Guild Wars 2

http://www.tentonhammer.com/galleries/ten-ton-hammer-best-of-2014-awards#3

Best Established MMO – Guild Wars 2

The winner of our game of the year award two years in a row, Guild Wars 2 remains one of the best MMOs on the market in 2014. Living World Season 2 is a shining example of how to inject meaningful, story-driven gameplay updates into an established MMO, and is just one of the many reasons why the Ten Ton Hammer editors selected Guild Wars 2 as our Best Established MMO of 2014.

Who’s Ten Ton Hammer again? Literally never heard of them.

Yeah, no.

Good try, but no, just no.

GW2 could win awards at release and I am confident that it is still a nice game. However, comparing how it was at release and what the company could have done the 2 years that followed.. it is just sad to see that not much has happened. Yes, GW2 is probably doing well, profit-wise and it has a huge population and it is still on the lists of most played online games. However, it is on a decline and without an expansion, proving that Anet is capable of returning the lost glory, GW2 will just end up as a successful MMO-release with no actual follow-up which is kinda rare in the MMO industry.

Since WoW, this has been the most successful commercial release. It is just sad that such a huge accomplishment would eventually fade away because the company wouldn’t take the right direction.

PS. I am not saying it is late. I still believe that GW2’s popularity can explode with a well-done expansion however I am persoanlly against the fact that LS can be enough as an updating-model. Even if it gets improved and we start to get everything from it. Still, it will not have the same promotional impact as an expansion. A game doesn’t only need happy players, it also needs promotional doses to hype it up in a good way. GW is luckily in a good position if something is to come up. The question is though if there is actually stuff to come..

nGumball.1283:

GW2 could win awards at release and I am confident that it is still a nice game. However, comparing how it was at release and what the company could have done the 2 years that followed.. it is just sad to see that not much has happened. Yes, GW2 is probably doing well, profit-wise and it has a huge population and it is still on the lists of most played online games. However, it is on a decline and without an expansion, proving that Anet is capable of returning the lost glory, GW2 will just end up as a successful MMO-release with no actual follow-up which is kinda rare in the MMO industry.

Since WoW, this has been the most successful commercial release. It is just sad that such a huge accomplishment would eventually fade away because the company wouldn’t take the right direction.

PS. I am not saying it is late. I still believe that GW2’s popularity can explode with a well-done expansion however I am persoanlly against the fact that LS can be enough as an updating-model. Even if it gets improved and we start to get everything from it. Still, it will not have the same promotional impact as an expansion. A game doesn’t only need happy players, it also needs promotional doses to hype it up in a good way. GW is luckily in a good position if something is to come up. The question is though if there is actually stuff to come..

Im pretty sure its not Anets fault, Anet are people with talent everyone can tell you that, is more like NCsoft, once again limiting them on doing mostly Gem store content for profit rather than actual content, this publisher is awful and this is the last time i bought an MMO from them. Anet dont forget, there are always kick starters, wink wink…

yes, let’s remove ncsoft from the equation and see what a miraculous thing the guildwars franchise becomes.. said no one adhering to logic, ever..

Filaha.1678:

Who’s Ten Ton Hammer again? Literally never heard of them.

Umm, they’ve been around for a long time and do these Best Of MMO reviews every year.

Congratulations, ArenaNet. On that note, sure would be nice if just one of these threads didn’t have you negative Nancies dragging out your talking points over and over again.

Cracks me up when I see people suggesting kickstarters to a company that has a revenue of several tens of millions of US dollars. What you gonna do with the kickstarter? Raise enough money to buy the air freshener in the company’s restrooms? Because I doubt it will be enough to buy tp for a month.

Anyandrell.6238:

Cracks me up when I see people suggesting kickstarters to a company that has a revenue of several tens of millions of US dollars. What you gonna do with the kickstarter? Raise enough money to buy the air freshener in the company’s restrooms? Because I doubt it will be enough to buy tp for a month.

it is obvious that you didnt get the point

Best MMO of 2014 is, hands down, Warlords of Draenor. Over 4 million players returning to the game made the choice and brought the award.

