Guild Wars 2

Hardly. You paid for access to it. Do you get it if you didnt pay? No. In pretty much ANY mmo in existence, you’ll find that there’s language in the EULA/ToC that amounts to “you paid only for access to the service/product,” not “you paid for something you THINK you should get.”

edit: In fact, from Section 2.a from the gw2 EULA:

You further acknowledge that Your full or partial access to Content, including one or more Message Boards, Teams or Items is conditioned upon Your compliance with the provisions of this agreement and the Rules of Conduct. ArenaNet may modify, remove, or add Content in its reasonable discretion.

Bolding my own to highlight the point soooooooooooooooo many of you people miss.

edit2: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-user-agreement/ for any of you who think I’m lying.

I’m grateful for the honest and open communication.

In a sense, it doesn’t really affect me, but the reason it doesn’t affect me would have been “solved” by completing a full series of new legendaries.

I often joke with my friends about how bad thieves have it when it comes to the first legendaries. I’ve mained Thief since 2012 and have never once taken an interest in the hard work needed for legendaries. I’ve always incorporated Pistols in my builds, but it doesn’t get more “joke weapon” than something named “The Quip”. I want my character to be cool and impressive, not pierce the heart of my enemies with sharp confetti. The shotbow has always been decent in WvW, but that route means shooting freaking unicorns and rainbows. The Incinerator is a genuinely cool weapon, but it is fire themed, and guess who absolutely never inflicts Burning? The sword has never been satisfactorily Thief-like for me and not enjoyable, so I don’t use it. I don’t remember what the underwater legendaries are, of course everyone wants water combat to be reworked, but that probably can’t be much of a priority until 2020 or so.

I don’t mind joke weapons being made, but Thieves have it too rough. But I’ll gladly sacrifice plenty of interesting content if it means any better progress for WvW. Cosmetics don’t mean a thing if I’m not playing.

I have supported this game since the time Guild Wars Prophecies came out. After the first game I pretty much bought every expansion on release date. I pre-ordered GW2 several months before release as soon as pre-orders were announced and I pre-ordered HOT.

I have several thousands of hours played in GW1 and at least 1800 hours played in GW2.

As of right now I haven’t played the game for the past 2 months. Before that I had stopped playing for about a year until HOT came out.

The game is truly just a big disappointment at this point, and with team members abandoning the ship and things like this being announced I just continue to lose hope about this ever changing. I understand that you want to focus on the playable content core game first, however at this point it almost feels like damage control when you have to sacrifice other long time promised content, content that was used to market your expansion, and that you never delivered.

The point here is that HOT promised many things and to this day many of the promises still remain as just promises and not facts. We were sold an expansion with all this content, and we only got a small fraction of it. There are many complaints about this, but I’ll just name the most silly one: the Mistward Weapons. These were usable in the Beta and used to market the game, even going as far as displaying them in the box art of HOT, and to this day those weapons still remain to be release. As of right now I even doubt they will ever be released, and we are not talking about anything special here but content that already exists and has already been used by players.

I really REALLY want GW2 to be the game we were promised, I really want HOT to be the expansion we bought and not a fraction of it. I hope this is for the best, but I just can’t believe you until I start seeing actual objective improvements. I have let many things pass, I have held my hopes up for too long and things only seem to be getting worse.

This game was promising and exciting at one point.

good luck mike
you guys can do it

Aidan Savage.2078:

Hardly. You paid for access to it. Do you get it if you didnt pay? No. In pretty much ANY mmo in existence, you’ll find that there’s language in the EULA/ToC that amounts to “you paid only for access to the service/product,” not “you paid for something you THINK you should get.”

edit: In fact, from Section 2.a from the gw2 EULA:

You further acknowledge that Your full or partial access to Content, including one or more Message Boards, Teams or Items is conditioned upon Your compliance with the provisions of this agreement and the Rules of Conduct. ArenaNet may modify, remove, or add Content in its reasonable discretion.

Bolding my own to highlight the point soooooooooooooooo many of you people miss.

edit2: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-user-agreement/ for any of you who think I’m lying.

Thank you Aiden, I was looking for this myself to post.

Right now I’m wondering how it is a team of 6 people assigned to the purpose of modeling various weapon sprites/animations and writing a collection are somehow going to meaningfully contribute to living world updates in such a way that their absence would’ve been distinctly noticed in future upcoming updates.

