Guild Wars 2

Aither.2859:

thaooo.5320:

Proved no such point, as I’m playing the game less than a casual, as I’ve proven on many threads. But you’re one of those people who mistakes posting and offering free advice to a failing company as ‘still playing’, so I can’t change your mind here.

The reason I said ‘formal education’ is because we don’t know about any self taught education, since the person of topic did not mention anything about it, I’d say it is non existent. Usually when a person rights a CV of themself, they include things like that to look their best. But you can argue against this all you like, to no effect.

Servers and networks cost next to nothing, so sorry but that’s a moot point.

I originally came in here to support the OP’s opinion, but after reading your posts I have to scream out the sheer ignorance of what you have described in your statements.

First of all you blame “capitalism” for the reason of GW2’s downfall. This is not the case as if the developers were true capitalists they would actually listen to the consumers in expanding to make GW2 a better experience, not continue the road with this linear nonsensical LS garbage.

While it may be true that some people like LS, it is quite apparent that the community wants a permanent expansion much like delving back into the areas of Cantha, or Elona. Anet had some very good material with GW such as; the ever expanding skills for each class, new armor, weapons, and dungeons with each new expansion. While it wasn’t perfect, the lore of the original GW was so much more interesting than the LS we have now through GW2. Learning of the human gods and fighting the likes of Shiro, and the destroyers was so much more intriguing and mystical than Scarlett ever could be.

To put it all in perspective capitalism is not the “evil” you believe it is, otherwise Anet wouldn’t have been able to develop like what GW is, and GW2 once was. In fact if capitalism didn’t exist you wouldn’t be playing the games those “passionate” developers as you put it had created because there would be no such things as a PC, video game console, or even tablet or Iphone. Capitalism is about profit and loss, I loved GW2 which is why I put hundreds of dollars into the gem store, but after going so long with no new areas, dungeons, or armor produced from the developer I stopped playing and stopped giving Anet my hard earned money until they come out with something new that I will enjoy. If Anet doesn’t comply than that will be one less customer for them as I will move onto the next best thing such as Everquest Next where the developers are listening to their consumers, or Black Desert online which looks absolutely amazing.

Well you then also made a mistake being not capitalistic (is that even a correct word) about it.
You wanted new content like maps and dungeons and so you put hundreds of dollars into the cash-shop. But the cash-shop does not give you any of that. So you helped to push them into the wrong direction. Then leaving leaving us with the mess. You see if you wanted that sort of stuff you should not have put money into the cash-shop but you should have both the content by buying an expansion (CE edition). Obviously that never came but if not enough people would have put money into the cash-shop pushing them towards more cash-shop focus we might have gotten an expansion.

I did buy the CE edition of the hoping to be able to buy the CE edition of an expansion about a year later meanwhile making sure to not buy gems as I do not want to support that.

The real issue here is that we’re not getting any more permanent content added to the game. That’s what the player base wants and sadly the LS stuff isn’t bringing enough of it in.

GW2 has been out for almost two years and we still haven’t gotten enough:

1)New weapons skins.
2)New armor skins.
3)New titles
4)New areas
5)New Legendary weapons
6)New skills ( Normal and elite)
7)New traits.

Beginning to see a pattern? Players are starved of things to do and goals to work towards. The game will become stale if this keeps up.

In a horizontal progression driven game the amount of new skins, new skills and new traits that have been added to the game since release is unacceptably low.

Both types of content have the potential to offer the same volume of stuff. However, here is how I see each of them:

Permanent content = Play it when I want, at my own pace.
Temporary content = Play it when the dev’s want me to, at their pace.

Personally I would much prefer a hybrid model. An expansion (maybe not as large as a standard model expansion) with story telling LS content. Give us permanent new zones, skills, JP’s, mini games, etc every half a year or quarterly (whatever is managable), with temporary dynamic events, story instances, world boss fights, etc, every few weeks or monthly, in between the permanent content releases.

