Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).
“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”
“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”
Legendary weapons
But still, it’s not like they’re breaking any laws by proving incompetent to deliver on their promises — as long as some sort of compensation is offered.
Yes, this should absolutely be their defense here:
“Hey guys, we didn’t break any laws, we’re just incompetent!”
I can’t say I’m happy that they’re working on the next expansion when the previous one still needs tonnes of work, but I’m fairly sure those 70 people were allocated ages ago, so either they’re left as they are or they get laid off.
I’m confused. What does it matter when those 70 people were assigned to work on the new expansion and why do you claim they have to be left there or laid off? Why can’t they be reassigned to finish HoT content?
It’s clear they had no problem reassigning the legendary weapons team without putting them out of a job. Why can’t they do that with some of the 70 people they have working on the expansion?
But still, it’s not like they’re breaking any laws by proving incompetent to deliver on their promises — as long as some sort of compensation is offered.
Yes, this should absolutely be their defense here:
“Hey guys, we didn’t break any laws, we’re just incompetent!”
I can’t say I’m happy that they’re working on the next expansion when the previous one still needs tonnes of work, but I’m fairly sure those 70 people were allocated ages ago, so either they’re left as they are or they get laid off.
I’m confused. What does it matter when those 70 people were assigned to work on the new expansion and why is it that you claim they have to be left there or laid off? Why can’t they be reassigned to finish HoT content?
It’s clear they had no problem reassigning the legendary weapons team without putting them out of a job. Why can’t they do that with some of the 70 people they have working on the expansion?
Anet apologists will always find some way to defend the actions of anet. Honestly I’m personally just waiting for a response from Mike O’Brien that isn’t just outright insulting people in this thread before I make my decision to leave or not.
I think the Dreamer is funny, but I’m glad that the shortbow is getting released, at least, because it’s always been more divisive. “Serious” alternatives are going to be available to for the Dreamer, Quip, and the Bifrost, so at least people who wanted something “cooler” can have it. (I think Bifrost is super cool, mind you, but I get why necros might not visually match a white-and-rainbow staff.)
Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone complain about the Moot before, so I’m not sure about that one. It’s a disco ball, but it doesn’t seem to rub people the wrong way like the others do, possibly just because it’s a scepter and it doesn’t shoot unicorns.
~The Storyteller – Elementalist – Jade Quarry~
What part of it means they didn’t? The burden of proof is not on the customers at this point…due to their sketchy track record so far.
In judging incompetence vs. malice, the burden of proof is always on whoever alleges malice. This stems partly from Hanlon’s Razor, and also from the general principle that you don’t accuse people of a crime without proof.
It’s obvious that they’re incompetent. They do need to compensate players for this — it was, after all, their balls-up — and offer refunds to those who don’t like whatever compensation they offer.
But however kittened off you are that they screwed up, that does not mean you’re justified in accusing them of lying or deceiving you.
Anet apologists will always find some way to defend the actions of anet. Honestly I’m personally just waiting for a response from Mike O’Brien that isn’t just outright insulting people in this thread before I make my decision to leave or not.
ANet haters will always find some way to portray the claims of anyone they disagree with as ANet apologism.
(edited by evilunderling.9265)
Wasnt this similiar to the bullcrap that ended up killing swtor and swg?
I imagine Mike in his office reading this post with Dido playing in the background: ‘I will go down with this ship, and I won’t put my arms up and surrender, there will be no white flag above my door…’
What part of it means they didn’t? The burden of proof is not on the customers at this point…due to their sketchy track record so far.
In judging incompetence vs. malice, the burden of proof is always on whoever alleges malice. This stems partly from Hanlon’s Razor, and also from the general principle that you don’t accuse people of a crime without proof.
It’s obvious that they’re incompetent. They do need to compensate players for this — it was, after all, their balls-up — and offer refunds to those who don’t like whatever compensation they offer.
But however kittened off you are that they screwed up, that does not mean you’re justified in accusing them of lying or deceiving you.
Good point. agree with you all around. They really should give free gems at the very least to every player who bought hot. What a farce.
dont worry they will probably give 3 classes shorbow on the next round of specialization lol.
You actually believe there will be other elite specs as they promised? Wish I could say the same, but after this I’m not convinced we will see others anymore.
I was really hoping for a sword and dagger.
Your brown nosing knows no end apparently. You aren’t getting a cookie for sucking up. You can bury your head in the sand or bend over…whatever.
