Guild Wars 2

guildwars1 was not a failure.. so why did you change the NUMBER 1 REASON that it was different and was for several years the #2 MMO. (vertical progression). tbh.. all of your devs answers in the reddit interview make me cringe.. and im not alone. all of my friends that play this game feel the exact same way. we purchased guildwars2, BECAUSE WE LOVED GUILDWARS1!

there is a question to this threat – why did the devs feel GW1 was a failure?

Hawken son of Z.1367:

guildwars1 was not a failure.. so why did you change the NUMBER 1 REASON that it was different and was for several years the #2 MMO. (vertical progression). tbh.. all of your devs answers in the reddit interview make me cringe.. and im not alone. all of my friends that play this game feel the exact same way. we purchased guildwars2, BECAUSE WE LOVED GUILDWARS1!

there is a question to this threat – why did the devs feel GW1 was a failure?

…I’m sorry? I must’ve missed something when you made that huge leap in logic. As far as I’m aware, I don’t remember any devs saying GW1 was a “failure” so I’m assuming that this is your own assumption.

I don’t think they thought it was a failure but they obviously wanted to try and capture a larger market this time around and innovation is not a bad thing.

However, i think they could have stayed closer to the original than they did. I preferred many of the features as they were implemented in GW1 rather than their new incarnations.

GW1 was lacking in many areas such as jumping, swimming and non-instanced maps (even though I really miss vanquishing). It did need an update because of these missing features present in other games.

I did like in GW1 you didn’t need to worry about gear as much as you do in GW2 but it is really not they thing I miss the most about it. For me, it is the skill system in the first game (including multiple professions, large skill pool and skill capping from named bosses).

In the end, this is the game we have and I do enjoy it and will continue to play it but in the end would have rather have 5 years of expansions to GW1.

I did love the skill capping..especially gathering Elites. It made you explore the world a lot more. Ironically such a system would have been great for GW2 because it would force people into different zones and the population to be more spread out, thus negating to an extent complaints of barren areas.

Hawken son of Z.1367:

guildwars1 was not a failure.. so why did you change the NUMBER 1 REASON that it was different and was for several years the #2 MMO. (vertical progression). tbh.. all of your devs answers in the reddit interview make me cringe.. and im not alone. all of my friends that play this game feel the exact same way. we purchased guildwars2, BECAUSE WE LOVED GUILDWARS1!

there is a question to this threat – why did the devs feel GW1 was a failure?

They didn’t. It’s so much of a not-failure that it’s still online now, and you can play it.

Why on Earth would they make the same game twice?

Also, am I the only one who remembers the endless “raise the level cap” threads on the GW1 forums? The non-stop whining for it to be more like WoW, which eventually led to Eye of the North?

Doesn’t matter what the game’s like, there will always be someone who didn’t get the memo and wants something else.

“Why on Earth would they make the same game twice?”

Call of Duty has been doing that for years, made a lot of cash for them

The truth is that its one of the only mmorpg that is on part with WoW and there realty nothing else that has come out in the last 7 years that even close to that.

Paul.4081:

“Why on Earth would they make the same game twice?”

Call of Duty has been doing that for years, made a lot of cash for them

Lol bazinga! I am enjoying black ops 2 very much though, they have gotten pretty much everything right except for the non-dedicated servers, which let’s face it, CoD will never have because they are too cheap (console)

OT: I feel the same way as OP. Why so much change? There was a reason GW1 had the following it did.

What I’d pay for new content/expansion/campaign in GW1 …..

People may have complained about the cap level not being higher but it was never done, unlike some games lately. Also those dungeons were fun.

I don’t think anyone thinks GW1 failed in any way. But… it wasn’t an MMO. No persistent world, no more than one party on a map at a time, no trading post, no wvw, etc.

From GW1 to GW2 – The only thing that stayed somewhat the same is the lore.

Missy.7356:

What I’d pay for new content/expansion/campaign in GW1 …..

People may have complained about the cap level not being higher but it was never done, unlike some games lately. Also those dungeons were fun.

And took time to figure out what builds should be used, what skills to bring, trial and error which pretty much doesn’t exist in GW2. You can do basically any content with any utilities… it’s insanely boring. I am running the same build with the same utilities 24/7 on my thief. Crit/SA with power/crit/tough gear. There is literally no need to EVER change my build or utilities.