Best of both worlds = more happy players.

Harper.4173:

GW2 has been out for almost two years and we still haven’t gotten enough:

1)New weapons skins.
2)New armor skins.
3)New titles
4)New areas
5)New Legendary weapons
6)New skills ( Normal and elite)
7)New traits.

1) Most are available indirectly from the Gem Store and a few by achievement completion.
2) Same as 1.
3) Meh. But key LS events do award special titles.
4) True enough. But a reasonable sized area needs permanent content. What level range should it be? Only available to high level characters or an alternative to some existing lower level ones?
5) Just what we need, more virtually unattainable items to complain about not being able to get.
6) We did get an extra healing…
7) What part of a simplified Trait system did you miss. Why do we need more choices that we can’t use? We get 14 points and 5 trait lines that can take up to 6 points each with a choice of three to six traits per pair of points on a trait line that we can choose one of. Well they did add a new grandmaster one for every trait line for every profession.

Danikat.8537:

I remember the days when each new campaign had utterly ruined GW1 to the point where no one played it any more. Balance across all game modes was completely, irreparably ruined by new classes and skills. All the new areas were horrible to navigate, had terrible mechanisms locking you out of parts to force you to grind through the whole storyline. New PvP modes were only ever farmed by bots because no real people would ever want to play them. And then to top it off the addition of heroes killed any hope that was left by turning GW1 into a single player game that was entirely for farmers.

Somehow i doubt that you ever really played GW1.
The expansions have were incredible and enriched the already epic game.
There is a reason why people still play it including me.

A big difference is you can enjoy GW1 while GW2 is a 2nd job.
You have to do this and this or earn that to get what you want.
Even the fights….. you are the hero in GW1 you can beat a boss or a group.
You needed to plan ahead and equip yourself.
Equipping is completely gone in GW2. There is nothing like a -30% damage from fire sword pommel or hilt. There is nothing like ICE bow strings.
A huge part of the fun is to see the plan coming together when fighting.

In GW 2 you are no hero, you are not even a janitor. Best case you are a janitor with thousands of other janitors sweeping the floor somewhere.

Most important thing of course is the game mechanic.
It was so much fun to play around with your skills.
The traid points were just to improve your skills you choose,
to shuffled around to the point you were happy.
Than adding the equipment to have a well round character …… pure fun

To make it short…..

GW1 did everything right and the people were asking for GW1 with better graphics and jumping and another expansion when thinking of GW2

vana.5467:

Just for the record, regarding the financial side of the original Guild Wars.
From an interview with Eurogamer in 2007:

"
Eurogamer: Guild Wars has been supported with lots of new expansion packs, perhaps to make up for the lack of subscription fees. Is this something you want to continue to do in Guild Wars 2?

Ben Miller: The Guild Wars business model has worked really, really well for us. We’re blown away by the success of the first game. We were three guys with an idea and now we’re a 130 person company supporting one of the biggest online role-playing games in the market.

We’re certainly not going to turn our back on the business model that got us here. It was really refreshing for players and carved out a niche in the market that is completely unsatisfied by any other games. I think you’ll see us do a lot of similar things with Guild Wars 2.
"

(source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-best-things-in-life-are-free-interview?page=2)

The reason that they decided to do GW2 instead of more expansions was most likely entirely because they had a lot of visions for the game that just couldn’t be accomplished in GW. Sadly, the people who had those visions have since left the company.

Yep, they left, unfortunately. Maybe they’ll come up with new games, though? Who knows, only time will tell!:)

Kurrilino.2706:

Danikat.8537:

I remember the days when each new campaign had utterly ruined GW1 to the point where no one played it any more. Balance across all game modes was completely, irreparably ruined by new classes and skills. All the new areas were horrible to navigate, had terrible mechanisms locking you out of parts to force you to grind through the whole storyline. New PvP modes were only ever farmed by bots because no real people would ever want to play them. And then to top it off the addition of heroes killed any hope that was left by turning GW1 into a single player game that was entirely for farmers.

