Guild Wars 2

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

I imagine 2 years from now people will still call this game new, right?

You name a single MMO that came into it’s own during the first year. That was fleshed out with a lot of end game content. Just one. I’ll wait here.

Most MMOs have either no end game, or tiny worlds, or tons of bugs. No one has a big huge world with lots of content and lots of end game and lots of bugs at launch nor do they have all that stuff a year later.

And you know, if it were easy, someone would have done it.

Rift came pretty close, except that the world was very small at launch and there were still some major gaffs. And people complained about no end game content.

Aion

You are joking right ???????? I remember the loud and long screaming over the imbalances etc on Aion. Still not fixed to this day either

Jazzabelle.6531:

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

I imagine 2 years from now people will still call this game new, right?

You name a single MMO that came into it’s own during the first year. That was fleshed out with a lot of end game content. Just one. I’ll wait here.

Most MMOs have either no end game, or tiny worlds, or tons of bugs. No one has a big huge world with lots of content and lots of end game and lots of bugs at launch nor do they have all that stuff a year later.

And you know, if it were easy, someone would have done it.

Rift came pretty close, except that the world was very small at launch and there were still some major gaffs. And people complained about no end game content.

Aion

You are joking right ???????? I remember the loud and long screaming over the imbalances etc on Aion. Still not fixed to this day either

Actually I forgot all about the balance issues, but I’m not a Pvper. Yes, there was tons of screaming about that, and also how many people were playing just one of the races and no one wanted to play the other one.

The problem I see with their current model of content updates is that it doesn’t (at least so far) add much permanent content to the game. For example, World of Warcraft in its first year added several high level dungeons, Battlegrounds, the Honour System a 40 man raid and a 20 man raid. You can’t really compare directly but my point is that that is a lot of content that is ‘in’ the game. Additional things you can do. Maybe the next update will make it outdated or obsolete to an extent but you can always go back and do it.

Personally I stopped playing GW2 back in November, came back for a couple of weeks in feb to check out F&F and then stopped playing until now. Nothing has really been added. There is still a lack of options at 80, just the place to hang around is South Sun not Orr for now. Not to mention that even levelling an alt (as people used to recommend while we waited for more content) is pretty tiresome now with the sparsely populated zones.

Jazzabelle.6531:

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

I imagine 2 years from now people will still call this game new, right?

You name a single MMO that came into it’s own during the first year. That was fleshed out with a lot of end game content. Just one. I’ll wait here.

Most MMOs have either no end game, or tiny worlds, or tons of bugs. No one has a big huge world with lots of content and lots of end game and lots of bugs at launch nor do they have all that stuff a year later.

And you know, if it were easy, someone would have done it.

Rift came pretty close, except that the world was very small at launch and there were still some major gaffs. And people complained about no end game content.

Aion

You are joking right ???????? I remember the loud and long screaming over the imbalances etc on Aion. Still not fixed to this day either

Well i did play a sin, and pvp was solid till they tweaked everything in the Balauar patch. They killed my class.

I only pvped and Rifts, Forts, Abyss.. were solid in the first month of release.

Vayne.8563:

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

I imagine 2 years from now people will still call this game new, right?

You name a single MMO that came into it’s own during the first year. That was fleshed out with a lot of end game content. Just one. I’ll wait here.

Most MMOs have either no end game, or tiny worlds, or tons of bugs. No one has a big huge world with lots of content and lots of end game and lots of bugs at launch nor do they have all that stuff a year later.

And you know, if it were easy, someone would have done it.

Rift came pretty close, except that the world was very small at launch and there were still some major gaffs. And people complained about no end game content.

Aion

Aion?? Did you even play the game? Did you visit the forums?

Aion released with a big world that had no quests in it. People ran out of quests completely and had to farm mobs over and over again to level in order to get to the PVP side of the game, so they could level some more.

The game had tons of bugs, not enough quests…and after the Asian release, when it released in the states, the retention rate was dreadful because of this.

Asians don’t mind EXTREMLELY grindy games and that’s really what Aion gave you. Not more content. A longer wait to get through the content they gave you. Eventually Aion has more content and more ques and more things to do…but that was more than two years after release.

I can’t even imagine of all the possible games you’d bring up Aion. I remember people freaking out over the fact that you simply ran out of quests and there was no way to level up without just farming the same bosses over and over and over again, until you leveled.

By western standards you could call it grindy, but i’d come from Korean games where the level cap was like 150. So i wouldn’t call it grindy at all. And you didn’t have to farm or grind to get to the PVP side of the game what are u on about? You could go to the abyss at level 20 and start entering rifts at level 20. I could get to level 10 in 2 hours and reach level 20 within a day. It was not hard to level at all.

Can’t comment on quests because I leveled through PVP and dungeons, I only really did pvp content, the abyss, forts and rifts were pretty solid and were good end game.

Did not experience any bugs.

Speak to anyone who played Aion at it’s release and that was the best the game ever was (expect for when they added Dreg) I can tell Vayne you didn’t reahc max or even half way .

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

I imagine 2 years from now people will still call this game new, right?

You name a single MMO that came into it’s own during the first year. That was fleshed out with a lot of end game content. Just one. I’ll wait here.

Most MMOs have either no end game, or tiny worlds, or tons of bugs. No one has a big huge world with lots of content and lots of end game and lots of bugs at launch nor do they have all that stuff a year later.

And you know, if it were easy, someone would have done it.

Rift came pretty close, except that the world was very small at launch and there were still some major gaffs. And people complained about no end game content.

Aion

Aion?? Did you even play the game? Did you visit the forums?

Aion released with a big world that had no quests in it. People ran out of quests completely and had to farm mobs over and over again to level in order to get to the PVP side of the game, so they could level some more.

The game had tons of bugs, not enough quests…and after the Asian release, when it released in the states, the retention rate was dreadful because of this.