So.. Shortbow huh?
Good! This means i dont need to make any new Legendary weapon.
My Money is so happy right now!

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Right now I’m wondering how it is a team of 6 people assigned to the purpose of modeling various weapon sprites/animations and writing a collection are somehow going to meaningfully contribute to living world updates in such a way that their absence would’ve been distinctly noticed in future upcoming updates.

they have to make the collections too

If HoT is indicative of future expansions this game will sink hard and fast, and deserve it. Awful, just awful.

Testudo.4620:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Right now I’m wondering how it is a team of 6 people assigned to the purpose of modeling various weapon sprites/animations and writing a collection are somehow going to meaningfully contribute to living world updates in such a way that their absence would’ve been distinctly noticed in future upcoming updates.

they have to make the collections too

Reading is not an exploit.

Huh. I mean, yeah I’m upset about a lot of things. Legendaries I’m not particularly concerned about, but the fact that they were promised and now ANet is kind of just like “nah son” about it is pretty troubling. Y’all should at least work out the kinks and get done what you said you were gonna do before you go and start new projects.

To be completely honest, at this point I just want Kralkatorrik content. I doubt it’s gonna be anytime soon but I can dream.

James Quall.6029:

I love the people here that applaud the wisdom of their decision to stop working on legendaries and start working on story. Is that really what this game has done to people? Is the huge content drought we had before and after the expansion really made us so desperate?

NEWS FLASH It’s ok to expect BOTH, especially when they promised BOTH! We’re talking about trade-offs and compromises that shouldn’t have to be made in the first place and the fact that they’re making them isn’t something we should ever congratulate!

I had to stop for a sec and quote this. I’ve been doing a lot of up-voting in my reading in this thread so far, but I really had to comment on this post in particular, because the same thing happened with the situation about posting here vs Reddit.

Do we get so desperate for any little scrap tossed our way that we say, “eh, we’re not thrilled you’re doing it there, but you’ve been silent so long, at least you’re doing it SOMEWHERE! I’ll take anything, just give it to me!” Yes, that’s what happened, and has been happening. Why do we have to settle? You can talk there and here!

We can want new legendaries and new LS! We’ve paid for both! Both were advertised and sold to us. The LS story taking until this summer (presumably) is bad enough. At this point, if that even happens and we’re not told last minute like this (the State of the Game Q2 2016 is due to be announced the beginning of April according to the bottom of this page- we should have been hearing about new stuff with that!) it’ll be “delayed” given this policy of not wanting to “give a lot of predictive statements”, is I think how it has been put, due to who-knows-what, will be nothing short of shocking to me.

I’m not a huge Reddit user, but I’m finding discussion over there interesting right now. The cheering section isn’t cheering so much, and people aren’t pleased. It’s… colorful.. there right now, for sure.

At any rate, I applaud the post here, but I think the decision was a poor business one given what I’ve read so far (still reading here and Reddit) and as someone who bought the expansion x3 before release based on what was advertised and what I saw in the beta weekend (my graphics being way better on my new systems vs my old ones when I’d left a year prior bring a major factor), I feel duped lately by ArenaNet. As I type this on my laptop, I’m reinstalling ESO on one of the main systems to see how their 3 updates since I left are. Something just has to give. It might just be me. I guess we’ll see.

So, since there won’t be anymore legendary weapons released for the masses to go after in the standard PVE environment how about unlocking legendary armor outside of the raid? Just a thought, since there are still many who haven’t been able to have even one successful raid. I think this might be a fair compromise for the loss of new legendary weapons.

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

This is an excuse, an unprofessional and rude one at that.
More than half of an expansion is still not a complete expansion. Your own personal offense does not matter to thousands of customers who bought an incomplete game.
To say, “But we did this” doesn’t do the customers any good. Yes, the expansion added 3 maps, a raid feature, and elite specializations, but it promised many other things as well, at a high cost of $50. To be asked to pay a substantial amount for an expansion, nonetheless an incomplete expansion, is ridiculous.

Anet has continuously promised things to be done, yet things never come. Open World PvE is a nightmare for anybody other than hardcore PvE’ers. Instanced events besides raids have seen no updates, yet raids cater to 1% of the population. WvW has been promised a fix 2 years too late. (As a WvW’er mainly, this is a huge issue for me. When only 2 maps have a queue (both of 20) in a Tier 1 NA server during reset (today), it screams that there is a problem). Only PvP has gotten updates via seasons, but also have gotten complaints.