---

Somehow i doubt that you ever really played GW1.
The expansions have were incredible and enriched the already epic game.
There is a reason why people still play it including me.

A big difference is you can enjoy GW1 while GW2 is a 2nd job.
You have to do this and this or earn that to get what you want.
Even the fights….. you are the hero in GW1 you can beat a boss or a group.
You needed to plan ahead and equip yourself.
Equipping is completely gone in GW2. There is nothing like a -30% damage from fire sword pommel or hilt. There is nothing like ICE bow strings.
A huge part of the fun is to see the plan coming together when fighting.

In GW 2 you are no hero, you are not even a janitor. Best case you are a janitor with thousands of other janitors sweeping the floor somewhere.

Most important thing of course is the game mechanic.
It was so much fun to play around with your skills.
The traid points were just to improve your skills you choose,
to shuffled around to the point you were happy.
Than adding the equipment to have a well round character …… pure fun

To make it short…..

GW1 did everything right and the people were asking for GW1 with better graphics and jumping and another expansion when thinking of GW2

+1….you are perfectly right. GW1 was awesome, we wanted an expansion of it with same mechanics, especially being able to freely choose what skills we wanted. GW2 on the other hand feel restricted, the skills are force onto you. There’s no “Build” building like we had in GW1. If they continue to go down this same road, the GW brand name is pretty much done.

Corpus Christi.2057:

vana.5467:

Just for the record, regarding the financial side of the original Guild Wars.
From an interview with Eurogamer in 2007:

"
Eurogamer: Guild Wars has been supported with lots of new expansion packs, perhaps to make up for the lack of subscription fees. Is this something you want to continue to do in Guild Wars 2?

Ben Miller: The Guild Wars business model has worked really, really well for us. We’re blown away by the success of the first game. We were three guys with an idea and now we’re a 130 person company supporting one of the biggest online role-playing games in the market.

We’re certainly not going to turn our back on the business model that got us here. It was really refreshing for players and carved out a niche in the market that is completely unsatisfied by any other games. I think you’ll see us do a lot of similar things with Guild Wars 2.
"

(source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-best-things-in-life-are-free-interview?page=2)

The reason that they decided to do GW2 instead of more expansions was most likely entirely because they had a lot of visions for the game that just couldn’t be accomplished in GW. Sadly, the people who had those visions have since left the company.

Yep, they left, unfortunately. Maybe they’ll come up with new games, though? Who knows, only time will tell!:)

Two founders left, in 2008, and one remains – Mike O’Brien.

As for Ben Miller, he is still, currently, a Developer at ArenaNet.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ben-miller/1/45a/895

It’s the same for everyone, it hard to understand the lack of new permanent content when you think about the huge potential Guild Wars 2 had.

Maybe LS season 2 will be more substantial than season 1.

Even then, no guild halls, no GvG, no new classes, only 2 new skills and they are healing skills nobody uses.

They spent way too much time balancing classes that didn’t need balancing for a WvW game type that isn’t balanced in the first place. WvW needs like twice more content and the removal of duplicated maps. But over all of this, it’s the lack of GvG that is killing this game.

5 years ago they said no GvG and instead we get WvW. Don’t know why you all are talking about it as if it was a possibility.

Have to say that the GW2 manifesto has proven to be a complete fraud. GW2 isn’t a patch on GW1 and I have no compulsion to keep grinding. The trait/skill system is shockingly bad, rewards/drops are ludicrous and the game is totally focussed on a drop in/drop out style of play – that isn’t an MMO or RPG it’s an FPS.

I still find more challenge and interest doing a FoW or UW run in GW1 than ANYTHING GW2 has to offer.

And yet what Anet think we want is a wardrobe, hairstyles and endless repetitive grind.