Asians don’t mind EXTREMLELY grindy games and that’s really what Aion gave you. Not more content. A longer wait to get through the content they gave you. Eventually Aion has more content and more ques and more things to do…but that was more than two years after release.

I can’t even imagine of all the possible games you’d bring up Aion. I remember people freaking out over the fact that you simply ran out of quests and there was no way to level up without just farming the same bosses over and over and over again, until you leveled.

By western standards you could call it grindy, but i’d come from Korean games where the level cap was like 150. So i wouldn’t call it grindy at all. And you didn’t have to farm or grind to get to the PVP side of the game what are u on about? You could go to the abyss at level 20 and start entering rifts at level 20. I could get to level 10 in 2 hours and reach level 20 within a day. It was not hard to level at all.

Can’t comment on quests because I leveled through PVP and dungeons, I only really did pvp content, the abyss, forts and rifts were pretty solid and were good end game.

Did not experience any bugs.

Speak to anyone who played Aion at it’s release and that was the best the game ever was (expect for when they added Dreg) I can tell Vayne you didn’t reahc max or even half way .

I certainly reached more than halfway to max level. The PvP balanced was complained about everywhere. The whole Abyss thing lost more players than it kept. As for your personal taste in grind, or that the game’s PvE at least released incomplete, that’s again a personal taste.

It’s like people in this game who complain PvP released incomplete. The game was incomplete. It’s really that simple.

You could tell by the number of complaints on the forums.

You have no idea what I have and haven’t played but obviously we’re approach games from completely different angles. But to say the game had no bugs because you didn’t encounter any is just ridiculous. Did you even see the bug list at launch? It was many many pages long.

Edit: If you happened to have played the Western release of Aion, you’ll note it was two years after the Eastern release. The western release was the release of a two year old game, in much the same way Terra’s western release didn’t have all the problems that a new new release had. Some of those bugs were fixed by the time the game reached the west. And it still had tons of bugs.

Vayne.8563:

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

I imagine 2 years from now people will still call this game new, right?

You name a single MMO that came into it’s own during the first year. That was fleshed out with a lot of end game content. Just one. I’ll wait here.

Most MMOs have either no end game, or tiny worlds, or tons of bugs. No one has a big huge world with lots of content and lots of end game and lots of bugs at launch nor do they have all that stuff a year later.

And you know, if it were easy, someone would have done it.

Rift came pretty close, except that the world was very small at launch and there were still some major gaffs. And people complained about no end game content.

Aion

Aion?? Did you even play the game? Did you visit the forums?

Aion released with a big world that had no quests in it. People ran out of quests completely and had to farm mobs over and over again to level in order to get to the PVP side of the game, so they could level some more.

The game had tons of bugs, not enough quests…and after the Asian release, when it released in the states, the retention rate was dreadful because of this.

Asians don’t mind EXTREMLELY grindy games and that’s really what Aion gave you. Not more content. A longer wait to get through the content they gave you. Eventually Aion has more content and more ques and more things to do…but that was more than two years after release.

I can’t even imagine of all the possible games you’d bring up Aion. I remember people freaking out over the fact that you simply ran out of quests and there was no way to level up without just farming the same bosses over and over and over again, until you leveled.

By western standards you could call it grindy, but i’d come from Korean games where the level cap was like 150. So i wouldn’t call it grindy at all. And you didn’t have to farm or grind to get to the PVP side of the game what are u on about? You could go to the abyss at level 20 and start entering rifts at level 20. I could get to level 10 in 2 hours and reach level 20 within a day. It was not hard to level at all.

Can’t comment on quests because I leveled through PVP and dungeons, I only really did pvp content, the abyss, forts and rifts were pretty solid and were good end game.

Did not experience any bugs.

Speak to anyone who played Aion at it’s release and that was the best the game ever was (expect for when they added Dreg) I can tell Vayne you didn’t reahc max or even half way .

I certainly reached more than halfway to max level. The PvP balanced was complained about everywhere. The whole Abyss thing lost more players than it kept. As for your personal taste in grind, or that the game’s PvE at least released incomplete, that’s again a personal taste.

It’s like people in this game who complain PvP released incomplete. The game was incomplete. It’s really that simple.

You could tell by the number of complaints on the forums.

You have no idea what I have and haven’t played but obviously we’re approach games from completely different angles. But to say the game had no bugs because you didn’t encounter any is just ridiculous. Did you even see the bug list at launch? It was many many pages long.

Edit: If you happened to have played the Western release of Aion, you’ll note it was two years after the Eastern release. The western release was the release of a two year old game, in much the same way Terra’s western release didn’t have all the problems that a new new release had. Some of those bugs were fixed by the time the game reached the west. And it still had tons of bugs.

So you reached level 25 and didn’t realise you could start pvping the moment you hit 20 and even got a quest that sent you to the opposite factions territory to pvp.

There are always people complaining about imbalance, doesn’t mean they are right, in Aion , people were only complaining about sins because of their great potential in rifting but weak potential in fort raiding. The people who wanted to pve were getting disturbed by twink sins who would come out of no where and 3 shot them. Like in GW2 theives pick of opponents easily.

And i did not write there are no bugs, if you actually read what i typed i wrote “Did not experience any bugs” not “There are no bugs”.

If you’re a PvE player, not a whole lot has changed. If you were a WvW player, I’d stay away. WvW is just getting worse IMO. And depending on what tier you were in and how long you’ve been away, you might still be fighting the same servers that you were fighting when you left.

About the coolest feature IMO that they’ve added is a spectator mode in sPvP. They still can’t make a group finder tool apparently. So with the thinning population you can spend even more time in spamming zone chat channels looking for groups. Or alt-tab out of their game and use a 3rd party site. Because you know… great design for making a player feel like a part of the world you create is making sure the player Alt-Tabs out of it to find a group.

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

I imagine 2 years from now people will still call this game new, right?

You name a single MMO that came into it’s own during the first year. That was fleshed out with a lot of end game content. Just one. I’ll wait here.