Well, this is literally true, in that, since my “brown-nosing” does not exist, it cannot possibly know an end.
I won’t. You can try to ignore their track record up to this point…I won’t. There is no lack of publicly available information about their lack of trustworthiness…especially when it comes to all things HoT so far. The fact that they had to be pressured into refunds for hot pre-orders.
Incompetence. No evidence of malice outside of your imagination.
The fact that the primary advertisements for HoT were for content that they have decided to just cancel…6 months after selling us the product.
This is actually factually incorrect. There was a blog post to the effect that they had 16 legendaries planned, it was never part of their “primary advertisements”.
But whatever, it was promised, and now they’ve determined that they’re no longer capable of delivering it.
The fact that they have said absolutely nothing about refunds or any form of compensation. These are adult issues. These are business issues. These are legal issues. These are respect for their customers issues. If you can’t understand that, then you need to stop posting.
And what part of that means that they actively tried to deceive you, as opposed to just screwing up?
This type of concern isn’t isolated to just one industry. If I ran any type of business, and advertised a product indicating specific things would be included. You came into my store, read the advertisement, and purchased based on said advertisement. Then you went home and found out said advertised items were not in the box. You contacted me and I simply told you that I decided not to include them for whatever (irrelevant to you) excuses…and just stood there smiling at you…with no offer for compensation or refund…would you feel you had been treated with respect as a paying customer? We all know the answer is no…therefore you are absolutely full of it.
That is not analogous to what is happening. Therefore, you are absolutely full of it.
This was a conclusion we were already coming to on our own…many forum posts about this already. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this was anything other than yet another PR recovery move.
What else would it be?
Yes, this was dirty and disreputable. You think they just realized this was a problem yesterday? You think they weren’t having these issues with the legendary weapon process prior to releasing HoT?
They had the first few in hand at that time, so no, I don’t think they were having the same problems at that time.
You don’t remember the outcry on the forums due to lack of information on what would actually be included in HoT for the pre-order purchase price?
I remember that outcry. But the people who didn’t feel they had enough information to decide whether or not to pre-purchase presumably opted not to pre-purchase. It’s pretty difficult to argue that they were deceived.
As far as requesting a refund from our banks…what bank is going to refund an e-purchase from 6 months ago? Why should we even have to go that route to dispute it from our bank. You don’t speak for ANET or our banking institutions. If ANET is trustworthy…they would be offering us the refund…just like any other reputable company with a product recall.
You’re proposing to take them to court, that is why I am telling you to contact them first via customer support, and then attempt a chargeback, because a court will expect you to try and resolve the matter amicably first.
I am actually disturbed that some people are giving Anet a pass on this. They have actually broken consumer laws in the EU and lied to you, and basically some are saying that’s ok, I still love you!
Nobody is giving them a free pass except in your own head. I absolutely believe that they should compensate existing players for this and offer refunds to anyone who wants them.
But the claims that they’re lying, cheating, disrespecting their customers, or even close to the worst in the industry are bullkitten.
There is a rather signifiant difference between being, “incapable,” of fulfilling the promise and being unwilling to do so.
As to refunds, Anet has established that giving a refund for HoT involves them cancelling the entire GW2 account, without refunding the non HoT expenditures. A charge back gets the same treatment with additional penalties.
For what it s worth, there does nt necessarily need to be malice involved for something to qualify as false advertisement and to merit state levied fines and compensation for the consumer. I dont know how this applies in other locales but in my state the penalties can be quite severe.
(edited by Ashen.2907)
I would really and truly love for the people threatening to sue to actually do so. Pay 4-500 dollars or equivalent currencies per hour to get back if very very lucky the price you paid for the game. You would need to find an incompetent judge and somehow have the company not delay matters with contesting the verdict but heh, stranger things happen.
They could legally according to the contract you agreed to turn every character into pink fuzzy slippers and the goal of the game would be to find the perfect feet to fit on and you could get squat back.
It’s obvious that they’re incompetent. They do need to compensate players for this — it was, after all, their balls-up — and offer refunds to those who don’t like whatever compensation they offer.
This sort of blind faith in the good of humanity is why we have so many wars and so much turmoil in the first place. People simply assume incompetence, and allow malicious individuals to continue on their merry way until it all explodes.
It is especially foolish to assume incompetence when money is on the line.
