Guild Wars 2

As a previous WoW player, I would go at times to read their General forums it was in fact a deterrent against ever wanting to go play that game, I would then come back to the GW2 forums, read the civilized and constructive posts and how everyone was for the most part happy with the game. It was great…

Now in a single weekend, that has all changed. 200+ thread filled with hate and animosity against Anet, people claiming Bait and Switch, A complete change of Guild Wars mechanics at its core..now…WoW not looking so bad anymore, because I see things over there that I know, classes I understand, mechanics I know..and I know where Blizzard stands on gear and grinding. I know Raids = best gear, Dailies = Grind, Dungeon Finder meaning I can skip questing…

Guild Wars…not sure what to expect anymore..and after bringing several friends from WoW to Guild Wars…I am afraid I may have done them a disservice.

Welcome to Guilds Wars of Wowcraft, pardon the dust, we are renovating so your stay will be more like where you came from!

Yeah, difference a few days make, ain’t is funny?

Yeah it’s odd that one tier of gear all of a sudden makes this a wow clone. Uh ok? Lol wow people cry that easily ?

Don’t be so harsh. The Ilum Patch of SWTOR probably still holds as one of the biggest mistakes. That one was just pathetic lol. :P

…because they added a new tier of gear. Yeah sure lol

I love how you call anyone with a different opinion than you a “vocal minority locust”.

I never asked for this change, I was enjoying the game quite as bit as it was. I’m sure that’s the case for many of the people you refer to as “locusts”. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to enjoy the hell out of a new tier of equipment.

You need to learn to not take life so seriously. Or games for that matter. This new tier of equipment isn’t going to break the game. A game which I might add has only been out for THREE months. They never made a promise that exotic(easy as hell to get) gear was going to be the final stage. So you have to actually do some work if you want to have ascended gear. Buck up kiddo. Expecting to never have anything to progress towards at only 3 months in the game was just stupid on your(and many others) part.

Loosifah.4739:

I love how you call anyone with a different opinion than you a “vocal minority locust”.

I never asked for this change, I was enjoying the game quite as bit as it was. I’m sure that’s the case for many of the people you refer to as “locusts”. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to enjoy the hell out of a new tier of equipment.

You need to learn to not take life so seriously. Or games for that matter. This new tier of equipment isn’t going to break the game. A game which I might add has only been out for THREE months. They never made a promise that exotic(easy as hell to get) gear was going to be the final stage. So you have to actually do some work if you want to have ascended gear. Buck up kiddo. Expecting to never have anything to progress towards at only 3 months in the game was just stupid on your(and many others) part.

Finally people with common sense

I always come to forums and think that the game is dying, but then I go to the game and see the complete opposite. Here after reading the forums you think no one will get ascended and everyone will stop playing but then you log in game and watch LA map chat and guild chat (big guilds) flood (maybe exaggerating a bit with flooding) with ascended equip links. Forums is only about 10% of the people who play the game.

Zynthetic.2954:

The TLDR of the past week is;

=>Vocal minority locusts QQ they have nothing to do, even though they probably haven’t done most of the content yet anyway.

=> Anet introduces the Ascended gear treadmill to shut them up.

=> Vocal majority, also the legit fans of the game go WTF?!?!

=> Legit fans explain in detail why it’s a bad idea, what’s wrong with it, and what they could have done instead of adding grind.

=> Apologists don’t understand the consequences, nor the other group’s viewpoint, and tell the legit fans to leave the game.

=> So the legit fans leave when Anet makes no attempt to respond to the PR disaster.

And now there’s a 50 / 50 chance this will go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of gaming. Well, I think anyway.

I can picture John Smedley going “Oh dear” in a stuttering Piglet fashion. Mind you, YEARS later, Smedley admits that the Star Wars Galaxies NGE was a bad idea and apologized. Damage was done, however. The game never recovered, and only the IP kept it alive.

…How strong do you think your IP is, Anet, compared to Star Wars?

Considering 90% of the forum complaining came from about 10% of the actual game population. I’d say they’re doing alright.

Loosifah.4739:

If you hate the game so much now, why are you still here?

There’s plenty of us who still love the game, and a single tier of new equipment isn’t going to change that.

Get a life or something kid.