I read some Glassdoor employee reviews, and there are two main issues I see: the environment and management.
While an open environment has its benefits, it also has downfalls. Lack of structure leads to operational efficiencies, for example communication difficulties brought up by employees. Any manager who went through business school should understand organizational growth, yet they miss the obvious next steps, delegation and control.
The other issue is the “disconnect between managers and employees”. This just highlights the management’s shortcomings in dealing with the issue of autonomy.

Anet’s organizational culture has stopped it from meeting deadlines, and a fix is necessary. They have been riding on the goodwill of their customers for too long, and this is the final straw.

Heibi.4251:

So, since there won’t be anymore legendary weapons released for the masses to go after in the standard PVE environment how about unlocking legendary armor outside of the raid? Just a thought, since there are still many who haven’t been able to have even one successful raid. I think this might be a fair compromise for the loss of new legendary weapons.

You mean there are still many who have not even set foot in those raids…
And there are still many who don’t even have a legendary of the “first” batch. After 3 years of playing.

I am not one bit disappointed in this decision. Those precursors require a huge amount of grinding, both for RNG drops and for gold so you can make the other ingredients. And then there’s the legendary itself to be done…

Brawson.4701:

Is it sad that I think SaB was the best content GW2 has had? Content originally thrown in as a april fools joke that was created pretty much by one guy?

Not at all, if that is what you enjoy, then that is what you enjoy! It was fun content for a lot of people. I was horrible at it, but my son was great, he really wants it back.

Buuuut, how much would someone like to wager they have it ready for next week to placate the masses? Hmm?

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Heibi.4251:

So, since there won’t be anymore legendary weapons released for the masses to go after in the standard PVE environment how about unlocking legendary armor outside of the raid? Just a thought, since there are still many who haven’t been able to have even one successful raid. I think this might be a fair compromise for the loss of new legendary weapons.

You mean there are still many who have not even set foot in those raids…
And there are still many who don’t even have a legendary of the “first” batch. After 3 years of playing.

I am not one bit disappointed in this decision. Those precursors require a huge amount of grinding, both for RNG drops and for gold so you can make the other ingredients. And then there’s the legendary itself to be done…

No, I said what I said and meant what I said. Don’t try to change the meaning.

My idea was an offer of a compromise for the canceled legendary weapon releases. Give players an alternative way to create the legendary armor outside of raids.

As for the cost/RNG/grind/etc…it’s each player’s decision to spend their money and grind. I’ve done so many times already. I’ve done the grind 6 times already for legendaries and there are people who have done it more.

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’ve got some b*lls cancelling half of this expansion (we haven’t forgotten about the cancellation of the hyped up delayed wvw update which clearly never existed in the first place – but that’s ok because “wvwers are really into pve” right?) while having half your staff working on a second expansion as we speak. Too bad there won’t be anyone around to buy the second one. Half of your forum posters including me are only here to watch the ship as it sinks from greener pastures.

I’m truly disappointed but not because you will not give us more legendaries(wtf in its own), but because i honestly don’t know of any COSMETIC items in HoT. Now you’re removing this as well. You should advertise that the only way to look different than the others is to buy costumes from the gem store. Very kitten decision.

Ahhh, so now we know the real reason Colin jumped ship….

Where’s the orchestra playing as the ship sinks?

ezhcim.3075:

Where’s the orchestra playing as the ship sinks?

Over in the wvw forums where the three people left on the bottom server are still talking about server pride.

Evil Seabass.5214:

Ahhh, so now we know the real reason Colin jumped ship….

I thought the same thing when I read the initial post..

I guess the next question is, what is to be delayed till further notice next?

• WvW is basically dead, needing a reboot.
• Some professions with the basic trait lines need reworked (or even all)
• Bugs
• Dungeons needing loot redone
• Fractals needing improvements
• PvP balance and matchmaking system
• (insert anything I missed here)

It really just sounds like resources need to be gathered up and redistributed better, because yeah, the current systems aren’t doing so well

Mike, did you consider just including the weapons (the recipe for the skins per se) in the game and postponing the journey to acquire them for later dates?

As many other users already pointed out, I believe most people are mostly interested in the prestige of the skins than the journey itself, even though the latter would make the acquisition more accessible, people would take it easier as we would only have to wait more for the story wise part of the weapon, and not the item.

I would be ok to wait longer for an easier path rather than waiting for the whole thing, I believe the possibility of acquisition is more important than the means to get it. Half a promise is better than no promise fulfilled whatsoever.

