Guild Wars 2

Question in the title. Just curious what your thoughts are on this.

Game has survivability even if the xpac is sub par. The reason being is that people have invested time and effort in making and buying their shinies. Its the mmorpg effect. Some won’t easily turn away. There is also the guild/friend factor.

We all hope Anet knocks it out of the park, but GW2 will still be around for a while.
The thing that would kill GW2 population the most would be GW3.

Expac 2 will most definitely be make or break for some people.

I do not, however, feel that it will break the game.

It won’t break it but if it doesn’t live up to it then I can’t see the game growing anymore. I am positive for the next one though.

Kalocin.5982:

It won’t break it but if it doesn’t live up to it then I can’t see the game growing anymore. I am positive for the next one though.

no that its growing now

I haven’t seen much, even in the leaks, that makes me so excited that I can’t do without the expansion.
Heart of Thorns maps did not increase or add too any part of world completion, nor did the living world maps. As such, I’ve no reason to explore any new maps that may be coming.
Cosmetics is, for me, in a sad state, as they’ve released next to nothing in the past 2 years that made me go “I want that!”
The only upcoming item that I have interest in is the 2nd generation Legendary Longbow. Mike O’Brien stated in the AMA that they plan to release the rest of the second generation legendary weapons without requiring the next expansion. I’ve seen in the past what happens when Anet says they “plan” to do something (precursor crafting by the end of 2013 anyone? and what do you have to have in order to do it? The expansion).
As such, that will be the make or break game for me, and probably a lot of other people. I’m not going to pay $50+ for an expansion just to craft a longbow, especially when Arenanet has already proven that they do not care one whit for people who want to actually “collect them all” for things like weapon skins. Once I realized that I would never be able to complete the longbow skin collection, I lost a lot of interest in the game in general. Espeically now that Arenanet has proven that they are not beyond locking skins behind gambling (elemental sword). The only longbow skin that held my interest was the 2nd generation legendary, which hasn’t even been spoken of. So.. if that goes up behind a Fifty dollar paywall, I don’t really have any reason just saying “nope” and ignoring it.

Is it a make or break for the whole game itself? I think it’s pretty clear that Arenanet makes plenty of money off whales and folks who are simply happy with whatever the gem store offers. As long as they keep those two groups happy, they could release an expansion with half a map, kill off Taimi, and make the purchase of 30 black lion keys part of every legendary recipe and this game would not blink in regards to it’s income.

tl;dr: no, it won’t make or break the game, even though it should.

Of course Expac 2 isn’t make or break for ANet any more than Expac 1 was. HoT did well, just not nearly as well as expected by NCSOFT shareholders. The gem shop continues to do well, despite a drop off in sales.

The big question is what happens if the game doesn’t add new communities. HoT sold well to super fans, but didn’t attract as many F2P as planned. Expac 2 also has the burden of a lot of people expecting miracles — they want ANet to have learned from all previous mistakes (and we don’t all agree on what those were). Some people are going to be extra cautious about pre-purchasing, which affects early hype.

Regardless, Expac 2 would have to do absolutely miserably for it to have any big impact on ANet’s future.

I doubt it’ll be make-or-break any more than the first one. I wouldn’t call it appealing to super-fans, either. I’d call it appealing to those who didn’t play this game for the PvP. PvP and WvW, as expected, died with the expansion. The landmark falloff is obvious at this point. It’s been slow, but it’s how it’s gone.

Those content with HoT are going to like the next one. The reasoning is because the next one is being catered towards those exact players, because they stayed, and because ANet already knows what those players want, and because ANet can stay profitable on those players.

ANet would be suicidal to try and re-convince the mass of betrayed players to come back. That’s a gamble and may just upset the players which liked HoT. They failed on the first try with a lot of time to develop the first expansion. The second expansion has been announced for just over a year, now, and we’re looking at maybe a two-year interval between when expansions are released. That’s breakneck speed for a company with so few developers.

