Guild Wars 2

As a GW1 player I’ve never been more disappointed in Guild Wars 2’s apparent (and very sudden) change of direction. I have bought many character slots with gems to experience all the professions. Now it seems I’ll never get to experience my alts significantly because I need to be stuck grinding my main endlessly. And this absolutely kills the joy. Frankly I feel ashamed of myself for encouraging my friends to buy and play Guild Wars 2 on my credit card. I extolled many of the virtues of the game in reliance on the developer’s promises, which really convinced the ex-WoWers tired of grinding to turn to this game. Now I have to go back on my word simply because I trusted people who couldn’t keep theirs.

I understand that the game cannot possibly cater to the fancies of its entire community. I understand that there are people who absolutely love the introduction of vertical gear progression. There are people who absolutely trust and support Anet’s works in the future, in spite of this, and believe without a doubt that Anet still cares very much for its game and community. To me, however, that trust is all but shattered. And trust is very important.

In a community where the Developer has absolute and arbitrary power, we powerless gamers cannot do but trust the Developer to continue keeping the game enjoyable. Trust is what keeps the interests of Developer and players properly aligned. Don’t forget that the lack of a vertical progression is but ONE promise they have broken, and they have made other promises which may or may not be in your (any gamer) best interest to keep. Take Anet’s commitment to keeping this game from turning Pay to Win, from abusing its Gem Shop, or even to keep the game running at all? [Fact: Anet’s parent, NCSoft, has shuttered nearly half of its english MMORPGs it or its subsidiaries have ever developed.]

This may sound like fearmongering to you. But in the absence of trust, fear is all one has. And this fear is keeping me from ever enjoying this game from this point forward. I do not anticipate any amount of “noise” in the forums to make a difference beyond this point; the changes are likely here to stay. If I may indulge in the luxury of speculation, I’d say this sudden design change is not a rash decision by the developers. Nobody is more passionate and appreciative about a work of art than the artist himself.

Vertical progression may be a tried-and-tested marketing model. Still I do not understand why they would sacrifice its monopoly on no doubt a substantial player base in pursuit of a super-saturated competitive environment where countless other products have tried, and failed to get a foothold in the market. Just look at NCSoft’s other failures.

Yet, I have no place to comment. Anet is absolutely entitled not to listen to the 10,000 forum posts about this. It is after all their game, and no longer mine. I used to be super-enthusiastic about the one time event. Even after the changes, I wanted my characters to go out with a bang, to finish one last challenge and see a glimpse the next chapter of Guild Wars 2. But throughout the weekend I am absolutely repulsed by even the icon sitting on my desktop. For it represents to me what culminated in an elaborate lie and failed promises. As a final protest I am sitting out the event completely. Whatever last glimmer of irrational hope I harbor for this game, I am suppressing it to make a difference on the player count that Anet no doubt tracks the progress of. Honestly I cannot see how Anet can untangle this mess and restore Guild Wars 2 from this point without breaking more promises. I am certain a number of others are sitting this event out as well because of this. So I hope Anet would see this as a sign of things to come. Because people. will. leave. And what is an MMO without your core community? Perhaps when we have left, Anet might stop removing bot accounts, because that’s all the liveliness that remains to inherit what’s left of Tyria?

I agree with you 100%. I haven’t logged in since Thursday as I am also sitting the event out. After it’s over, I will continue to play WvW until the game reaches the point where you either have Ascended gear in WvW or go home and then that is exactly what I will do. I don’t know how long that will be but I can promise one thing, I’ve made my last gem shop purchase or any other sort of purchase for this game. I pre-purchased 2 copies of the game and have spent around $80 in gems since launch but now I am just going to be a freeloader until I leave for good.

Anet seems to be clueless about the decision to make Fractals of the Mists accessible to people under lvl 80, because now you see advertised everywhere “lfg FOTM lvl 80 exotics only”

Feed the elitists some more. And tease the one’s who have that much higher to reach for. Just like every other game you said you wouldnt be.

I agree, but something i’d like point out is that isn’t their first promise that was broken. The way they advertised this game, the whole thing was false*. Most notable one is the endless grind.

You’re not missing anything by sitting it out.