GW2 is bleeding to death…. perhaps it’s time to take Yeller out to the barn…

GW2 is not comparable to GW1. Of course I do regret that there were at least ten times more things in GW1 after 2 years.

I agree that GW2 is different, but it’s the continuity of the world we knew in GW1. Two third of it was scrapped because someone felt offended. All we got since the release was as good as 60% of the traits and skills: useless. Builds are worthless (only one or two are useful for each profession), new traists and healing skills does not have any purpose (since most of them are not as good as the ones we got on release), nothing new to explore except a zerg-paradise…

GW2 lacks the soul we found in GW1: each zone had its history, its conflicts, its importance… Here we have beautiful maps, but nothing interesting to do on them: who cares about the Reknown-heart farmer’s story? Who pays attention to the quaggan’s problems? All we do is finish as quickly as possible… I liked to make my character evolve for a purpose (kill Abaddon, Shiro, or the Lich), to witness cutscenes, to advance slowly in long missions… In GW2, I started skipping the blah-bah after mission lvl20, it was boring as hell! Plus, half of the game revolves around going into Orr and fighting Risen… Talk about originality… And except the last mission/dungeon, every other mission is far too short: go from point A to point B, kill the enemies, rinse and repeat.

If the game hadn’t had WvW, I would have quit a long time ago… GW1 is as rich as GW2 is poor.

I hope that with LS2 devs understood what the community wants: we want to witness the rise of an evil entity, fight against forgotten enemies, have customized characters and not fighters with the same skills since the rest are useless, we want to hate the Big Bad Enemy, we want to help NPCs reach the enemy to save the world and not do all the work for a salad-head to take the credit… We don’t want to fight “just to fight”, we want to live the game, we want to play a Role in that “MMORPG” (or rather MMOGGWP: Massively Multiplayer Online Grinding Game Without Purpose).

Things were implemented in the game, like polearms, and the icons were even updated. The players would die to have such new weapons, yet what do we get? 300-gem gloves, a bunch of minipets, and crates of useless content. Why don’t they just focus on creating some new weapons and skills (and swappable skills)? That would buy the game some time before its downfall…

As mush as I liked GW1, GW2 does not hold the candle to it. They could change the name of the game and have the same result: besides names, nothing link GW2 to GW1…

If you don’t like GW2, then don’t play – jeez. What are y’all, some type of martyrs?

They said, from the start, GW2 would be different from GW1. It is the fans that don’t want to change.

I am a fan of both.

GW1 was NOT an MMO (hence the first ‘M’ in MMO – MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE) – I mean the max you could have playing on one team was 12 – that is NOT massive. It is more static, now that I go back. I find GW1 very plastic and not very fluid at all. The instanced basis of GW1 is what makes it feel that way – the towns are just graphical lobbies, nothing more.

Dusty Moon.4382:

They said, from the start, GW2 would be different from GW1. It is the fans that don’t want to change.

They also said that everything we liked in GW1 would be back :/

I do like GW2, but the promises they made and didn’t keep kind of spoil the pleasure…

I am not against an expansion. I would love to see new skills, new zones, new armor, even a new race.

However, Factions was not a large ‘expansion.’ (Technically wasn’t an expansion, but we’ll use the term here for simplicity). People completed it in a day with their prophecies characters. Personally, I would prefer to see something larger in scope in regards to an expansion for GW2. As such, I expect it to take significantly more time.

Behellagh.1468:

I’m going to be called a white knight but here goes.

In my experience, if you don’t like the food or service at a restaurant and after numerous complaints to the owners, nothing changes, you stop going there.

What you don’t do is set up across the street from them on a folding chair with a bullhorn telling the arriving customers that the service and food stink and would be so much better if the owners just listen to you. If the place is still in business and they still get an decent clientele of regulars, where is your proof that what the owners are doing is wrong? Seems to be working out for them. Parking lot is always full and people seem to be enjoying themselves as they leave after their meal, only to return again several times during the month or even week.