FALSE ADVERTISING

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will let you begin your journey toward the first new set of legendary weapons to be added to the game since its original set of 20 that were included in the launch of Guild Wars 2. The first three to be released will be the celestial axe named Astralaria, an experimental energy pistol called H.O.P.E., and the raven spirit staff named Nevermore. Additional legendary weapons will be released in small groups at regular intervals until the full set of 16 has been added to this game.

Myself and many other players purchased HoT based on the content we were told it would contain. HoT was marketed and sold to us with the promise that we would be getting more content than we did. Just go to the freaking HoT website if you disagree with that (looking at you, Mike).

It doesn’t matter if ANet believes that HoT has “enough” or “plenty” of content. That’s irrelevant and subjective. What matters is what the marketing team promised us, and what we did not get.

I have been patiently waiting and saving materials for a new legendary weapon I could use on my sword / longbow character since before the expansion launched.

I feel as though I have been lied to. I feel like ANet cheated me as a customer.

I will not be spending any more money on this game.

Great move,finally devs are asking us (community) what we want for this game.We want GW2 to have as much as content as possible,things to do and makes you play this game.Legendaries are useless and only % of people care about them at all.We need as much as PVE is possible as well as WvW fix.Thanks Mike

Huddi.8297:

Mike O Brien.4613:

I strongly believe that we will in fact entertain you. We’re a team of people who love the game that you love, and are working on things we’re confident you’ll love. But I’m not here to convince you of that, and I wouldn’t expect you to take my word for it. You can make that judgment in April, and each subsequent time we ship. I will work to make you happy, and I’ll do it by making you happy with what we ship, not with what we promise to ship.

Mo

Great to hear! I hope you can manage to get the best out of this situation. I hope you deliver on entertainment in HoT and not only in the next expac.

Well, they’ve failed nine times with story so far (All three Guild Wars+Expac, Personal Story, LS1+2, and HoT), and now they’ve failed on Legendaries.

Tl;dr: Thank you for being so blunt and honest, Mo. I really appreciate it. Although I was looking forward to more legendary weapons, I’m looking forward to seeing what you and team have to deliver. Keep your head up!

Long version: I am so sick and tired of hearing about “half an expansion.” I’m not 100% certain what was promised shortly before HoT’s release. I wasn’t around when the marketing hype was happening, since I had been inactive for years.

What I am 100% certain of is that I’ve gotten 100+ hours of enjoyment since I’ve returned post-HoT launch. For $50, I’ve gotten FAR, FAR more out of my money than I ever expected. That amounts to $0.50 per hour.

Would I like more raids, legendaries, and living season episodes? Of course! Do I expect them as part and parcel of the original $50 that I paid? No. Don’t be ridiculous. $50 is the price of 3-4 movies, up to a measly ~9 hours of entertainment. It’s the price of one or two people’s meal and drinks on a night out with friends.

Compare that to the last 100 hours I spent gliding about happily in vertical maps that I’ve never seen the like of before. The awe I encountered while fighting Mordy in Dragon’s Stand for the first time. It was well worth the $50. I have no regrets. None at all.

That said, if all of these purported features were promised before HoT, please, please have a gentle but firm talk with the teams responsible for publicly promising them. Urge them to not promise features that are more than 1, 2 months from release. Best to not promise any features that are not ready. I have the benefit of age, but most of our friends and companions in the game are younger. 10 or 15 years ago, I might have expected the world for my $50 — whether it’s reasonable or not.

In any case, here’s one voice in the sea of many. ArenaNet: you had given me the happiest days of my gaming life with GW1. You’re giving me hundreds of hours of enjoyment now with GW2, whether or not I agree with some of your previous and current decisions. But I support you, and I especially support your openness, Mo.

And now, I will go in game and support it with a purchase. Have some money to back up my words.

Keep your chin up. But maybe remember to make less promises in the future.

saalle.4623:

Great move,finally devs are asking us (community) what we want for this game.We want GW2 to have as much as content as possible,things to do and makes you play this game. Legendaries are useless and only % of people care about them at all.We need as much as PVE is possible as well as WvW fix.Thanks Mike

I’m a PvE player and have no Legendaries, and have no interest in getting a Legendary. Does that make it OK for a company to lie to me, or anyone else for that matter, regarding the content that I will be buying with my money? NO

You might be a PvE player, you might not like Legendaries, but other people out there bought the expansion specifically for those weapons and they have every right to be kittened. Even if you don’t care about this weapons you should be concerned about the fact that a company can so easily change what they have promised to deliver and basically tell you: too bad you won’t be getting what we said you would get for paying 50 to us.