?
That’s why people are complaining… What kind of life do you have while grinding for gear in a game?

Really kid?

It’s a pattern that plays out far too often, their willingness to do this now with so little community involvement speaks volumes. I left Rift, a good game, but a game with gear progression. I came to GW2 because I knew upon reaching 80, I’d not be chasing gear, I could just play the game. Horizontal progression allowed a variety of ways to acquire the best gear in the game. Ascended gear will not.

But, for the sake of argument let’s say they do allow a variety of ways to acquire Ascended like exotics are now:

• Buy Ascended for Karma.

• Buy Ascended for Gold.

• Earn Ascended through Dungeon tokens in any of 8 different dungeons.

• Earn Ascended through WvW badges.

• Craft Ascended through mob drops / mining.

• Throw Exotics into Mystic Forge.

We would then be exactly where we were before ANet decided to add Ascended thus completely nullifying the entire purpose they sought to achieve.

No, Ascended will remain acquirable via narrowly proscribed ways. If ANet does open up on the acquisition it will because they know they screwed the pooch and will need to backpedal.

Falcon Night.4653:

Loosifah.4739:

If you hate the game so much now, why are you still here?

There’s plenty of us who still love the game, and a single tier of new equipment isn’t going to change that.

Get a life or something kid.

?
That’s why people are complaining… What kind of life do you have while grinding for gear in a game?

Really kid?

I work a full time job(40 hours a week), I have a girlfriend, and a life. Yet I’ve managed to gear out 2 level 80’s and run a guild all by myself without much help.

I don’t want to hear “Oh I can’t have a life and do this” because that’s just a lame excuse.

Loosifah.4739:

Considering 90% of the forum complaining came from about 10% of the actual game population. I’d say they’re doing alright.

Far be it from me to just blurt out numbers, I somewhat agree that there’s really no way to say how representative of the community the forum of a game is.

But it will be ignorant of them to ignore. Case in point – CCP and EVE online

Here’s a link to the official apology to the community from CCP
http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=2672

Look also at SWTOR’s forum a few months into it’s release. There’s little argument now that the game failed it’s initial release. There’s been very vocal warnings from the community of what was happening. Almost every single time, all the warnings came true pretty much exactly as people predicting.

Also, bear in mind that each MMO’s forum community is different. Just because one game’s forum only behaves one way, doesn’t mean that all MMO forum goers are the same way.

EDIT: weird, I can’t seem to get the link to work. Anyways, just google “A letter to the followers of EVE” if you’re interested.

Also they have said multiple times that ascended will be available via other means(such as WvW and crafting). They just haven’t released it yet.

Loosifah.4739:

Also they have said multiple times that ascended will be available via other means(such as WvW and crafting). They just haven’t released it yet.

So do you think we’ll be able to get them with Badges of Honor or Valor in 3-6 months?

ckeeton.4907:

Nah this community is filled with people who say they love the game but actually hate it because they can’t stand someone being better then them. It’s really odd

we just dont like to be forced to grind to compete.

Loosifah.4739:

I love how you call anyone with a different opinion than you a “vocal minority locust”.

Is that a harsh term? Yes. Does name calling get either side anywhere? Nope. But when you come into a game, marketed as not having a treadmill, and ask for the total opposite, that is pretty idiotic.

Loosifah.4739:

I never asked for this change, I was enjoying the game quite as bit as it was. I’m sure that’s the case for many of the people you refer to as “locusts”. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to enjoy the hell out of a new tier of equipment.

Majority of the playerbase was enjoying the game before the last patch, you and me included. If you had asked me a week ago I would have said I’d be playing this game for years. It was a minority however asking for the gear progression / treadmill. If that’s what you want however, there are many, many games that do it so much better though. WoW, Rift, SWTOR, and many others.

Loosifah.4739:

This new tier of equipment isn’t going to break the game. A game which I might add has only been out for THREE months. They never made a promise that exotic(easy as hell to get) gear was going to be the final stage.

Adding in ascended gear was a grey area. If they had added in legendary armor instead of ascended gear, it would have been fine. Noone would have cared, hell people would have been happy.