Most MMOs have either no end game, or tiny worlds, or tons of bugs. No one has a big huge world with lots of content and lots of end game and lots of bugs at launch nor do they have all that stuff a year later.

And you know, if it were easy, someone would have done it.

Rift came pretty close, except that the world was very small at launch and there were still some major gaffs. And people complained about no end game content.

Aion

Aion?? Did you even play the game? Did you visit the forums?

Aion released with a big world that had no quests in it. People ran out of quests completely and had to farm mobs over and over again to level in order to get to the PVP side of the game, so they could level some more.

The game had tons of bugs, not enough quests…and after the Asian release, when it released in the states, the retention rate was dreadful because of this.

Asians don’t mind EXTREMLELY grindy games and that’s really what Aion gave you. Not more content. A longer wait to get through the content they gave you. Eventually Aion has more content and more ques and more things to do…but that was more than two years after release.

I can’t even imagine of all the possible games you’d bring up Aion. I remember people freaking out over the fact that you simply ran out of quests and there was no way to level up without just farming the same bosses over and over and over again, until you leveled.

By western standards you could call it grindy, but i’d come from Korean games where the level cap was like 150. So i wouldn’t call it grindy at all. And you didn’t have to farm or grind to get to the PVP side of the game what are u on about? You could go to the abyss at level 20 and start entering rifts at level 20. I could get to level 10 in 2 hours and reach level 20 within a day. It was not hard to level at all.

Can’t comment on quests because I leveled through PVP and dungeons, I only really did pvp content, the abyss, forts and rifts were pretty solid and were good end game.

Did not experience any bugs.

Speak to anyone who played Aion at it’s release and that was the best the game ever was (expect for when they added Dreg) I can tell Vayne you didn’t reahc max or even half way .

I certainly reached more than halfway to max level. The PvP balanced was complained about everywhere. The whole Abyss thing lost more players than it kept. As for your personal taste in grind, or that the game’s PvE at least released incomplete, that’s again a personal taste.

It’s like people in this game who complain PvP released incomplete. The game was incomplete. It’s really that simple.

You could tell by the number of complaints on the forums.

You have no idea what I have and haven’t played but obviously we’re approach games from completely different angles. But to say the game had no bugs because you didn’t encounter any is just ridiculous. Did you even see the bug list at launch? It was many many pages long.

Edit: If you happened to have played the Western release of Aion, you’ll note it was two years after the Eastern release. The western release was the release of a two year old game, in much the same way Terra’s western release didn’t have all the problems that a new new release had. Some of those bugs were fixed by the time the game reached the west. And it still had tons of bugs.

So you reached level 25 and didn’t realise you could start pvping the moment you hit 20 and even got a quest that sent you to the opposite factions territory to pvp.

There are always people complaining about imbalance, doesn’t mean they are right, in Aion , people were only complaining about sins because of their great potential in rifting but weak potential in fort raiding. The people who wanted to pve were getting disturbed by twink sins who would come out of no where and 3 shot them. Like in GW2 theives pick of opponents easily.

And i did not write there are no bugs, if you actually read what i typed i wrote “Did not experience any bugs” not “There are no bugs”.

As I said if you were playing the western release, you were already playing a 2 year old game. I’m actually referring to the original release.

Vayne,

I’ve been reading through a lot of your posts on these forums, and I can see you make it a point to defend ArenaNet for their decisions and game design. The problem is that it really sounds like you have no idea what you’re talking about, even though you may have years of experience with MMOs.

I think this needs to be cleared up right now: just because another game did it, does not make it okay to do it again. You make comparisons to other MMOs but why can’t you see Guild Wars 2 as a standalone product?

It’s not hard to see that Guild Wars 2 was released unfinished and unpolished to make a quick buck for its publisher, NCSoft. And yet, you’ve given the excuse that other MMOs were released mostly unfinished as well and had a plethora of problems. The big hole in your argument is that we’re in 2013 and the MMO market is a fairly saturated and mature market.

We’re nine months into Guild Wars 2 and the game still largely remains the same. While many improvements were made, the game is still essentially flawed at its core. This is pretty unacceptable given the fact that ArenaNet is no longer a fifteen man operation and currently has 300+ employees at their disposal.

If OP were to ask me the question, I’d say not much has changed. We haven’t really gotten anything for permanent content other than Fractals of the Mists, Southsun Cove, a few new items and some UI changes, character balancing, and that’s about it. For a game that’s nine months old, it’s simply inexcusable. What makes it even worse is that ArenaNet did not deliver on many of the promises that were made in the ArenaNet manifesto and maybe even regressed from it.

“I swung a sword, I swung a sword again” yeah, sounds like what you’ll be doing in Guild Wars 2 for the next two years. Maybe Guild Wars 3 will get it right.

The game has core problems and it’s not until the last 2 patches where we are starting to see a change in the design of content. Right now IMO, SouthSun is what every zone should be like in the terms of rewarding and even then it’s a mixed bag.

Building much of your core content strictly around the RNG monster is always bad news, there really needs to be unique rewards for different areas of the game and they need to be guaranteed rewards. I see some slow movement on ANets end that addresses that part, but yet they keep adding more things weighted so heavily on RNG, it’s really not good at all. It really does tick people off… The inflated rarity of things is a pretty big problem.

People also take a big issue with skills and their tie in with weapons… It’s not going to go away soon either.

I believe however, Vayne is correct in that spreading out the population isn’t a good solution to having people playing the starter zones more. But, in turn, making them more uniquely rewarding wouldn’t actually make things worse.

One thing to me is the Mystic Forge and it’s very centralized use around crafting unique items, it simply takes too much away from crafting professions. When i first heard about the forge, i thought what a great secondary mechanic, but it soon turned to such a primary focus, it became this really horrible thing.