In GW1 you would run into all kinds of things like needing a necro’s corpse exploit skill or a skill that prevents enemies from rezzing, or what have you. In GW2, I haven’t once used scorpion wire or anything of the sort because why? It’s a complete waste. The devs didn’t design anything around much of our skills. You just go in, faceroll, collect your reward. What makes this even more disappointing is our incredibly tiny amount of utility skills to choose from, I mean how hard would it be to make us use some of them once in a while?

This game amounts to nothing but pewpew.

Gw1 was a corpg with instanced-maps. It’s not meant to be a mmorpg. Gw2 is a mmorpg with open environment. That’s why it has to accustom with the human nature in reality too. Mmorpg = a world that’s reflected from reality.

There’s hierarchy of needs, elitisms, dedication-get-rewards, skillful-get-rewards, sense of belonging to be with a group, seeking to feel special, seeking to be worth in something, to protect something, to feel motivated with something, feeding people’s needs of progression, seek something new everyday, taste something new everyday, to have leisure and most importantly, people in reality can only create light only when there’s darkness. That’s why in reality, people appreciate things more that comes with own effort.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

The closer the mmorpg is closer to human nature, the more successful it’ll be.
The reason: It’s inevitable that human nature will be shown in a virtual world that’s a reflects realism and people.

Hawken son of Z.1367:

guildwars1 was not a failure.. so why did you change the NUMBER 1 REASON that it was different and was for several years the #2 MMO. (vertical progression). tbh.. all of your devs answers in the reddit interview make me cringe.. and im not alone. all of my friends that play this game feel the exact same way. we purchased guildwars2, BECAUSE WE LOVED GUILDWARS1!

there is a question to this threat – why did the devs feel GW1 was a failure?

“ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.” -Mike O’brien, 11/27/12

http://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

Naoko.7096:

Gw1 was a corpg with instanced-maps. It’s not meant to be a mmorpg. Gw2 is a mmorpg with open environment. That’s why it has to accustom with the human nature in reality too. Mmorpg = a world that’s reflected from reality.

There’s hierarchy of needs, elitisms, dedication-get-rewards, skillful-get-rewards, sense of belonging to be with a group, seeking to feel special, seeking to be worth in something, to protect something, to feel motivated with something, feeding people’s needs of progression, seek something new everyday, taste something new everyday, to have leisure and most importantly, people in reality can only create light only when there’s darkness. That’s why in reality, people appreciate things more that comes with own effort.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

The closer the mmorpg is closer to human nature, the more successful it’ll be.
The reason: It’s inevitable that human nature will be shown in a virtual world that’s a reflects realism and people.

This is a frightening misunderstanding of game design, of the experience of human play, of psychology, and particularly of the work of Abraham Maslow.

Maslow’s model of human motivation (which in any case is now largely discredited) is intended to apply to the whole of human life, not to be micro-replicated into individual activities. It’s true to say that people are unlikely to play games (or feel comfortable playing games) when they feel their physical safety is not under control. But it’s not true to say that the game space should replicate and satisfy all of a human’s needs; the logical extension would be to say that people can’t enjoy a dungeon until they have a healthy guild and regular cybersex, because their emotional needs have to be met before they can self-actualize. That’s patent rubbish, and you look ridiculous for having suggested it. It would be analagous to the suggestion that for people to enjoy a hamburger it must offer them sexual intimacy, security of housing, and the potential for self actualization.

Specifically Maslow has nothing to say about whether humans enjoy challenge, or being rewarded for challenge. What he’s saying is that people are unikely to be motivated to seek out higher order challenges such as building their self-esteem or engaging in personal self-growth while their lower-order needs such as safety and social acceptance are failing to be met.

Appeals to authority work better when you understand what you’re talking about rather than just mis-linking a wiki page.

GregT.4702:

Paul.4081:

“Why on Earth would they make the same game twice?”

Call of Duty has been doing that for years, made a lot of cash for them

I meant from an artistic and creative standpoint. If your goal is just to take money from stupid people you may as well just run a pyramid scam.

Or make MMOs.

;)

Whether or not GW1 was an MMO, I’d rather play whatever it was than whatever MMOs are. If both were suspended over lava and I could only save one, I’d cut the rope on MMOs myself. They need to die.