I had missed out on GW1. I was playing NWN online and loving it, but once I got doing MMO’s I never got around to it. GW2 was supposed to be the spiritual successor to GW1 and improve upon it. I feel betrayed. This expansion is not Guild Wars. Vertical progression is not Guild Wars. I guess I missed out.

Count me out too.

Like I mentioned in the other post, I login last night just to test out the bug fix and logout. My Ele is still bug-gy like kitten. Not surprise at all.

I believe Areanet has been so busy with rushing out those new grinding contents that they don’t really give a kitten about profession bug fixing.

I’m sitting it out not because I want to, but because I can’t join on it. It’s dawn on my time when it’s happening.

O_O

Those 10k posts represent how many dozen unique posters?

The cool thing about a guildwars game is you can skip whatever you like. Just play the way you wanna play.

Define “grind”.

I’ve experienced 7 of the 9 fractals. I’ve only done a few explorable dungeons. I rarely farm karma in PvE. I have two level 80s and the power of my characters is on par with most others. I mostly play WvWvW and I enjoy the new content when it comes out (Lost Shores, Halloween etc.)

I’m a full-time student at a university, work almost full time, have a girlfriend and yet I can still play Guild Wars 2 pretty efficiently.

So please, define “grind” in your own words.

mulch.2586:

Those 10k posts represent how many dozen unique posters?

The cool thing about a guildwars game is you can skip whatever you like. Just play the way you wanna play.

Until the point you need that gear to compete in wvwvw. Heck even players wanting full ascended gear for older instances that most players will not run because they need better gear from the new zone. Its the beginning of a gear grind to always try to get new pants with slightly better stats.

I would like to come tomorrow, but after sitting in Lion’s Arch overflow today for an hour with nothing to do but watch a line of text change. Tomorrow I will be turning my alarm clock off and getting a few hours extra sleep.

Not getting up early on Aussie time to spend 2 hours dying to invisible mobs and AEs to finally get 2 blues and Shaman’s Medallion from a chest.

The main thing that I HATE is that they are saying “we don’t care about skill balancing so we only have 2 people working that but we care about how the game looks so people will buy it, once they buy it we get the money so that’s all that matter.”

All I know is I’m pretty heartbroken, and haven’t logged into GW2 at all this weekend. Not sure if I ever will again. Time will tell. This sort of feels like a breakup: painful, yet something of a relief. No clue why I’m still lurking on the forums. I guess I had a higher emotional investment in the game than I’d realized.

Maybe this wouldn’t have been such an issue if they hadn’t called it “Guild Wars 2”. Using the Guild Wars name kind of sets some expectations.

Oh well. All good things come to an end eventually. Some sooner, some later.

You really gotta wonder if everyone in charge of this game for the last 5 years is off on vacation and are going to arrive back to work to find out that some idiot decided to roll this shortsighted nonsense out.

…just wishful thinking.

I quit logging in also, maybe logged in a couple times to see whats going on in chat, people seem oblivious to what is going on in-game. It should be extremely obvious why Anet is doing what they are doing just like EA/Bioware screwed up their almost perfect rpg shooter.

Hey at least I got Skyrim to play and their new expansion coming soon. MMO’s nowadays are all about screwing the player over while taking their money. I should have given up on MMO’s after GW1 but you know…

The sad part is that these opinions on this forum are actually very well written in a calm and mature tone. That says to me that a huge portion of the Guild Wars 2 player base is actually adults or mature young people that had set their hopes high concerning this game. The problem is that players want to have an impact on their game not a themepark slideshow where they have absolutely no influence on things whatsoever. There is no housing, no guild halls, heck even no Guild Wars and items you create do not have your name attached to it. Like the personal story its actually a ride trough a premade script that is actually not about you but a group of adventures and their infighting. This upgrade should have been the inclusion of housing, guild battles and fixing existing bugs. Instead of that we get a bugridden lag and zergfest where we are, in essence, simply bystanders. GW2 will never die as it has no monthly fee and there are always people wanting to play it. What WILL happen is that the mature role play minded people that had set their hopes high on this game will indeed quit and start to look again for that modern UO like game

oh thank god , I thought i was the only one getting this vibe , lately I’m “trying” to love GW2 but it’s getting harder and harder to swallow with these odd changes and what not.
if this keeps going on , i might as well just forget it and jump to the next best thing … what ever it may be

the first one time event broke on the overflow i was in. so i cba to try the 2nd one.

probably a good thing too, because i guess it was just 40 minutes of standing around then 10 minutes of w/e it was supposed to be.