I know. You all wanted something different. Something closer to what you had with the first game. It’s been over a year and a half since it went live. It doesn’t look as if your comments and complaints are making any headway. So when do you give up and move on, or move back since Guild Wars is still running? When do you stop jousting windmills?

So accept what good you can find in the game now, and by some of the posts it seems very little, or look for something better. I never understood how people can stay in abusive relationships and I’m seeing some of the same signs here. We’ll give ArenaNet another chance to see if Living Story 2 is any better. Maybe it’ll be different this time.

Honestly I think there’s a calling for therapists who specialize in getting people to leave MMOs they no longer like but can’t leave for some reason.

It’s called “escalation of commitment.” While not an official DSM-V diagnosis (at least I hope it isn’t =P), it does explain why long-timers malinger and rant on something they’ve invested so much time and effort into.

And the trait system in GW2 is terrible, who at Anet thought that was a good idea. They should just release the skills and let us create our own build like GW1, instead of playing the templates that they wants us to only play.

Things take time. Time isn’t something many people understand today especially the 20’something crowd. You know, those that have to have it now? We have all seen him or her just starry eyed looking at their latest gadget or smart phone and saying I’ll just do a search and BAM! There is the answer (right or wrong mind you) but they have something that they believe is the answer.

Never played GW1. Don’t intend to. Was caught up in DaOC then other MMO’s. Not sure the subscription model works long tern yet Blizzard still has over 7 million strong paying monthly fees and Blizconn is pretty popular. So who are we to judge? I sure in the heck am not. Holding that many subscribers for any length of time hats off to them. What do you say?

GW2 has three different meta’s of play and they are all in different states. Which is more popular is beyond me. I don’t have the stats in front of me let alone access to their databases to answer it. That is pretty much the only way “ANY” of us could answer these sort of posts or threads. We just don’t now but we all have opinions on the matter. Heck, I know I do. I only play WvW and in my opinion it is broke. Seasonal challenges are worthless just has the rewards are. The season can start and we already know who is going to be in what league and their result the first 5 minutes? Why is that? Because the server with the most number of players AND 24 hour coverage wins. Defending yields no rewards, flipping camps and towers does. Zergs rule the day and there is no incentive for a party of 5 outside the challenge we face. Heck, it is 2014 can we please have a meaningful portal with player statistics like the Camelot Herald????

Here is my $0.02 on the new latest shiny we call Wildstar. Picture if you will the Jetson’s cartoon then add in World of Warcraft with a pinch of Mars Attacks and that pretty much sums up the artwork and sound of Wildstar. Feel free to use that at will, I didn’t copyright it But yes, that is what it what it feels and looks like after playing it this past weekend. It pretty much borrowed 80% of Warcraft’s foundation surrounding dungeons, raids, arena’s, battle grounds, reputations, and of course gear progression. It then picked off a few of the GW2 concepts such has jump puzzles and dodging but stopped there more or less. Two factions and gear score. Subscription.

Is it fun? Sure, for a bit. Maybe longer. But if raiding isn’t your thing nor are rated arena’s or battle rounds or if you only like RvR or WvW then it really isn’t going to be your cup of tea. Why? The progression will kill casual or light players. Something GW2 has today going for it. We can, and in some cases do, take a break and when we come back our characters are still relavent.

Grass isn’t always greener but one thing is for sure. New games that garner attention like Wildstar or Blizzcon or new expansion packs for games is good. It brings attention to GW2 current stagnation. It is Arena Nets to loose.

Shen Slayer.3058:

And the trait system in GW2 is terrible, who at Anet thought that was a good idea. They should just release the skills and let us create our own build like GW1, instead of playing the templates that they wants us to only play.