Indeed that quote from Mike O was just ignorant. GW1 did have vertical progression in the sense that players got better and better at finding progressively better builds yet the absolute gear numbers remained the same. It was a very fluid game as far as power curve goes. I liked that. Seeing the game evolve over the years even though there wasn’t any number increases was a joy.

I really liked the introduction of the HoM. That alone was worth playing for and the pure sense of achievement from raising it to 50/50 was far more than any other MMO ever gave me. Horizontal progression at it’s best.
There should be some kind of overall achievement track in GW2 that mimics this. A completionist achievement in every section.

Plague.5329:

Whether or not GW1 was an MMO, I’d rather play whatever it was than whatever MMOs are. If both were suspended over lava and I could only save one, I’d cut the rope on MMOs myself. They need to die.

xD

So much THIS.

If being an MMO means that you have to have a needlessly high level cap, a boring passive trait tree, and a carrot on a stick then gladly count me out.

GregT.4702:

It would be analagous to the suggestion that for people to enjoy a hamburger it must offer them sexual intimacy, security of housing, and the potential for self actualization.

That would be one kitten of a hamburger!

Back on topic: I think developer perceptions of GW1 were rooted in their statement in the initial announcement that they were making GW2, to the effect that they had tons of ideas about games which the structure of Guild Wars would not allow them to do. There is a lot of frustration when you have an idea but cannot make it happen, and that may color their view of their first game.

I’d have to say that, financially, Guild Wars was not a failure. Its fans probably don’t think of it as a failure. Nor does ANet, despite the statement that its horizontal progression was “not that fun” by Mike O’Brien. After all, that statement is about gear, and gear was not a major part of the original Guild Wars.

Rukia.4802:

“ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.” -Mike O’brien, 11/27/12

http://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

What a fail reply by Mike O’brien. This just proves they don’t get it anymore. If they are wondering why GW died it’s because they completely abandoned all of us with no pvp balance or content to work on GW2 for YEARS. Anyone who actively played GW1 played it because IT HAD NO VP. Wow, is it seriously THAT HARD to get it through their heads? Jesus.

GW1 was NOT stagnant. I hate Mike O’brien with a passion now, I thought he was smarter than that. Just confirmation of the failure of GW2, it has no future with me.

My useless input?

Stagnant is a variable word and in a sense . . . yes. It was stagnant in one sense: the developers readily admitted they had no real idea what they could do further within the engine and design of the game. Hence they started GuildWars 2.

When the developers are unable to continue with a project it then is stagnant. They can add fun new little side things (and risk adding something which doesn’t work at all), they can try polishing what’s there (and risk of over-doing that) . . . but there’s no growth. It’s done expanding and reached the borders of what the developers can see.

No, GW1 was not a failure, it was a success. Wildly so, in fact. But there’s the classic problem of the question which follows a success:

“So what’s next?”

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Rukia.4802:

“ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.” -Mike O’brien, 11/27/12

http://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

What a fail reply by Mike O’brien. This just proves they don’t get it anymore. If they are wondering why GW died it’s because they completely abandoned all of us with no pvp balance or content to work on GW2 for YEARS. Anyone who actively played GW1 played it because IT HAD NO VP. Wow, is it seriously THAT HARD to get it through their heads? Jesus.

GW1 was NOT stagnant. I hate Mike O’brien with a passion now, I thought he was smarter than that. Just confirmation of the failure of GW2, it has no future with me.

My useless input?

Stagnant is a variable word and in a sense . . . yes. It was stagnant in one sense: the developers readily admitted they had no real idea what they could do further within the engine and design of the game. Hence they started GuildWars 2.

When the developers are unable to continue with a project it then is stagnant. They can add fun new little side things (and risk adding something which doesn’t work at all), they can try polishing what’s there (and risk of over-doing that) . . . but there’s no growth. It’s done expanding and reached the borders of what the developers can see.

No, GW1 was not a failure, it was a success. Wildly so, in fact. But there’s the classic problem of the question which follows a success:

“So what’s next?”

No the developers admitted that the engine could not support the ideas they had for Guild Wars Utopia. That’s why they started on GW2 and made EotN instead of Utopia.