How great would it be to get one random out of 20 different recipe to make say a FoeFires essence type weapon for completing all 4 paths of AC? How cool would it be that you would only earn this once per account? Also, the materials needed to craft it only came from areas around Ascalon. How uniquely rewarding does it become to be a weaponsmith and have the ability to craft something really cool that not many people will get? There’s a lot of stuff they can do like that, that would make playing the game so much more rewarding and fun, they just keep missing the boat.

dimgl.4786:

Vayne,

I’ve been reading through a lot of your posts on these forums, and I can see you make it a point to defend ArenaNet for their decisions and game design. The problem is that it really sounds like you have no idea what you’re talking about, even though you may have years of experience with MMOs.

I think this needs to be cleared up right now: just because another game did it, does not make it okay to do it again. You make comparisons to other MMOs but why can’t you see Guild Wars 2 as a standalone product?

It’s not hard to see that Guild Wars 2 was released unfinished and unpolished to make a quick buck for its publisher, NCSoft. And yet, you’ve given the excuse that other MMOs were released mostly unfinished as well and had a plethora of problems. The big hole in your argument is that we’re in 2013 and the MMO market is a fairly saturated and mature market.

We’re nine months into Guild Wars 2 and the game still largely remains the same. While many improvements were made, the game is still essentially flawed at its core. This is pretty unacceptable given the fact that ArenaNet is no longer a fifteen man operation and currently has 300+ employees at their disposal.

If OP were to ask me the question, I’d say not much has changed. We haven’t really gotten anything for permanent content other than Fractals of the Mists, Southsun Cove, a few new items and some UI changes, character balancing, and that’s about it. For a game that’s nine months old, it’s simply inexcusable. What makes it even worse is that ArenaNet did not deliver on many of the promises that were made in the ArenaNet manifesto and maybe even regressed from it.

“I swung a sword, I swung a sword again” yeah, sounds like what you’ll be doing in Guild Wars 2 for the next two years. Maybe Guild Wars 3 will get it right.

People see what they want to see…including you.

Point 1…you ignore the posts where I don’t defend, and even actively disagree with Guild Wars 2. You want to see a fan boy, so you see one. The only difference between me and other people is that I’ve yet to see an MMO less than a year old that I consider playable. Most of them are much much worse than this.

Point 2. Comparisons are inevitable. We learn from them as humans. we use them as humans. Not comparing games to other games in the same genre is simply not human. Of course we compare games. How else can you rate something in the absence of anything to contrast it with. A game is either more fun or less fun than other games. If you took every game by itself, what would you have learned.

The fact that you think I don’t know what I’m talking about is fine. It means about as much to me as any complete stranger saying the same thing. In fact, I think you’re so blind-sided by your singular point of view that you see nothing but expectations. Had you approached the game without those expectations, your entire experience might have been different.

But you know, I don’t really care if you think I know what I’m talking about or not. It makes zero difference to me. The fact that you have said in multiple posts I don’t know what I’m talking about tell me all I need to know about you.

So what I’m gathering from this post is

-Person is interested in possible coming back to the game

-Most responses warn away because:
-game is dying
-zones are dead
-new content sucks

This seems pretty on par for the responses around here it seems. You people won’t be happy until we’re all on 1 server, with only 1 town, and only 1 zone (with all permanent static content), with dungeons/pvp/wvw removed because gods forbid anything segregate the population. Cause if you can’t see the other players, the game is obviously dying and they don’t exist right?

Chris.7653:

HogWash.3928:

Been Gone for a while and thinking of coming back.
Hows the game these days?
How is the state of the necro?

I just came back myself…I know I will be flamed for this but it is my honest opinion…

Stay away man, right now it isn’t worth the hard drive space…The world was empty (Even had my friends on the populated servers look too) they put in a grind link system and it just seems like a mess…

All the problems I and many others complained about are still there for the most part…

ok whiteknights you can flame me now…

I’d have to agree, came back after being gone for a month the only time I logged was just the launcher so I could keep up with updates so there was no wait time for when I had planned on coming back.

If you are an open world only player PVE and you are one of the these three classes Ranger, Necro, Engineer, don’t even bother downloading the thing. It’s not worth it. I’ve pretty much decided to give this thing a whole year and come back to find out what’s happening then. Tonight (and some leetist trolls will be very happy about this) my hand is on the uninstall button as we speak.

I’ve pretty much had it with the horrible way they’ve handled loot. MORE RNG boxes are NOT the solutions for RNG Bags. Magic find is a joke and for some is the only way we even get things like unidentified dyes or T1-4 materials to appear. T5-T6 don’t drop hardly at all. Globs are still nerfed (it’s fantfreakintastic when you get your 1 daily allowed rare from a boss fight salvage the thing from the store bought salvage kits and get 0 globs for days).

Mystic toilet is the new crafting, basically crafting to 400 was only useful for making 1 set of gear and then poof it’s usefulness is dead.

Then there are the traits that still don’t work from BWE2 seriously it’s almost a year now, hire some contractors or something if you’re business is doing so well in the shop (they claimed that at their Q1 meeting recently).

The dungeon focus has gotten out of hand, instead of making them fun they’ve made them troublesome. If you’re not in zerker gear or zerker specced (burst dps) then gtfo in pugs. Healing is a joke most skills don’t offset the incoming damage like what other mmo devs have learned needs to happen at certain levels to make the healing balanced even against bosses. No direct healing bosses mysteriously put down a highly damaging AOE on your healing AOE spots 99% of the time making no healing occur but regen which is all but useless. 75% of the skills for healing on the engineer don’t scale with healing scores. Now they’ve begun to “adjust” the world mobs to make it harder to fight them and give those that are 65 resistances to damage you deal so fights last longer, even tho PVE has yet to be balanced properly to allow those classes that still can’t burst DPS properly to actually be equal.

Professionalism is dead and so is this game to me until they make the appropriate and necessary changes starting with learning from basic mmo design history specifically how to test, how to balance, and what not to do to hinder the progress of your players (DR).