HoT already broke the game for many, including me. Until they go against the grain of the first expansion and back to the game’s original manifesto, I’m never buying from ANet again, regardless of the state of one of the leaked elite specs being almost identical to a proposal I made. The product at its core is no longer good enough.
The original promises are pretty much entirely all broken for why I signed up to begin with. ANet’s practices are not good enough to warrant trust in their development reliability or attentiveness in gameplay improvements, either.

For the past two years, it’s been QoL at best. Sweeping changes that have been necessary for five years have not been made still, because ANet is insistent on making changes to “low hanging fruit” (quote CJ) problems which are symptoms and not causes.

So no, it won’t break GW2 or ANet. We’ve already “hit” that mark; it just won’t revitalize the other aspects of the game which many people quit over which are already failing and failing hard.

if it sucks i’m out.

Its near the end of an age of gw2 and anet at this point i am not sure if an expansion can save the game. So many new games on different system pulling ppl away from pve on-top of some major pvp aimed games i am not sure if there any thing anet can do about it. Before you know your going to have amazon major games coming out on-top of some highly looked at rvr games.

I made a post yesterday about how I think the combat presentation could be updated.

Guild Wars 2 is great, but a large part of it is combat, and honestly the combat feels like shadow puppets passing through each other with damage numbers floating up from where they intersect.

I left GW2 earlier this year to play black desert and right now I prefer to play bdo as the combat is just more satisfying. It’s hard to describe but the way that combat is visually and audibly presented makes me feel like I’m connecting with the world.

Illconceived Was Na.9781 & DeceiverX.8361 +1

Personally I’ve barely noticed anything about a new expansion, not really paid attention and not even heard much rumors. Which probably isn’t a good thing, as basically no one of the people I play with and hang out with in this game bothers to read up or mention it.

I’m not really all that interested myself, I’ll probably pick it up just to support ANet, but I’m not going to bother pre-order or buy it straight away. Just not interested enough in all the living story stuff and story lines. So will have to look at what new features and content they add outside of that.

At this stage, I’m starting to miss having some semi-vanilla servers for PvP and WvW, where they remove the specialisations, 4stat gear, new runes and food etc from HoT. Because I honestly haven’t enjoyed those at all, made fighting super boring, and basically burned me completely out of WvW. Just let me keep the Autoloot thing, because that is the one thing I really can’t live without from HOT.

Personally I’ve already stopped caring about GW2 for the most part.

But then, I did about a year after release. That isn’t to say I don’t play the game fairly actively (though only an hour a day, if you were to average it out), but I’ve given up hope the game can truly go anywhere, and hence I’m not overly committed. I like my guildies, a lot. But if someone were to show me a MMORPG where I can talk them into switching to, I’d be gone in a heartbeat.

I think that focusing too much on the expansion solely isn’t the good way to see things. As a matter of fact the current season of living world (season 3) is of very good quality. We already got 5 new very interesting maps, new content and all this just before the release of a new major expansion. I think GW2 has its future brighter than ever and I say this as a very big fan of the franchise who was extremly bitter when I realized how the “build” system turned out to be what it is when the game released and the pretty obvious lack of content HoT offered (in particular in terms of gameplay and even objectives).

They clearly took a big turn in their direction now and I think the “new team” is doing a far better job at doing something great with this game. If we truly have an episode every 3 months and an expansion after every season it will be just freaking awesome. Now there is a few potential issues with the balancing of elite specs and the mastery system which already became extremly odd even before the new expansion. But that can be fixed, tweaked and arranged so I’m not too worried. (plus the leaks are soooo exciting in terms of what will arrive)

IMO the content drought before and after HoT hurt the game. This time it seems that the next expansion and the start of LWS4 is going to be much shorter which I can only see as a positive.

Neural.1824:

Cosmetics is, for me, in a sad state, as they’ve released next to nothing in the past 2 years that made me go “I want that!”

Honetly I am more disappointed how thick 95% medium armor designs have become in GW2.

Anet has shown it is possible to make Medium armor design that is not so EXTRA THICK on the body armor piece but for some reason they keep chugging up EXTRA THICK Medium armor designs.