But by adding in an extremely long grind, (with infusions that increase in power) which the game was marketed as not having, to get these new items, it has put a lot of people off the game. I would suggest go educating yourself on both sides of the argument, but sifting through the 214 page thread, but it’s nigh impossible to find your own posts in that mess (I’ve tried and failed using permalinks) let alone anything of value.

Loosifah.4739:

Also they have said multiple times that ascended will be available via other means(such as WvW and crafting). They just haven’t released it yet.

Which puts it much like Kuldebar said….

Again, why is everyone arguing about Ascended gear? The OP never mentioned it. He/she mentioned the whole weekend.

EDIT: As Slyder said, the forums have a lot of QQ on them. But they also have a lot of defenders. You can gauge the game by that and the population.

In one weekend, QQ went way up and defense way down. A lot of that is “the sky is falling”. But a lot is well thought out constructive criticism showing exactly what is being done wrong and will drive people away over time.

I predict Wintersday will be another failure. I won’t judge the game on that, but I won’t be a blind fanboy either staying silent and telling people to just “trust”. I’m going to judge the game on the events after Wintersday, when ArenaNet should know exactly how to not make bugged content patches. If it isn’t coming together by then, then this is just another SWTOR, doing too little too late.

Can’t run a game on good intentions. Will these thing kill GW2? No, as they can always pull it together over a year. No sub means people will come back to see if things changed.

But what will kill the game is people not bothering because the competition did the same thing—better. We see how WoW massively alienates their playerbase to rapidly change direction. They adapt to maintain and attract the most numbers. They are 8 years old and make you pay, and it works! And Elder Scrolls is coming along too, taking the same approach.

Variety is the spice of life in gaming, but MMOs, most stick to a select few and just have no interest in others. There is no time. MMOs require longevity.

Guys, the OP isn’t exactly complaining about the game or recent changes, but expressing regret over the dramatic change in attitude in the General Forums over the last weekend.

He has a credible point. Whatever you might think about Ascended armor, the forums have been objectively nastier and more hostile lately, much more argumentative and far less constructive.

The OP is talking about how the forum community went from relatively civil to almost exclusively flooded with a front page of angry, baffled or hostile threads. Frankly I agree. It’s depressing.

Maz.8604:

Loosifah.4739:

Also they have said multiple times that ascended will be available via other means(such as WvW and crafting). They just haven’t released it yet.

So do you think we’ll be able to get them with Badges of Honor or Valor in 3-6 months?

Why didn’t they make it available via wvwvw at release. Some of us HATE dungeons and don’t appreciate being discriminated against.

Loosifah.4739:

I love how you call anyone with a different opinion than you a “vocal minority locust”.

I never asked for this change, I was enjoying the game quite as bit as it was. I’m sure that’s the case for many of the people you refer to as “locusts”. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to enjoy the hell out of a new tier of equipment.

You need to learn to not take life so seriously. Or games for that matter. This new tier of equipment isn’t going to break the game. A game which I might add has only been out for THREE months. They never made a promise that exotic(easy as hell to get) gear was going to be the final stage. So you have to actually do some work if you want to have ascended gear. Buck up kiddo. Expecting to never have anything to progress towards at only 3 months in the game was just stupid on your(and many others) part.

I totally agree with you on not taking this game seriously. Not taking life seriously, is a bit more questionable.

But listen kiddo, if you weren’t taking this game so seriously why are you here on the forums posting so many times arguing your case and defending the changes.

I don’t really take this game seriously anymore. But I’m here cause once I really liked this game and saw alot of future potential. Its sad to see that potential wasted, like so many developers have done to their games (SWTOR being the latest.)

I’ve seen games brought down for reasons such as this before. And the reason is not so much that ANET just implemented a new tier of gear (other MMOs have done this and have been very successful,) its the fact that by doing so they have gone against their words during development, which people bought into.

Its really sad to see people out there who do not take companies/organizations/etc seriously because they believe that they are going to get screwed over anyway. You also can’t blame people for this attitude cause so many organizations have done just that. Bait and switch. So basically people now just take for granted that they are not going to be told everything, not going to rely on an organization’s word, etc. So why bother?

The pre Lost Shores forums was pretty much civil. You had a few dissenters complaining about bugs, lack of content, missing trinity etc., but they were probably like 10% of the actual threads. All in all, pretty much a normal – even one of the better- game forums around.

