Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars was my first real MMO, so of course I had to buy Guild Wars 2.. I’d only been waiting 5+ years. My issue is, I’m scared to play it. I’m scared to get into it. I don’t want to love a game (and I could really LOVE this game!) so NCSoft can just trash it like they CoH. I still love ANet but I do NOT trust NCSoft.

However, I noted that Guild Wars is still running.. no content updates (as far as I know) but it’s not been shut down. Did ANet make sure that won’t happen?

My friends and I were all CoH players.. we won’t touch anything having to do with NCSoft except the Guild Wars games.. can someone.. re-assure me? =/

Grow some hair on your chest, flex your muscles, look the future in the eye and say “Screw you NCSoft! I’m playing anyway!”.

Plus my crystal ball has run out of batteries and I can’t answer your question right now. Maybe someone else can.

They just announced an expansion. You’re safe

Unlike Paragon Studios which was a wholly-owned subsiduary; ArenaNet is more like the days of Cryptic where the studio retains some independence from the publisher (hence why GW1 wasn’t simply shuttered either).

NCSoft has killed more MMOs than every other publisher combined. That said, they haven’t seemed to try to kill GW1 yet.

I’ll never trust NCSoft again after what they’ve pulled on not just CoH, but elsewhere as well (Looking at you, Tabula Rasa), though ArenaNet seems to have some leeway.

I could be wrong and they might decide ‘it doesn’t align with their (crosseyed, myopic, idiotic and incomprehensible) vision’ and go Full Idiot on it like they’ve done so many other things in the western market. Whether Anet can stop them or not, I don’t honestly know.

Hmm….3 years in August will GW2 have been running.

And if you’re truly a fan of the Guild Wars universe, you would have hopped onto the bandwagon back in 2012 when the game launched.

The problem is that you WAITED. You missed out on the Season 1 events and memories as well as missed out on Season 2. Lion’s Arch was an amazing city that got invaded by Karka, haunted by Mad King Thorn, became a murder scene for a Pirate Lord, center point for an invasion by Scarlet, and completely obliterated just the same. Giant marionette puppets, invisible tower of poisonous plants, evil mole people with fire cats, and so much more. These are the things that were missed by those who waited. And they were one time events at that.

naiasonod.9265:

NCSoft has killed more MMOs than every other publisher combined. That said, they haven’t seemed to try to kill GW1 yet.

I’ll never trust NCSoft again after what they’ve pulled on not just CoH, but elsewhere as well (Looking at you, Tabula Rasa), though ArenaNet seems to have some leeway.

I could be wrong and they might decide ‘it doesn’t align with their (crosseyed, myopic, idiotic and incomprehensible) vision’ and go Full Idiot on it like they’ve done so many other things in the western market. Whether Anet can stop them or not, I don’t honestly know.

-applauds-

CoH was running what, 8 years or something? Compared with GW2, which is just beginning at 2.5 years. Its also 99% likely that there is a Guild Wars 3 in production as we speak, although I dont expect any announcement on that for another year or so. IE GW3 is highly likely to release before GW2 is as old as CoH was.

Lets not forget that GW2 is also fairly unique and draws a crowd, while CoH was a generic “hero game” that easily got trumphed by DCUO. Its all about the lore

Why would NCSoft trying to kill they milk-cow. That makes no sense. The only reason NCSoft would do that is Anet refuse to take money from us.

@teotl
I’m a CoH refugee too, and I’ll admit… I have no lost love for NCsoft. I think how they handled CoH was a terrible atrocity . It felt like, to me that they shut it down because someone over there in Korea didn’t like it.
But you know what I realized?
NCsoft =/= ArenaNet
And not playing Guild Wars was akin to punishing ArenaNet for what NCsoft did.

I think the situation is also different too.
Paragon Studios was under much more direct control from NCsoft, since NCsoft put the studio together after they got the game from Cryptic Studios…
ArenaNet was it’s own studio before it was acquired by NCsoft…

All I’m saying, I guess, is just take heart. This game isn’t likely going anywhere soon. Jump in and enjoy it!