Guild Wars 2 is okay, but unless they baked the expansion for 2015, I can’t see it’s success.

They can call it what they like but for this fan of the original, this game was, and continues to be, a major disappointment.

yeah, i’m definitely resubbing my warcraft.. to be fair though, i have little complaint for ncsoft’s other titles this year.. and after reading this article, i’m afraid i can’t take anything off that site seriously

Neat! Guild Wars 2 is by far my favorite MMO of all time. GW2 is the only MMO out there that I am willing to spend tons of hours and money into without any regrets. No other games out there come even close to this one imo.

Honestly, if it was not for GW2, I would have given up on MMOs a long time ago.

Anyandrell.6238:

Cracks me up when I see people suggesting kickstarters to a company that has a revenue of several tens of millions of US dollars. What you gonna do with the kickstarter? Raise enough money to buy the air freshener in the company’s restrooms? Because I doubt it will be enough to buy tp for a month.

You are quite oblivious to the size of things kickstarter has funded/help fund so far, do you think a game like Star Citizen is something to scoff at?

but I agree with you somewhat, I doubt the reason we are not seeing an expansion is lack of funds or something like that.

1. Ten Ton Hammer?? Never heard of it until now.
2. Gw2 is only a feble shadow of it former self after release more than 2 years ago. Either the other games are even worse or the election isnt really representative. Im sure that other review sites and magazines had a different outcome in theirs.

Rym.1469:

Best MMO of 2014 is, hands down, Warlords of Draenor. Over 4 million players returning to the game made the choice and brought the award.

Guild Wars 2 is okay, but unless they baked the expansion for 2015, I can’t see it’s success.

Huge surge of players returning for an expansion isn’t all that surprising. It’s a given really for WoW. It’s if Blizzard is able to keep them all after they finish all the content within a couple months is the real hurdle. Because after all that, they only thing really keeping people playing and paying is dailies and rerunning raids.

I would probably think about going back myself for awhile, but them giving their players year long content droughts, this coming for a multi-billion dollar company, burned out any good will I have towards them. (Them adding a cash store didn’t help matters at all.)

GW2 is a good fresh mmo for newcomers but….

1st month – oh great game, graphics, love pvp, wvw, pve, I will play it every day.
2nd month – Its super game dungeons are great I play mostly every day.
3rd month – It’s ok game but feeling something is missin dont play long like before.
4th month – I am bored, nothing to do, gone to other mmo for a while but i will be back.

a year later – I am back anything new? Nope, well too bad :/…..

Ragnarox.9601:

GW2 is a good fresh mmo for newcomers but….

1st month – oh great game, graphics, love pvp, wvw, pve, I will play it every day.
2nd month – Its super game dungeons are great I play mostly every day.
3rd month – It’s ok game but feeling something is missin dont play long like before.
4th month – I am bored, nothing to do, gone to other mmo for a while but i will be back.

a year later – I am back anything new? Nope, well too bad :/…..

Other than the year later, I hear the same thing bout WoD. Unless you care bout raiding.

Marauding Scum.6728:

Anyandrell.6238:

Cracks me up when I see people suggesting kickstarters to a company that has a revenue of several tens of millions of US dollars. What you gonna do with the kickstarter? Raise enough money to buy the air freshener in the company’s restrooms? Because I doubt it will be enough to buy tp for a month.

You are quite oblivious to the size of things kickstarter has funded/help fund so far, do you think a game like Star Citizen is something to scoff at?

but I agree with you somewhat, I doubt the reason we are not seeing an expansion is lack of funds or something like that.

Ok, no, that’s funny. Kickstarter was a tiny infinitesimal fraction of Star Citizen’s success. It wasn’t even the original campaign. They added it to give funders a better way to access them.

There is no other crowd funded project in the history of crowd funding that has done as well as Star Citizen, and Star Citizen’s success cannot even come close to guaranteeing even the slightest level of success to any other company or project. They only got a couple million of there 60+ million out of kickstarter anyway.

