Guild Wars 2

When GW2 launched, it received amazing reviews, from both media and players, for a single reason – the developers understood that the player is more important than the game itself. They understood that, in order to set this game apart, they had to be different than any other MMO out there.

Understanding that, they knew the key was keeping us entertained – giving us something new and fun to do on a continual basis – a reason to keep logging into the game that didn’t require a credit card. They understood how to keep the game fresh, to provide a constant flow of quality content that kept us logging in week after week. And, it was content for everyone to enjoy.

After yesterday’s AMA, I worry that those days are now over for this game. They have moved from something unique and special to a me-too content model designed to push out expansions faster, with only a few content dumps (most of which will be raids) in between (and months apart). This is EXACTLY what every other AAA mmo does.

The devs argued that the faster pacing had to go away for quality reasons. But that reason doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The old system gave us Silverwastes, some amazing story experiences, the Marionette, the Breachmaker fight, Fractals, Guild Missions and much more. The new system will give us balance changes, a raid that fewer than 20 percent of the game will ever care about and MONTHS between actual new content updates.

The philosophy of “always give them something new and fun to do” that existed when the game launched is apparently gone, and that saddens me. It has been replaced with the EXACT SAME model used by the games I left to come here. In other words, they have moved the focus away from the players onto what is easiest for the studio.

GW2 gave me an experience I couldn’t find in other MMOs. Now the only reason to keep logging in (for many of us – not just me) is my friends and guild in the game.

The GW2 team needs to get back to the vision it had when the game launched – back to that concept of giving us something new and fun to do much more often than all of the me-too MMOs out there.

All of this said, I still hold out hope they will realize this again and get back to providing the great product that caused almost all media and millions of players to praise this game unlike any other MMO we had ever seen before. Only time will tell.

There was also a lot of complaints about dissapearing content with the old system and how once it was gone it was inaccessible and the game was exactly the same as it was at launch. It also meant that old story lines were inaccessible to new players. At best they could only read about what happened, not access it themselves.

Unfortunatly a couple of months after launch the game really wasn’t bringing in enough money so they had to completely change directions, and with HOTs it’s being shown even more.

Ridley.3691:

Unfortunatly a couple of months after launch the game really wasn’t bringing in enough money so they had to completely change directions, and with HOTs it’s being shown even more.

you have issue reading ncsoft’s financial report?? pre-hot it was looking good, but after hot things are not looking good, q1 2016 report will be very interesting, i suggest you learn how to read it.

Is the OP using the royal, “we,” or does he, perhaps, have a hamster in his pocket? Perhaps he just does not realize, for whatever reason, that he does not speak for the player base as a whole, a majority, or even a significant minority.

OP, It is okay to have an opinion. It is perfectly fine to express what you want out of the game. You do not need to imply rhat you are some sort of spokesperson for the poor unheard and abandoned masses in order to justify expressing your desires as a customer. A little honesty goes a long way.

With all due respect I feel more then Anet remembering why we play the game OP needs to remember an MMO has many different kinds of players. I am saying this even though I agree with the sentiment. I too enjoy the LS model much more then the Expansion model but its undeniable that for a lot of people that wasnt working and they asked for an expansion, they got one. Going forward its going to be a balance between the two as it should be.

Besides nothing is totally black and totally white.

While I enjoyed LS more and I loved the old Dynamic Events system with tons of small stories to enjoy in each map much more then the new super structured War path style of events I also love the new raids, finally good challenging content and the new maps are a marvel of exploration.

Well apparently:

“The April update is about reducing grind, clearing away some tedium, getting quickly to the fun, and improving rewards. We’ve always said that Guild Wars should be about having fun rather than preparing to have fun, and this will be a back-to-our-roots kind of update.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/

So there’s that for your hope?

The mistake they’re currently making is making it look like their focus is entirely on raids. According to the AMA, the raid team is very small, and thus raids should be cheap to implement, whereas the story team is larger and of course a lot more works goes into it. But by releasing only new raids, making them the center of attention, and only announcing raids as new content for the next several months, GW2 is looking just like every other generic MMO. I can see why however and why they focused HoT’s advertising on it, because back at the original launch, all the WoW players I knew quit a week in because they didn’t know what to do without raids to grind. A simple solo/story version of the raids to tie them in would have been good enough as a simple distraction.

Knowing that some SAB data was mined a while ago, it will probably be out soon, or maybe the hinted at Gauntlet will return. That should hopefully make a distraction while waiting for the story to return months later. But considering how long the story is taking, I don’t expect to see more than 1 season per expansion, with an expansion every 2 years.

I think one of the big reasons for this misconception that Anet is focusing entirely on raids, is simply due to when they are released. It is actually less so that they are focusing entirely on raids, but that they are focusing so little on raids that the single raid instance was not completed by the release date of the expansion.

It is not that raids are taking all of Anet’s effort, it is that they are so late in being implemented after the expansion’s release.

Then of course, raids have their own small, dedicated, and incredibly vocal hate group. I still do not understand why these vocal raid haters don’t also hate that WvW and PvP also get attention from the devs (however little amount of attention that is), as it is the exact same thing: content that they personally do not like exists in the game. The constant whining from this small group just makes it appear at first glance that there is a problem where there is not.

They need to step it up on Living World season 3. Their currently announced schedule for it is simply unacceptable for people who purchased HoT in the expectation that it would include not only what it launched with, but also a reasonable tail of new content. Then it’s been four months and counting with NO new content added, just rehashed holiday events, PvP tournaments, and that raid nonsense.

Just move people from other areas if the current Living World team isn’t able to keep up.