I am not Aku so I don’t want all new Medium Armor design make Medium Armor characters look EXTRA THICK.

I don’t think I will permanently quit the game if the expansion isn’t as good as I hope. HoT was a lot of fun for me, even if my opinion wasn’t shared by many. I just hope that the expansion will have a lot of non-raid content that isn’t as easy as the living story open world maps. I really hope they will add at least 2 or more meta event chains in HoT/SW style. Since the second expansion doesn’t focus much on adding new systems and such we might get much more content. I just hope that the new maps will be more like the recent Draconis Mons or HoT, LS1-4 maps were decent but they really feel like maps I will never go to ever again once I finish my achievements and get the last couple of items I miss. It’s completely understandable that those LS maps aren’t as elaborate with meta events and big rewards (like a full weapon/armor set or something) as they are made with a different intention. I just hope that instead it’ll reappear in the expansion.

Sombrero.9204:

As a matter of fact the current season of living world (season 3) is of very good quality. We already got 5 new very interesting maps, new content and all this just before the release of a new major expansion.

Interesting.

Those maps are quite a large part of what sorry state I think the GW2 development is in. I am mostly hoping the exp2 maps are better again, HoT had 4 rather cool maps, LS3 has 3 really really bad throwaway maps, one pretty good but still throwaway map (Bloodstone Fen) and one really cool map which sadly again is built for anything but longevity (Draconis Mons).

Overall, the maps are just… they feel as if they were designed to be temporary, tbh.

I think for me I am currently in just a wait and see mode. Coming more from the PvP and WvW side, it will probably be something to wait out and see in terms of new content and new mechanics. But if worse case scenario the expansion doesn’t add any significant content or mechanics to WvW and PvP, I will most likely find myself moving on. Its unfortunate because there is a lot of potential in those two areas!

Somewhat, but it’s not the expansion IMO but part of a larger problem.

It’s been a year since the big exodus of employees to Amazon and we really haven’t seen the company recover so to speak. If Expac 2 showcases that the company can do something without the 8-10 big name employees that left then maybe the game still has room to improve. However, judging solely by what’s gone on currently my faith in that isn’t as high as i personally would have hoped.

Honestly, I don’t know. I’m waiting to see what Episode 6 brings to the table in terms of its story before I even consider getting Expac 2. So far though, based on the story we’ve got so far from Living World Season 3, I’m not impressed enough to warrant buying Expac 2.

Hoping Episode 6 will prove me wrong but I highly doubt it.

I think it’s more that the expansion will be make or break for the identity of the game, rather than the game itself.

If it throws more HoT level challenges and meta events at everyone trying to do the story and explore, then any pretense of this being a casual fun game goes out the window for most people. If it softballs it, then the dreams of a far more challenging game for those that one one wither and die.

It is possible that they’ve listened, thought things through, and made the main paths easy while putting some challenging stuff in an optional map off to the side. But… I’ve seen no evidence of that at all, nor do I expect them to actually do it.

i love pvp games that have uptime so i will check the pvp damage before buying it
if the damage stays so high i will go play something else

TheOrlyFactor.8341:

Honestly, I don’t know. I’m waiting to see what Episode 6 brings to the table in terms of its story before I even consider getting Expac 2. So far though, based on the story we’ve got so far from Living World Season 3, I’m not impressed enough to warrant buying Expac 2.

Hoping Episode 6 will prove me wrong but I highly doubt it.

+1

I’m on the same boat. Just yesterday, I created a new character to unlock the personal story achievements for the Charr race, and wandering the “old” maps made me realize how far off the devs have moved from the game’s original concept (story- and design-wise). It saddens me, it is no fun at the moment.

Sure, I grind the new maps like everyone else, but I don’t feel it anymore, that feeling that was connecting me to Tyria (its lore and everything else) since 2004.

Anser: No.

Explination: HoT was make or break for GW2. GW2 vanilla had some problems and was losing players overtime. The Living Story seasons where not able to deliver the Expansion-Like content people wanted.
But at the core there still where other problems with GW2. Imo the lack of traditional quest and the big (cosmetic) grind (what I blame that cash-shop focus approach for) are the main problems.