Yeah, sitting this one out too.
First I´m dead tired by the end of the day these are on for me, then I don´t see how running the zergs with 1 fps will benefit me any.

Glad I didn´t invite anybody to this.
I´m embarrassed enough at the abysmally programmed client´s gfx performance, let alone showing how ungracefully the server handles overload.

Taking a good nap instead and/or watching Formula 1.

Agree with OP. I’m very disappointed with where they’re headed. I’m not only skipping this event but also ceased playing altogether.

I only ever dipped my toe in GW1, but understand it had essentially the same gear plateau for 7 years. I came to GW2 to get away from the grind, and to get to a system like that.

The journey from 1-80 was enjoyable enough and I got my fill of the dynamic events and such, but found most of my later levels spent in WvW. When I hit 80 and with some light to moderate effort, finished off my exotic armor set, I felt a great sense of relief that I could now enjoy the mode of the game I preferred without any regard to having to do other content I did not enjoy, to stay on a level playing field.

That has all been shattered with the beginning of the gear treadmill that is Fractals. I have no desire to run those dungeons for 100 hours to collect a few pieces of gear. Let alone hundreds more in the future when the rest of the items are released. And yet by not doing them, I will slowly start becoming less and less competitive in the game mode I do still enjoy, which is WvW.

The devs have said that eventually more paths to upgrade will become available but judging by their slow fixes so far, I’m not too confident when or how well this is going to happen. And if it doesn’t soon enough, if parts of the game continue to get neglected and treated like second class, then there will be no reason to stick around. Most people came to GW2 for the philosophies, and design ideas originally laid forth, and now those are no longer true, and seem almost to be getting trampled on actually.

The problem is every company (or their parent company) wants a mega hit, that is going to compete with the likes of Blizzard. It’s not going to happen and dozens have already failed in going down that road trying to steal their customers. Instead GW2 should have been happier with the more niche market they did already have, who were being offered something here that wasn’t available anywhere else. Now it looks like it won’t even be available here, so what is to distinguish GW2 from a dozen other treadmill clones out there? I see nothing.

Chuo.4238:

All I know is I’m pretty heartbroken, and haven’t logged into GW2 at all this weekend. Not sure if I ever will again. Time will tell. This sort of feels like a breakup: painful, yet something of a relief. No clue why I’m still lurking on the forums. I guess I had a higher emotional investment in the game than I’d realized.

Maybe this wouldn’t have been such an issue if they hadn’t called it “Guild Wars 2”. Using the Guild Wars name kind of sets some expectations.

Oh well. All good things come to an end eventually. Some sooner, some later.

It’s like in olden days agreeing to work for years to earn the hand of a beautiful woman (whom you love) but when the day comes you are presented with the ugly sister.

You want your voice to matter? Speak with your $$. If you spend money supporting Anet, you are doing a diservice to yourself and others who feel as you do.

I paid $60 for the game, was enthusiastic enough to buy it early for the headstart. I paid another $50 in gem cards. Then this gear tread mill happens. Not one cent more will I ever spend on any product from this company, EVER. I did the same thing with WoW, if anyone cares to say I will not follow through. Oh do I follow through.

When I feel I have bought and paid for something I am sold given statements that later are made contrary I get even.

Cercie.1025:

Anet seems to be clueless about the decision to make Fractals of the Mists accessible to people under lvl 80, because now you see advertised everywhere “lfg FOTM lvl 80 exotics only”

Does anyone else find it ironic that this new dungeon has the same acronym as ‘flavor of the month’?

Osprey.6587:

Cercie.1025:

Anet seems to be clueless about the decision to make Fractals of the Mists accessible to people under lvl 80, because now you see advertised everywhere “lfg FOTM lvl 80 exotics only”

Does anyone else find it ironic that this new dungeon has the same acronym as ‘flavor of the month’?

I like that they can poke a bit of fun at it. FotM, and using “fractals” for an infinitely recursive process gets a z^2 + i, too.

Pro tip — chicks dig math references