Guild Wars 2

I’ll have to agree with the others here. HoT was advertised to contain 16 new legendary weapons, 2 legendary back pieces and a set of legendary armor. The weapons were supposed to arrive at regular intervals.

Half a year later you delivered almost nothing and tell me you are suspending the development after you took my money? You cant even spare six developers to develop what I paid you for? If these weapons dont come out before the next expansions, I will not buy the next expansion.

Well done.

shinjin.3924:

while gw2 keep losing players.

GW2 is losing players because there is nothing new to do (and, well, because of anet’s screw ups too), and not everyone cares about legendaries. From that point of view, this is good news, because it should (SHOULD) translate to more content more often.

This is getting a serious joke

Still no legendary fractal back piece, after all the promise on this one

We’ll have 4/16 new legendary weapon after 1 year, this is a mess from you arena net, a very serious lie

Still no news for WvW
Still no news for Living world
No release date for SAB

We’ll reach april 2016

The next step is “We’ve suspended legendary armor” ?

Pathetic, you should hide yourself

Virtutis.8614:

Spira.4578:

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/advertising-marketing-internet-rules-road

I feel like you guys forgot to read this.

We’re definitely owed some form of compensation if we purchased HoT. This is absolutely treading in the realm of misleading consumers.

No kitten.. I was already disappointed when I heard that there’s no work in progress for the promised guild hall features that magically disappeared..

how about let ppl craft them like the old way.

Mike, thank you for the communication. Even though I am personally very disappointed, I appreciate the heads up. Can you share anything that might lessen the blow (not necessarily ship dates, but things being actively worked)? I’d be happy knowing someone is working build templates, LS1 story journal, maybe some elite spec hints if anything is in more than just brainstorm phase etc.

My post got infracted. So I’m gonna say it again. This is a kittening joke and you guys should be ashamed. I haven’t complained about anything in this expansion because I’ve enjoyed it, but this was content you promised with the expansion, you’ve had 6 additional months to get it done, and now you’re bailing on it with 25% of the new legendaries completed. GG.

How about finishing your first expansion before working on the next one? This is a real joke.

How about instead of cutting legendary weapons which we get 1 every 30 weeks, instead cut gem store weapons of which we get 14 every 4 weeks?

I see no possible excuse for you to cut something that we PAID for, while still outputting more of something that you are still SELLING.

Just put the team in charge of gemstore outfits and gliders working on this instead, so they can make something useful.

DiogoSilva.7089:

shinjin.3924:

while gw2 keep losing players.

GW2 is losing players because there is nothing new to do (and, well, because of anet’s screw ups too), and not everyone cares about legendaries. From that point of view, this is good news, because it should (SHOULD) translate to more content more often.

I find hard to believe 6 devs will make such a difference when kittening 70 are working on a new expansion. Why not shift some of them to the living story? I guess it’s all about the honey $$$ …..

“We have about 120 devs working on the live game, 70 devs on Expac2, and 30 devs on core teams that support both” why not pull 30 some devs off the next expansion and finish the one you already shipped.

Spira.4578:

Virtutis.8614:

Spira.4578:

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/advertising-marketing-internet-rules-road

I feel like you guys forgot to read this.

We’re definitely owed some form of compensation if we purchased HoT. This is absolutely treading in the realm of misleading consumers.

No kitten.. I was already disappointed when I heard that there’s no work in progress for the promised guild hall features that magically disappeared..

Makes me wonder why in the world they’re pulling people away from the legendary team and not the team working on the next xpac, which has even more members on it. It’s like they have literally 0 proper project management. They’re trying to work on a new xpac while lowing that which is promised in the current one. Like, what? Where’s the kittening logic?

definitely not buying next expac unless everything its supposed to come with comes at release…

If six developers are the difference between new content or no new content, you’re doing it wrong.

You’re telling us you can’t spare (or hire) six people to keep the legendary weapons we were promised going? HORSE HOCKEY.

chronometria.3708:

The precursor creation system is a complete waste of time and effort that serves no purpose.