GW2 makes Anet and NCSoft quite a bit of money, there’s no reason for it to be trashed.

Is GW2 going to get trashed like CoH?

No (short answer)

NCSoft likes GW2 its a good money earner for them and probably there most successful MMO in US/Eu where in the past they have had trouble in those markets. In a recent round of cutbacks across there large family of NCSoft MMO’s GW2 was protected from any cuts because its successful.

teotl.7418:

However, I noted that Guild Wars is still running.. no content updates (as far as I know) but it’s not been shut down.

Its had exactly 40 content updates in 3 years since launch…

A expansion has just been announced GW2:Heart of Thorns and the chances are after that is released there will be many more ‘free’ content updates. So a good time to buy GW2 and get into the game, especially if its still 75% off (celebrating expansion announcement).

I liked CoH and all but honestly the game was very old didn’t really have the polish or content needed to survive. The F2P system was pretty bad as well. Lotta people just played it to RP. GW2 has nothing to worry about right meow.

~and with CoH in mind I really with Water Elementalist could be as destructive as CoH Water power. >.> /sigh Whys Water so neglected in MMOs.

Gw2 is far more popular and profitable than CoH ever was, especially right be for it got shut down. Gw2 will be here for many years.
The expansion looks amazing, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the game pick up in population more than it has since shortly after release.

teotl.7418:

no content updates

We’ve had content updates for gw2 pretty kitten constantly. Granted, pretty much all of LS season 1 was temporary (some remains in some fashion or another), while LS2 is permanent. Additionally, there’s holiday content as well.

Also, CoH is the wrong game to compare GW2 to. Compare it to it’s predecessor, GW1, which is still going strong around 10 years later. Probably one of the handful of games able to still say that.

MMO’s do not last forever, and I share your pain on the unjust execution of CoH, but I feel GW2 will be around for at least 5 years, if not longer.

Considering they have just announced an expansion, i’d say that the risk of them getting canned within next years is very low.

what is CoH ?

…………..

muckshifter.9731:

what is CoH ?

…………..

City of Heroes

Aidan Savage.2078:

teotl.7418:

no content updates

We’ve had content updates for gw2 pretty kitten constantly. Granted, pretty much all of LS season 1 was temporary (some remains in some fashion or another), while LS2 is permanent. Additionally, there’s holiday content as well.

Also, CoH is the wrong game to compare GW2 to. Compare it to it’s predecessor, GW1, which is still going strong around 10 years later. Probably one of the handful of games able to still say that.

He said “no content updates” for GW1 not GW2 lol and yes even though GW1 hasn’t had a content for ages it is still running, I believe the same will happen to GW2, we are in for a very very long run

Just three months ago NCSoft butchered the staff at Wildstar – the price they payed for some gross mismanagement. Other studios also got a shave. At the same time ArenaNet lost exactly zero staff. NCSoft has expressed satisfaction with Guild Wars 1&2 in the most tangible manner possible: they left them alone.

Dawdler.8521:

Its also 99% likely that there is a Guild Wars 3 in production as we speak, although I dont expect any announcement on that for another year or so.

lol what?

maddoctor.2738:

Aidan Savage.2078:

teotl.7418:

no content updates

We’ve had content updates for gw2 pretty kitten constantly. Granted, pretty much all of LS season 1 was temporary (some remains in some fashion or another), while LS2 is permanent. Additionally, there’s holiday content as well.

Also, CoH is the wrong game to compare GW2 to. Compare it to it’s predecessor, GW1, which is still going strong around 10 years later. Probably one of the handful of games able to still say that.

He said “no content updates” for GW1 not GW2 lol and yes even though GW1 hasn’t had a content for ages it is still running, I believe the same will happen to GW2, we are in for a very very long run

also in GW1 timed events are still cycling – I mean all those festivals and stuff
[i’d be nice to not miss wanderer’s eerie (or wahtever was the name of this event) this year… :P]

Nike.2631:

Just three months ago NCSoft butchered the staff at Wildstar – the price they payed for some gross mismanagement. Other studios also got a shave. At the same time ArenaNet lost exactly zero staff. NCSoft has expressed satisfaction with Guild Wars 1&2 in the most tangible manner possible: they left them alone.

