Guild Wars 2

Come February GW2 will have been out for 6 months. There have been good times and bad, but I think most can agree we have all been waiting patiently for this game to turn the corner and become what we were told it would be. Tomorrow is the beginning of the trifecta of patches touted as an “expansions worth of content” and with it lies what could be a turning point for better or worse. Will real class balance be addressed in the coming months? It needs to be because right now only half of the classes in the game are on par. Will people have a reason to play TPvP or SPvP? Currently these areas of the game are dying fast. What about wvw and the zerg? How will they break the mass armies up and breath new life into the Altaric Valley of GW2? I know personally I am excited and a nit nervous to see what lies in store for us. I really like this game but am realistic in seeing that there are massive flaws. A weak spot in the armor that could bring it all down if not repaired. With TESO on the horizon things need to change and change fast. The community has listened to a half a year of vague plans and sat by patch after patch waiting for the method of minor tweaks to make things right. And well…in all honestly its been mostly disappointing. Lately in my guild I have heard a lot of players whos decision to stay here or move to other games really depend of what is coming in the next 3 months. Will anet deliver? I am cautiously hopeful but I gotta say I don’t have the confidence that I did on the evening of August 28th. What about you?

TESO.. Are people still thinking that that game won’t be littered with game breaking bugs for years? Just like every single other game that Studio has released.
I mean, they’re great games and everything, Morrowind still remains my second favorite game I’ve ever played, but seriously, those games were filled with bugs and this will be their first time designing an MMO.
As for this games future, I think 6 months is still way too early to come to any conclusions about it.

Yup, probably teso is gonna have at the very least the same amount of time as GW2 to fix even more serious issues than gw2 have. Although gw2 doesnt have issues but things to add. TESO is going to be facing serious bugs, as the kind of world it is almost cries for them.

After what happened to TOR, I seriously doubt anyone can really predict the success or failure of ESO, especially this early on. We already know that being able to make and sell single player games does not automatically mean MMOs can be done equally well. A company that makes buggy games will likely produce a buggy MMO and many MMO players in general are not all that forgiving of bugs.

Jrunyon.3012:

TESO.. Are people still thinking that that game won’t be littered with game breaking bugs for years? Just like every single other game that Studio has released.
I mean, they’re great games and everything, Morrowind still remains my second favorite game I’ve ever played, but seriously, those games were filled with bugs and this will be their first time designing an MMO.
As for this games future, I think 6 months is still way too early to come to any conclusions about it.

FYI TESO is being made by Zenimax not Bethesda so before you even begin to say anything negative about TESO do some research your clearly just spouting nonsense.

Kakeru.2873:

Jrunyon.3012:

TESO.. Are people still thinking that that game won’t be littered with game breaking bugs for years? Just like every single other game that Studio has released.
I mean, they’re great games and everything, Morrowind still remains my second favorite game I’ve ever played, but seriously, those games were filled with bugs and this will be their first time designing an MMO.
As for this games future, I think 6 months is still way too early to come to any conclusions about it.

FYI TESO is being made by Zenimax not Bethesda so before you even begin to say anything negative about TESO do some research your clearly just spouting nonsense.

Oblivion
Skyrim
Fallout
Last I checked Zenimax was involved on all of those games. All of them were full of bugs. Excuse me if I forgot Zenimax wasn’t onboard for Morrowind, it was only about 7 years ago that I played it last. What research am I supposed to be doing? Anything regarding that game is just speculation at this point obviously, but the trend seems to be that both Zenimax/Bethesda games are not bug free. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a fact of life. If they pull up their pants and do it right, well then awesome, you can count me on board for giving it a shot, but I’m not holding my breath.

Kakeru.2873:

FYI TESO is being made by Zenimax not Bethesda so before you even begin to say anything negative about TESO do some research your clearly just spouting nonsense.

Yes, Zenimax Game Studios is making it. However, Zenimax is the owner of Bethesda (sort of like how NCSoft owns ANet), and instead of allowing Bethesda create the game, they put together an entirely separate studio of people for the sole purpose of creating TESO.

It’d be like if NCSoft had made a brand new studio full of people from games other than GW1 to create the new ga….oh. Right.

Mind, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be bad, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be good, either. It’s a new team that has never made a game together before. They’re an untested and unproven entity. It remains to be seen if they will create a good product or not.