I have to strongly disagree with that, the journeys lead you through content you may otherwise not have even thought to do and I’ve had a lot of fun doing them. Add to that certain elements of the new legendaries post journey had me more invested in learning the HoT metas than I otherwise would have been and although I couldnt see myself going through that 16 times it was pretty fun the first time.

In regards to the topic I have to say I am both relieved and disappointed at the same time; it would have been really nice to see what other legendarys you guys came up with and I would have at least enjoyed doing the journeys for them but at the same time it feels like it has been too long since regular players have seen any actual story progression and I am excited to see that.

I just hope the gen 2 legendaries dont end up like SaB in a perpetual state of maybe

This is so upsetting. I feel like I have been slighted. Paid money for HoT just to have WvW be ruined with these terrible borderlands. Dungeons are pointless and now no new legendary weapons. What was the point of buying HoT?

Mike O Brien.4613:

Obviously I go into this knowing that some players will be very upset. That’s why it’s such a tough decision.

Ankdarkwolf, Darkmikau, Ballads, Spira, Caerbannog, Cysgod, you each posted a variant of an accusation I’ve seen many times over the past few months on the forums, something along the lines of, “AN shipped half an expansion with HoT.” I take issue with that. We shipped a new region full of content, a new mastery system, gliding, guild halls, a new profession, nine new elite specializations for existing professions, and more. Then we shipped precursor journeys for existing legendaries, and said, “We’ve been working hard on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.” While I fully get that you’re disappointed today, this is not about us shipping half an expansion pack.

Mo

As long as you deliver everything you promised would come with HoT before the next expansion arrives, I will accept your reply.

Tentonhammr.7849:

My post got infracted. So I’m gonna say it again. This is a kittening joke and you guys should be ashamed. I haven’t complained about anything in this expansion because I’ve enjoyed it, but this was content you promised with the expansion, you’ve had 6 additional months to get it done, and now you’re bailing on it with 25% of the new legendaries completed. GG.

Where did he say they were bailing on it? He said they were postponing the work on the remaining ones so that they could focus on Living World content for a period of time. Because the apparently overestimated how long players would take to complete the content that has been released up to this point and likely underestimated the number of players who would be raiding.

Yes, I’d love to see what the remaining legendaries will look like. None of my characters use the ones that have been currently released, I don’t think. But most players aren’t going for the legendary weapons.

Jesus.3298:

This is so upsetting. I feel like I have been slighted. Paid money for HoT just to have WvW be ruined with these terrible borderlands. Chronomancer is useless and now no new legendary weapons. What was the point of buying HoT?

I’ll give you the other stuff, but Chrono? It is meta in every game mode.

I support the decision mainly because the game needs more than new legendaries right now. Though honestly Mike, you guys need to decide what it is you’re going to deliver…so many unfulfilled promises, so many unfinished areas of the game, bugs and balance all over the place…what is GW2? What are you guys aiming for because at the moment I think we’re all losing hope.

Focus on something and make it great because at the moment we have empty WvW BLs, no new dungeons, boring fractals, a decent-ish raid, hardly any new skins (even further aggravated now)…the only other content forces you into 2 hour meta event cycles to hop onto a treadmill (thought ANet didn’t believe in them?). I love the new maps but urgh doing nothing but event after event just doesn’t have lasting appeal – plus you have diminishing returns in play idk why.

I love this game but it’s never been in a more precarious position for me, I’m bored out my mind…least there used to be dungeons to offer some fun/variation/lolz with friends…fractals isn’t the same.

Revert dungeon rewards, bring back SAB, and please figure out what the hell you guys are doing.

PS. How’s about you take the developers who are making you crappy gliders/outfits every other week and put them on legendaries? …just sayin’

I’m a real fanboy since day 1. Plus, I have never planned on getting one of the new legendaries, nor am I too disappointed with the HoT content.
I still think that this is a major slap in the face for many players.