The forums now reminds me of the scorched earth wasteland that the Diablo 3 and TOR forums became a few months after launch. Whoever is reading these forums must have a pretty negative picture from all the threads. Not certain if anet anticipated THIS much of a backlash (I’m sure they anticipated some).

Eveningstar.6940:

Guys, the OP isn’t exactly complaining about the game or recent changes, but expressing regret over the dramatic change in attitude in the General Forums over the last weekend.

He has a credible point. Whatever you might think about Ascended armor, the forums have been objectively nastier and more hostile lately, much more argumentative and far less constructive.

The OP is talking about how the forum community went from relatively civil to almost exclusively flooded with a front page of angry, baffled or hostile threads. Frankly I agree. It’s depressing.

That’s ultimately on Anet’s head. They are allowing speculation and debate to rule the forums. Their only communications have been largely unsatisfying and their community moderation is as draconian as SWTOR was back when I quit it in March.

Since Whiteside’s post, only Mcleod has replied and his words are summed thusly:

We don’t want to encourage exclusion based on gear, but we have no way of controlling how players react to content.

We won’t tell you why Ascended and Infusions raises the ceiling on max stats, but here, let me point you to Chris Whiteside’s post about the “no treadmill.”

Unsatisfying responses, leaving the community to duke it out amonst themselves.

Shifu.4321:

The pre Lost Shores forums was pretty much civil. You had a few dissenters complaining about bugs, lack of content, missing trinity etc., but they were probably like 10% of the actual threads. All in all, pretty much a normal – even one of the better- game forums around.

The forums now reminds me of the scorched earth wasteland that the Diablo 3 and TOR forums became a few months after launch. Whoever is reading these forums must have a pretty negative picture from all the threads. Not certain if anet anticipated THIS much of a backlash (I’m sure they anticipated some).

The thing too, for the most part the whiners on the SWTOR forums back then were pretty much on point with their predictions. They warned Bioware a week before of what was going to happen should they release Patch 1.1. What they said in that really long forum thread was what exactly happened – and more besides.

Loosifah.4739:

I love how you call anyone with a different opinion than you a “vocal minority locust”.

It seems to be the standard “my argument is right, your is wrong” logic on these forums.

[insert large portion of the playerbase here] hasn’t displayed any opinion on [insert current argument basis here] so they must implicitly agree with my views.

Slyder.9215:

Loosifah.4739:

Considering 90% of the forum complaining came from about 10% of the actual game population. I’d say they’re doing alright.

Far be it from me to just blurt out numbers, I somewhat agree that there’s really no way to say how representative of the community the forum of a game is.

But it will be ignorant of them to ignore. Case in point – CCP and EVE online

Here’s a link to the official apology to the community from CCP
http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=2672

Look also at SWTOR’s forum a few months into it’s release. There’s little argument now that the game failed it’s initial release. There’s been very vocal warnings from the community of what was happening. Almost every single time, all the warnings came true pretty much exactly as people predicting.

Also, bear in mind that each MMO’s forum community is different. Just because one game’s forum only behaves one way, doesn’t mean that all MMO forum goers are the same way.

EDIT: weird, I can’t seem to get the link to work. Anyways, just google “A letter to the followers of EVE” if you’re interested.

So far – MMO history have shown more often than not that the ‘doomsayers’ usually are way more correct about a games chances than the fanbois.
And player numbers usually seem to fall along side the ‘doomsayers’ (cause otherwise numbers wouldn’t have dropped off as much as they did in those games).

If people complain about things in MMOs, it is usually because they care about it and want to see it succeed instead of turning in to another run-of-the-mill ‘this game had potential, but…. ’ MMOs we’ve seen way too many of over the last number of years.

I do think ANet has messed up big time now. Both with Lost Shore event and with Ascended gear and gating at least the current new dungeon – I hope they learn from it.
I’m just not sure I’ll wait around in the hope it does. I’ve sunk enough time and money into this game and seeing them change around their design philosophies – pretty much over night – gives me very little confidence they will.

Shifu.4321:

The pre Lost Shores forums was pretty much civil. You had a few dissenters complaining about bugs, lack of content, missing trinity etc., but they were probably like 10% of the actual threads. All in all, pretty much a normal – even one of the better- game forums around.