If we don’t stand our ground then the next time this happens it might be about something YOU care.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Heibi.4251:

So, since there won’t be anymore legendary weapons released for the masses to go after in the standard PVE environment how about unlocking legendary armor outside of the raid? Just a thought, since there are still many who haven’t been able to have even one successful raid. I think this might be a fair compromise for the loss of new legendary weapons.

You mean there are still many who have not even set foot in those raids…
And there are still many who don’t even have a legendary of the “first” batch. After 3 years of playing.

I am not one bit disappointed in this decision. Those precursors require a huge amount of grinding, both for RNG drops and for gold so you can make the other ingredients. And then there’s the legendary itself to be done…

My husband recently, after I leveled and reached elite ranger/druid a month or so ago has started crafting me Kudzu. Have I mentioned that we hail from a guild of 5 people? Us and the kids and my ex husband (the ‘kids’ are admittedly in their 20’s and the ex doesn’t get to play alot, his job and internet connection prevent quality time). We’re pretty casual people. We’ve never been “rich” in game (the most we’ve all ever had at once in one of our bags was me, I think at almost 400g) He’s gotten quite far by his lonesome. I’m in no rush.

We don’t raid, but we 3 man fractals all the time- again, the ex doesn’t get much time on, my daughter has a trial account I talked her into trying and got fed up once getting her necro to 80, hasn’t logged in to play in over a month- so it’s me, my husband and my son. I have a whooping 43 AR, have gotten to PF level 26 (in a month- purdy good for a filthy casual I say! wink), and gotten all the mastery achievements except ‘Weapons Tester’ and ‘Subject 6 Deep-Sixer’ with 3 people or less. Will we be able to get much higher with just us 3? Doubtful. However, we try, and if we want to try to achieve something, we should be able to.

Don’t finger wag. Just because you, or someone else, isn’t disappointed, doesn’t mean others aren’t. They paid for stuff just like you did. Whether you play the content available is up to you. Just because you don’t find it useful, doesn’t mean others don’t, or won’t at least wanna try. Sometimes, it’s the challenge that’s fun.

*-edit typos!

Isiene.8093:

Tl;dr: Thank you for being so blunt and honest, Mo. I really appreciate it. Although I was looking forward to more legendary weapons, I’m looking forward to seeing what you and team have to deliver. Keep your head up!

Long version: I am so sick and tired of hearing about “half an expansion.” I’m not 100% certain what was promised shortly before HoT’s release. I wasn’t around when the marketing hype was happening, since I had been inactive for years.

What I am 100% certain of is that I’ve gotten 100+ hours of enjoyment since I’ve returned post-HoT launch. For $50, I’ve gotten FAR, FAR more out of my money than I ever expected. That amounts to $0.50 per hour.

Would I like more raids, legendaries, and living season episodes? Of course! Do I expect them as part and parcel of the original $50 that I paid? No. Don’t be ridiculous. $50 is the price of 3-4 movies, up to a measly ~9 hours of entertainment. It’s the price of one or two people’s meal and drinks on a night out with friends.

Compare that to the last 100 hours I spent gliding about happily in vertical maps that I’ve never seen the like of before. The awe I encountered while fighting Mordy in Dragon’s Stand for the first time. It was well worth the $50. I have no regrets. None at all.

That said, if all of these purported features were promised before HoT, please, please have a gentle but firm talk with the teams responsible for publicly promising them. Urge them to not promise features that are more than 1, 2 months from release. Best to not promise any features that are not ready. I have the benefit of age, but most of our friends and companions in the game are younger. 10 or 15 years ago, I might have expected the world for my $50 — whether it’s reasonable or not.

In any case, here’s one voice in the sea of many. ArenaNet: you had given me the happiest days of my gaming life with GW1. You’re giving me hundreds of hours of enjoyment now with GW2, whether or not I agree with some of your previous and current decisions. But I support you, and I especially support your openness, Mo.

And now, I will go in game and support it with a purchase. Have some money to back up my words.

Keep your chin up. But maybe remember to make less promises in the future.

I don’t care about your math equations, if you promise to deliver something and then you just don’t then you lied to your customer base, did false advertisement, and practically stole money from me. While you might have bought the game for the 100 hours of gameplay you got, some other people might have bought it specifically for the legendaries.