That is a completely different issue from having horizontal progression and than kicking the community that likes this some more by calling it stagnant and not fun. Mike O’Brien is a fool for doing so. The only thing that statement accomplished was drive people away. Doesn’t matter if it was many or not.

Conner.4702:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Rukia.4802:

“ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.” -Mike O’brien, 11/27/12

http://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

What a fail reply by Mike O’brien. This just proves they don’t get it anymore. If they are wondering why GW died it’s because they completely abandoned all of us with no pvp balance or content to work on GW2 for YEARS. Anyone who actively played GW1 played it because IT HAD NO VP. Wow, is it seriously THAT HARD to get it through their heads? Jesus.

GW1 was NOT stagnant. I hate Mike O’brien with a passion now, I thought he was smarter than that. Just confirmation of the failure of GW2, it has no future with me.

My useless input?

Stagnant is a variable word and in a sense . . . yes. It was stagnant in one sense: the developers readily admitted they had no real idea what they could do further within the engine and design of the game. Hence they started GuildWars 2.

When the developers are unable to continue with a project it then is stagnant. They can add fun new little side things (and risk adding something which doesn’t work at all), they can try polishing what’s there (and risk of over-doing that) . . . but there’s no growth. It’s done expanding and reached the borders of what the developers can see.

No, GW1 was not a failure, it was a success. Wildly so, in fact. But there’s the classic problem of the question which follows a success:

“So what’s next?”

No the developers admitted that the engine could not support the ideas they had for Guild Wars Utopia. That’s why they started on GW2 and made EotN instead of Utopia.

That is a completely different issue from having horizontal progression and than kicking the community that likes this some more by calling it stagnant and not fun. Mike O’Brien is a fool for doing so. The only thing that statement accomplished was drive people away. Doesn’t matter if it was many or not.

Ehhh, it was just my two cents and thoughts which I wanted to put in text. I don’t feel much like going into exactly how I could understand his expression in regards to players, because I would rather look forward or elsewhere for now.

Wintersday is on it’s way, and I’m curious as to what’s coming with it.

GW1 did not stay on par with WoW financially…not even close. WoW made billions, Anet could have left NCsoft if they made Billions, GW1 eeked by according to the financial reports. GW2 is not perfect, its kept my interest for longer than GW1 did though. GW1’s main selling point for me was GVG, otherwise it was a digital ccg with graphics. It was stagnant..you were collecting skills like a deck of magic cards and stacking them up. Skill progression is no different than item progression, the only difference is you get to click different buttons..so your stimuli isnt a shiney..its a different formation of buttons…woo hoo..how utterly “skillful” you are. GW2 needs more features like GVG and it will be just fine. Gw1 fans wanted this game to cater to them and one very poignant thing that the AMA had was O’brien saying they werent going to cater to one group of fans anymore, that includes Gw1 fans and thats whats really infuriating you guys, you thought this was YOUR MMO.

Ditton.3149:

GW1 did not stay on par with WoW financially…not even close. WoW made billions, Anet could have left NCsoft if they made Billions.

Sure, but that ship has sailed. Dozens of companies have tried to make a WoW-clone and failed, because WoW got there first. The skinner box tactic only really works on someone once. There will never be another WoW.

WoW made it’s money by selling an addictive, expensive, unethical product. They give you a free sample to taste, then jack the price up sky high.

You could make billions selling crack too.

You shouldn’t compare GW1 to WoW. That’s just unfair. Look at it this way. My boss probably earns a rough million euros a year (or could pay himself that if he wanted). Does that mean I don’t earn good money with my 50k per year? One has to put things in perspective.

OK you’re right, WoW made billions. It’s the only MMO ever to achieve ten figures. Probably the only game ever. It’s an outlier, statistics 101 tells you to ignore WoW income numbers and focus on what’s the norm. Breaking even is already insanely difficult in the gaming industry.

On the other hand, GW1 still made a pretty solid income. Not billions but at least enough to pay for the prolonged development of GW2. For a company who’s only ever made 1 game, that’s a huge achievement. Dare I say this was exactly because GW1 did not have vertical progression? I wager that’s the only reason people were still playing it after 5++ years. At times I left for months and when I came back, my character was still just as powerful.

Perspective.

Chamone.6890:

Ditton.3149:

GW1 did not stay on par with WoW financially…not even close. WoW made billions, Anet could have left NCsoft if they made Billions.