Maybe you should bring up what takes so long for all this. Maybe the skin is the easiest part and you can create a new set of bltc weapons in a few hours, but most people only see how many new cash shop items (compared to actual new ingame skins) are coming this days.

I don’t know much about finances, company politics etc.
But you seem a bit understaffed the last ~year.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Then we shipped precursor journeys for existing legendaries, and said, “We’ve been working hard on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.” While I fully get that you’re disappointed today, this is not about us shipping half an expansion pack.

Actually Mike, the specific wording was:

“Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns heralds the beginning of the *first new set of legendary weapons to be added to the game since its original set of twenty included in the launch of Guild Wars 2. The first three we’ll release are a celestially themed axe called Astralaria, an experimental energy themed pistol called H.O.P.E., and a raven spirit themed staff called Nevermore. It takes a lot of work to craft these legendary journeys for release, so rather than take the time to develop the full set before releasing any of them, we will be releasing new legendary weapons in small groups at regular intervals until the full set of sixteen has been added to the game.”

Source

Is there not a legal obligation to provide paying customers with the things that were advertised as being part of the expansion but to be released at a later date?

It honestly feels like every day, ArenaNet has been disappointing me more and more. As a player whose primary interest revolves around making legendaries, I’m really not intrigued by many other types of content, especially not the lengthy maps that we received from the expansion. Precursor crafting was a good idea on paper but the gist of it was that it took too much time to create, resulting in the waiting and now scrapping of new legendary weapons. The best idea I can think of to have a medium ground is just abandoning the precursor crafting in general, or even just putting it on pause right now until you get the rest of the content that you would like fixed. Simply have the precursors as a drop from the HoT maps and meta events and be done with it. If you really are swamped with content to fix and create and can’t even design the legendary weapon itself, let the community do it. We know it’s possible because you guys have done it in the original Guild Wars.

Can I just get a partial refund for all this garbage in this expansion? I haven’t gotten wvw focus, i haven’t gotten new legendaries, i haven’t gotten new armor, i’ve only gotten 4 non gemstore armor sets and around that of weapons.. living story season 2 gave more than HOT

Mike O Brien.4613:

Obviously I go into this knowing that some players will be very upset. That’s why it’s such a tough decision.

Ankdarkwolf, Darkmikau, Ballads, Spira, Caerbannog, Cysgod, you each posted a variant of an accusation I’ve seen many times over the past few months on the forums, something along the lines of, “AN shipped half an expansion with HoT.” I take issue with that. We shipped a new region full of content, a new mastery system, gliding, guild halls, a new profession, nine new elite specializations for existing professions, and more. Then we shipped precursor journeys for existing legendaries, and said, “We’ve been working hard on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.” While I fully get that you’re disappointed today, this is not about us shipping half an expansion pack.

Mo

you’re right. You shipped 30% of an expansion. We’re still waiting on: legendary backpiece, fractal leaderboards, third raid wing, legendary armor, all of the new legendary weapons, the wvw rework (which btw, congrats on killing WvW; everyone was telling you in the wvw beta that the new maps were terrible, and it would backfire completely if you launched them as they were), the scribe rework, so it wouldn’t cost a left arm and your kidney, You killed dungeons completely, making sure the ONLY REASON to ever run them is, ironically enough, going for a gen 1 legendary weapon. And while not promised with HoT, you need to work on new fractal instances, rework on most of the fractal instabilities.

The story in HoT was complete garbage; it had the biggest deus ex machina that i’ve EVER SEEN, and the ending just YELLS of of a story that met the chopping block just so you guys can release the expansion early. There’s all of the bugs that you have yet to fix, like the entire instance of hearts and minds for example, as well as all of the looped map events.

This expansion is the VERY DEFINITION OF AN UNFINISHED EXPANSION. I don’t know how you could EVER think that it’s a finished piece of work.