It’s possible that ANet could have similar results. A couple million at best. But a couple million is a drop in the bucket for what they would actually need to do anything. All that couple million can do for a game company is prove to a producer that there are people willing to pay for it.

In this case they already have a producer, and a couple million isn’t going to impress them when they already have all the rights to the game anyway and can do what they want with it.

Dahkeus.8243:

Filaha.1678:

Who’s Ten Ton Hammer again? Literally never heard of them.

Umm, they’ve been around for a long time and do these Best Of MMO reviews every year.

That’s cool.

I still have never heard of them before. And considering the number of video game forums I frequent, that’s a significant achievement.

Filaha.1678:

Dahkeus.8243:

Filaha.1678:

Who’s Ten Ton Hammer again? Literally never heard of them.

Umm, they’ve been around for a long time and do these Best Of MMO reviews every year.

That’s cool.

I still have never heard of them before. And considering the number of video game forums I frequent, that’s a significant achievement.

I first heard of them when I was playing City of Heroes, but I only recently discovered it was an organization and not just a random fanboy. So it’s not that significant of an achievement. They’re not terribly relevant.

Filaha.1678:

Dahkeus.8243:

Filaha.1678:

Who’s Ten Ton Hammer again? Literally never heard of them.

Umm, they’ve been around for a long time and do these Best Of MMO reviews every year.

That’s cool.

I still have never heard of them before. And considering the number of video game forums I frequent, that’s a significant achievement.

I used their leveling guides eons ago back in the early days of WoW when you needed to grind mobs in specific areas to level. This was also in the days of Thottbot, may be before your time

I’m pretty surprised some of you haven’t heard of Ten Ton Hammer. It’s better, over all, than most of the MMO sites online. That and Kill Ten Rats are the sites I enjoy most.

Karizee.8076:

Filaha.1678:

Dahkeus.8243:

Filaha.1678:

Who’s Ten Ton Hammer again? Literally never heard of them.

Umm, they’ve been around for a long time and do these Best Of MMO reviews every year.

That’s cool.

I still have never heard of them before. And considering the number of video game forums I frequent, that’s a significant achievement.

I used their leveling guides eons ago back in the early days of WoW when you needed to grind mobs in specific areas to level. This was also in the days of Thottbot, may be before your time

Don’t patronize me.

I’m clearly not the only person that’s never heard of them, especially so since I’ve not seen them mentioned on any of the forums I go to before.

Doesn’t matter how long you’ve been going there. Doesn’t make them important.

More proof that the forums are the worst place to visit when you want to learn about new video games… And I don’t mean the original post, but the shovelstorm of bitter vitriole following it.

Congratulations ArenaNET, WELL DESERVED.

Rym.1469:

Best MMO of 2014 is, hands down, Warlords of Draenor. Over 4 million players returning to the game made the choice and brought the award.

And masses of them already left again because they are bored after 2 weeks or flame the forums about the worst expansion ever.

Filaha.1678:

Karizee.8076:

Filaha.1678:

Dahkeus.8243:

Filaha.1678:

Who’s Ten Ton Hammer again? Literally never heard of them.

Umm, they’ve been around for a long time and do these Best Of MMO reviews every year.

That’s cool.

I still have never heard of them before. And considering the number of video game forums I frequent, that’s a significant achievement.

I used their leveling guides eons ago back in the early days of WoW when you needed to grind mobs in specific areas to level. This was also in the days of Thottbot, may be before your time

Don’t patronize me.

I’m clearly not the only person that’s never heard of them, especially so since I’ve not seen them mentioned on any of the forums I go to before.

Doesn’t matter how long you’ve been going there. Doesn’t make them important.

So if one person hasn’t heard of them, they must not be important?

Beldin.5498:

Rym.1469:

Best MMO of 2014 is, hands down, Warlords of Draenor. Over 4 million players returning to the game made the choice and brought the award.

And masses of them already left again because they are bored after 2 weeks or flame the forums about the worst expansion ever.

At least they had an expansion.