However, judging from what game footage they’ve shown us, I’m not all that impressed. It sounds like they ripped off GW2 for a lot of their design, too, which isn’t a good first step.

Honestly I was just using a random mmo as an example. I really have no love loss with Zenimax or Bethesda as I am one of the poor fools that bought Skyrim on PS3. FYI I have both systems just bigger HD on ps3 and at the time I figured it wouldn’t matter. Really I am more interested in ppls views on what is to come with GW2.

If Anet makes a serious mistake in the next 3 months, then it’s going to seriously effect their ability to sell their expansion to people.

If Anet stays the course they are on right now, they will maintain a slow increase in players while having decent player base.

If Anet does well, they are going to keep players, have a better environment for new players, and have players return. They also will have much better expansion sales (assuming a price of $40-50).

This is all imo.

Agreed. Right now the game isn’t “bad”. I think balance and bugfixes are still the biggest issue. If that gets addressed and we get some decent content I think things will be ok. If the AOE nerf is a disaster and the wvw and pvp fixes promised turn out to be all crap and false promises I think people are going to give up.

Sure, some people will give up. But I don’t think a single person I play with on my server cares. Surely there are people that do, but I don’t personally know any of them. So as far as I’m concerned, all those supposed fixes for WvW and PvP are irrelevant. I’m waiting on more content.

I don’t think any of us has to worry about GW2 or the competition with MMOs. Being a non-subscription based game, we will all keep playing when we are able to, and check back with the events. GW2 broke the 3 Million mark…. great job ArenaNet!

I didn’t play much from Oct-Dec, but I was around for the Mad King, Karka, and Wintersday events. I also dumped in some money for the costumes and goodies, as did a lot of people.

I’m excited and hopeful for ESO and FFXIV ARR (3 years building the game from the ground up.. it looks really exciting, especially if you enjoyed FFXI or even gulp FFXIV lol). However what will cut down is my playtime of other mmos… I stopped raiding and cancelled my wow sub this month.. but still dropping a fair amount of time in to Planetside 2.

Guild Wars 2 is my “Zelda” of the MMO world, and I LOVE IT… I can jump in at anytime, and get involved, play, explore, and have an AMAZING time… follow the winding road and uncover events and discover. All at my own pace, and enjoying the content regardless of level.

As stated in the ESO preview – there are 50 levels, and at level 50 is when you can really play the game… I’m still trying to grasp the point of any MMO that restricts itself because you’re not ‘max level’ – it causes players to rush and grind… for what? Why skip content.

Make or break? Nah… this isn’t Warhammer Online, Vanguard, SWToR, or any other game that competes directly due to subscriptions. GW2 business model doesn’t reflect the competition in the traditional way.. so it’s not make or break.. cause at the end of the day, you’ll always have a happy home to log into.

Yes these next few months are make or break for me personally, i’m just one person out of thousands but a lot of people i speak too seem to be in agreement..

If the game follows this tier / Ascended / WoW clone direction its currently following i doubt i’ll stay here, its not fun and its another generic version of every other mmorpg made to date, i played Guildwars 1 because it wasn’t like WoW and all of its clones..ever made..

Jrunyon.3012:

Oblivion
Skyrim
Fallout
Last I checked Zenimax was involved on all of those games. All of them were full of bugs. Excuse me if I forgot Zenimax wasn’t onboard for Morrowind, it was only about 7 years ago that I played it last. What research am I supposed to be doing? Anything regarding that game is just speculation at this point obviously, but the trend seems to be that both Zenimax/Bethesda games are not bug free. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a fact of life. If they pull up their pants and do it right, well then awesome, you can count me on board for giving it a shot, but I’m not holding my breath.

This is irrelevant. The project lead for ESO is the same guy who created DAOC and the first two expansions. He left the DAOC, and picked up ESO in 2007… he’s someone who knows what he’s doing when it comes to MMOs.

A game in that has been in the works for about 6 years… and has some backbone to it, I’m excited and hopeful of the possibilities.

That being said, my comment above is where I stand in regards to GW2… and the viewpoint remains the same… GW2 will happily stay installed on my PC regardless of anything else I’m playing

Yes. They claim the next patches will be filled with stuff making the world more fun. I hope they are right because if they aren’t in 3 months it won’t matter if nothing dropped ill be so bored ill just sit there drooling instead.