Yeah well, WildStar had a lot going wrong with it.

That being said, the fact Guild Wars 1 is still running should give skeptics some peace of mind.

Dawdler.8521:

CoH was running what, 8 years or something? Compared with GW2, which is just beginning at 2.5 years. Its also 99% likely that there is a Guild Wars 3 in production as we speak, although I dont expect any announcement on that for another year or so. IE GW3 is highly likely to release before GW2 is as old as CoH was.

I would be ok with a Guild Wars 3, assuming they take a hard look at housing in other games and Elder Scrolls Online. Love ESO or hate it, I love the simplicity of its combat and the ability to customize (on par with Champion’s free-framework builds).

….while CoH was a generic “hero game” that easily got trumphed by DCUO. Its all about the lore

Err, that is incredibly debatable. 1) City of Heroes is an original IP where as DCUO carries the DC brand. 2) I wouldn’t say it got trumped at all, while DCUO had a massive falling out and reverted to F2P (survived only by the Station Pass at this point) City of Heroes was shut down by a decision and not because it was “failing” by any means. Despite some of the mechanics here and there, the game itself was solid and still proclaimed as the best super-hero MMO there ever was… which is more or less opinion.

Although I do admit I’m a little bias since my original account on DCUO was banned for using some program I had no knowledge of and when I asked if I could address the problem, they gave me the subtle-finger. To add to that, plenty of people were getting account-locked by false positives, support was running a test of a new security system and I was getting nowhere. So I’m still a little sour about that.

It did kind-of-sort-of stump Champions though. Man that was a horrible mess I regret being apart of.

teotl.7418:

Guild Wars was my first real MMO, so of course I had to buy Guild Wars 2.. I’d only been waiting 5+ years. My issue is, I’m scared to play it. I’m scared to get into it. I don’t want to love a game (and I could really LOVE this game!) so NCSoft can just trash it like they CoH. I still love ANet but I do NOT trust NCSoft.

However, I noted that Guild Wars is still running.. no content updates (as far as I know) but it’s not been shut down. Did ANet make sure that won’t happen?

My friends and I were all CoH players.. we won’t touch anything having to do with NCSoft except the Guild Wars games.. can someone.. re-assure me? =/

Your safe for a very very long time, Wildstar is next on NCsoft’s chopping block and even that game will be years before it closes down due to them having to try and milk any profit they can out of it to cover their losses. You will get your moneys worth and then some out of Gw2, best value for the dollar. And by this time next year you will you will be complaining like everyone else of why Anet did this?, why Anet won’t do that?, where’s Anet? etc etc etc lol.

To be fair the Guild War’s MMO’s is the only competition to Blizzards WoW and has a large player base, one of the reasons Guild Wars is sticking around with Guild Wars 2 would be down to the Hall of monuments, they work together.

It looks like ArenaNet put in a way to protect GW1 by doing that. Good on them.

Company of Heroes? :P

City of Heroes had quite a few supporters and players I tried it had no friends in it but it was kind of cool anyway. The problem with it was mainly things like this http://www.gamespot.com/articles/marvel-sues-ncsoft-over-city-of-heroes/1100-6113055/

That is probably the main reason or on of the main reasons for COH demise. How many times can an MMO get sued before they let go. It was a smart decision on NC Softs part. Unfortunately for the player base it happened though, but do not blame NC Soft for it all

That is one reason why Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are so different from other MMO’s. All MMO’s have similarities of course but those are throughout every game and need to be there. Tera another MMO people know about got its Action Based Combat from NC Soft, because when Lineage 3 was in development a small group of people in the company stole it from NC Soft. One of them was the highest paid person in the company. NC Soft sued them won then it got turned over somehow. Any way NC Soft had to change the way combat was done for Lineage 3.