Schwarzseher.9873:

Beldin.5498:

Rym.1469:

Best MMO of 2014 is, hands down, Warlords of Draenor. Over 4 million players returning to the game made the choice and brought the award.

And masses of them already left again because they are bored after 2 weeks or flame the forums about the worst expansion ever.

At least they had an expansion.

Yeah, but think about it. $60 + $15 for two weeks of entertainment….

Serophous.9085:

Filaha.1678:

Karizee.8076:

Filaha.1678:

Dahkeus.8243:

Filaha.1678:

Who’s Ten Ton Hammer again? Literally never heard of them.

Umm, they’ve been around for a long time and do these Best Of MMO reviews every year.

That’s cool.

I still have never heard of them before. And considering the number of video game forums I frequent, that’s a significant achievement.

I used their leveling guides eons ago back in the early days of WoW when you needed to grind mobs in specific areas to level. This was also in the days of Thottbot, may be before your time

Don’t patronize me.

I’m clearly not the only person that’s never heard of them, especially so since I’ve not seen them mentioned on any of the forums I go to before.

Doesn’t matter how long you’ve been going there. Doesn’t make them important.

So if one person hasn’t heard of them, they must not be important?

Yes, that’s correct.

Filaha.1678:

Serophous.9085:

Filaha.1678:

Karizee.8076:

Filaha.1678:

Dahkeus.8243:

Filaha.1678:

Who’s Ten Ton Hammer again? Literally never heard of them.

Umm, they’ve been around for a long time and do these Best Of MMO reviews every year.

That’s cool.

I still have never heard of them before. And considering the number of video game forums I frequent, that’s a significant achievement.

I used their leveling guides eons ago back in the early days of WoW when you needed to grind mobs in specific areas to level. This was also in the days of Thottbot, may be before your time

Don’t patronize me.

I’m clearly not the only person that’s never heard of them, especially so since I’ve not seen them mentioned on any of the forums I go to before.

Doesn’t matter how long you’ve been going there. Doesn’t make them important.

So if one person hasn’t heard of them, they must not be important?

Yes, that’s correct.

In this case many players havent ever heard of them. At least not in Europe.

Serophous.9085:

Schwarzseher.9873:

Beldin.5498:

Rym.1469:

Best MMO of 2014 is, hands down, Warlords of Draenor. Over 4 million players returning to the game made the choice and brought the award.

And masses of them already left again because they are bored after 2 weeks or flame the forums about the worst expansion ever.

At least they had an expansion.

Yeah, but think about it. $60 + $15 for two weeks of entertainment….

I already see the flames if ANet would bring out an expansion like that for $60 :

ANet you are so gready .. you just want to milk the money out of us .. expansion sucks ..

and i can’t even imagine what would be happen if they then announce :
ok .. we moved away from living story to expansions .. now this was all for the next
2 years so far beside maybe some new dungeons that only the top 5% of the players
are able to beat.

Tentonhammer does still exist?

Well, what is their method of measuring this “best”?

Established MMO #1: Regained 4.000.000 subscribers with a single expansion this year. Looks like success to me.

Established MMO #2: Expanded to China with very limited success (being kind here) while just trying to keep the status quo in the West. Sounds not as successful as MMO #1 to me.

Logic? Tentonhammer is not good at it.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Well, what is their method of measuring this “best”?

Established MMO #1: Regained 4.000.000 subscribers with a single expansion this year. Looks like success to me.

WoW in the end is simply the McDonalds of MMOs .. but does McDonalds really sell the best meal worldwide ?

Considering their heavy pro GW2 bias in prior pieces, this isn’t suprising. Most of their GW2 related stuff reads like ANet propaganda anyway.
Not saying the game is bad but there is a lot they could do better and it certainly doesn’t deserve best established MMO of 2014 :/

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Tentonhammer does still exist?

Well, what is their method of measuring this “best”?

Established MMO #1: Regained 4.000.000 subscribers with a single expansion this year. Looks like success to me.