Dante.1508:

If the game follows this tier / Ascended / WoW clone direction its currently following i doubt i’ll stay here, its not fun and its another generic version of every other mmorpg made to date, i played Guildwars 1 because it wasn’t like WoW and all of its clones..ever made..

It has been confirmed that there won’t be any new tiers added. Contrary to what the purists like to believe, it was stated that ascended was supposed to be implemented on launch but was not ready. As such, it’s been released now. Considering that they’re going to start letting you earn ascended gear in many other ways, there is no gear grind.

Jrunyon.3012:

Dante.1508:

If the game follows this tier / Ascended / WoW clone direction its currently following i doubt i’ll stay here, its not fun and its another generic version of every other mmorpg made to date, i played Guildwars 1 because it wasn’t like WoW and all of its clones..ever made..

It has been confirmed that there won’t be any new tiers added. Contrary to what the purists like to believe, it was stated that ascended was supposed to be implemented on launch but was not ready. As such, it’s been released now. Considering that they’re going to start letting you earn ascended gear in many other ways, there is no gear grind.

It was confirmed no new tiers this year…. that was all

Not sure if this has been mentioned but the best thing that TESO has going for it is Matt Firor from Mythic who was one of the original devs of DAoC back in the day. It’s not like there’s absolutely no MMO experience within this project.

But yes, all MMOs have bugs that riddle them for years if not for their entire life span but to compare GW2 to a game that’s not even out yet doesn’t even make sense.

EDIT: Nevermind, just saw this mentioned within the thread…not sure how I missed it. Guess I was reading too fast for my brain at this late hour.

I don’t think TESO is on the “horizon” I doubt it will be released this year. if it is, it won’t be until the very end of the year…And to be honest I’m not sold on it, yet. It sounds almost identical to GW2 with a couple more bells and whistles, and probably a better oPvP system, but overall they haven’t really even shown anything substantial other than the world reacts to you differently if you save a town from werewolves or not. Cool, GW2 could probably do that too. I am looking forward to seeing more info on it, but between how little we’ve really even seen of it, Bethesda/Zenimax’s track record, and the frightful excuse for character models and animations they have shown off in the few gameplay videos they actually have…Just not sold, yet…That being said I am looking for more and if GW2 can’t cover what I’m looking for then I will play other games, including TESO if it manages to pull it off..I’m ready for these “Sandpark” MMO’s, such as Wildstar, ArcheAge, EQnext (supposedly). etc..I want to do more than events, and quests…I want to build houses, camps, have alternative types of content like those games all are supposed to and while I think Anet could do this with GW2, I kind of doubt it’s on their immediate plans.

I don’t see any make or break point looming. GW2 is a non-subscription, casual friendly game where PvE can be played almost completely as a single player game. As long as this continues to be true, GW2 should have a market for expansions. About the worse I see is that some of the rapid content consuming, hardcore gamers may become bored and leave. Just my opinion.

This is an mmo thats made for the full time working, family loveing, RL friend haveing gamer. There is a huge market for it and thats why i have been enjoying it. As long as it sticks to this than i will keep comeing back for more

So far TESO has really grabbed my attention in a meaningful way. I really don’t care what brand label they slap on it only that it’s a good game. It’s becoming far too common for companies to slap some brand label on a product just to make sales even though the product doesn’t measure up to the brand it purports to represent (e.g. recent Final Fantasy games).

Calling it “The Elder Scrolls” isn’t going to make me buy it. After Skyrim it actually makes me want to avoid it like the plague. That’s right I said avoid it. Skyrim is quite frankly a terrible game if you want anything resembling depth, diversity of play, balance, or engaging combat. All things I care about in an MMO.

As has been mentioned Bethesda has a habit of releasing less-than-functional products. They are on my “won’t buy new” list because I don’t expect anything they release to be good for 6 months to a year after launch. Mods are also a huge part of what makes an elder scrolls game great and I can’t see them having heavy mod support for an MMO.

All that aside, GW2 will likely never be uninstalled from my computer. The same way GW1 has been on my computer for the last 6 years, and still is. I’ve played GW1 every single year a bit here and a bit there. Sometimes I wouldn’t play for months but I always came back to it. I expect GW2 to be the same. I might not play for a month or two and then I’ll play it for a month or two.