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

So what I’m gathering from this post is

-Person is interested in possible coming back to the game

-Most responses warn away because:
-game is dying
-zones are dead
-new content sucks

This seems pretty on par for the responses around here it seems. You people won’t be happy until we’re all on 1 server, with only 1 town, and only 1 zone (with all permanent static content), with dungeons/pvp/wvw removed because gods forbid anything segregate the population. Cause if you can’t see the other players, the game is obviously dying and they don’t exist right?

The OP asked if it was worth coming back. If nothing has changed since he decided to quit, why blow smoke up his kitten and tell him to come back?

You missed the OTHER responses, the ones that kiss ANet’s butt:

- OMG, YES! This game is amazing!
- OMG, YES! Don’t mind the grind!
- OMG, YES! Everything wrong with the game is present in every OTHER game, so you should just suck it up and LOVE it!

OP: it should take you about 10 minutes to sign on and see if you want to waste your time with it. Give it a shot and make your OWN determination.

Great video on all the changes we’ve seen since launch. It kinda creeps up on you when you play every day but they’ve done A LOT with the game

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

The OP asked if it was worth coming back. If nothing has changed since he decided to quit, why blow smoke up his kitten and tell him to come back?

You missed the OTHER responses, the ones that kiss ANet’s butt:

- OMG, YES! This game is amazing!
- OMG, YES! Don’t mind the grind!
- OMG, YES! Everything wrong with the game is present in every OTHER game, so you should just suck it up and LOVE it!

OP: it should take you about 10 minutes to sign on and see if you want to waste your time with it. Give it a shot and make your OWN determination.

Yes there were a few overly ‘love love love’ but they are far, far outweighed by the ‘this game is dying’ ‘if you play x class dont bother’ crap.

The game is not ‘dying’. Yes, some zones aren’t jam packed with people. Yes, some servers seem to have less population. Yes, most people are trying out the new content so the majority of the player base can be found there. My point was that there are very few mid-range HELPFUL responses to threads like this. Generally speaking its either gloom and doom (which is usually the majority) or rainbows and lollipops. When the fact is that the OP could totally disagree with either spectrum, but he won’t know unless he opts to try it. The most helpful responses are ‘here are the changes, make your own decision’ which [if you look] most (probably 90%) of these are not, which was my whole point.

I do agree with you that he should sign on, play for a bit and evaluate himself. That’s the only way he’s going to get a clear picture of whether he’s going to enjoy it or not. However if he takes any of the majority of the comments here, well, he may as well go fishing.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

The OP asked if it was worth coming back. If nothing has changed since he decided to quit, why blow smoke up his kitten and tell him to come back?

You missed the OTHER responses, the ones that kiss ANet’s butt:

- OMG, YES! This game is amazing!
- OMG, YES! Don’t mind the grind!
- OMG, YES! Everything wrong with the game is present in every OTHER game, so you should just suck it up and LOVE it!

OP: it should take you about 10 minutes to sign on and see if you want to waste your time with it. Give it a shot and make your OWN determination.

Yes there were a few overly ‘love love love’ but they are far, far outweighed by the ‘this game is dying’ ‘if you play x class dont bother’ crap.

The game is not ‘dying’. Yes, some zones aren’t jam packed with people. Yes, some servers seem to have less population. Yes, most people are trying out the new content so the majority of the player base can be found there. My point was that there are very few mid-range HELPFUL responses to threads like this. Generally speaking its either gloom and doom (which is usually the majority) or rainbows and lollipops. When the fact is that the OP could totally disagree with either spectrum, but he won’t know unless he opts to try it. The most helpful responses are ‘here are the changes, make your own decision’ which [if you look] most (probably 90%) of these are not, which was my whole point.

I do agree with you that he should sign on, play for a bit and evaluate himself. That’s the only way he’s going to get a clear picture of whether he’s going to enjoy it or not. However if he takes any of the majority of the comments here, well, he may as well go fishing.

Mm, I’ll have to disagree with you. The game is dying. It’s just dying at a snail’s pace with more people leaving than people joining. Most level 80’s, including myself, saw that there was no point in continuing to play after the player got the strongest gear in the game. Some players will come back for the temporary events, but rarely do they stay on for more than a day or two because they remembered why they left. Other than that, I agree with everything else you said. You have to play for yourself to see if you like the direction the game is taking. Right now, it seems like Anet is slowly, very very slowly, edging its way to the “pay to enjoy” type of game. With the last event, Southsun, there were two options to get a Southsun weapon skin: Grind, or buy it with gems. I stopped trying to persuade people to leave while they had the chance, so I’m just going to say: watch the gem store closely. See what types of items Anet implements and watch your desire for those items rise. Those items will not be available anywhere except the gem store.

Karizee.8076:

Great video on all the changes we’ve seen since launch. It kinda creeps up on you when you play every day but they’ve done A LOT with the game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIgeldCpV68

Breakdown of an HOUR long video below

Fixed bugs
Profession balance
Allowed use of materials from bank slots while crafting
Can play on Mac
Content from Halloween- recurring temporary content
Costume brawl
Karma Jugs for dailies/monthlies
Exploration achievements
Titles viewable
4 new jumping puzzles
Explorable mini dungeons
30 new DE’s, including Skritt burglar
Lost Shores-Temp content- major infusion of precursors if you got to take part
Southsun Cove- includes new enemy types, pets, crafting materials
New build- apothecary
Dungeon reward overhaul
Better downscaled loot drops- (was supposed to always be in game in that form, would consider this a bug fix)
Fractals-Mini dungeons that scale up as you complete them over time, unique dungeon rewards for fractals
Ascended gear
Content from Wintersday- recurring temporary content
New build- givers
Increased diversity of drops from blc’s
Living Story content- All temporary content
Laurels system for dailies/ monthlies
Tweak daily and monthly choices- a lot of players now only log in for dailies, then stop
Guesting
Paid server transfers
Name/ appearance change
Orr updates- improved reward, karma inventory increased, more wp, enemy revamp
Legendary Tweaks
Item preview updates
Guild Missions-raiding
Leaderboards
World boss event chests
SAB- recurring temp content, possibly permanent at a later date
SPVP changes:
1vs1 ranked spvp
2 new spvp maps
spvp build locks
custom arenas
Spectator mode

WvW
removed orbs
fixed bugs/exploits
Breakout events
outmanned buff tweaked
WvW leveling
new skins
wvw culling
siege weapon tweaks
traps

People complain about the temporary content that brings us new and exciting stuff to do on a roster system to keep the game from being too boring. People complain about the game having no end game but then whinge about a possible upgrade in lvl and or needing to buy new armour/weapons. If there is no new stuff to motivate people to work for those things then why do we need this mysterious and hidden endgame for?