The forums now reminds me of the scorched earth wasteland that the Diablo 3 and TOR forums became a few months after launch. Whoever is reading these forums must have a pretty negative picture from all the threads. Not certain if anet anticipated THIS much of a backlash (I’m sure they anticipated some).

Yeah, I agree. And you know, people aren’t really talking about this much but…

…this degree of constant negativity on the forums will, over the long term, have very real and tangible effects in shaping the identity of the forum community. The more consistently hostile a forum, the more likely we are to drive away sensible people who might have something very cool or imaginative or intelligent to share with us, but end up thinking, “Wow, look at these guys. They’d rip me apart. I’d rather not waste my time here.”

Consequently forums which stay ugly for a while tend to spiral, because they either drive away readership and discourage contributions or sort of become cannibalistic where just a small, angry core of perpetually dissatisfied players (or ex-players) who chase each other in circles over the same arguments over who’s ruining the game and why.

I’m not trying to be dramatic. I love forum communities and I’ve been part of at least a dozen major MMO communities over the last decade. This sort of situation can end up defining the tenor of a forum.

:(

Eveningstar.6940:

Guys, the OP isn’t exactly complaining about the game or recent changes, but expressing regret over the dramatic change in attitude in the General Forums over the last weekend.

He has a credible point. Whatever you might think about Ascended armor, the forums have been objectively nastier and more hostile lately, much more argumentative and far less constructive.

The OP is talking about how the forum community went from relatively civil to almost exclusively flooded with a front page of angry, baffled or hostile threads. Frankly I agree. It’s depressing.

When you merge all of the threads concerning a different part of a topic into a single thread, it makes information hard to find.

What happens is you either have to spend to much time to find the proper facts and maths behind them. It also makes it harder to find any and all logical conclusions and reasoning.

This is completely ignoring all the other threads that have been deleted as well in the past week.

So debating with reasoning becomes hard unless you’ve bothered to sift through it all. Many just decide to wing it and argue blindly without knowing anything.

…. Explaining why X is bad for the 10th+ time is quite annoying.

ckeeton.4907:

Yeah it’s odd that one tier of gear all of a sudden makes this a wow clone. Uh ok? Lol wow people cry that easily ?

How about this thought experiment: Remove all gear (and the ability/need to acquire it) from WoW permanently. What happens? Man, that’s just so “odd”…

Maz.8604:

Eveningstar.6940:

Guys, the OP isn’t exactly complaining about the game or recent changes, but expressing regret over the dramatic change in attitude in the General Forums over the last weekend.

He has a credible point. Whatever you might think about Ascended armor, the forums have been objectively nastier and more hostile lately, much more argumentative and far less constructive.

The OP is talking about how the forum community went from relatively civil to almost exclusively flooded with a front page of angry, baffled or hostile threads. Frankly I agree. It’s depressing.

That’s ultimately on Anet’s head. They are allowing speculation and debate to rule the forums. Their only communications have been largely unsatisfying and their community moderation is as draconian as SWTOR was back when I quit it in March.

Since Whiteside’s post, only Mcleod has replied and his words are summed thusly:

We don’t want to encourage exclusion based on gear, but we have no way of controlling how players react to content.

We won’t tell you why Ascended and Infusions raises the ceiling on max stats, but here, let me point you to Chris Whiteside’s post about the “no treadmill.”

Unsatisfying responses, leaving the community to duke it out amonst themselves.

I know, and I definitely see where you’re coming from. I want to make it clear that I’m not ascribing blame or pointing fingers on the source of all this negativity, just thinking about the long-term effects of having such a hostile forum at all.

I think it’s fair to say that it would be in everyone’s best interest if we somehow managed to calm things down, one way or another, with either the players who are dissatisfied coming to terms with the way things are and moving on, or ArenaNet opening up dialogue that ends up placating a lot of our concerns.

One way or another, having a hostile forum community sucks. I think we can all agree on that. Most of us anyway.

Eveningstar.6940:

<snip>

Yeah, I agree. And you know, people aren’t really talking about this much but…

…this degree of constant negativity on the forums will, over the long term, have very real and tangible effects in shaping the identity of the forum community. The more consistently hostile a forum, the more likely we are to drive away sensible people who might have something very cool or imaginative or intelligent to share with us, but end up thinking, “Wow, look at these guys. They’d rip me apart. I’d rather not waste my time here.”