Sure, but that ship has sailed. Dozens of companies have tried to make a WoW-clone and failed, because WoW got there first. The skinner box tactic only really works on someone once. There will never be another WoW.

WoW made it’s money by selling an addictive, expensive, unethical product. They give you a free sample to taste, then jack the price up sky high.

You could make billions selling crack too.

It doesnt matter, Gw1 had nowhere near the subscriptions either. You did not give me parameters to discuss or a regulation I had to follow, the statement was made that Gw1 is on par with WoW and that is a fallacy. In utility to the people who played Gw1? Yes, that much is probably true. In any sense of general numbers though like number of players, number of subs, money made..GW1 is not on par with WoW.

marnick.4305:

You shouldn’t compare GW1 to WoW. That’s just unfair. Look at it this way. My boss probably earns a rough million euros a year (or could pay himself that if he wanted). Does that mean I don’t earn good money with my 50k per year? One has to put things in perspective.

OK you’re right, WoW made billions. It’s the only MMO ever to achieve ten figures. Probably the only game ever. It’s an outlier, statistics 101 tells you to ignore WoW income numbers and focus on what’s the norm. Breaking even is already insanely difficult in the gaming industry.

On the other hand, GW1 still made a pretty solid income. Not billions but at least enough to pay for the prolonged development of GW2. For a company who’s only ever made 1 game, that’s a huge achievement. Dare I say this was exactly because GW1 did not have vertical progression? I wager that’s the only reason people were still playing it after 5++ years. At times I left for months and when I came back, my character was still just as powerful.

Perspective.

and Speculation. The major selling point for alot of pvpers that I knew of Guild Wars was simply the Guild vs Guild function and the fact that it was buy once play forever. They could leave, play whatever else they wanted and then come back on weekends for a GvG match, then leave again.

GregT.4702:

Naoko.7096:

Gw1 was a corpg with instanced-maps. It’s not meant to be a mmorpg. Gw2 is a mmorpg with open environment. That’s why it has to accustom with the human nature in reality too. Mmorpg = a world that’s reflected from reality.

There’s hierarchy of needs, elitisms, dedication-get-rewards, skillful-get-rewards, sense of belonging to be with a group, seeking to feel special, seeking to be worth in something, to protect something, to feel motivated with something, feeding people’s needs of progression, seek something new everyday, taste something new everyday, to have leisure and most importantly, people in reality can only create light only when there’s darkness. That’s why in reality, people appreciate things more that comes with own effort.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

The closer the mmorpg is closer to human nature, the more successful it’ll be.
The reason: It’s inevitable that human nature will be shown in a virtual world that’s a reflects realism and people.

This is a frightening misunderstanding of game design, of the experience of human play, of psychology, and particularly of the work of Abraham Maslow.

Maslow’s model of human motivation (which in any case is now largely discredited) is intended to apply to the whole of human life, not to be micro-replicated into individual activities. It’s true to say that people are unlikely to play games (or feel comfortable playing games) when they feel their physical safety is not under control. But it’s not true to say that the game space should replicate and satisfy all of a human’s needs; the logical extension would be to say that people can’t enjoy a dungeon until they have a healthy guild and regular cybersex, because their emotional needs have to be met before they can self-actualize. That’s patent rubbish, and you look ridiculous for having suggested it. It would be analagous to the suggestion that for people to enjoy a hamburger it must offer them sexual intimacy, security of housing, and the potential for self actualization.

Specifically Maslow has nothing to say about whether humans enjoy challenge, or being rewarded for challenge. What he’s saying is that people are unikely to be motivated to seek out higher order challenges such as building their self-esteem or engaging in personal self-growth while their lower-order needs such as safety and social acceptance are failing to be met.

Appeals to authority work better when you understand what you’re talking about rather than just mis-linking a wiki page.

Mmorpg is a mmorpg for a reason. You role-play as someone who you are not you in an alternate reality world. You control an avatar, but in a world with millions of people. In that alternate reality world, human nature are inevitably formed. A community where human nature takes it’s course.