While no seamless zones are also an issue that I think is underestimated. Loading-screens when going to a new area (being it by traveling to another map or using a way-point) break the immersion. This makes that it feels more like being in a game then in another world and that result in less binding with that world. Less binding means people are less likely to come back once they left.

Anet does seem to try and adress all these issues btw, just does not manage to completely solve them because they don’t go the full mile.

Anyway, once HoT was announced I think GW2 was already running in it overtime, with that I mean that many people where leaving but because of the announcement did stay and waited for the expansion.

The Expansion sadly did not solve any of the core-problems of GW2 and so once people played some of the HoT they left (See quarterly results). By that time probabbly totally burned out.

I don’t think the majority of them will come back for the next expansion. So imho HoT was make or break for GW2 not the next expansion.

(With ‘break’ I obviously do not mean servers would be closing down. I just mean it gets a much lower base-line. Besically where we are now. With ‘make’ I would mean rising to something close to it’s initial glory. Being one of the big MMO’s out there.)

I think people are still forgetting that HoT was more of a framework expansion than a actual content expansion. As in the content placed in HoT was more for future workings. and feature rich, Examples are Guild Halls, Raids, new skills/spec system(E-Specs), progression system, and Legendary Crafting(Precursor crafting). I definitely have my hopes up for the next expansion being more content rich now that we have good systems in place. A good indicator of this is also the quality of maps released through LS as well as story. So I’m going to say it’ll probably do better than HoT.

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

i am using this from another post today as i do find it most fitting .

I am going to wait till after the pack comes out this time .and see how it goes . as a lot of us who got hot and got very burned over that whole deal . another new packing coming out this year . just only puts that bad taste back in some of our mouths .and giving how that all went down and has been going of late. their going to have to really bring it this time and do it so very well that even us that got that bad taste in our mouths will want to put a bow on it and tell our friends its ok to come back . but only time will tell how that goes . and for some of us no matter what they do they just will not be able to take that bad taste out of our mouths . not trying to be salty here just honest is all .

also i made the choice even tho there is a new pack going to be coming out. i for one will not be buying the pack at all . for at least 6 months to a year or so after it does come out. to see if everything’s does come out as promised unlike how hot came out and still not gotten all the legendary stuff that was to have come with it and if it does not live up to them and does fail like hot did well . then i think that answer your looking for in the end will be painfully very clear .

LOL, you just described my position.
When I pre-ordered HoT I thought it was my way of saying “thank you” for the hundreds of cool hours I spent playing GW2.
Unfortunately I dont feel the same way about HoT, and just like WARIORSCHARGEING.263 I already decided that I won’t preorder the next expansion no matter what, l and won’t buy it for a few months.

And I’m sure we’re not the only ones feeling like this.

Lucentfir.7430:

I think people are still forgetting that HoT was more of a framework expansion than a actual content expansion. As in the content placed in HoT was more for future workings. and feature rich, Examples are Guild Halls, Raids, new skills/spec system(E-Specs), progression system, and Legendary Crafting(Precursor crafting). I definitely have my hopes up for the next expansion being more content rich now that we have good systems in place. A good indicator of this is also the quality of maps released through LS as well as story. So I’m going to say it’ll probably do better than HoT.

The people who lost interest in the game largely didn’t leave because of a lack of content.

Most people who have since left have left because the framework changes implemented have been objectively negative in regards to what this game was trying to be before the release of the expansion.

As for new maps being stale as discussed by people above, this is just because of the fact that these maps are designed to serve only one purpose: Act as holdover/new content. A new reward or shiny. A new thing – so people grind them out, wander back to their safe zones to show off their loot, and are bored again with no incentive to go exploring. The new maps are over-designed trying to funnel people around with very specific chains of events and story hooks and so on. Every aspect of the way the maps are designed feels like a grind, especially when considering mastery points and so on.