To give you an example a GW1 expansion included a whole new continent, a whole new story, several new armor sets, several new weapon sets, several new features, etc. And those were cheaper than the 50 bucks we paid for HOT. While some might argue that GW2 is a whole lot more complex (and I agree) it still doesn’t make it right for a company to advertise X and Y content and then not deliver it.

Alright, where to start?

I suppose I should start by saying I could care less about legendaries. Whatever, it is what it is. I like the option to have them, but they aren’t the be all and end all to me. However, I do not like being screwed over. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we were lied to, but it’s like that beautiful grey area between “lying” and keeping us “hopefully optimistic” that is just grey enough to keep your rear ends off the fire.

About a hundred people have already lit this thread up listing all the crap we were promised and didn’t receive, and a few people had the clang to show up and defend ANet saying “well, it’s for a good cause.” Yeah, and the guy in map chat in DR asking for sticks of butter to “finish his cooking skill” isn’t screwing you over either, I’m sure.

The real issue here is that there are people working on a new expansion pack that we’ve only just heard about now, apparently, when there’s still work to be done on other things. Not even the legendaries, but how about the bugs from the OLD living story ffs? All of them over a year old, and most of them riddled with bugs. I know y’all gotta make money, but you need to understand that when we pay 90 bucks for a base game, 100 for a (half finished, whether you like it or not) expansion, and lord knows how much on gems, we need to be respected as your loyal player base. Lying to us, not delivering promises, not fixing the game as it is right now; that isn’t respect and I don’t dig it. The allocation of staff to projects is just all wrong and needs to be rethought, asap, before you deal permanent damageto yourselves.

so to summarize, old players before game going Free to play don’t get bonuses for upgrading to Heart of thorns, maps are broken, story is still horrendous despite given effort, maps and events are a bit bugged now, raid wings aren’t complete on release,dungeons hit the final nail on the coffin, WvW is still dead, fractal leaderboards doesn’t exist and probably never happen and now the promised full set of legendaries will remain incomplete. did i missed anything from their broken promises?

now questions to answer, what’s the rate of paid players leaving the game as we speak, and is this the part where i regret buying the expansion?

and for pete’s sake can anet just be more transparent on their development instead of keeping people in the kitten dark, it’s making me think that they’re getting rid of old players so they could just incentivize on the new casual F2P players

…oh well… thats 2 things down that i expected but dont got with HoT…. ontop of having many things i enjoyed before pretty much destroyed. Sure, they said they gonna add the new legendaries in intervals….so i waited for my new knive thingy and hammer thingy but i think i got enough. Why do i even still complain? Why do i even keep buying gems? Eh… whatever…

Atleast be so kitteng kind to finally add armor skins with the LS…

Isiene.8093:

That said, if all of these purported features were promised before HoT,

Before HoT.

Bait & Switch Advertising

Bait and switch advertising is when a company offers consumers an appealing deal and then changes the deal when consumers make direct inquiries. HoT used deceptive advertising to get the consumer believing that he/she is going to find the deal of the year. HoT was advertised to offer new Legendary weapons , the attraction of bait and switch advertising is strong. HoT is incomplete and was grossly overpriced considering the market and all brand new games out are much less.

WvW was filled with broken promises. No1 priority last year turned then later this year, then an overhaul, to all being scrapped. Population balance and skill balances are basic fundamentals of any game not to be presented as an expansion or an update.

New Legendaries , 3 of which were already made 2013 and just polished for HoT. Now the rest are scrapped. What was really being worked on all this time. Nothing

You lied to the community , your long time vet players and any new player is mislead.

To argue with the points about paying for access. It’s like paying for a birthday cake and paying for said cake. Then get the cake and find out they didn’t finish the icing on it. Hey, you still have cake, right? It’s okay! It’s still edible and still tastes good, but it’s not what you paid for. It’s unfinished. I’ll still eat my cake but I won’t be buying another one from this bakery. I’m not even going to buy the fresh cookies they sell every other month out of disgust. If they have so much time for all these other things they could have taken time to finish my cake.