Where are my gem sales? I want gem sales! Nerf EVERYTHING!
I don’t actually believe the intention was malicious but pure incompetence. There are literally 70 other people doing nothing of importance to anybody in this game that should have been moved, instead they moved the only 6 people doing stuff we actually paid for. Anybody defending this action is truly stupid.
Makes me wonder how the team working on the legendaries is still employed if they can only crap out 4 in more than half a year.
1, 1 in half a year. Remember the other 3 must’ve been fairly close to completion at HoT launch because they came shortly after. So like 1 weapon in 6 months. I’d fire the kitten out of those people.
Oh, very true, I said 6+ with that “close to completion” aspect in mind but if it took them 6 months to do ONE, they must have been working on the other 3 for at least a year and a half. Unfortunate.
I truly wish to believe this wasn’t an act of malice, maybe they just over estimated their work force.. but I’m sure I’m not the only one offended by the responses of MO when he says not to talk about what they sold but what they plan to sell.
Wasnt this similiar to the bullcrap that ended up killing swtor and swg?
Raph Koster (the lead on that game) posted a fair bit of commentary on what happened to SWG.
The TL;DR on why SWG failed is that Raph and his team were overambitious and the higher-ups at SoE failed to rein him back in.
The TL;DR on what actually happened is that the game was pretty badly hurt by a premature release, and updates intended to reverse that decline culminated in the NGE, which ‘killed’ the game by destroying much of what distinguished it gameplay-wise from other MMOs. It was ultimately shut down a few years later.
There might be a few parallels.
(edited by evilunderling.9265)
Wasnt this similiar to the bullcrap that ended up killing swtor and swg?
Not sure about SWTOR, but SWG was massively hurt by a premature launch, so in that sense, it’s kind of similar.
First few months of that game were the best.
I previously addressed the “half an expansion” thing, and I can point you to pages like this one and this one (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_Heart_of_Thorns), but that doesn’t matter because it’s just arguing. My job is to entertain you, not to argue with you.
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
I’m sorry Mike your job previously was simply to entertain us before you sold us another product. When it was just bi-weekly updates, and things of that nature in which we could choose to log on for or not. When it was gemstore armors we may or may not buy. That’s when your job was to simply entertain. But now that you’ve resold your game through a new expansion promising certain content the players are now owed that content with zero exception. Delay it, postpone it, whatever you want, but until that’s done there should not be a large team working on the next expansion when you’re not even giving the players the one they bought already. This isn’t about which content we would enjoy more, this isn’t about which content you feel is more important, this about you charging us for promised content then pulling staff off of that project to finish another one while you still have plenty of people working on something to charge us more for. It’s disrespectful. You can say that we’re here to entertain you but you’re ostracizing anyone and everyone who bought said expansion for the prospect of new weapons. You’re saying “It doesn’t matter if that’s what’s fun to you in this game, because I’m just going to entertain you with something you don’t care about” and that completely diminishes their purchase, and the value of their money as customers. I personally love the idea of new content but it sickens me that a company would choose the steps you’re currently taking instead of choosing to delay their next sale when they have yet to finish their first.
Let’s look at it in terms of other business’s.
Example 1:
You buy from a magazine catalog, you wanted to purchase fireworks for the 4th of july, they promise they’re delivering you 16 mortars and some fountains for your party at $100. Instead they send you 4 mortars and some pop its, with the promise that someday you may get the fountains, but for now you’re for certain you’re not getting the mortars.
Solution:
You never buy from that company again, and in most cases that would be enough evidence for a lawsuit. (I have zero intention of suing this company because I still love the game, and really hope that it will somehow make a turnaround)
Example 2:
You go to a tech store to buy a computer. Said computer is advertised to have 8gb ram, and a i7 processor in it as stock. You know it’s not the most amazing machine ever, but it’s within your price range and its better than what you have so you get it. You’re super excited about it, but when you get home you find out that processor will be mailed to you in 7 months, and the ram may or may not show up this year.
Solution:
The company offers compensation for the inconvenience, you take the computer back, you accept being lied to and purchase nothing from the company ever again.
My point is this; if you promise us a certain product and charge us a premium price for a new “expansion” and then don’t deliver what you promise. In any other business that would at the very least result in a loss of business on a massive scale if not more. You’re no longer thinking of the players, instead you’re thinking about how you can manage to satisfy enough of them to make a sale on your next expansion.