You can create as many builds as there were VIABLE builds (I don’t mean builds like for HoH, AB, JQ,, etc that were arena specific) in GW1 (and there aren’t that many). Too many people use the cookie cutter attitude and say that is all there is, but there are more than that. What templates are they forcing down your throat? NONE – what you are saying is a player defined attitude, not the game. The same thing happened in GW1, there were only specific builds that people played and on the forums, people were complaining that there was not enough diversity.

They will never just give skills again, like in GW1, as it was too imbalanced and so many were just utter garbage.

I will leave my own anecdotal response as well, why not. That seems to be the thing to do in this thread.

I was in GW beta for a short time. I didn’t do much with it, and I determined very quickly that it wasn’t a game I would like. I thought it was beautiful at the time, but not a great game. I was then in GW2 beta. I did not initially have any interest in GW2 at all, having disliked GW I assumed it would be the same situation. I was playing TOR at the time and had been super psyched for that game. Then BioWare made a lot of decisions I didn’t like and I was quickly growing discontent, after less than a year of playing. I needed something else and GW2 was there. I immediately fell in love with the design and the mechanics. I heard about the Hall of Monuments and figured why not.

So I got GW. I tried to play it, I really did. I put in a concerted effort, but it is just so much what I remember it being. It’s not a hard game, like at all, but it’s so difficult to want to play it. There are things in GW that I would love to see in GW2, specifically being able to find a trainer getting a quest from him and then coming back and learning a new skill. I loved that the game would actively tell me to stop playing because I’ve been playing for hours and I should eat something or stretch. That’s really cool. Most of everything else, I’m kind of glad they don’t exist in GW2. I see no reason to change what they have or what they’re doing just to be like that game.

I played through all of the LS except the secret base part around Dragon Bash. I didn’t care for that one and took a break. Other than that I came back again and again to partake. Just before the end of Season 1 I got into Neverwinter. I’ve been playing that more and more heavily. With the conclusion of Season 1 I’ve taken a break again. And I’m taking a break from Neverwinter too, but not because I don’t like either game. I’m taking a break cause I can. They’re free to play, I can leave and come back whenever I like. I would be playing Watch_Dogs, but the PC controls are terrible, so instead I’m playing Final Fantasy VII. One of the greatest games of all time, ported to current generation technology, it’s amazing. I’m just biding my time, though, for Season 2. Will I play heavily once it starts? Probably not, I don’t need to. I’ll do the things relevant to the achievements, if there’s anything I really like I’ll do that a lot, and then I’ll play more of other stuff, cause I can. That’s the business model they’re using. Play when you like, if you like.

You’ve been playing for X hours, you might want to take a rest.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Shen Slayer.3058:

And the trait system in GW2 is terrible, who at Anet thought that was a good idea. They should just release the skills and let us create our own build like GW1, instead of playing the templates that they wants us to only play.

You can create as many builds as there were VIABLE builds (I don’t mean builds like for HoH, AB, JQ,, etc that were arena specific) in GW1 (and there aren’t that many). Too many people use the cookie cutter attitude and say that is all there is, but there are more than that. What templates are they forcing down your throat? NONE – what you are saying is a player defined attitude, not the game. The same thing happened in GW1, there were only specific builds that people played and on the forums, people were complaining that there was not enough diversity.

They will never just give skills again, like in GW1, as it was too imbalanced and so many were just utter garbage.

Sounds like you never even played GW1. You could put any skills in your skill bar in GW1 and level it up with skill points. Where as GW, the skill are force on me by the weapon I’m holding and traits are just utterly stupid. I don’t know why Anet stray away from GW1’s mechanic.

I really don’t get this fixation people have with boxed expansions. Expansions, Living Story Updates and standard DLC are all the exact same thing on a fundamental level, data that is added onto a game to expand the player’s experience. As it is all just data, how it is distributed has no baring on the content itself and in this day and age, digital distribution has rendered physical media all but obsolete. I can see it everywhere; Nintendo and Sony placing emphasis on their online shops (at least in their handheld consoles), the popularity of services like Steam, companies like Gamestop looking into new specializations, Blockbuster all but closing down. Digital Distribution has won.