Xehanort.7034:

How about anet actually produces the content that we PAID FOR?

They could offer me a free Legendary of my choice, but it will not entice me to ever purchase early again. They simply are incapable of delivering on their word.

Mike we know its not your fault but you need to be harder with the people working in the game its the first time i see things like this for us is a game for anet a job and devs arent acting like if they have a job they are killing a game with so much potential

ozma.3498:

As this is another thing ArenaNet promised with HoT and has failed to deliver (the list is growing), I think I’ll look into the legalities of getting a full refund for HoT and post my findings on this forum and Reddit. I know the the Consumer Rights Act was recently expanded to include online/digital goods, including games, and frankly I feel ripped off with my HoT purchase. As far as I’m aware, ArenaNet has a legal responsibility to provide the goods that were advertised (with regards to new legendaries, see the forum post “Hot New Legendary Weapons” where it says a full set of 16 will be released in HoT) and failing to do that should entitle people to their money back.

Honestly, the only thing that keeps this from meeting the legal definition of fraud is that they didn’t INTENTIONALLY (I want to believe, anyway) mislead us all with the marketing for HoT. But, just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s right. Absolutely the last time I pre-purchase anything from Anet. The way I’m feeling now, it may the the last time I ever purchase anything from them at all.

I appreciate your willingness to be the bad guy in this situation.

Glad you’re being upfront about it, at least.
Here’s to hoping some of that manpower goes to WvW improvements… heh.

With all due respect, Mike, the precursor collections were a bad idea in the first place. I mean 1 month per legendary? Not surprised.

Cysgod.8523:

“We have about 120 devs working on the live game, 70 devs on Expac2, and 30 devs on core teams that support both” why not pull 30 some devs off the next expansion and finish the one you already shipped.

This.

Neural.1824:

They could offer me a free Legendary of my choice, but it will not entice me to ever purchase early again. They simply are incapable of delivering on their word.

I would also like a free legendary of my choice. Please send me The Juggernaut.

ANET, thank you for communicating this clearly unlike your silence in past years. I think this is one of your biggest steps forward: more communication.

However, I have to agree with the posters saying that it simply unfathomable that you can produce gem store weapon SETS so often, yet you cannot even come up with 1 set of legendary weapons. Would it not be prudent to redirect the team(s) working on the gem store weapons for a couple of weeks/months on the legendary set? And then go back to churning out those gem store sets…

Sorry but how the heck do you expect people to pay for another expansion if you can’t even deliver the kitten you promised with HoT? I sure as hell won’t.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Obviously I go into this knowing that some players will be very upset. That’s why it’s such a tough decision.

Ankdarkwolf, Darkmikau, Ballads, Spira, Caerbannog, Cysgod, you each posted a variant of an accusation I’ve seen many times over the past few months on the forums, something along the lines of, “AN shipped half an expansion with HoT.” I take issue with that. We shipped a new region full of content, a new mastery system, gliding, guild halls, a new profession, nine new elite specializations for existing professions, and more. Then we shipped precursor journeys for existing legendaries, and said, “We’ve been working hard on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.” While I fully get that you’re disappointed today, this is not about us shipping half an expansion pack.

Mo

Fact still stands regardless on how hard your team works.
If you are selling something, sell it in the way you are promoting it.
Don’t come to the customers with an appologize several months after they bought your product saying “i’m sorry but our priorities are different now”.
The customers don’t care. What we care about is what we paid for – and we paid for something that was not delivered in the way you promoted it.
In other words, if you promote something, you need to deliver it – regardless on how much other promised content was delivered.

Here’s a different situation.
The merchant promotes that in their bag of fruits the customer would find a grape, an apple and a peach.
The customer would buy the bag, only to find that the bag is missing the apple.
The customer would tell the merchant about the missing item and the merchant would reply with “You got the grape and the peach, so don’t complain about the apple”.
I had to use this kind of analogy because you clearly don’t want to understand what we are saying.