Had you not promised this much content to us with our purchase of HoT then sure you could argue the fact that this isn’t a half baked expansion. And to be quite honest this expansion is a lot of good content all things considered and by any right would be a full expansion in most circumstances. But what it is right now is a half baked sham of an expansion because you charged people for content that you have yet to get around to supplying several months after the purchase date, and your argument is “but we gave you something”. Something is not what we paid for, something is not what you promised us.
The esport thing is just silly.
The last tournament they held i checked it out- barley anyone watching on twitch. Went to a few peoples personal twitchs/youtubes. maybe 100 subs.
200k prize for something no one is watching, and clearly almost no one cares about.
Is that really why they keep pushing out outfits and black lion skins super fast? To support that?
This has to be some sort of joke.
QFT
We won’t receive part of what was advertised on HoT for indefinite time? Yay! Will definitely pre-order next expansion!
I can’t say well done,since content being delayed indefinitely is not a ideal situation.
It would be better if we could have both the new legendaries and more seasonal events*. On the other hand,I do want the return of LW s1 type of content in the game.
Something besides the main story releases that are made to be repeatable,maybe a
few limited time,non recurring/repeatable events per year,focused mainly in open world group content.Like s1.
Not everyone’s cup of tea,but the way I see it the static and repeatable worlds of MMOs is a compromise,given the technology and tools that are available to developers,and anything done to move away from this concept and provide ever changing game worlds is a move to the right direction.
*Yes,I did pull a Captain Obvious there.
-Win a pip,lose a pip,win a pip,lose a pip,lose a pip,
lose a pip,win 2 pips,lose a pip,lose a pip…………..-
-Go go Espartz.-
lose a pip,win 2 pips,lose a pip,lose a pip…………..-
-Go go Espartz.-
I would really and truly love for the people threatening to sue to actually do so. Pay 4-500 dollars or equivalent currencies per hour to get back if very very lucky the price you paid for the game. You would need to find an incompetent judge and somehow have the company not delay matters with contesting the verdict but heh, stranger things happen.
They could legally according to the contract you agreed to turn every character into pink fuzzy slippers and the goal of the game would be to find the perfect feet to fit on and you could get squat back.
That might happen in the US, but in the UK there is the ‘The Consumer Rights Act 2015’ that is a law passed by the UK Parliament, that is there to protect the consumer, we have very strict laws here when it comes to consumer rights. And this is a basic snap shot of what it states.
—————————————————————————————————————————————-
The Consumer Rights Act came into force on 1 October 2015 which meant from that date new consumer rights became law covering:
What should happen when goods are faulty;
What should happen when digital content is faulty;
[How services should match up to what has been agreed, and what should happen when they do not, or when they are not provided with reasonable care and skill;] This here applies to what Mike said.
Unfair terms in a contract;
What happens when a business is acting in a way which isn’t competitive;
Written notice for routine inspections by public enforcers, such as Trading Standards; and greater flexibility for public enforcers, such as Trading Standards, to respond to breaches of consumer law, such as seeking redress for consumers who have suffered harm.
Most of these changes were important updates to existing laws. But two new areas of law were also introduced.
For the first time rights on digital content have been set out in legislation. The Act gives consumers a clear right to the repair or replacement of faulty digital content, such as online film and games, music downloads and e-books. The law here had been unclear and this change has brought us up to date with how digital products have evolved.
There are now also new, clear rules for what should happen if a service is not provided with reasonable care and skill or as agreed.
[For example, the business that provided the service must bring it into line with what was agreed with the customer or, if this is not practical, must give some money back.] This also applies to what was announced by Mike.
The Consumer Rights Act 2015 stands alongside Regulations to create a greatly simplified body of consumer law. Taken together, they set out the basic rules which govern how consumers buy and businesses sell to them in the UK.
——————————————————————————————————————————-
Personally I won’t take legal action, not worth the effort, I just will not buy anything again from Anet, but I have no doubt some will as it is UK law. I believe a simple gift of a few hundred gems to all that bought HoT would quell a lot of the anger.
Financial suicide.
Clearly something very significant and serious is going on at Anet at the moment and all the evidence suggests that the things I have described have contributed to a serious fall in player numbers that could affect the long term future of the game.
The simple fact is that once Gem store sales start falling (and of course I have no evidence that they are at the moment) the game becomes unsustainable.