Consequently forums which stay ugly for a while tend to spiral, because they either drive away readership and discourage contributions or sort of become cannibalistic where just a small, angry core of perpetually dissatisfied players (or ex-players) who chase each other in circles over the same arguments over who’s ruining the game and why.

I’m not trying to be dramatic. I love forum communities and I’ve been part of at least a dozen major MMO communities over the last decade. This sort of situation can end up defining the tenor of a forum.

:(

If you’ve been part of a dozen major MMO communities, you’d also know that the situations on the forums were shaped by the state of the games.

Eveningstar.6940:

Maz.8604:

Eveningstar.6940:

Guys, the OP isn’t exactly complaining about the game or recent changes, but expressing regret over the dramatic change in attitude in the General Forums over the last weekend.

He has a credible point. Whatever you might think about Ascended armor, the forums have been objectively nastier and more hostile lately, much more argumentative and far less constructive.

The OP is talking about how the forum community went from relatively civil to almost exclusively flooded with a front page of angry, baffled or hostile threads. Frankly I agree. It’s depressing.

That’s ultimately on Anet’s head. They are allowing speculation and debate to rule the forums. Their only communications have been largely unsatisfying and their community moderation is as draconian as SWTOR was back when I quit it in March.

Since Whiteside’s post, only Mcleod has replied and his words are summed thusly:

We don’t want to encourage exclusion based on gear, but we have no way of controlling how players react to content.

We won’t tell you why Ascended and Infusions raises the ceiling on max stats, but here, let me point you to Chris Whiteside’s post about the “no treadmill.”

Unsatisfying responses, leaving the community to duke it out amonst themselves.

I know, and I definitely see where you’re coming from. I want to make it clear that I’m not ascribing blame or pointing fingers on the source of all this negativity, just thinking about the long-term effects of having such a hostile forum at all.

I think it’s fair to say that it would be in everyone’s best interest if we somehow managed to calm things down, one way or another, with either the players who are dissatisfied coming to terms with the way things are and moving on, or ArenaNet opening up dialogue that ends up placating a lot of our concerns.

One way or another, having a hostile forum community sucks. I think we can all agree on that. Most of us anyway.

Ultimately it is on Anet. People need to keep the pressure up, because only pressure is going to affect them. This lack of communication should have a negative impact. If it doesn’t then it just trains Anet to ignore the players. Who cares so long as the cash shop keeps providing a steady revenue source? That source need to be impacted negatively in order to force them to get their act together.

Xandax.1753:

Eveningstar.6940:

<snip>
Yeah, I agree. And you know, people aren’t really talking about this much but…

…this degree of constant negativity on the forums will, over the long term, have very real and tangible effects in shaping the identity of the forum community. The more consistently hostile a forum, the more likely we are to drive away sensible people who might have something very cool or imaginative or intelligent to share with us, but end up thinking, “Wow, look at these guys. They’d rip me apart. I’d rather not waste my time here.”

Consequently forums which stay ugly for a while tend to spiral, because they either drive away readership and discourage contributions or sort of become cannibalistic where just a small, angry core of perpetually dissatisfied players (or ex-players) who chase each other in circles over the same arguments over who’s ruining the game and why.

I’m not trying to be dramatic. I love forum communities and I’ve been part of at least a dozen major MMO communities over the last decade. This sort of situation can end up defining the tenor of a forum.

:(

If you’ve been part of a dozen major MMO communities, you’d also know that the situations on the forums were shaped by the state of the games.

^ The forums where mostly fine before the patch. Then after they announced their plans, it became a hater v hater fest of negativity.

It was an expected reaction though.

I liked the forums before the patch.

A lot of the tricks I learned on my Engineer I learned from reading the forums. Reading people’s experiences. Generous and helpful people who can’t wait to give advise on how to more effectively play your class and the game.