Established MMO #2: Expanded to China with very limited success (being kind here) while just trying to keep the status quo in the West. Sounds not as successful as MMO #1 to me.

Logic? Tentonhammer is not good at it.

Since when does any MMO ind the industry compete with MMO #1?

nGumball.1283:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Tentonhammer does still exist?

Well, what is their method of measuring this “best”?

Established MMO #1: Regained 4.000.000 subscribers with a single expansion this year. Looks like success to me.

Established MMO #2: Expanded to China with very limited success (being kind here) while just trying to keep the status quo in the West. Sounds not as successful as MMO #1 to me.

Logic? Tentonhammer is not good at it.

Since when does any MMO ind the industry compete with MMO #1?

“We were number two to World of Warcraft with Guild Wars, now we want to beat them. We’ll be satisfied when the Guild Wars 2 is the most successful MMO… One MMO has been on the top of the heap for seven years now, but there’s been a progression in the industry for other games being able to attract more and more players. And we’re set to climb to the top.”

-Mike O’brien

Fernling.1729:

nGumball.1283:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Tentonhammer does still exist?

Well, what is their method of measuring this “best”?

Established MMO #1: Regained 4.000.000 subscribers with a single expansion this year. Looks like success to me.

Established MMO #2: Expanded to China with very limited success (being kind here) while just trying to keep the status quo in the West. Sounds not as successful as MMO #1 to me.

Logic? Tentonhammer is not good at it.

Since when does any MMO ind the industry compete with MMO #1?

“We’re in it to win it this time,” said O’Brien. “We were number two to World of Warcraft with Guild Wars, now we want to beat them. We’ll be satisfied when the Guild Wars 2 is the most successful MMO."

-Mike O’brien

Well now they’re #3, which isn’t bad at all. #3 however isn’t #1.

This bears repeating: The winner of our game of the year award two years in a row, Guild Wars 2 remains one of the best MMOs on the market in 2014. Living World Season 2 is a shining example of how to inject meaningful, story-driven gameplay updates into an established MMO, and is just one of the many reasons why the Ten Ton Hammer editors selected Guild Wars 2 as our Best Established MMO of 2014.

As one can read, they’re basing the decision on the story-driven gameplay and updates among many reasons not disclosed. And apparently, Guild Wars 2 is a twice-in-a-row winner.

Regaining 4 million players means you also lost 4 million players. So, logically, calling this established, given the criteria of releases and updates, isn’t sound.

Please keep this in mind.

Edit:

“We’re in it to win it this time,” said O’Brien. “We were number two to World of Warcraft with Guild Wars, now we want to beat them. We’ll be satisfied when the Guild Wars 2 is the most successful MMO."

-Mike O’brien

That’s pretty much the definition of a rah-rah-rah statement. Not a mission one. Let’s keep it in context please.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

This bears repeating: The winner of our game of the year award two years in a row, Guild Wars 2 remains one of the best MMOs on the market in 2014. Living World Season 2 is a shining example of how to inject meaningful, story-driven gameplay updates into an established MMO, and is just one of the many reasons why the Ten Ton Hammer editors selected Guild Wars 2 as our Best Established MMO of 2014.

As one can read, they’re basing the decision on the story-driven gameplay and updates among many reasons not disclosed. And apparently, Guild Wars 2 is a twice-in-a-row winner.

Regaining 4 million players means you also lost 4 million players. So, logically, calling this established, given the criteria of releases and updates, isn’t sound.

They lost 4 million players and were still the strongest MMO in the West. It is a sub based game, convincing 4 mio people to pay a fee every month next to also buying a full price expansion tells a lot. They actually give numbers of active accounts, because they have enough players and faith in their product.

How many active players has GW2? Nope, no official statement. Accounts created doesn’t tell us kitten in a B2P game.

And seriously, ANet got the title for the story?
Look at Season 2, do you (or tentonhammer) even realize how little story there is? If story was a factor, than this is even worse a joke of a descision. Other MMOs offered way more story-driven gameplay updates, called content patches or expansions.