Anyway there are forces that cause problems with MMO’s like anything else. For COH one of them was players could make their characters too similar to DC and Marvel super heroes.

Chyanne Waters.8719:

It was a smart decision on NC Softs part.

We must have different definitions of “smart”. City of Heroes was still, after Freedom (F2P-Freemium), bringing in acceptable profit. It really came down to NCSoft deciding to take apart development teams and purposing them and/or letting them go. Some went to Carmine, some were added to a new NCSoft subsidiary (NC-somethingorrather) and others just fell off the grid. In fact Valiance Online (the self proclaimed spiritual successor) picked up some of the animation designers from former Paragon Studios and that game is shaping up rapidly.

Hard to say what compelled their decision to shut it down. I don’t think it was the lawsuits, Marvel and DC both had it out for that game but the lawsuits were dropped when it turned out people forging the complaints were found to be making the very toons they were reporting for “copywrite”.

I watched what happened to Aion Online and decided I would never buy NCSoft stocks. Have not changed my mind, given so many things in the move to accommodate China opening for GW2 point to the same direction. I’m leery.

I’m playing this game as long as I have fun. Nothing is forever. :p Including the universe lol lol.

Only thing that will stay is Darwin theory.

P.S. What bothers me about NCSoft is its lack of vision, innovation, sense of timing. They mean well, but I don’t think they cut it. I’m sad to see ANet under their ownership.

What I want to tell NCSoft is: Leave ANet to be in charge of development. Stop messing.

What if it cost more for them to keep CoH running than what they were making? What if that had been going on for years? I get the people want NCSoft to be loyal to their customers, but it’s a business. At some point in a big meeting someone will have to present to the board a chart showing that CoH has been bleeding money for X period of time.

What do you think the outcome of that would be? “Shut it down.” It was probably a no-brainer. I’m sure it wasn’t lost on them that existing players would be upset, but sometimes you have to make hard decisions.

zenleto.6179:

Plus my crystal ball has run out of batteries and I can’t answer your question right now. Maybe someone else can.

Mine just said “404 Answer Not Found,” so I can’t help either.
But, I can say I have had some fun with the game, and I still have a special place for it in my heart. I just want them to fix some really glaring flaws. >_>

Dawdler.8521:

CoH was running what, 8 years or something? Compared with GW2, which is just beginning at 2.5 years. Its also 99% likely that there is a Guild Wars 3 in production as we speak, although I dont expect any announcement on that for another year or so. IE GW3 is highly likely to release before GW2 is as old as CoH was.

Lets not forget that GW2 is also fairly unique and draws a crowd, while CoH was a generic “hero game” that easily got trumphed by DCUO. Its all about the lore

Gw3 in production as we speak… That’s a joke right? There is no reason to make GW3…. GW2’s lore and potential future lore is far from finished. Those other dragons we are supposed to kill haven’t been killed yet have they? It would be stupid to just forget about whatever GW2 lore had and simply do a 180 in the other direction.

The expansion for GW2 is enough evidence to deny any GW3 production. To me GW2 is still an unfinished game that has not realized its full potential to be a B2P game.

Siphaed.9235:

Hmm….3 years in August will GW2 have been running.

And at least the WvW-achievement title hunter need at least another 40 years till we will have the first: Yak Slapper

PS: I’ll probably need a bit longer, after 2.5 years I am only at 3700 of 1000000, so in 675 year I likely made it I hope Gw2 will stay online long enough!!

From a long-time MMOer (and predecessor) perspective, and while GW2 is no longer “in its younger years”, its also definitely going to be around for several more years (short of some giant financial catastrophe or releasing ToA into a primary RvR game like DAoC / Mark Jacobs did back in the day). GW2 development could do the ToA error and kitten off its entire player base but the chance is fairly remote given its 3-game modes versus 1.5-game modes for DAoC.