Back on topic, people seem to have this dillusion that the Living Story is incapable of providing new classes, races, modes, maps and anything else associated with a traditional expansion. I say, if their both data, then that’s simply not the case. It seem illogical to assume otherwise. I see free2play games doing it all the time, so there’s absolutely no reason that Guild Wars 2 can’t with their Living Story.

Dual.8953:

I really don’t get this fixation people have with boxed expansions. Expansions, Living Story Updates and standard DLC are all the exact same thing on a fundamental level, data that is added onto a game to expand the player’s experience. As it is all just data, how it is distributed has no baring on the content itself and in this day and age, digital distribution has rendered physical media all but obsolete. I can see it everywhere; Nintendo and Sony placing emphasis on their online shops (at least in their handheld consoles), the popularity of services like Steam, companies like Gamestop looking into new specializations, Blockbuster all but closing down. Digital Distribution has won.

Back on topic, people seem to have this dillusion that the Living Story is incapable of providing new classes, races, modes, maps and anything else associated with a traditional expansion. I say, if their both data, then that’s simply not the case. It seem illogical to assume otherwise. I see free2play games doing it all the time, so there’s absolutely no reason that Guild Wars 2 can’t with their Living Story.

It can. It just hasn’t happened and we are what, few ticks shy of 2 years?

Again, 3 different play types 2 of which are in many cases broke (S/T PvP and WvW). Since broke is subjective let us just agree on stale? That seems a bit more accurate although putting beer goggles on yet still waking up with a gorilla doesn’t make it any less forgiving…

Devata.6589:

Well you then also made a mistake being not capitalistic (is that even a correct word) about it.
You wanted new content like maps and dungeons and so you put hundreds of dollars into the cash-shop. But the cash-shop does not give you any of that. So you helped to push them into the wrong direction. Then leaving leaving us with the mess. You see if you wanted that sort of stuff you should not have put money into the cash-shop but you should have both the content by buying an expansion (CE edition). Obviously that never came but if not enough people would have put money into the cash-shop pushing them towards more cash-shop focus we might have gotten an expansion.

I did buy the CE edition of the hoping to be able to buy the CE edition of an expansion about a year later meanwhile making sure to not buy gems as I do not want to support that.

You’re right that I did help create this mess by putting my money into the gem shop, but I was expecting for Anet to go in the direction they did with the original GW by developing expansions with the money they earned from the gem shop. There were so many signals pointing in that direction that I figured it would come to pass eventually, but after two years of waiting and a second LS on the way it is safe to assume Anet has taken a wrong turn towards disaster for the GW franchise.

Don’t get me wrong, GW2 was fun for a while and everyone was expecting some sort of new content to come out that wasn’t LS, we just didn’t know that Anet would screw it up this bad but that’s hindsight for you. We live and learn from our mistakes and I personally am rectifying my mistake by not supporting Anet until we get new permanent content. Who knows, maybe Anet did learn from their mistakes and this new LS2 will be like that of an expansion with a vast array of permanent content that will not be the likes of the Scarlett saga, but then again if wishes were horses we’d all take a ride.

This video explains it best about the hopes consumers had for the gem store and where Anet went wrong:

Celestial.8051:

Guild Wars Prophecies was released on April 28, 2005.

Guild Wars Factions on April 28, 2006, released exactly a year after Prophecies.

The third campaign, Guild Wars Nightfall, was released on October 27, 2006

So from April 2005 to October 2006…Guild Wars 1 had two new campaigns, basically expansions, that took GW1 to incredible new heights in terms of new areas, classes, story, gameplay, everything.

Now look at GW2. What have we gotten in the time since it’s been launched?

It’s not even remotely comparable to what was delivered in GW1. It’s staggeringly low.