To underline this – If you can locate the ANET Financial report Q4 2015 thread – you will see that revenue for HOT was less than a normal quarters gem sales.
Gem sales and by implication active player numbers are the be all and end all for ensuring the game stays in existence.
For many businesses the value of ‘good will’ far exceeds both income and assets and Anet could clearly use some good will at the moment to maintain current, entice back lost and attract new players..
So your solution to all this loss in revenue is even more loss in revenue? Okay….
Clearly you are not familiar with the term ‘loss leader’ – look it up – Also look at the Q4 2015 financial statement.
Gem store sales are the revenue stream and to sustain that income the game needs a stable (not shrinking) player base.
Anet needs to win back old and entice new players to the game – Another poorly received expansion that generates less revenue than quarterly Gem sales (as HOT did) may provide a nice blip on the balance sheet every 12 months but if player numbers
decline, the viability of the long term future of the game is sadly going to be in question.
As I said, go for it.
Hey Mike, how about this:
“From brainstorming to testing and bug fixing, building everything for a new legendary weapon reasonably takes about a month, not including the art for the weapon. That’s about a week per themed collection and a week for the economics, recipes and other random tasks. When you do the math for twenty existing precursors and three brand new weapons, plus development time at the front end for the base system…let’s just say that we had to get clever to get everything done to the high quality bar we were setting.”
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/hot-new-legendary-weapons/
I feel lied to over and over.
Why don’t you pull developers from the 70 (SEVENTY!!) working on a product that you will later sell to us instead of the 6 working on completing a product already sold to us?
This isn’t a simple case of “hard decision”/“controversial decision”… It’s a POOR decision to make and you are being criticized for that. You made the worse out of your situation where you actually had a beacon to turn it around. I am 100% sure the community would not be in this situation if you had come out and said you would be pulling resources from the future expansion team instead. It is mind blowing to me that you could make such a bad management move like this one you’ve done.
And you’ve done it on a Friday, what a joke! So we can have all the weekend to “forgive & forget” since you won’t be talking to us at all these days. Pathetic.
mouth too blunt, truth too loud
(edited by Kitta.3657)
The most effective legal action, if any, would not be to personally sue but rather to get one’s state department of weights and measures involved. They can levy serious fines, and are very aggressive because these fines can represent significant revenue for the state. In my state the fines can range as high as one thousand dollars. Per incident. A single customer being affected can be determined to be an incident. Retroactively. So, in theory, the state could require that Anet provide information indicating how many copies of HoT were sold in state and could, theoretically, levy a fine for each sold copy. This does not require that those purchasers actually file complaints, only that the state be made aware of the incidence.
To be honest, this really makes me sad.
First of all, a short bow. Really. Shortbow is used by Thief and Ranger. Two leather armor classes. As opposed to a Gs, which would be used by Warriors, Necro Elite, Ranger, Mesmer, Guardian. But okay, what’s done is done.
BUT – honestly, if you have only six people responsible for the legendary weapons, a feature that was promised with the expansion, a feature a lot of people were looking for, and those people can’t, for whatever reason, finish these things, you could either offer them help by for example the designer team that made, since July 2013, a whopping 30 (!!!) weapon sets with, safe for an exception, the winter’s weapons, which were only 10, and the bloody prince’s weapons, which were only 6, but, for simplicities sake, 16 weapons each. That is 480 (!!!) skins. Fourhundredeighty. Just think about that, 480 skins. And those poor kittens have problems with designing like what, 10 more? I mean sure, you need footfall and auras, and whatnot, but that really shouldn’t be a problem. Honestly, compare the 480 skins to the 3 skins they made in about the same time. You really have some productive people making the BL Weapon skins. And crafting a legendary always follows the same pattern. Get your prec, get your gifts of might and magic, another random gift that fits the theme of the weapon to some extent, bam, done. The blueprint is there. It really only comes down to the design. And we know that the design for, for example, Nevermore, has been out for ages.
So the problem seems to be the legendary journey. Okay, I can see that that could be some trouble, but still, if you told me that you need like 50 point all over tyria that fit a new Legendary weapon that is Ice themed, I could get that done in a month tops. Yaddayadda programming and bam, its done.
And if it takes longer, well, give the people the time they need, but add the new precs to the loot tables in the HoT maps, make them tradeable, until a new journey is finished, then add the journey, everybody is happy. I mean sure, not everybode, but at least a lot of people.
