Guild Wars 2

As long as we start getting some content, other than rehashed festivals, I support giving up a few legendaries (be it all of them) for it.

Raxzor.5946:

Zetsumei.4975:

Ragnarox.9601:

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?

Let just say, although the website has thoroughly run its course now and has a bad reputation – there is a reason players had to resort to creating an unofficial wvw forum back in the day and people began using their permaban-count as a measure of how long they’ve been a true wvwer.

There’s no question that ANet made mistakes in mismanaging player expectations about new legendaries, our appetite for gated content, our enthusiasm for time-dependent maps, and (for over a year) our interest in the original system of regular content updates that change the world. There’s no question that ANet’s reputation has been tarnished by these mistakes.

However, there’s plenty of questions about what sorts of things they can do to mend those mistakes. Any future expac is at least a year away, if not 2 years, so I can’t imagine how it would help to offer it for free.

One of the most important things they can do, however, would be to follow up on Mike O’Brian’s announcement that they are going to return focus to the evolving world and fix some of the fundamental issues affecting the current content that they have been promoting.

If they get that “right” (in the way that the original 2012 launch was done “right”), then that is a great first step. And if they can’t get that right, then I can’t imagine that a free expansion would save them.

tl;dr there’s no scenario in which announcing a free expansion is going to help the franchise — they need to deliver regularly-refreshed, entertaining content first.

Cyninja.2954:

Daroon.1736:

Cyninja.2954:

Daroon.1736:

Crysto.7089:

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

Lol – well done for copying and pasting a few lines from the Wikipedia entry for loss leader:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader

Sadly though the ability to Google search and copy/paste doesn’t convince me that you have enough understanding of the concept to see how it would apply in this situation.

Care to share your thoughts on the Q4 2015 financial results?

Kamara.4187:

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.

I’m going by what Raph himself said in part of his post-mortem , which is that they started losing subscribers after they introduced holocrons, and that the reason the holocrons were a problem was because they’d gutted the achievements system that they’d planned to use to determine who became a jedi in order to meet their deadlines. Things like the CU and the NGE were, from what I’ve been told, attempts to reverse that decline.

But this is veering into off-topic territory now. SWG was brought up because someone asked if there were parallels between what happened there and the current GW2 situation.

That said, I think I’ve said everything I need to say on the topic of the thread. TL;DR:

I don’t think this level of incompetence is acceptable at all, I think we are entitled to some form of compensation, and I think refunds should be offered to those who think that whatever compensation we are offered isn’t acceptable, but most importantly, I think ANet needs to get its kitten together. However, I don’t think that we’re being deceived or that there’s any malice going on, and I don’t think it helps anything to try to ‘punish’ ANet over this, especially when it’s only a symptom of the real problem, which is that HoT’s launch was premature and utterly shambolic.

I’ve put some thought into this and decided that the statement “6 devs” is probably false. I refuse to believe that six people have been working primarily on legendaries since HoT released, and have failed to produce any content. This is simply unfathomable to me, to the point that I don’t believe it is true.

These devs have more likely been working on other projects, and have had some occasional involvement with the legendaries. Being pulled from one project to another constantly, and never able to focus. I believe we’re seeing the result of that.

Go read some glassdoor reviews; ANet suffers from serious management and structural problems. This is obvious to anyone who has worked in a mismanaged office before. The symptoms are all there. I was a logistics and e-commerce manager for a shoe company for many years. I have seen first hand just how much time can be wasted when the executive team has you doing senseless kitten and confusing your employees. I believe ANet’s studio is basically a Dilbert comic.

I do not trust this company anymore.

Wish we could vote for no confidence with who ever makes these horrible decision at anet since the conception of hot !

Why don’t you incorporate your legends with the living story? They don’t all need some giant huge journey. The first three were enough. Cool. Awesome. Reneging on your promise for more legendary weapons defeats the morale of all your players aspiring to higher goals set by YOU and your team. At this point I really can’t even hope for Legendary Armor. You’re literally stomping on everything your game stands for, GW2 isn’t known for it’s rockstar stories or awesome content updates. It’s known for the weapons and customization options we’ve been able to make the most of and spread throughout the MMO community. People ask me about GW2 and the first thing I’ll say is something about the amazing legendary weapons. Idk, I really want to stick with this game, but it keeps getting harder and harder.

in gw2 in past 3 years i see alot of events like madking Halloween or Christmas events or Twisted Watchwork events….why you cant repeat this events while you develop a new one? a lot of people miss some events & a lot of people a new players. why not? its quickly not needed a lot of developers work & players has a old but fun events. also imo stop this useless pvp tornaments…most of people don’t care about it

next expansion should be free?…

or..you know…we could get free updates and content for another 3 years..