Been saying this for almost a year but all the fanboys just keep talking about how Living story will give us the same amount of stuff. It wasn’t enough that they were wrong after the 1st year, they’ll continue to say it after 2 years. The idea that an expansion would “suck” to people who like the LS is ridiculous. So basically, you want less content with lower quality as long as it’s spread out over a long time? makes no sense.
The comparison is laughable. Just by sheer volume, nevermind how dumb GW2 characters & story are.

Corpus Christi.2057:

I’ll sum it up for you: the number of players quadrupled with the release of the first and the second campaign as compared to the original Guild Wars 1. Not to mention, just browse through random websites and you’ll see that the campaigns and the expansion have higher ratings than the original game.

Nothing more needed to disprove your argument.

Exactly….

siralius.9517:

Let me break it down for you guys, simply. Right now, I can log into GW2 but instead I’m going to read a book. Do you understand what I just wrote here? I. am. choosing. to. read. a. book. This is not good… This is not good at all…

What book is it?

Behellagh.1468:

Honestly I think there’s a calling for therapists who specialize in getting people to leave MMOs they no longer like but can’t leave for some reason.

I agree with the whole post, just wanted to point out this portion.

There is a Center for Net addictions. You can read about it Here.

Dual.8953:

I really don’t get this fixation people have with boxed expansions. Expansions, Living Story Updates and standard DLC are all the exact same thing on a fundamental level, data that is added onto a game to expand the player’s experience. As it is all just data, how it is distributed has no baring on the content itself and in this day and age, digital distribution has rendered physical media all but obsolete. I can see it everywhere; Nintendo and Sony placing emphasis on their online shops (at least in their handheld consoles), the popularity of services like Steam, companies like Gamestop looking into new specializations, Blockbuster all but closing down. Digital Distribution has won.

Back on topic, people seem to have this dillusion that the Living Story is incapable of providing new classes, races, modes, maps and anything else associated with a traditional expansion. I say, if their both data, then that’s simply not the case. It seem illogical to assume otherwise. I see free2play games doing it all the time, so there’s absolutely no reason that Guild Wars 2 can’t with their Living Story.

I think it relates to the perceived amount of added content. A box expansion that comes out after 18-24 months MUST contain a lot of content to warrant a box. It must take weeks or even months to explore all of it to death. DLC, that’s just one little thing. That’s horse armor. Free updates, mustn’t contain anything worthwhile if they are giving it away for free. It’s all psychological, it’s how PC gamers have been conditioned.

Behellagh.1468:

I think it relates to the perceived amount of added content. A box expansion that comes out after 18-24 months MUST contain a lot of content to warrant a box. It must take weeks or even months to explore all of it to death. DLC, that’s just one little thing. That’s horse armor. Free updates, mustn’t contain anything worthwhile if they are giving it away for free. It’s all psychological, it’s how PC gamers have been conditioned.

Big box content gets murdered in about a month. Then the ‘hardcore’ peeps will be crowing about “nothing to do” again. Eking out content the way Living Story does at least gets people coming back once in a while.

Granted, as someone above said, a big box release would draw a lot of attention for the game. I’d love to see a proper expansion.

But who sells PC games in stores anymore? BestBuy? Target is down to half a display shelf. Walmart displays tend to be disorganized piles in lock boxes. GameStop may have a rack of old, dusty boxes of outdated games.

The notion of a box release driving sales because it’s a form of advertising is long past. Other than Blizzard paying for shelf space to display their warchests and EA with Sims X expansions there isn’t a lot of box games on store shelves anymore, expansion or otherwise. PC Games are now primarily sold online through Steam, Origin or some other download service, and this includes expansions.

FenrirSlakt.3692:

siralius.9517:

Let me break it down for you guys, simply. Right now, I can log into GW2 but instead I’m going to read a book. Do you understand what I just wrote here? I. am. choosing. to. read. a. book. This is not good… This is not good at all…

What book is it?

“The Secret Agent” by Joseph Conrad