If you want to play a game where human nature does not plays a part, I recommend you to play console games. There’re many rpg consoles where it’s between you and the npcs/challenges. You can play to the point to reach a wall and switch games each time you complete it’s story. In mmorpg, it’s people who creates their own story and memories with each other. They must not only creates memories between players and npcs/challenges. Mmorpg’ers must make memories between themselves.

You’ve no idea of the human nature, “People appreciate things of what they lack.”.
Fun often takes into account on how much people appreciate it.
In reality, people hardly appreciate things unless it’s exclusive and others doesn’t have.

Face it. Game designs between mmorpgs and console games are different for reasons.
Mmorpg must accustom to human nature if it wants to be successful. No, not just successful in making money, but delivering fun and precious memories. Console games are made without consideration of any interactions between 2 or more humans. Console games is a virtual reality only between players and npcs. Mmorpg must relate game with human nature of what is taken into consideration from people’s course of actions they would’ve taken in reality.

Gw1 was successful because the maps are fully instanced. It’s not an open-world. It’s closer to console games with multi-player options. So the lack of human nature doesn’t affects the game. In mmorpg, human nature is the vital element. This is why gw2 can’t follow entirely gw1 based on it’s success.

Rukia.4802:

“ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.” -Mike O’brien, 11/27/12

http://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

What a fail reply by Mike O’brien. This just proves they don’t get it anymore. If they are wondering why GW died it’s because they completely abandoned all of us with no pvp balance or content to work on GW2 for YEARS. Anyone who actively played GW1 played it because IT HAD NO VP. Wow, is it seriously THAT HARD to get it through their heads? Jesus.

GW1 was NOT stagnant. I hate Mike O’brien with a passion now, I thought he was smarter than that. Just confirmation of the failure of GW2, it has no future with me.

Proves he is a tool and does not get it. Then Why call it GW2 since it is nothing like GW1?
Right to play off the success of the game and use the members of that community to support you in this game until you throw them under the bus when it suits you.

That is how resentment is built and they then go out and make one hell of noise and how bad you and your company is- They NEVER let it go. Think SWTOR – SWG/NGE ect. Those groups made that game toxic and I see that happening here now.

It doesnt matter where I stand because the others are going to carry this a lot farther then I ever could and Anet may never recover.

Ditton.3149:

Chamone.6890:

Ditton.3149:

GW1 did not stay on par with WoW financially…not even close. WoW made billions, Anet could have left NCsoft if they made Billions.

Sure, but that ship has sailed. Dozens of companies have tried to make a WoW-clone and failed, because WoW got there first. The skinner box tactic only really works on someone once. There will never be another WoW.

WoW made it’s money by selling an addictive, expensive, unethical product. They give you a free sample to taste, then jack the price up sky high.

You could make billions selling crack too.

It doesnt matter, Gw1 had nowhere near the subscriptions either. You did not give me parameters to discuss or a regulation I had to follow, the statement was made that Gw1 is on par with WoW and that is a fallacy. In utility to the people who played Gw1? Yes, that much is probably true. In any sense of general numbers though like number of players, number of subs, money made..GW1 is not on par with WoW.

Where are you even going with this? It’s a fact WoW has made more money than GW1, no one even argued that it didn’t. If you ask any GW player they would tell you the same thing. They played the game because it had no VP and monthly fee and that it is the best MMO they ever played, including me. And I am still playing GW1 so all these people saying to go back to it (in other threads) can lay off because I can still voice my opinion on how horrible this sequel is.

And in my eyes, we were betrayed, it’s all about money figures now. It used to be about the players that loved GW, not once did GW ever gain VP and they handled that magnificently. GW had a heavy playerbase that was loyal and now they lost most of it, all of my friends have quit GW2, that is saying something. 10 people and we’re all back at GW vanquishing and trying our best to get some pvp going in a dead game. Because we would rather play that than this crap.

We along with our other guild mates planned on going full hardcore in GW2, completing all missions (oh sorry, crappy stories) and dungeons but instead pretty much facepalmed about a month in.

ANet used to care about US, so yeah, we did expect GW2 to be “OUR” MMO. Hence the outrage with all this 180 bullcrap on every philosophy they’ve ever had for the past 7+ years.

It’s an entirely new franchise with the name guild wars 2…. they should have named it world of wedontevenknowwhatwe’redoingcraft with all the funky randomness of adding a new tier of gear and horrible “balances” or lack thereof. I mean, GW has had a history of silly balances but wow GW2 pvp is just horrible.