And saying that “legendaries are for only a small percentage of people” – I do not have a legendary, and ive been playing since launch, but I still like them, I love to look at them in the preview, thinking to myself, “oh yeah, one day I will get myself that kitten Flameseeker Prophecies”. It’s just a think of perspective.
I really don’t like the fact that the legendaries are postponed even longer – if they ever get released, that is – and I am really mad that they still didn’t really deliver the things they promised us back in 2013.
its great that Anet can pump out a full set of BL weapon skins every month for the gem store, but arent even able to give us all the legendaries they promised us with the expansion. But I guess we always knew where the priorities lay.
You know what’s more effective than a lawyer or some useless bureaucrat?
Not buying gems. Not converting gold to gems. Not logging in. Not buying the next expansion they push. Hurt their metrics that will get the attention of the money people and they ultimately run the show.
Personally, I’m disappointed. I wasted so much time just waiting for new legendaries to come out, alongside that and the drought of living world content. But in the other side, i guess this is okay but hot is just on big mess. Probably not buying any expansions until hot gets fixed.
Incinerator/Meteorlogicus/Sunrise/Bifrost.
Syllariana, Ghostly Eva, M Ë S, Scarletta Marie, D R Ä K E.
Syllariana, Ghostly Eva, M Ë S, Scarletta Marie, D R Ä K E.
Raids benefit more than just the people who run them.
And Legendaries don’t?
Besides, i don’t need to remind you that at the moment it’s still highly debatable if the positive effects of Raids on the game even outweight the negative ones. And that is without considering the fact of clear developer shortage.
Seriously, if 6 developers from the legendary team can have such a great impact on the game that it outweights the massive publicity hit resulting from their repurposing, then having raid team pulled would have even better effect. And there would actually be a lot of people that would find it a good publicity.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Ask yourself this question to determine whether this move is ethical/fair/misleading/whatever…regardless of your stance on whether it’s good or bad for the game.
Q: Could players obrain the new legendaries without purchasing HOT?
A: No.
The ability to craft new legendaries was a one of the selling features of HOT. You could not make them if you only had the core game. Therefore, this move violates player’s expectations as set by AN’s advertising for HOT.
I can live comfortably with more work going into the LS side of the game, that’s the area I mainly focus on as a semi-casual player – but…
I still can’t help making a connection between dropping work on the remaining legendries and the current state of the in-game economy, yes I’m looking at you Mr Smith.
Anyone who follows the market trends knows someone has been buying up a lot of crafting materials recently and that supply/demand and prices for higher level materials has become a little ‘unbalanced’ – legendries play into the market and one effect of saying they are on ‘indefinite hold’ would be to add a major disincentive to speculate in related materials, in hopes this would release stockpiles back into the market with a corresponding drop in prices.
If there is a ‘hidden agenda’ here, be nice if John Smith could be as open as Mike and say so.
Just saying.
Fire, Ice, Storm…Heart of, Cold as, the Breeze that comes before.
I couldn’t care less about there not being more Legendary’s, since I currently don’t have any… But the gem shop items need to take a step back. If there are what appears to be large amounts of development time being spent on shoehorning in some crappy looking weapon skins or gliders on a near daily basis, there must be development time that can be spent designing new weapons, LS content, and PvP.
Financial suicide.
Clearly something very significant and serious is going on at Anet at the moment and all the evidence suggests that the things I have described have contributed to a serious fall in player numbers that could affect the long term future of the game.
The simple fact is that once Gem store sales start falling (and of course I have no evidence that they are at the moment) the game becomes unsustainable.
To underline this – If you can locate the ANET Financial report Q4 2015 thread – you will see that revenue for HOT was less than a normal quarters gem sales.
Gem sales and by implication active player numbers are the be all and end all for ensuring the game stays in existence.
For many businesses the value of ‘good will’ far exceeds both income and assets and Anet could clearly use some good will at the moment to maintain current, entice back lost and attract new players..
So your solution to all this loss in revenue is even more loss in revenue? Okay….
Clearly you are not familiar with the term ‘loss leader’ – look it up – Also look at the Q4 2015 financial statement.
Gem store sales are the revenue stream and to sustain that income the game needs a stable (not shrinking) player base.
Anet needs to win back old and entice new players to the game – Another poorly received expansion that generates less revenue than quarterly Gem sales (as HOT did) may provide a nice blip on the balance sheet every 12 months but if player numbers
decline, the viability of the long term future of the game is sadly going to be in question.