People crying on almost every game forum the game is dying maybe…. just maybe…. the games aren’t dying cos they do magically hang around for many years, just maybe its not the game that is dying but this new entitled gamer attitude is wishing it would. Old time players aren’t crying the game is too grindy they don’t cry that every bug isn’t fixed in the first 10 minutes in fact we just worked with what we had and had fun doing it.

GW2 has its problems but none of them are game breaking, how much fun you have playing the game is determined not by the content the game gives you but by how entitled you think you are. If you are the new breed of gamer who thinks the gaming company is your own personal kindergarten and its their duty to amuse and keep you happy then nah GW2 isnt for you

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

So what I’m gathering from this post is

-Person is interested in possible coming back to the game

-Most responses warn away because:
-game is dying
-zones are dead
-new content sucks

This seems pretty on par for the responses around here it seems. You people won’t be happy until we’re all on 1 server, with only 1 town, and only 1 zone (with all permanent static content), with dungeons/pvp/wvw removed because gods forbid anything segregate the population. Cause if you can’t see the other players, the game is obviously dying and they don’t exist right?

The OP asked if it was worth coming back. If nothing has changed since he decided to quit, why blow smoke up his kitten and tell him to come back?

You missed the OTHER responses, the ones that kiss ANet’s butt:

- OMG, YES! This game is amazing!
- OMG, YES! Don’t mind the grind!
- OMG, YES! Everything wrong with the game is present in every OTHER game, so you should just suck it up and LOVE it!

OP: it should take you about 10 minutes to sign on and see if you want to waste your time with it. Give it a shot and make your OWN determination.

This is probably the most disingenuous post in the entire thread. You don’t like something so anyone who does is kissing Anet’s butt. Do you realize how narrow and selective your point of view sounds. I don’t like basketball, but I admit many do and that’s fine.

The game is amazing to some of us. There is no mandatory grind to some of us (some people feel there is grind and some feel there’s no grind. You can’t both be right).

And there are things present in this game that aren’t present in others, if not individually than all in the same combination.

The idea that I have individual gathering nodes, the idea that no one can steal my kills, that I don’t have to wait around for a boss to respawn to get a reward for a quest, that I see people attacking an outpost and destroying it while I’m fighting them off, that the dynamic events (unlike the ones in other games) chain, the downed state, the way loot is handled (everyone gets their own, no rolling against others on the same team), the lack of a trinity….you can name ONE other game even half these things are in? When you add in no monthly fee and monthly content releases (whether you personally like them or not) I defy you to find one game that’s offered us this.

I get it…you don’t like the game. I haven’t liked other games in the past and I went and found games to replace them. Do you know why most people who don’t like this game are still here on the boards? Because the other MMOs they want back to aren’t as interesting as this one.

They’re just kitten that some changes to the content didn’t go the way they wanted them to.

Galtrix.7369:

Mm, I’ll have to disagree with you. The game is dying. It’s just dying at a snail’s pace with more people leaving than people joining. Most level 80’s, including myself, saw that there was no point in continuing to play after the player got the strongest gear in the game. Some players will come back for the temporary events, but rarely do they stay on for more than a day or two because they remembered why they left. Other than that, I agree with everything else you said. You have to play for yourself to see if you like the direction the game is taking. Right now, it seems like Anet is slowly, very very slowly, edging its way to the “pay to enjoy” type of game. With the last event, Southsun, there were two options to get a Southsun weapon skin: Grind, or buy it with gems. I stopped trying to persuade people to leave while they had the chance, so I’m just going to say: watch the gem store closely. See what types of items Anet implements and watch your desire for those items rise. Those items will not be available anywhere except the gem store.

Disagree all you want, but the fact remains that it is not dying. IF it were, you would see several things happening – larger discounts and pushes on box sales, massive advertising and more frequent trial weekends, server merges, less work on new monthly content as focus would shift to an expansion in the hopes of renewing interest, percentage discounts on buying gems to increase gem sales, etc. None of these things are happening, or are prevalent. Yes, we have had…I think, 2 trial weekends since the game’s launch. This is normal, it is a means for new people to ‘try it before buying it’ to determine if it’s worth the investment. In addition to this, NCSoft and Anet have both stated that the game is healthy, and the earning statement released recently supports these statements, and those statements (if I recall correctly) don’t include gemstore sales. I could be wrong, I don’t rightly remember. Also, Anet would not still be hiring if the game was doing poorly, they simply would not have the forecasted funding to do so.

Has the game lost some people? Sure. Has it gained new people? Yeah. Are all of the people that ‘left’ gone for good? Obviously not, since there’s been several threads about people coming back, and since the forum is only a SMALL percentage of the actual player base, how many others that we don’t know have come back and decided they like they changes? We honestly don’t know, and there isn’t any way to know unless Anet releases numbers to us, which is never going to happen.

People have claimed for years that GW1 was dying too, and now it’s 8 years old. People have cried for years that WoW is dying too…and you can see where that monster is at. Yes, the perception may be that the game is dying, but with some knowledge of company ‘tactics’ in regards to failing products and some research into company status, you’ll see that it really isn’t.