There’s a lack of intent on keeping those areas really permanent, prominent areas of the game. Just feature the new content. A new ride at the themepark, and move on after a few goes.

One of the most brilliant displays of map design for an online world I’ve seen came from a game I played years ago where even in the very starting maps, moments away from where your character spawns, they put higher level content that had persistent purpose to higher levels. In a level 10 zone there’d be a huge marble monument with a huge neutral level 50 boss at the center. As you’re leveling up and circling around the structure while monsters increase in zone level, higher levels would be all over the place trying to kill the boss or PvP over the kill. This kind of design gave life to all of the old maps through these kinds of features – a world where people would develop new reasons to go back and re-play through old content, be it through some kind of rare item drop that spawned some special encounter for game-story reasons, bosses, misc. quests, etc.

The maps are so modular due to the payment model behind them via LS unlocks that ANet can’t do this, and there’s a distinct lack of interest in building the world to feel living and realistic when the content is designed to just be churned out over and over.

I’m late on the Living World content (not done with episode 4 yet) but so far as a completely casual solo-PvE player, I really like what I’ve seen as of late, and the sheer size of the new map make the next episode look awesome. If they can keep the pace with the expansion and further content, I think we’re looking into a very good future for the game.

It’s just very unfortunate that it took 5 years for the game to get there. After an original game that lacked in end-game content and an expansion that, despite having a lot of hidden gems like adventures, ultimately disappointed a lot of people by it’s small size. It may be difficult to convince players to give another chance to the game. Even though I truly believe it deserves another look, it may be a hard sell. In a sense, it may already be broken in terms of growth.

But there is hope. There are not a lot of new MMOs these days, and the two most popular ones (WoW and FF14) are pay-to-play which is a non-starter for a lot of people, so while the game is 5 years old, Guild Wars 2’s traditional niche of being a super casual-friendly MMO with no power creep and a pay-for-the-box business model may still have it’s place.

But it’s to Arenanet to worry about such things. As long as the expansion release I’m happy.

I think it will for wvw players like myself. If i want good pve gw2 is not it OF COURSE i mean common. Anyway, how much more can wvwers take if next expac doesnt bring really good things to thw game mode? Continue to do the exact same thing ina game mode broken in terms of balance between classes either in smallscale or large scale? I thin the game will stay around but due to nothing fixed and added EXCLUSIVELY FOR WVW IT Will get a of 6 to 12months decent active population and then drop even more than before the expac.

I prepaid $100 for the expansion and have been fine with everything they have done. I am enjoying all parts of the game. Well, except for the PvP. I just don’t get into PvP. I do play the WvW and PvE parts thou and enjoy all the maps.

The longevity of GW2 has always depended on others doing the entire package better. Base GW2 is just an incredibly good quality game and nothing has challenged it.

New games has come out but there is always something wrong. Great visuals? kittenty p2w combat, back to GW2. Something that could replace WvW? Subscription cost so dead on arrival, back to GW2. Great combat system? Visuals and animations that make you vomit, back to GW2. Awesome MMO features like housing and trading? No WvW, back to GW2.

Etc and so on.

Carighan.6758:

Sombrero.9204:

As a matter of fact the current season of living world (season 3) is of very good quality. We already got 5 new very interesting maps, new content and all this just before the release of a new major expansion.

Interesting.

Those maps are quite a large part of what sorry state I think the GW2 development is in. I am mostly hoping the exp2 maps are better again, HoT had 4 rather cool maps, LS3 has 3 really really bad throwaway maps, one pretty good but still throwaway map (Bloodstone Fen) and one really cool map which sadly again is built for anything but longevity (Draconis Mons).

Overall, the maps are just… they feel as if they were designed to be temporary, tbh.

If you want longevity draconis mons has the most with the jp and the backpiece collection.

If the story gets more deep and detailed, I will get it. I only do PvE and Story content is the only thing that drives me. If I lose that I am so out of this game as I hate being forced into PvP or other things if its not PvE.