Narkosys.5173:

Rukia.4802:

“ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.” -Mike O’brien, 11/27/12

http://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

What a fail reply by Mike O’brien. This just proves they don’t get it anymore. If they are wondering why GW died it’s because they completely abandoned all of us with no pvp balance or content to work on GW2 for YEARS. Anyone who actively played GW1 played it because IT HAD NO VP. Wow, is it seriously THAT HARD to get it through their heads? Jesus.

GW1 was NOT stagnant. I hate Mike O’brien with a passion now, I thought he was smarter than that. Just confirmation of the failure of GW2, it has no future with me.

Proves he is a tool and does not get it. Then Why call it GW2 since it is nothing like GW1?
Right to play off the success of the game and use the members of that community to support you in this game until you throw them under the bus when it suits you.

That is how resentment is built and they then go out and make one hell of noise and how bad you and your company is- They NEVER let it go. Think SWTOR – SWG/NGE ect. Those groups made that game toxic and I see that happening here now.

It doesnt matter where I stand because the others are going to carry this a lot farther then I ever could and Anet may never recover.

My thoughts exactly. And without a ton of vertical progression this game isn’t going anywhere. They tried to make GW2 half GW and half WoW, and it just doesn’t work. It’s linear, grindy, and all around boring with a dead world and they expect people to keep playing? Yeah… good luck with THAT.

I think this is the greatest mystery for me. GW1 had limitations but also did a lot of things right.

What surprised me most about GW2 is that there is no link to what was great about GW1 and what ended up being GW2.

You would think that if people like certain elements that you would want to keep those or something similar in the new game and then add new ideas to these solid original ideas that you worked out already.

I think for myself I really liked the old mission style of story telling much more than the story telling in GW2. I remember Anet commenting on the wall of text element and how they wanted to improve on it. That could’ve been a great improvement but I think they would’ve been better off not doing it considering the horrendous voice acting that they introduced in GW2.

A big thing from GW1 was builds. You had cookie cutter builds but it was also fun to create your own builds that were still viable and you could easily save and swap builds in just 2 seconds. The current skill bar has more slots (10 instead of but is less flexible. It’s odd because with weapon swapping you get to 15 skills or more for elementalists but you are stuck with fixed choices that are linked to weapons. My problem there is that I always have 2 skills in each weapon set that I don’t like. Interestingly enough I might use em in PvP but in PvE they are useless. The other thing is that even though you have more actual skills available there are much longer cd’s and that makes it that you don’t actually have more skills available. In essence, anything over 30 seconds is too long for a small skill bar like this to be considered part of your build strategy. Combine with that the fact that elite skills are often underpowered and I would prefer normal skills over elite skills and then we come to the final issue: dedicated slots. One must be a heal skill and one must be an elite.

All this together makes the skill bar far more rigid than in GW1. Also the trait system is not very transparent and if I take 5 points out of one tree and stick em in another I don’t necessarily notice any differences. In fact I’ve rarely seen people discuss builds or trait configurations cause they don’t really matter. The only thing you do hear is people asking me (Mesmer) if I have teleport with me but even that was rare.

So yeh all in all GW1 was more interesting to me and GW2 seems more of a hype game. Every month a new event with shineys is what I mean. You see this also in the monthly achievement.

I will never understand why they thought the materials needed for these ascended items make sense from a “non grind game” point of view, but perhaps they didn’t realise that in GW1 people grinded away to get elite armour sets because they were cool looking or got titles because they had rewards that people wanted.

I am sure there are many people here that like more powerful stats, but by itself they may not be enough to make the grind ok or even fun.

But anyways, all in all I think the main reason a lot of GW1 players are surprised at how GW2 turned out is that even the good ideas from GW1 are nowhere to be found in GW2.

Mitch.4781:

I did love the skill capping..especially gathering Elites. It made you explore the world a lot more. Ironically such a system would have been great for GW2 because it would force people into different zones and the population to be more spread out, thus negating to an extent complaints of barren areas.

yeah.. I’d like it alot if this (or something like this) was somehow re-introduced with some of the next expands

GregT.4702:

Why on Earth would they make the same game twice?

