment.

The same way that all content produced by any of the 220 devs (with your salary guess, ~ $11M/year) does, keeping players interested in the game.

IndigoSundown.5419:

STIHL.2489:

If the raid team is like 6 people, (plus some support), the average Dev makes around 50K a year, Raids have been in the works for a little over a year, so, given some lesser paid positions, that would around 300K invested into raids, just from the 6 core dev’s assuming they were only making that much.

I wonder how raids will generate the ROI of that monetary investment.

The same way that all content produced by any of the 220 devs (with your salary guess, coming ikitten1M/year) does, keeping players interested in the game.

Since HoT is B2P and Core is F2P now, that is simply not a sufficient answer. There needs to be something about raids that will generate an ROI from them directly, since they have a designated team just doing that at the expense of contributing to any other content.

So I am wondering, what direct ROI do raids have, I mean, I know I won’t ever see the numbers, but I would love to see if the metrics draw a linkage between the people that love raids to death and an increase in their real money spending on the game since raids got introduced.

If they haven’t, then raids have zero ROI in and of themselves, and they are just being funded by the other content.

Anyway, since you answered, have you been spending more on the game since raids got put in? I know I haven’t, been spending a lot less to tell the truth. As a Filthy Casual, I’m not gonna pay into a game that makes an ‘end game’ not designed for me.

STIHL.2489:

So I am wondering, what direct ROI do raids have

At the very least, raiding advertised and sold the game to that audience, as well as kept them active. I doubt these players spend extra money however as gold is trivial to obtain in GW2. In other MMOs however, I’ve seen hardcore raid guilds spend hundreds of dollars to be first. For example, if ascended was just released along with raids, they would have bought gold to immediately craft it all. Next expansion will reveal if raids were worth it, as either this will be the last, or just the beginning.

Personally, I was with a raiding guild from other MMOs back at launch and everyone simply rushed to the nonexistent endgame. Without the typical progression/raid grind, they basically didn’t know what to do, so they quit within the first month. A lot of them did come back for HoT, only because everything else was dead at the time, but in the end, cosmetic raiding was of no interest to them.

Healix.5819:

STIHL.2489:

So I am wondering, what direct ROI do raids have

At the very least, raiding advertised and sold the game to that audience, as well as kept them active. I doubt these players spend extra money however as gold is trivial to obtain in GW2. In other MMOs however, I’ve seen hardcore raid guilds spend hundreds of dollars to be first. For example, if ascended was just released along with raids, they would have bought gold to immediately craft it all. Next expansion will reveal if raids were worth it, as either this will be the last, or just the beginning.

Personally, I was with a raiding guild from other MMOs back at launch and everyone simply rushed to the nonexistent endgame. Without the typical progression/raid grind, they basically didn’t know what to do, so they quit within the first month. A lot of them did come back for HoT, only because everything else was dead at the time, but in the end, cosmetic raiding was of no interest to them.

This is a good answer, it boosted the HoT sales, and now Anet is just making good on their promise. Pity the HoT sales were, not up to expectation.

But I have to agree with you, the next expansion will reveal if raids were a good investment or not.

STIHL.2489:

IndigoSundown.5419:

STIHL.2489:

If the raid team is like 6 people, (plus some support), the average Dev makes around 50K a year, Raids have been in the works for a little over a year, so, given some lesser paid positions, that would around 300K invested into raids, just from the 6 core dev’s assuming they were only making that much.

I wonder how raids will generate the ROI of that monetary investment.

The same way that all content produced by any of the 220 devs (with your salary guess, about 11M/year) does, keeping players interested in the game.

Since HoT is B2P and Core is F2P now, that is simply not a sufficient answer. There needs to be something about raids that will generate an ROI from them directly, since they have a designated team just doing that at the expense of contributing to any other content.

Why do you get to decide what’s sufficient? Cash shop revenue generation game revenue models are based on statistics. There’s a percentage of players who play regularly who will spend money in the store. Some of them will spend a lot. The rest will spend nothing. Any content that adds to the player-base is increasing the likelihood that revenue will increase. As to the raid team not contributing to other content, you could say that about any of the designated teams.

So I am wondering, what direct ROI do raids have, I mean, I know I won’t ever see the numbers, but I would love to see if the metrics draw a linkage between the people that love raids to death and an increase in their real money spending on the game since raids got introduced.

I’m sure Anet can compile those statistics if they want to. They should have the information.

If they haven’t, then raids have zero ROI in and of themselves, and they are just being funded by the other content.

Again, this is possibly true about any content. Arguably, PvP subtracts money because of the prize funds.

Anyway, since you answered, have you been spending more on the game since raids got put in? I know I haven’t, been spending a lot less to tell the truth. As a Filthy Casual, I’m not gonna pay into a game that makes an ‘end game’ not designed for me.

Me? The base GW2 game was arguably the best game product in terms of value for money for me. It even beat the original GW. However, I’ve not liked the direction Anet has taken the game after launch. So, I vowed a long time ago not to throw money at Anet unless they produced something I valued. I bought HoT, but only because it was on sale on Amazon when I did. Raids are not my cup of tea, either. However, I think of raids as a small portion of the game that I can easily avoid. I view them as only a tiny portion of GW2 endgame, and despise a lot of it, whereas I’m kind of indifferent about raids.

You guys have to take into account that Raids ROI is not something you can fully appreciate through number of players doing them NOW alone.

Raids are more than just the in-game content – they are a tickbox of “stuff” the game has that has now been checked.
This is a smart PR move – I’ve known a lot of people who stayed away from GW2 because it has no “raids” or “endgame”. Now that box has been ticked and a number of people might be interested or might consider the game.

Another issue is that a lot of the first raid’s success or failure will hinge on legendary armor. If it’s cool, looks good and appeals to a lot of people I guarantee you a lot of people will start raiding. If not – a lot of people might drop it.
This is an MMO – people do things for rewards and progression (be it vertical or horizontal) – if the rewards are considered “bad” the content overall will be considered “bad” and flop.

One must also take into account that Raids are a way of appeasing a part of the community. You can’t really say “GW2 has no hardcore content” anymore. And I haven’t seen one thread about “no difficult content” in a long time.
GW2 has had for a very long time a LOT of easy content for the casual player(Open world stuff). Now it has some hardcore content for the hardcore player.
It also has intermediate content for the in-between player (dungeons, fractals) – so all in all I think with the addition of raids the majority of players have been covered with something to do.