Without a sub, a massive treadmill to fall behind on, or an absolute REQUIREMENT to have a good solid guild of active players to actually play and progress through the new content (always raids…), there’s nothing stopping me from coming back in a couple months and just doing whatever I want.

tl;dr GW2 has no ‘make or break point’ for me. I will most likely always come back to it. TESO is definitely not going to make me quit GW2 because I’m highly skeptical it will actually be any good.

Well last month was make or break time and the month before that and the month before that do you see what going on here? Truth tell of a game is about a year + a game with true staying power will still have a health community behind it at that point and groups of ppl willing to buy the next new exposition of a game. The first year should be about mostly bugs not content but they have done both a cut well above most existing mmorpgs.

gw2 will prob be a game ill play for years to come… maybe not all the time.. ill take breaks but like the first one anet will prob add more stuff later on that will keep me playing.

As for the elder scrolls.. well the single player games were rubbish so what makes you think the online will be any good…altho ill prob give it a try but wont hold my breath

We’ll have to wait for the plan on TESO? Is it a sub game? If not then it is absolutely no threat to GW2.

I think GW2 is a game meant for people to play when they want instead of being locked into a grind.

I don’t know why it would be make or break time any ways? Any MMO vet knows that these games are meant to only get better.

I feel GW2 has been a good value for me the last 5 months. When they release a new expansion, Anet has earned my purchase.

kailin.4905:

Come February GW2 will have been out for 6 months. There have been good times and bad, but I think most can agree we have all been waiting patiently for this game to turn the corner and become what we were told it would be. Tomorrow is the beginning of the trifecta of patches touted as an “expansions worth of content” and with it lies what could be a turning point for better or worse. Will real class balance be addressed in the coming months? It needs to be because right now only half of the classes in the game are on par. Will people have a reason to play TPvP or SPvP? Currently these areas of the game are dying fast. What about wvw and the zerg? How will they break the mass armies up and breath new life into the Altaric Valley of GW2? I know personally I am excited and a nit nervous to see what lies in store for us. I really like this game but am realistic in seeing that there are massive flaws. A weak spot in the armor that could bring it all down if not repaired. With TESO on the horizon things need to change and change fast. The community has listened to a half a year of vague plans and sat by patch after patch waiting for the method of minor tweaks to make things right. And well…in all honestly its been mostly disappointing. Lately in my guild I have heard a lot of players whos decision to stay here or move to other games really depend of what is coming in the next 3 months. Will anet deliver? I am cautiously hopeful but I gotta say I don’t have the confidence that I did on the evening of August 28th. What about you?

Actually none of what you listed here was ever promised nor is what needs to happen.
WvW should not being about mass pvp? Half classes being UP? You’re playing another game I guess.
And seriously, TESO? If you quit GW2 for a MMO whose combat is the clunkiest thing since ‘90s games, almost as turn-based-ish as FF11, then you’re very far from GW2’s audience.
It will last two months before it’s empty just like any other cash-grab MMO who use famous titles on terrible MMOs to leech off their fans.
I’m a #1 TES fan but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize a terrible MMO.

I’ve got lots of expectation for the patches released the next 3 months, but no make or break it.
I agree that GW2 need some work in balancing professions and fixing things, and sometimes i wish devs would stick on fixing duties instead of release new things. but I understand how new content help the longevity of the game.
On that point I found the idea of daily around the world like in GW1 awesome both for reward(and have an alternative way to obtain ascended item for the one who hate fractals) and to add value to the world they created to not let the world be a stage for leveling a hero and forgot it when the level cap is reached, otherwise the the dynamic event concept would be wasted.
In the end, no matter how many bugs there are, I still like this game and i think that time can only improve it and the absence of a subscritption mean only that if one day I got bored I can just stop and return after some times.

For anyone wondering what TESO is, its The Elder Scrolls Online.
And I don’t think the next few months will make or break the game, Ascended gear didn’t so I don’t think anything will.

Yah, I agree OP…. although I play GW2 in spurts, and I personally don’t think that it’ll ever be an everyday game for me. I’ve been apart of GW1 so I know that stuff happens all the time… but eventually it’s really like spending 60 bucks to a basketball game just to see your favorite player, it’s not really cuz the game has changed or anything.