CoH (along with CoV) was around for quite a life cycle. If you didn’t think CoH was on its last legs when Champions Online came out, I’m not sure what to tell you. While I personally went back to CoH/CoV back after about a 2 year hiatus to compare it to CO (just before it released), I could easily tell how “ancient” the feel and flow of CoH had become. CoH had a life cycle of around ~8 years and plenty of warning before it became apparent of its doom at around year 6 when staff started leaving/players were creating more content than development. In comparison, GW2 has been around under 3 years and has none of these early signs.

Original GW is still around because its “a feeder” of players to GW2. You can’t deny it. More players from GW have converted to GW2 and any mentioning of shutting down original GW will definitely upset the old-GW players (that still enjoy the old GvG mode). It’s a different game now that satisfies a different niche. And at this point, GW continues to run as is with very low support. Accordingly, NCSoft is not going to touch it until business metrics state otherwise.

TL;DR Not investing yourself in a MMO means you’ll never fully enjoy it for what it is. Just keep your eyes open for the next-big-thing. If the next-big-thing is a dud (there have been a few contenders since GW2’s release), GW2 has the model that you can come back and it doesn’t cost you a thing except some minor personal character goal/account goal advancement.

Well I did “invest” in GW2. Now I regret it. :P Holding further investment till I see better signs.

Chyanne Waters.8719:

City of Heroes had quite a few supporters and players I tried it had no friends in it but it was kind of cool anyway. The problem with it was mainly things like this http://www.gamespot.com/articles/marvel-sues-ncsoft-over-city-of-heroes/1100-6113055/

That is probably the main reason or on of the main reasons for COH demise. How many times can an MMO get sued before they let go. It was a smart decision on NC Softs part. Unfortunately for the player base it happened though, but do not blame NC Soft for it all

….

Anyway there are forces that cause problems with MMO’s like anything else. For COH one of them was players could make their characters too similar to DC and Marvel super heroes.

No, they were sued AT LAUNCH (article dated 2004) and settled out of court. And the reason was because Marvel shot themselves in the foot twice; once because they commissioned people to make the ‘homage’ characters invalidating that evidence but twice because in acknowledging the character creator was an authoring tool (part of their copyright infringement angle) it also meant that every character created could potentially be used to countersue Marvel and go after DC, Dark Horse and all the other comic book creators for infringing NC, Cryptic’s and the players’ copyrighted characters.

There was a number of reasons why but “constantly being sued” wasn’t one of them. Clunky game engine, lack of cashshop till its last year and rumours of clash of management styles (to put it delicately) all contributed.

There was a Steam sale last August or September that had all the available GW1 content (except the bonus mission pack) on sale, and it picked up a fair bit of new players.

There was a patch done in the fall to allow HA to be run with henchmen, there was an exploit fix last week, and a large number of bots were banned less than a month ago. GW1 doesn’t see much ANet activity but they still do care a little about it.

That said, I’m very glad ANet has a bit more leeway with NCSoft than other companies it published for.

Tyger.1637:

Unlike Paragon Studios which was a wholly-owned subsiduary; ArenaNet is more like the days of Cryptic where the studio retains some independence from the publisher (hence why GW1 wasn’t simply shuttered either).

ANet is a wholly owned subsidiary.

They have a lot of liberty compared to many other wholly-owned companies, though…

…unless they try to make something that some guy in a suit decides the asian market would not like because of some survey made up by some management consultant who has no idea about the game market; or try to add decent items and set reasonable prices to the gemstore instead some Maple Story-grade shenanigans.

Then they can only come back by parodying their NCSoft/Nexon overlords as The same-colored yellow and blue Consortium.

But other than the few intrusions, they can do mostly what they want to do. And the more NCSoft sees that it actually works, the bigger the chances they’ll let them do what they want even more, and that all these practices will be also used on other games.

Games to be shut down is something that can always happen. Technology can always fail. Servers can always fail. Your ISP can fail. Devs and publishers can always go bankrupt. What matters is what you do along the way, the things you enjoy, the friends you may find. I wouldn’t want to struggle too much with virtual belongings but appreciate the path I walk. You can feel attached to the world that is created and may miss it regardless, but in the end it will always be just pixels and polygons so perhaps you gotta give a little more room to pragmatism.