I do feel like this is a good move overall. It does feel a lot like there’s a lot of stuff “in the pipeline” or that’s still “hush-hush”, but very little that’s actually ready to ship any time soon. I think it’s a move that could pay dividends in getting more content out over the next 6-12 months that would reach more players. I’d chalk it up as an especial victory if LS3 ended up getting pushed out earlier or some high-demand aspects of content were worked on by those people (e.g. I know it’s getting to be a trite example by this point, but SAB). I’m conscious that six people won’t result in instant content, but, spread between certain other teams, could result in schedules being pushed up which I think would be healthy for the game and well-received by the community.

That said, I’m also conscious that we did get told that we would have new legendaries post-HoT. As such, question: is this likely to be an effectively permanent halt or is it the case that in an ideal world we’d still see the full 16 shipped by the time the next expansion comes out?

Edit: Also I’m seeing a lot of queries along the lines of “we have new gliders/BL weapon skins every few weeks, why can’t people be pulled from that?”. It might be oversimplistic to say, but the overhead for gliders/BL skins is primarily on art – there’s very little serious developer work involved on those compared to anything else. They could probably ship shiny looking things that are skin-only all day without actually taking away from serious design and programming. They’re basically two completely different things.

The loudest complaint I have heard from the community is that there is nothing to do and that there are too many barriers in game between events that prevent members from doing activities. It makes sense to focus on fixing this major mechanic issue before focusing on more aesthetic issues. That being said, I am still disappointed that there will be no one working on the new legendaries at all. Once a few months has been spent focusing more man power into the larger mechanics based issues I do sincerely hope that at least SOME devs return to focusing on legendary weapons as they were a part of the HoT advertised features. If no new legendaries are created by the time a next expansion becomes advertised I’m afraid the majority of the current community will be hesitant to purchase the product.

It’s fine. As long as we see tangible results from this. So far the legendary team has done a very good job, and I’m certain they will continue to do a very good job in other areas of the game.

I can understand that some people might be very disappointed with this, but keep in mind that there are more goals than legendaries to achieve in this game.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Obviously I go into this knowing that some players will be very upset. That’s why it’s such a tough decision.

Ankdarkwolf, Darkmikau, Ballads, Spira, Caerbannog, Cysgod, you each posted a variant of an accusation I’ve seen many times over the past few months on the forums, something along the lines of, “AN shipped half an expansion with HoT.” I take issue with that. We shipped a new region full of content, a new mastery system, gliding, guild halls, a new profession, nine new elite specializations for existing professions, and more. Then we shipped precursor journeys for existing legendaries, and said, “We’ve been working hard on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.” While I fully get that you’re disappointed today, this is not about us shipping half an expansion pack.

Mo

While I do appreciate that you care enough to actually talk about the issues (most game developers now days will just hide under the desk until things blow over) I do honestly question how much longer GW2 has left before it just crumbles up and dies, at the rate you’re finishing HoT content (and throwing it out..) I wonder if there will even be anyone left to buy the 2nd expansion you’ve committed almost half the team to. I just wish you could veer off the money path and care more about ALL of your players than just the -hardcore- casuals.

Almost everyone I know was waiting on the new legendaries and it just feels you spit in our faces when you there are so many more alternatives than cutting them, it really should’ve been the last resort but it just seems like it was your first. wholeheartedly disappointed with the direction the game is going.

Spira.4578:

Mike O Brien.4613:

Obviously I go into this knowing that some players will be very upset. That’s why it’s such a tough decision.

Ankdarkwolf, Darkmikau, Ballads, Spira, Caerbannog, Cysgod, you each posted a variant of an accusation I’ve seen many times over the past few months on the forums, something along the lines of, “AN shipped half an expansion with HoT.” I take issue with that. We shipped a new region full of content, a new mastery system, gliding, guild halls, a new profession, nine new elite specializations for existing professions, and more. Then we shipped precursor journeys for existing legendaries, and said, “We’ve been working hard on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.” While I fully get that you’re disappointed today, this is not about us shipping half an expansion pack.