People completely valid in their anger over it and are well within their rights to demand a refund because they didn’t get everything that they paid for. Everyone not mad, it’s great you still enjoy the cake. But we all now know buyer beware.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Hardly. You paid for access to it. Do you get it if you didnt pay? No. In pretty much ANY mmo in existence, you’ll find that there’s language in the EULA/ToC that amounts to “you paid only for access to the service/product,” not “you paid for something you THINK you should get.”

edit: In fact, from Section 2.a from the gw2 EULA:

You further acknowledge that Your full or partial access to Content, including one or more Message Boards, Teams or Items is conditioned upon Your compliance with the provisions of this agreement and the Rules of Conduct. ArenaNet may modify, remove, or add Content in its reasonable discretion.

Bolding my own to highlight the point soooooooooooooooo many of you people miss.

edit2: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-user-agreement/ for any of you who think I’m lying.

>You paid for access to it

The access is now gone.

So you are selling half finished products now and don’t ever bother to complete them as you promised. Good to know for future expansions.

Even more faith in Anet is lost for me.

HoT wasn’t worth the price, the content was completely lacking. I understand that it took time to build some of the new mechanics but the amount of content is almost equal to the amount added in the later half of the living story with Dry Top and the Silverwastes. The story seemed rushed and poorly written, almost as kittenhooting down Zhaitan with fireworks. What was the point in making Mordremoth the big-baddy of the expansion if you could solo him within a few hours? It was completely underwhelming. The zones are confusing messes most of the time, tuned too high with too many tightly placed mobs.

So I agree with people saying it was half an expansion. Yeah it had the new mechanics and class changes one would expect from an expansion but the actual story and world content felt like 1/4th of what it should have been.
You asked for $50 for the base game which had tons of actual content. Yes there were bugs but it was filled with tons of varied zones, little details, engaging questlines (aside from the later part of the PACT and lackluster end of Zhaitan)
You asked for $50 for HoT. We got a story line shorter than the base racial story, 4 zones which felt the same for the most part. 1 new spec for each class, 1 new class, and masteries.

HoT felt more like half of a living story season in total and now you are working on a new expansion too? I’ll be hard pressed to buy it at this point. Even WoW’s WoD expansion was better than HoT and its the worst, most content empty expansion they have had.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Hardly. You paid for access to it. Do you get it if you didnt pay? No. In pretty much ANY mmo in existence, you’ll find that there’s language in the EULA/ToC that amounts to “you paid only for access to the service/product,” not “you paid for something you THINK you should get.”

edit: In fact, from Section 2.a from the gw2 EULA:

You further acknowledge that Your full or partial access to Content, including one or more Message Boards, Teams or Items is conditioned upon Your compliance with the provisions of this agreement and the Rules of Conduct. ArenaNet may modify, remove, or add Content in its reasonable discretion.

Bolding my own to highlight the point soooooooooooooooo many of you people miss.

edit2: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-user-agreement/ for any of you who think I’m lying.

The issue is not that they took it away. The issue is more so that they MISLEAD us and changed the facts after we paid.

“Hey, friend, I have 400 ecto. Would you like 400 ecto?”

“Yes I would like 400 ecto. Here, have 100 gold.”
“Cool, here’s 200 ecto.”
“What about the other 200?”
“Go kitten yourself, not in the budget.”

You’d be ticked and you know it.

Edit: stupid autocorrect

I’m sure you examined the possibility of scrapping the collections instead of scrapping legendaries instead. But I’m really curious why it was chosen to go in this direction. Maybe I’m one of the few, but I didn’t mind the RNG based system of getting precursors. Yes, it was all based on luck, but for me it was part of the fun that I could be doing something and get an exceedingly rare item like a precursor and when one finally did drop it was such a rush, and from their I could even sell it if it wasn’t quite what I was wanting.

I’m actually really disappointed by the decision to scrap all future legendaries, I’d been saving up all my mats for the release of them all before I decided which legendary I was going to try for, now I’m disheartened at it all. I hope ANet comes around on this decision, either reworks/scraps the collection idea if that’s what’s holding them back, or they at least release the second precursors as a dropped based item in the future, at least until they make collections for them. At least give us something as we were all waiting and hoping for new, interesting legendary weapons to forge, collections or not.

And yes, the only thing that would be an acceptable trade-off for the scrapping of future legendaries would be for the return of Tybalt, living, unharmed and NOT undead.

vladracul.6798:

Mike, did you consider just including the weapons (the recipe for the skins per se) in the game and postponing the journey to acquire them for later dates?

As many other users already pointed out, I believe most people are mostly interested in the prestige of the skins than the journey itself, even though the latter would make the acquisition more accessible, people would take it easier as we would only have to wait more for the story wise part of the weapon, and not the item.