In regards to Anet moving towards more of a ‘pay to enjoy it’ type of game, yes and no. There will always be rare, desirable cosmetics in the gem shop. There have to be in order to keep people buying gems. Do I think they are pushing the gem shop a little much? Sure. I feel they could tone it down a bit. The store they implemented in GW1 had things that you could only get through real money (ie costumes) and that was/is fine. They just need to find a balance between what can only be obtained via gem purchase and what is farmable, which I can only hope will come in time.

Jazzabelle.6531:

People complain about the temporary content that brings us new and exciting stuff to do on a roster system to keep the game from being too boring. People complain about the game having no end game but then whinge about a possible upgrade in lvl and or needing to buy new armour/weapons. If there is no new stuff to motivate people to work for those things then why do we need this mysterious and hidden endgame for?

People crying on almost every game forum the game is dying maybe…. just maybe…. the games aren’t dying cos they do magically hang around for many years, just maybe its not the game that is dying but this new entitled gamer attitude is wishing it would. Old time players aren’t crying the game is too grindy they don’t cry that every bug isn’t fixed in the first 10 minutes in fact we just worked with what we had and had fun doing it.

GW2 has its problems but none of them are game breaking, how much fun you have playing the game is determined not by the content the game gives you but by how entitled you think you are. If you are the new breed of gamer who thinks the gaming company is your own personal kindergarten and its their duty to amuse and keep you happy then nah GW2 isnt for you

+1 for you bud

I did the same recently. Pretty much the same old game except that the drops kind of suck bi remember them being much better.

I really wish people would stop using the entitled argument. No one should be playing a video game that isn’t rewarding enough (in both fun and unique loot), if you are then there isn’t really much to say. Maybe you’re just generally bored or you don’t have enough going on in your daily life… I dunno. People are allowed to expect certain things, get over it.

Although the game is getting better with the rewards, it’s still really not that great. Some of the new content is a bit engaging, but it’s not really all that strong and is often riddled with bugs. The game has problems and in some ways those problems outweigh the good stuff. I find less and less motivation to play weekly and that’s not something i regularly find in games like this.

@Vayne: And how do you propose to make EVERY zone more appealing. In fact, I’ll go one better. If Anet makes every zone more appealing all at the same time, you’ll have no one to play with in the world.

What I would do are one of two things:
1. Make rewards from all DEs scale with your level, completely 100%. A DE in queensdale gives the same amount of silver, xp, and karma as one in Orr. The only issue is, how do you entice people to farm Orr (which is arguably the most difficult zone to move around at times). Orr specific currency(dare I say it..this game has too many currencies) where you purchase..whtever I dont know. Otherwise, you get the same rewards. This enables the player to choose where he/she wants to have fun. Killing a troll and Oak heart over and over in queensdale? Defending a bridge in Kessex? Opening the gate to CoF? Whatever you want, play how you want. Thats a core premise of the game, isnt it?

2. Same as above, but each zone reward a different currency to purchase different items. Maybe skins that are unique to that zone’s theme? Everyone loves skins! Now, trust me I HATE the thought of adding more currencies intothe game. But this would truely enable the player to play whever they want, receive the same XP/Gold/Karma as if they were in Orr, and be working toward, ahah!, character progression in terms of aesthetics.

cesmode.4257:

@Vayne: And how do you propose to make EVERY zone more appealing. In fact, I’ll go one better.

I don’t know how to make ALL zones more appealing, but they could at least make zones that have World Bosses more appealing, instead of having players waiting at the exact same spot for the boss to spawn, they could give incentive to those players for going around the zone, while they wait for the timer.

How to accomplish this without a new currency (we already have loads)
Add a new stackable ability, like Bloodlust/Life/Luck etc that increases when you are finishing events, each successful event adds another stack, until you either change zones or maybe until you die (arguable). This new stack will give you a boost in gold/karma/experience and it could also give a Magic Find boost to the big final chest. Chest loot is unaffected by Magic Find, but making the new stack affect chest drops will go a long way in making players roam around and do events in the zone, before fighting the big boss, players will stay in the zone, players will populate the zone etc

maddoctor.2738:

cesmode.4257:

@Vayne: And how do you propose to make EVERY zone more appealing. In fact, I’ll go one better.

I don’t know how to make ALL zones more appealing, but they could at least make zones that have World Bosses more appealing, instead of having players waiting at the exact same spot for the boss to spawn, they could give incentive to those players for going around the zone, while they wait for the timer.

How to accomplish this without a new currency (we already have loads)
Add a new stackable ability, like Bloodlust/Life/Luck etc that increases when you are finishing events, each successful event adds another stack, until you either change zones or maybe until you die (arguable). This new stack will give you a boost in gold/karma/experience and it could also give a Magic Find boost to the big final chest. Chest loot is unaffected by Magic Find, but making the new stack affect chest drops will go a long way in making players roam around and do events in the zone, before fighting the big boss, players will stay in the zone, players will populate the zone etc

Thats actually interesting. The more dynamic events you do… Also, we should be allowed to repeat hearts. There were some fun ones I would redo.

@maddoctor – having the boss move around the zone / spawn in a slightly different area might be interesting. could cause havoc too. might be nifty, but people would still whine

@cesmode – people complain that we already have too many currencies. instead of zone specific currency, why not just zone specific skins as drops, specific bosses drop a specific unique named exotic (something similar to greens in gw1), increase the likeliness of getting materials for that zone level from kills, that sort of thing. Would see an upswing in farming, if nothing else.

Vayne.8563:

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

So what I’m gathering from this post is

-Person is interested in possible coming back to the game

-Most responses warn away because:
-game is dying
-zones are dead
-new content sucks

This seems pretty on par for the responses around here it seems. You people won’t be happy until we’re all on 1 server, with only 1 town, and only 1 zone (with all permanent static content), with dungeons/pvp/wvw removed because gods forbid anything segregate the population. Cause if you can’t see the other players, the game is obviously dying and they don’t exist right?