Xandax.1753:

Eveningstar.6940:

<snip>
Yeah, I agree. And you know, people aren’t really talking about this much but…

…this degree of constant negativity on the forums will, over the long term, have very real and tangible effects in shaping the identity of the forum community. The more consistently hostile a forum, the more likely we are to drive away sensible people who might have something very cool or imaginative or intelligent to share with us, but end up thinking, “Wow, look at these guys. They’d rip me apart. I’d rather not waste my time here.”

Consequently forums which stay ugly for a while tend to spiral, because they either drive away readership and discourage contributions or sort of become cannibalistic where just a small, angry core of perpetually dissatisfied players (or ex-players) who chase each other in circles over the same arguments over who’s ruining the game and why.

I’m not trying to be dramatic. I love forum communities and I’ve been part of at least a dozen major MMO communities over the last decade. This sort of situation can end up defining the tenor of a forum.

:(

If you’ve been part of a dozen major MMO communities, you’d also know that the situations on the forums were shaped by the state of the games.

Absolutely, but that doesn’t keep me from saying that the situation of the forum is regrettable. Yeah, it’s on ANet in the sense that only ANet has the ability to be the mediator here, step in and get an honest dialogue going about why people are upset, whether it matters to them and what, if anything, is going to be done about it. Until then, the forums are probably going to stay unproductive and hostile for a while because we have no closure.

That goes without saying. The only thing I’m saying, though, is that if that doesn’t happen, and we don’t get some kind of decisive closure to the issue before long, the attitude and tenor of the forums could change permanently. We could go from a rare MMO forum that’s largely characterized by friendliness and civility to yet another toxic community full of anger and divisiveness.

My point is, I don’t think anyone wants that. It’d damage the community in the long run (I honestly do think forums are more important to the health of an MMO community than we give them credit) in ways we aren’t really anticipating.

I have to say, though, that best MMO forums I’ve encountered so far were the forums from LoTRO and The Secret World.

The LoTRO forums are just plain friendly and helpful.

And The Secret World game as a whole encourages and attracts people who like intelligent, well thought out discussions. It attracts role-players, healthy faction loyalty and spirited (but engaging) discussion on the game’s lore.

Being a game that actually incorporates real-world research into in game quest-solving, TSW’s forums effectively became an extension of the game itself, instead of merely a place for people to post questions. It’s very rare that an MMO can do that.

I have actually installed WOW and am playing on a free trial account, directly after this weekends fiasco-and obvious subsequent GW2 downfall. I’m sure this will only last temporarily, because PlanetSide 2 release is in just a few hours, accompanied with an awesome development team who cares about it’s player-base, unlike some teams we all know and hate.

As much as hate to lay the blame, I really do, Anet came up with a severely unpopular idea, the community was already very much against it before the release, but they released it anyhow.

Now the damage is done, I doubt they can revert the whole Lost Shore, most they can do is to give out some Band-aids.

In just one weekend..All hell broke lose. I’m still pretty amazed with the feat.

Loosifah.4739:

I love how you call anyone with a different opinion than you a “vocal minority locust”.

I never asked for this change, I was enjoying the game quite as bit as it was. I’m sure that’s the case for many of the people you refer to as “locusts”. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to enjoy the hell out of a new tier of equipment.

You need to learn to not take life so seriously. Or games for that matter. This new tier of equipment isn’t going to break the game. A game which I might add has only been out for THREE months. They never made a promise that exotic(easy as hell to get) gear was going to be the final stage. So you have to actually do some work if you want to have ascended gear. Buck up kiddo. Expecting to never have anything to progress towards at only 3 months in the game was just stupid on your(and many others) part.

What you don’t get, is that we could of gotten progression without

1) Content gating
2) New gear with better stats
3) New gear, with better stats, not tied to RNG
4) New gear, with better stats, that requires more than 60hrs to obtain

Xandax.1753:

Slyder.9215:

Loosifah.4739:

Considering 90% of the forum complaining came from about 10% of the actual game population. I’d say they’re doing alright.

Far be it from me to just blurt out numbers, I somewhat agree that there’s really no way to say how representative of the community the forum of a game is.

But it will be ignorant of them to ignore. Case in point – CCP and EVE online

Here’s a link to the official apology to the community from CCP
http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=2672

Please do not refer to CCP with any kind of positive statement.
I can understand a game company being greedy but I will never
understand CCP’s stupidy.