There were plenty of traits you could take, expand upon and add new things, not to make the same game twice. The open world, the jump, swim, dodge itself are major additions to GW1, if nothing else changed. No one said removing those changes, so it’s not the same game twice.

The issue is that its not a game only for GW1 fans, its not your MMO and yes, all companies are driven by money. Anet was under a failing company, this might be that company’s last chance to make money. So no matter how romantic we want it to be and how in touch with us the developers are, unless they are their own studio without a publisher like NCsoft over their head..they have to answer to a budget. I honestly wish this ascended issue would go away..because its the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what is wrong with this game.

Well, after reading all the comments, I have concluded that the reason I purchased this game, WAS to get off the never ending gear treadmill of WoW and Tortanic. I have my exotic gear and weaps, I will be farming for legendary weaps, but in my own time while I’m exploring the areas. If I get left behind in gear so what? It’s not what I personally am playing the game for. As for the people who want this, let them stroke their in-game kitten….it will not affect the way I play the game.

Yes, “Too much change is not change.” it could have been said by a Sylvari. Obviously, “no change at all is not change” -this is just logic-, anyone knows.

But there is evolution, evolution implies a series of features changes within a permanency of features. World of Warcraft is a good example of a game that has evolved and becomes better and better with time, despite of their philosophy of “If it works, do not change it”. Why? Because actually, if it works, do not change it, does not imply no change at all, but an evolutionary dynamic.

On the other side if you want to break with what you have previously done, and make a different kind of game, it is better to say it, and put to it another name. Guild Wars 2 should have a different name -say… “World of Wars”-, else it should have shared the main features of Guild Wars and be an evolution from Guild Wars.

I do not believe in any manifestos, so nothing to blame in this sense. I do not believe in changes that are a break from the roots, and I believe in evolution. I still hope that Guild Wars may evolve and converge.

Narkosys.5173:

Then Why call it GW2 since it is nothing like GW1?

That’s easy. Guild Wars is an IP as well as a game. GW2’s s background and setting evolved from that of GW1. There are a lot of references back to GW1, touches that I appreciate. Y’all are focused on one thing because it’s a hot button right now. If you step back from that a pace, you will achieve a better perspective.

Rancor Chiron.6178:

I don’t think they thought it was a failure but they obviously wanted to try and capture a larger market this time around and innovation is not a bad thing.

However, i think they could have stayed closer to the original than they did. I preferred many of the features as they were implemented in GW1 rather than their new incarnations.

GW1 was lacking in many areas such as jumping, swimming and non-instanced maps (even though I really miss vanquishing). It did need an update because of these missing features present in other games.

I did like in GW1 you didn’t need to worry about gear as much as you do in GW2 but it is really not they thing I miss the most about it. For me, it is the skill system in the first game (including multiple professions, large skill pool and skill capping from named bosses).

In the end, this is the game we have and I do enjoy it and will continue to play it but in the end would have rather have 5 years of expansions to GW1.

Hear, hear! Although I don’t think I could play another 7 years of GW1 after having played GW2. I do miss the things from GW1 you mentioned.

i’m betting right now they are wishing they named it something else, and this does have precident, I know John Smedley has often said he wishes they had named Everquest 2 something different because of all the moaning in the early days that EQ2 was not an exact remake with better graphics of EQ1.

My thoughts exactly. And without a ton of vertical progression this game isn’t going anywhere. They tried to make GW2 half GW and half WoW, and it just doesn’t work. It’s linear, grindy, and all around boring with a dead world and they expect people to keep playing? Yeah… good luck with THAT.

I agree they have no direction now except every direction and that isnt going to fly. They had what separated them from the others but now they are the same. But they dont seem to get that either. It is a weird discontent with the devs and the game. They implemented a very poor VP system and they are going to continue expanding it but they dont seem sure how.

There is a stunning lack of vision and drive in the game and frankly they dont have a lot of time to fix it because gamers have a fickle attention span. I hope they can fix it but I just wonder.

Gamers have a fickle attention span just like any consumer that buys something new… You want it to work and any kinks to be fixed swiftly (unless you buy the item specifically for the kinks). Otherwise, you return that product and probably try something else or move onto the next thing.

Hello,

As this thread has derailled in many ways, it is now closed.

Please remember to stay constructive and avoid of topic posting on the future.

Thank you.