True that, Enoah. I had fun last night wandering around Dredgehaunt. These days I make sure to go to places that are NOT on daily achievements. Without yielding to “being told what to do”. I’m having a grand time.

There were two things that killed CoH.

The first was that it just didn’t do well in Asian markets. Western style Super Heroes are not a big thing over there (or were not, at least), and the game did poorly. The highly casual-friendly style didn’t help. This caused NCSoft to lose some faith in the idea.

The second is that while it was turning a profit, it wasn’t making as much per dollar of investment as more “classical” themed games. If investing $1 in game A gets you $2 back, but investing that $1 in game B gets you $3 back, it’s pretty easy to guess where your money is going to go.

Paragon had actually wanted to make a CoH2, but NCSoft shot down the idea. While Paragon was in talks to buy itself out and break free, NCSoft came in and shut them down one Friday, fairly abruptly too.

The lesson for GW2? It’s not enough to make a profit, you have to make a LARGE profit, and NCSoft needs to think you’ll continue to make good money for them in the future. If they decide that you do not meet these requirements (even if they turn out to be wrong), then they’ll shut you down. Yes, I’ve heard that ANet has something set up where they can buy themselves out if need be, but I have the feeling that NCSoft would destroy it before it lets that happen.

So, there you go. Happy paranoia, one and all.

The fact that:

1. NCSoft has not negatively cut Anet and
2. Their brutal reputation (Tabula Rasa was MAKING money when it was cut)

make me think there is no reason not to worry about GW2’s future.

of course NCsoft isn’t afraid of shutting down games that even appear to slow down (Tabula Rasa, City of Heroes, Auto Assault (lasted barely over a year)), but then again, the same can be said for other publishers cough cough SOE cough.

like the others said: if NCsoft didn’t touch GW or GW2 in the latest round of layoffs, that is about as healthy a sign as you can get.

teotl.7418:

However, I noted that Guild Wars is still running.. no content updates (as far as I know) but it’s not been shut down. Did ANet make sure that won’t happen?

The no content updates comment was in reference to Guild Wars (the original), not Guild Wars 2. And I don’t actually know if that is true. It seems that they still support it.

I like ArenaNet which is why I continue to play the GW franchise (both 1 and 2), but I refuse to buy anything else having to do with NCSoft, regardless of how good it looks. All I can think of is “what if they shut THAT down too?” Honestly I think ANet was wise enough to write something into their contracts to prevent that.

It’s absolutely disgusting what NCSoft did to CoH and they have lost a LOT of money for that.. money then, money now, and money in the future. To top that off, they are too stupid to realize this and they refuse to make it up.. which seals the deal on most of their future in the west.

Reading this-

Palador.2170:

The second is that while it was turning a profit, it wasn’t making as much per dollar of investment as more “classical” themed games. If investing $1 in game A gets you $2 back, but investing that $1 in game B gets you $3 back, it’s pretty easy to guess where your money is going to go.

Paragon had actually wanted to make a CoH2, but NCSoft shot down the idea. While Paragon was in talks to buy itself out and break free, NCSoft came in and shut them down one Friday, fairly abruptly too.

-makes me even MORE disgusted with NCSoft.. it still made them a profit and they decided to be kittenbags and shut it down anyway. If you ask me, it was a combination of spite (that Westerners didn’t flock to Aion) and an attempt to force Americans to play their games (lol). And THEN they wouldn’t even let Paragon out, they just shut them down.

My point is, I don’t want to get into a game just for NCSoft to have a temper tantrum and shut it down and my mindset isn’t unique, many people probably feel the same way.. and it’s hurting them financially. I just don’t trust them. I want to know that it’s not going to happen with GW2. It hasn’t happened yet with GW1 so that gives me hope, but I’m still paranoid.

Dawdler.8521:

Its also 99% likely that there is a Guild Wars 3 in production as we speak

Orly?

lol Kittenbags XD