Oh I know what a loss leader is. I find it funny that you’d apply this to an expansion for an MMO. Then again, maybe you should read up on what characteristics usually qualify a loss leader, especially:
- A loss leader is usually a product that customers purchase frequently—thus they are aware that its unusually low price is a bargain.
- Loss leaders are often scarce, to discourage stockpiling. The seller must use this technique regularly if they expect their customers to come back.
- The retailer will often limit how much a customer can purchase.
- product is sold at a price below its market cost to stimulate other sales of more profitable goods or services
Then read up on how this is usually part of dumping campaigns. Then finally, please explain how this relates to digital goods. I imagine your thought process is something like:“Free expansion = more players = more gem revenue.” I’ll let you read a bit about digital sales and marketing to figure out how this is not even true.
What you have not ansered though is why arenanet should offer a costly expansion for free when they effectively are:
- trading guaranteed revenue (price of the expansion and prepurchase) for possible future revenue (higher revenue from gem sales and bigger player base)
- having to upfront the cost of the expansion since developement is not free. This usually gets covered to a certain degree by prepurchases and expected sales, all of which fall flat at no cost expansions.
- how not even most free to play MMOs with way more expansive and restricting free to play models offer free expansions. Definately with the amount of content offered in HoT
About possible higher ffuture revenue, you’ve provided not one shred of evidence this would even be the case.
Hence, again the question:
So your solution to all this loss in revenue is even more loss in revenue? Okay….
I pay for the expansion, I want my legendary, I want the legendary longbow. Not like will not know if they need to fire or hire people, but I already gave my kitten money, I want my kitten legendary, I took months accumulating thinking that before July or August would put all the legendary material, and between including the longbow.
Do not give me trouble or cheap solutions, I want my legendary kitten ….
kitten you Colin Johanson and your kitten smile that sells smoke.
And kitten you Google Chrome that I use for these capitalist pigs understand me.
I keep telling yall, you shouldn’t have sent those cupcakes…
Maybe next time yall will listen.
Main – Laaz Rocket – Guardian (Ehmry Bay)
Johnny Johnny – Ranger (Ehmry Bay)
Hárvey Wallbanger – Alt Warrior (Ehmry Bay)
Johnny Johnny – Ranger (Ehmry Bay)
Hárvey Wallbanger – Alt Warrior (Ehmry Bay)
The part that continues to puzzle me is the idea that a 5% increase in the size of the live content team will make a significant difference on a release schedule measuring nine months. This really seems like a desperation move. What does it say for the health and viability of the company and game ?
Pardon the analogy but financially healthy individuals dont need to scrounge under sofa cushions for loose change and a company with healthy, effective, well managed production does not need to scramble for bodies to throw at already staffed projects.
First few months of that game were the best.
So I’ve heard. Apparently, whole swathes of the game had been gutted in order to meet the ship date. There’s a full post-mortem here , if you’re interested.
The other interesting parallel between SWG’s woes and GW2’s from those articles is the whole thing about how they started asking the wrong questions when running metrics.
And Legendaries don’t?
When they don’t materialise for six months on end, they very definitely don’t.
(edited by evilunderling.9265)
Pardon the analogy but financially healthy individuals dont need to scrounge under sofa cushions for loose change and a company with healthy, effective, well managed production does not need to scramble for bodies to throw at already staffed projects.
That is so true and the most offending part of it is that: it is not the first time and surely not the last one. They’ve done this for yeaaaaaaaars with the WvW team.
mouth too blunt, truth too loud
Arguing about the legalities and arguing with other posers is pointless. Neither will change anything.
They started giving infractions for nothing . You can infract all you like but you won’t hide the truth.
They started giving infractions for nothing . You can infract all you like but you won’t hide the truth.
This is when you know the ship is sinking, now the rest of the playerbase is beginning to feel what it is like being a vocal/passionate wvwer.
Kurodaraku – Necromancer | Kuroshikon – Ranger
Officer of [DEX] Deus Ex Machina Eu and [Fus] Fus Ro Dâh
Ruins of Surmia
Officer of [DEX] Deus Ex Machina Eu and [Fus] Fus Ro Dâh
Ruins of Surmia
So the players who bought the expansion for the yet to be released legendaries are pretty much screwed.