The OP asked if it was worth coming back. If nothing has changed since he decided to quit, why blow smoke up his kitten and tell him to come back?

You missed the OTHER responses, the ones that kiss ANet’s butt:

- OMG, YES! This game is amazing!
- OMG, YES! Don’t mind the grind!
- OMG, YES! Everything wrong with the game is present in every OTHER game, so you should just suck it up and LOVE it!

OP: it should take you about 10 minutes to sign on and see if you want to waste your time with it. Give it a shot and make your OWN determination.

This is probably the most disingenuous post in the entire thread. You don’t like something so anyone who does is kissing Anet’s butt. Do you realize how narrow and selective your point of view sounds. I don’t like basketball, but I admit many do and that’s fine.

The game is amazing to some of us. There is no mandatory grind to some of us (some people feel there is grind and some feel there’s no grind. You can’t both be right).

And there are things present in this game that aren’t present in others, if not individually than all in the same combination.

The idea that I have individual gathering nodes, the idea that no one can steal my kills, that I don’t have to wait around for a boss to respawn to get a reward for a quest, that I see people attacking an outpost and destroying it while I’m fighting them off, that the dynamic events (unlike the ones in other games) chain, the downed state, the way loot is handled (everyone gets their own, no rolling against others on the same team), the lack of a trinity….you can name ONE other game even half these things are in? When you add in no monthly fee and monthly content releases (whether you personally like them or not) I defy you to find one game that’s offered us this.

I get it…you don’t like the game. I haven’t liked other games in the past and I went and found games to replace them. Do you know why most people who don’t like this game are still here on the boards? Because the other MMOs they want back to aren’t as interesting as this one.

They’re just kitten that some changes to the content didn’t go the way they wanted them to.

Yes, Vayne, I get it: you like the game. The fact you’re on kitten near every thread defending ANet illustrates that!

I don’t see where my post was “disingenuous”: I pointed out the opposite points that ShadowFlame pointed out and suggested the OP sign on and check it out for himself. There was a reason he quit playing the game, HE’D be the one to determine if there was a reason to come back.

As for why some people are here on the boards and not in the game? MAYBE because there’s more HERE than IN the game!!!? I come on here just to see what people are saying, whether I agree with them or not. Just because I don’t like the game does NOT mean I can’t complain about it.

BTW, Vayne: when the hell DO you play??? Looking at the timestamps on your LONG list of posts, I don’t see where you get time to sleep, post, and PLAY!!!

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

BTW, Vayne: when the hell DO you play??? Looking at the timestamps on your LONG list of posts, I don’t see where you get time to sleep, post, and PLAY!!!

He’s stated in another post (saw it somewhere, don’t recall where) that he don’t sleep much. Comes with being old (no offense to anyone here), you just don’t sleep as much. At least the older people I know never seem to.

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

Vayne.8563:

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

So what I’m gathering from this post is

-Person is interested in possible coming back to the game

-Most responses warn away because:
-game is dying
-zones are dead
-new content sucks

This seems pretty on par for the responses around here it seems. You people won’t be happy until we’re all on 1 server, with only 1 town, and only 1 zone (with all permanent static content), with dungeons/pvp/wvw removed because gods forbid anything segregate the population. Cause if you can’t see the other players, the game is obviously dying and they don’t exist right?

The OP asked if it was worth coming back. If nothing has changed since he decided to quit, why blow smoke up his kitten and tell him to come back?

You missed the OTHER responses, the ones that kiss ANet’s butt:

- OMG, YES! This game is amazing!
- OMG, YES! Don’t mind the grind!
- OMG, YES! Everything wrong with the game is present in every OTHER game, so you should just suck it up and LOVE it!

OP: it should take you about 10 minutes to sign on and see if you want to waste your time with it. Give it a shot and make your OWN determination.

This is probably the most disingenuous post in the entire thread. You don’t like something so anyone who does is kissing Anet’s butt. Do you realize how narrow and selective your point of view sounds. I don’t like basketball, but I admit many do and that’s fine.

The game is amazing to some of us. There is no mandatory grind to some of us (some people feel there is grind and some feel there’s no grind. You can’t both be right).

And there are things present in this game that aren’t present in others, if not individually than all in the same combination.

The idea that I have individual gathering nodes, the idea that no one can steal my kills, that I don’t have to wait around for a boss to respawn to get a reward for a quest, that I see people attacking an outpost and destroying it while I’m fighting them off, that the dynamic events (unlike the ones in other games) chain, the downed state, the way loot is handled (everyone gets their own, no rolling against others on the same team), the lack of a trinity….you can name ONE other game even half these things are in? When you add in no monthly fee and monthly content releases (whether you personally like them or not) I defy you to find one game that’s offered us this.

I get it…you don’t like the game. I haven’t liked other games in the past and I went and found games to replace them. Do you know why most people who don’t like this game are still here on the boards? Because the other MMOs they want back to aren’t as interesting as this one.

They’re just kitten that some changes to the content didn’t go the way they wanted them to.

Yes, Vayne, I get it: you like the game. The fact you’re on kitten near every thread defending ANet illustrates that!

I don’t see where my post was “disingenuous”: I pointed out the opposite points that ShadowFlame pointed out and suggested the OP sign on and check it out for himself. There was a reason he quit playing the game, HE’D be the one to determine if there was a reason to come back.

As for why some people are here on the boards and not in the game? MAYBE because there’s more HERE than IN the game!!!? I come on here just to see what people are saying, whether I agree with them or not. Just because I don’t like the game does NOT mean I can’t complain about it.

BTW, Vayne: when the hell DO you play??? Looking at the timestamps on your LONG list of posts, I don’t see where you get time to sleep, post, and PLAY!!!

Take a look at my achievement points if you don’t think I play. I just come here when I’m eating or taking a break.

I do, however, type fast.