I pre-ordered the expansion and I did not regret the buy, I got what I wanted from the HoT expansion and giving the ability to buy a expensive back item (The Red Flower one) with the included bonus gems from the Ultimate Edition as I was unable to afford it off the TP.

I just hope the story don’t flop or anything though with the next expansion or when the final expansion to end the story which won’t be around for a long long time.

Lucentfir.7430:

I think people are still forgetting that HoT was more of a framework expansion than a actual content expansion. As in the content placed in HoT was more for future workings. and feature rich, Examples are Guild Halls, Raids, new skills/spec system(E-Specs), progression system, and Legendary Crafting(Precursor crafting). I definitely have my hopes up for the next expansion being more content rich now that we have good systems in place. A good indicator of this is also the quality of maps released through LS as well as story. So I’m going to say it’ll probably do better than HoT.

It was sold as an expansion, and they had to as they could not wait until now with the first expansion.
So no matter if you consider HoT a true expansion or not does not really matter.

Officially and for pretty much any player it simply was.

After eventually getting bored by the initial game (Many people now point to HoT as the big problem, but players where leaving GW2 also before HoT, that was likely why we got HoT in the first place) and then again within the first half year of HoT many of them are simply not likely to come back for a new expansion, no matter how good it is.

And I think Anet is very aware / afraid of this, based on this statement of Mike-O Brien. https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/68vw84/flashpoint_devs_here_ask_us_anything/dh1pm80/

Now Bearhugger.4326 has a point that there are not many MMO alternatives for GW2 and that that might give some hope. While you can wonder if that really matters, will people not also go to other games? 2016 was an awesome year for games.

Some players might want an MMO but many might have switched to games like BF 1 or Overwatch and be happy there.

And still the question will be if the next expansion will be able to solve what was wrong since vanilla.
Sure, so far everything looks great, with a little luck we will also get less waypoints in the new maps.

But will the core problems be solved, or will much of the content still feel like a grind?

Don’t forget that HoT did also look very promising before release. And really, much of the content was not that bad, but it just did not solve the issues many people already had before HoT.

Lucentfir.7430:

I think people are still forgetting that HoT was more of a framework expansion than a actual content expansion. As in the content placed in HoT was more for future workings. and feature rich, Examples are Guild Halls, Raids, new skills/spec system(E-Specs), progression system, and Legendary Crafting(Precursor crafting). I definitely have my hopes up for the next expansion being more content rich now that we have good systems in place. A good indicator of this is also the quality of maps released through LS as well as story. So I’m going to say it’ll probably do better than HoT.

You mean they can now expand on things in the future?

Like how they keep adding new precursor scavenger hunts, or how Guild Halls are going to be “worked on” the same way they’ve continuously added new Guild Events since those came out? Or how the new mini-zones all have new adventures as non-combat content since HoT brought in the tech for that?

Oh wait, that never happened either! :o

I have exactly 0 expectations in regards to seeing new work on anything of these. Because if ANet can do one thing really well, it is to throw 15 things at a wall, have 4 stick, then promptly abandon all 4 and instead work on one which didn’t stick.

I don’t think the new expansion will be make or break for the game. By the same token, I don’t think the game is going to grow hugely bigger than it is. MMOs tend to settle into a place in the overall pantheon of MMOs and I think Guild Wars 2 is up there in the top five. I don’t really see it going anywhere, unless some really bad mistakes are made.

The initial response to HOT certain did hurt the company some, but then the better reaction to the Living World brought some of the good will back.

I’d say to be make or break, the expansion would have to be terrible and fundamentally change the game.

Since the game is not likely to fundamentally change at this point, I don’t really see how it can make or break anything.

Well, Expansion 1 vastly improved with the LS so it feels worth the investment at this point. I was one of the ones upset by the pricing shenanigans but that is all gone now and I’m really looking forward to the next xpan.
Although the LS costing gems makes it harder to get my friends who haven’t played in ages but own HoT to wanna return, unfortunately.

Hope Xpan2 comes with medium armor that doesn’t have buttcapes though. Man, it’s been such a long wait for something so simple…