Look a LotRO, three major content patches (not even counting the expansion which hit end of 2013), tons of story driven gameplay + many regions + new class. How does GW2 come even close to that?

The LS is slow, meager and more offline than online. This should have been a negative criteria for GW2…

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Tentonhammer does still exist?

Well, what is their method of measuring this “best”?

Established MMO #1: Regained 4.000.000 subscribers with a single expansion this year. Looks like success to me.

Established MMO #2: Expanded to China with very limited success (being kind here) while just trying to keep the status quo in the West. Sounds not as successful as MMO #1 to me.

Logic? Tentonhammer is not good at it.

Or they don’t measure success based on advertising budget. Who’d have thunk it.

I have people in my guild who played the WoW expansion, found they had nothing to do because of how dumbed down WoW has become and they’re back here. Imagine that.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

They lost 4 million players and were still the strongest MMO in the West. It is a sub based game, convincing 4 mio people to pay a fee every month next to also buying a full price expansion tells a lot. They actually give numbers of active accounts, because they have enough players and faith in their product.

How many active players has GW2? Nope, no official statement. Accounts created doesn’t tell us kitten in a B2P game.

And seriously, ANet got the title for the story?
Look at Season 2, do you (or tentonhammer) even realize how little story there is? If story was a factor, than this is even worse a joke of a descision. Other MMOs offered way more story-driven gameplay updates, called content patches or expansions.

Look a LotRO, three major content patches (not even counting the expansion which hit end of 2013), tons of story driven gameplay + many regions + new class. How does GW2 come even close to that?

The LS is slow, meager and more offline than online. This should have been a negative criteria for GW2…

For God’s sakes, I’m not the one who gave ArenaNet the award. Calm down. It’s not like they called your baby ugly by giving someone else the title.

Take it up with Ten Hammers if you feel that strongly about it.

Vayne.8563:

I have people in my guild who played the WoW expansion, found they had nothing to do because of how dumbed down WoW has become and they’re back here. Imagine that.

Fighting fire with fire. Hard to imaging that anyone would come back to GW2 for its complexity…

GW2 is not a bad game. But this award is just too much credit for the very little we got.

this “award” has as much credibility as wooden potatoes giving gw2 ‘game of the year’

Actually, I have a ton of respect for Wooden Potatoes given the information he gives to the community with his videos. So, if he in fact did give Guild Wars 2 Game of the Year, I’d give him more credibility.

Plus throwing him under the bus to make a point, and a poor one at that, wasn’t necessary.

But maybe that’s just me.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Vayne.8563:

I have people in my guild who played the WoW expansion, found they had nothing to do because of how dumbed down WoW has become and they’re back here. Imagine that.

Fighting fire with fire. Hard to imaging that anyone would come back to GW2 for its complexity…

GW2 is not a bad game. But this award is just too much credit for the very little we got.

They’re not coming back for it’s complexity. They’re coming back because this is, currently, a better MMO to them than the one they left. It’s happened to a lot of people over a lot of games.

And you might say, well you know, the industry sucks. No one has made a good MMO in recent years.

That may or may not be true. But if that is true, and this is the best of them, it deserves the award. I certainly think it’s better than other MMOs, including WoW.

It doesn’t have the advertising budget, and it didn’t have the timing WoW had, but that doesn’t mean it’s not as good or better.

Funny thing is that all those people, that want to tell us how great the new WoW expansion is, are still / again here instead in the WoW forums.

If i would change the game because i found one that is soooo much better, i would
also be in the forum of that game, instead of hanging around in the forum of a game
that i don’t even like anymore.

GW2 still the best MMO out there. Could be better of course, but as long as competition is dated (WoW) on Asian garbage (AA) Anet has nothing to worry about.

Beldin.5498:

Funny thing is that all those people, that want to tell us how great the new WoW expansion is, are still / again here instead in the WoW forums.

If i would change the game because i found one that is soooo much better, i would
also be in the forum of that game, instead of hanging around in the forum of a game
that i don’t even like anymore.

We have a winner. Give that man a prize.