New inventory system .<<<This

Look also at SWTOR’s forum a few months into it’s release. There’s little argument now that the game failed it’s initial release. There’s been very vocal warnings from the community of what was happening. Almost every single time, all the warnings came true pretty much exactly as people predicting.

Also, bear in mind that each MMO’s forum community is different. Just because one game’s forum only behaves one way, doesn’t mean that all MMO forum goers are the same way.

EDIT: weird, I can’t seem to get the link to work. Anyways, just google “A letter to the followers of EVE” if you’re interested.

So far – MMO history have shown more often than not that the ‘doomsayers’ usually are way more correct about a games chances than the fanbois.
And player numbers usually seem to fall along side the ‘doomsayers’ (cause otherwise numbers wouldn’t have dropped off as much as they did in those games).

If people complain about things in MMOs, it is usually because they care about it and want to see it succeed instead of turning in to another run-of-the-mill ‘this game had potential, but…. ’ MMOs we’ve seen way too many of over the last number of years.

I do think ANet has messed up big time now. Both with Lost Shore event and with Ascended gear and gating at least the current new dungeon – I hope they learn from it.
I’m just not sure I’ll wait around in the hope it does. I’ve sunk enough time and money into this game and seeing them change around their design philosophies – pretty much over night – gives me very little confidence they will.

SameHH.1048:

I always come to forums and think that the game is dying, but then I go to the game and see the complete opposite. Here after reading the forums you think no one will get ascended and everyone will stop playing but then you log in game and watch LA map chat and guild chat (big guilds) flood (maybe exaggerating a bit with flooding) with ascended equip links. Forums is only about 10% of the people who play the game.

There is a slight difference this time. People have posted evidence that they got refunds because they did not like the radical change in design.

I have read tons of complaints prior to this patch but never saw one person state that they requested a refund due to the issue.

The discontent over this change is growing and spilling out into other sites. In North America, this is a big retail season due to post-Thanksgiving holiday promotions. The negativity on this is hitting retail sites. Do you think people who wanted horizontal progression and no gear stat progression will buy the game now?

ckeeton.4907:

Yeah it’s odd that one tier of gear all of a sudden makes this a wow clone. Uh ok? Lol wow people cry that easily ?

And here it is again, the ghost of “I didn’t read any of your arguments for the past 15.000 posts you made or the blogposts or the articles about treadmills, progression and item creep that were linked and discussed, so I know more about it than you.”

You don’t. You are uninformed. And contrary to reformed education, not all opinions are equally valuable. Informed ones weigh more – or at least they should. The issue and the viewpoint you just demonstrated you don’t understand have been explained literally hundrets of times, to hundrets of others who used to be as ignorant about it as you.

Fortunately for you, countless those explanations can be found here, on http://www.reddit.com/r/guildwars2 or on any other guildwars-related forum.

Just a test of the emergency broadcast system, this is only a test

Reading over these posts, and logging into the game…All I see is fractual dungeons. Before it was a mired of different dungeons… Now it’s Only fractuals. Not only have the forums changed in a weekend, the game itself has changed completely… Maybe they can just roll things back and just take out the new gear, or something… I want Guild Wars back..not…what ever this is now.

You just added another one to the big pile of threads made by negative/pessimist people.

MorceluLebeau.5109:

Reading over these posts, and logging into the game…All I see is fractual dungeons. Before it was a mired of different dungeons… Now it’s Only fractuals. Not only have the forums changed in a weekend, the game itself has changed completely… Maybe they can just roll things back and just take out the new gear, or something… I want Guild Wars back..not…what ever this is now.

I went to Ascalonian Catacombs today to get the waypoint, and there were four players out front…

Three of them were under 50 (one was 34) one was level 80..the place used to be packed now its empty… I really hope this is not the future of the old dungeons or the game… i really hope its because fractals are popular… and not a lack of population.

I feel terrible for everyone who can’t seem to see any difference between GW2 and WoW, I really do. I mean what if I too were naive and blind?

Oh the sweet, sweet irony of people willing to devote hundreds of hours to the Ascended grind telling those of us who refuse to do it that we should get a life!

At least WoW has a dungeon finder and raid finder, cutting down on the grind time by cutting down on the time required to get a group to do the grind.