Mo

Fact still stands regardless on how hard your team works.
If you are selling something, sell it in the way you are promoting it.
Don’t come to the costumers with an appologize several months after they bought your product saying “i’m sorry but our priorities are different now”.
The costumers don’t care. What we care about is what we paid for – and we paid for something that was not delivered in the way you promoted it.
In other words, if you promote something, you need to deliver it – regardless on how much other promised content was delivered.

Here’s a different situation.
The merchant promotes that in their bag of fruits the costumer would find a grape, an apple and a peach.
The costumer would buy the bag, only to find that the bag is missing the apple.
The costumer would tell the merchant about the missing item and the merchant would reply with “You got the grape and the peach, so don’t complain about the apple”.
I had to use this kind of analogy because you clearly don’t want to understand what we are saying.

I love this!!! Perfect example

I welcome this. Thank you for getting out here and taking the flak. I genuinely mean it. This face to face communication is what we needed all along. Please keep it up.

I like this decision. Lets get interesting and fun content out rather than focus on legendary weapons that only a handful of players will grind to get. I like legendary weapons, but I like the thought of content even more. I am also a pvp focused player, so there is that.

I feel the need to point out a few things here:

First, they took 6 people off the legendary thing and put them on living story, and people wonder how much of a difference 6 people can make… Mind you, in making their next living story and even expansion there aren’t as many things that will need to be built from the ground up, and they will have laid out the overall plans years ago, so ultimately it “should” only be an issue of using the tools they already have at hand to build the maps, add the all the npcs and their pathing and dialogue, and start tying in mission instances.
>>I’m saying 6 people theoretically can make this process a whole lot faster.<<

They are suspending something that was part of HoT’s selling points. Yea… my assumption is that the parts lagging here have to do with creating the “journey” AKA the collections, and checking that they don’t rely on things that can easily be trolled. This involves taking a hard look at stuff that was likely written and never touched since before GW2’s original launch, which is NOT a quick process for anybody who cares about what they make. What the story is on the actual graphic components, the skins themselves, IDK.
>>I’d like to think the skins are lined up and ready to be stuck to collections and the crafting recipes are already hashed out, but we don’t know.<<

I assume he knew this wasn’t going to sit well, but at least he came out and made a direct statement to what is going on with these things, and not a response that sounds like the PR dept.’s sound board.

And it’s been a very long time since I went all white knight like that…

This makes me so sad. Raids and legendaries are what keeps me going right now. I have been farming and saving up to craft the new ones for the last months. Just been eagerly waiting for pics of the new ones every stream or other news update. This breaks my heart.

Please reconsider this decision. I get online and I play multiple hours every day, and the feeling of crafting a new shiny legendary is the best payoff out there for me.

How does a 5-man raid dev team put out more content in 3 months than a 6-person legendary weapon dev team?

Also, this is a huge mistake lol. Legendary weapons are one of the few things that keep people playing this game for a long time…the months of farming to craft them. Really bad.

DiogoSilva.7089:

• Most of the content being developed is targetted way too much at niches. Raids are heavily social-driven, fractals are heavily agony-grinding driven, etc. I would like to see more content that can appeal to a larger majority of players (generally, new maps with new stories do that), or see existing content be made more accessible to non-hardcore players (removal of agony and much improved LFG for raids, in my opinion, would go a long way towards that).

The problem is that stories have an even shorter lifespan than any of those things you’ve mentioned.

Gahro.4095:

It’s fine. As long as we see tangible results from this. So far the legendary team has done a very good job, and I’m certain they will continue to do a very good job in other areas of the game.

I can understand that some people might be very disappointed with this, but keep in mind that there are more goals than legendaries to achieve in this game.

If that is your definition of a good job, then I hope they don’t do that in other areas of the game…..or they will end up putting them on hold too.