It’s good that Mo can make tough decisions but now the true challenge begins. Anet HAS to deliver good content or a big chunk of players will be lost.
They already lost a chunk due to putting all the post-HoT focus on the 1%. Even HoT itself pushed away the more casual players.
This reminds me of what happened to WildStar. They spent all their resources on raiding only to realize that most people played solo, so they immediately cut raiding with the intention of developing other content. Likewise, ArenaNet needs to keep the core audience entertained before it’s too late. The numbers are likely sliding and legendaries probably saw poor results, so they’re rushing to release anything that will appeal to the majority.
The part that continues to puzzle me is the idea that a 5% increase in the size of the live content team will make a significant difference on a release schedule measuring nine months.
Keep in mind that Living World style content can be anything, from dungeons, to events, to story instances. With raids and past content like SAB and live events being made by smaller teams, those 6 devs will certainly be of better use elsewhere. As we’ve heard in the past, the old content is broken, so simply having them fix up those events for re-release would be better than nothing.
They started giving infractions for nothing . You can infract all you like but you won’t hide the truth.
This is when you know the ship is sinking, now the rest of the playerbase is beginning to feel what it is like being a vocal/passionate wvwer.
A guild member got a 3 day forum ban, for just asking ‘Why not get the glider, outfit team to work on LS instead of Legendary team?’ he posted on our Guild Facebook page he is quitting the game, if he can can get a forum ban for something as trivial as that he doesn’t want to support Anet anymore. So I am not sure what the prerequisite for a ban is?
- 2013- New Legendaries are promised. This was before expansions were ever going to be a thing in GW2. They never came.
- 2014- Nothing on the Legendary front.
- January2015- PAX South. HoT Announcement. Colin and Mike take the stage and announce that Legendaries are coming with HoT. Those of us with the brain capacity to remember things from 2013 are ticked. These weren’t supposed to be behind a paywall. They were supposed to come out two years prior!
- March 2015- Linsey Murdock Blogpost- All the way at the end of the blog, *the deal has been altered: It’s gone from new Legendaries to, “…handful of new legendaries”
- August-September 2015- It’s announced that we are getting 3 new legendaries at launch with more to come.
- March 2015- Legendaries are halted indefinitely.
That’s just the facts. You made multiple promises. They were broken multiple times. You should follow through on your promises and at the very least release the Legendary items you have finished without the journeys.
- Keep your word and release the Legendaries. Full stop.
Fantastic post.
Too many things not followed through on. Which explains the new policy they have of not speaking to us until things are on the table. Well, I don’t want to to continue to support something when I have no idea what direction it’s going in. I may not wanna go the same way they do.
No news since October 28th 2014. Question asked straight up! 473 times. 647 days and thread locked..
I love the Dreamer, I think it’s hilarious. But then I also use it on my ranger in spite of it apparently being useless so my opinions seem to be quite different to most people on this forum.
But it seems to be one of the most devisive legendaries (people either love it or hate it) so having an alternative seems like a good idea.
Whereas there are 2 legendary Greatswords already (3 if you count Eternity as a separate skin) and they’re some of the most popular of the whole lot so even if more professions use them I think there’s less demand for new ones.
Yes but most classes use the greatsword. I would have been fine with sword or shield, even torch is used by nearly half the classes same with dagger both of which are used in all 3 weight classes to boot.
This isn’t just because people either like or dislike the dreamer it’s about the fact that ONLY 2 classes use it both in medium and honestly thief has a better use of it. And I used to use SB on my ranger in pvp a lot before the trait system got changed and enjoyed it.
They should pick a weapon that most classes use not one that most don’t even touch and only one that puts it to good use.
Wasnt this similiar to the bullcrap that ended up killing swtor and swg?
Raph Koster (the lead on that game) posted a fair bit of commentary on what happened to SWG.
The TL;DR on why SWG failed is that Raph and his team were overambitious and the higher-ups at SoE failed to rein him back in.
The TL;DR on what actually happened is that the game was pretty badly hurt by a premature release, and updates intended to reverse that decline culminated in the NGE, which ‘killed’ the game by destroying much of what distinguished it gameplay-wise from other MMOs. It was ultimately shut down a few years later.
There might be a few parallels.
That’s not what happened. In fact going back even a little further than NGE or the CU, Ralph’s stance concerning the alpha classes altogether was that it would be a detrimental move…Time has proven him correct.
Many also forget that he resigned over the CU.