I would be ok to wait longer for an easier path rather than waiting for the whole thing, I believe the possibility of acquisition is more important than the means to get it. Half a promise is better than no promise fulfilled whatsoever.

How many times must those of us who craft these things tell you, our motivations are not entirely (or in my case especially) about shinies, it IS about the journey, accomplishing a goal, creating something difficult. Why do you do whatever it is you enjoy? Seriously, so presumptuous to claim you understand what motivates another person.

Well thanks for the update Mike, I’m not happy about it. In fact, I’m pretty much upset about how things are going. I need a goal to play any game. Making legendary weapons was one of them. I’ve got Nevermore just right before Christmas, and now I have nothing to keep me going.
By now I’m not having fun in the living world. I’m bored with the open world content. Been playing core Tyria open world for years, and now thanks to the grind-fest for let’s say chak weapon set and the couple of others, I’m getting tired of it in HoT. It isn’t fun anymore.

I’d really like to see new playable content as in story, or the need to achieve something other than gathering collections… (I don’t know about others, but for example even if it was a grind back then, making MawdreyII was something I liked, kind of missing those days :S)

Yea, some elite specializations were great, some weren’t, and yea that was a huge chunk of HoT. The mastery system was a huge work, but (sadly) not something that makes me want to play the game. (Yea right, I like gliding in central Tyria, but seriously, I could do without it. I’m not playing GW2, because gliding is SOOOO much fun…)

All in all, I am dissapointed. And I’m not seeing myself pre-ordering the next ‘expansion’. Probably going to buy it at some point, when we will know what will be in it.

I guess it is time to move on, and log in just for the daily log-in rewards for months, when there will be something to play for. Like new fractals maybe (it’ll arrive in the near future? oh right… I’ll believe it when I see it), the ressurrection of www, the non-existend dungeons that you guys just want to shut down anyways (we’d still like 5 player content..), oh yea, almost forgot the LS3. Summer? really?…

:(

It’s like ANet doesn’t have enough people to do kitten

So let me get this straight – you can afford new gem store updates every week and pump out a new weapon set, outfit and glider every 4 weeks but you can’t afford to make actual content? Content that was a main selling point of the expansion?

Mike I’ve been with you guys since Guild Wars 1 beta but honestly I am done. You guys have had too many chances and you are losing loyal long time fans. I hope it’s worth the gem sales though.

Funny how your cash shop in GW1 was actually fair and not gouging but GW2 is now actively being affected by the imbalance of cash shop vs in-game content and you will lose loyal players and fans in droves over stuff like this.

Again – I really hope you think it’s worth it. But hey, it’s cool, looking forward to the next black lion weapon set or outfit package. I’m sure that’s better for the game’s playerbase than actual content or long-term goals, right?

Not sure what else to say.

Well, on the one hand, thanks for the communication.

On the other, I have a hard time believing that a team of 6 people can screw up so badly and have to start over so often that they take this long to implement a new legendary weapon.

I work as a developer, and I just now spent some time mulling how this’d work at my place, and it’d be me (doing the programming, development, quest design) and one artist, with 1-2 hours a day of a tester’s time, if we’re lucky. We probably have to test ourselves because the testers are busy.
And we’d be expected to produce a weapon round about ever 6-10 days, from what is part of a precursor process ingame. To send it off to QA and to localization.

In other words, I’d be long fired if I worked that slow. Sorry to sound so harsh. Yes the process isn’t easy, and yes there’s a lot of hoops to jump through, but that’s why we two (my graphics artist and me) can’t do it in 1-2 days but need a week or two.

And this is a problem I have with a lot of work on the game, it’s glacially slow.

mrauls.6519:

It’s like ANet doesn’t have enough people to do kitten

This is probably the root of the issue yes, also that they keep abandoning unfinished projects to start new ones (which they then don’t finish either).

They need to hire enough people so teams can be working on different things rather than having to drop one for another.

Or at least have these done by the people pumping out cash shop outfits none asked for every other week.

Simple rule, if you can’t promise you will do something, then just dont do it.
Players will not expect anything, so you wont dissapoint them.

It’s sad because for me Legendaries were the biggest part of the expansion.
Masteries – i hoped it will take months, not days to finish them.

Anyway, you made a lot of work, expansions is big, but content hidden inside is not sufficient, it’s not enough.
Bored by PvE people go into PvP and change into some toxic s..