My company restricts its use of loss leaders to products that a customer will come back for very frequently (consumables generally) so as to ensure frequent exposure to other, profitable, products. We do not give these products away, but do sell them at or below cost.

It seems that an expansion that people keep logging in to play has at least the potential to serve that purpose. That is the basic business model of microtransaction funded F2P games after all.

The drawback to this model is that once you establish in the minds of your customers that the loss leader price is the price it becomes an expectation. Any futre attempt to charge a profitable price for the product will be overcharging in the minds of your customers.

That said, giving an expansion away for free, with no effort to directly recoup multimillion dollar development costs, would require a very significant increase in gem purchases. I do not think that the gem sore, in its current, benign, state is likely to be able to support that kind of increase. I think we would have to see a paradigm shift in the gem store to a significantly more exploitive model. This seems likely to counter any possible benefit of using expansions as a loss leader in terms of retaining players who are willing to spend money on the game.

Make sure the next Expansion is more than 40% done when it ships. If it ships like Heart of Thorns it better cost us 40% of what that 1st expansion did.

If there is any reconciling players for their $$$ on HoT, drop the Trading Post “Outfit” people and put them on more Living World content instead. Thereby you keep working on Legendary weapons and make good on at least one more promise. The old “armor sets” on the Trade Post were much more valiable to myself at least because you could mix+match the pieces to existing armor in the game and that provided more diversity.

That WvW team you have needs to save that 3rd of your game. If it comes out rough again just toss WvW out the window cause all the veterans will be gone. Should probably make surveys alongside the WvW content as much as possible to proceed safely and with some self-assurance. Include players from start to finish, don’t throw out a beta and waste your own time trying to make it shiny and new with no time left to change anything major if players dislike something again.

Regarding incompetence and malice, let me give you an example for the meeting and even melting of these two words.

Over 10 years ago, Central Europe was shook by the Schneider scandal. That guy was a rich mogul dealing in houses, cars and highly profitable business models. Business people were falling all over each other to invest in the man and his business, often inviting common people from their banking institutes to invest too. And why not? He was cultivated, had humor and appeared like a through and through trustworthy business man with the best credentials and certificates of business analysts. His papers had gone to the highest of banking managers who could not give him money fast enough.

Or so everyone thought.

It turned out that he was basically broke from the start and had built the biggest snowball and house of cards empire ever. He lived like a king and blew out the money so fast that he was nearly broke again when things finally went out in the public when a clever and honest business woman called him out and sued him instead of taking money to stay silent.

I saw a video with that man some time ago. He lives rather modest right now, and despite him screwing over so many people, you have that nagging feeling to sympathize with him, at least I had that feeling. That is the example of a con artist.
I also saw videos with banking managers who retired or were forced out by the outrage of that scandal. Most were pale like walls and still amazed how things had happened to them. That is the example of a gullible, incompetent dupe with several business degrees from the best business schools.

So position does not protect you from being incompetent. A sizeable portion of people in the position of a superior are incompetent in vital ares of their jobs and make bad decisions.

Daroon.1736:

Cyninja.2954:

Daroon.1736:

Cyninja.2954:

Daroon.1736:

Crysto.7089:

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

Lol – well done for copying and pasting a few lines from the Wikipedia entry for loss leader:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader

Sadly though the ability to Google search and copy/paste doesn’t convince me that you have enough understanding of the concept to see how it would apply in this situation.

Care to share your thoughts on the Q4 2015 financial results?

First off, what you are looking for is this: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx not hard to find if you had spent 10 second googling.

Second, if you’d taken the time to actually read through Q4 2014 and Q4 2015, well read is a bit much since it’s nicely put in graphs with a lot of bells and whistles, you’d have seen the rise in sales accross the entire year of 2015 (prepurchases etc) compared to 2014. Given only the pure numbers, we are talking 85.6 BN KRW to 101 BN KRW, which is a 17.99% increase in revenue (13.68 MM Dollar). That is not calculating for the lost revenue from people getting the gems discounted with delux editions or any late adopters who bought HoT not within the first 3 months. For a over 3 year old game, not bad. Especially after a big slump in 2014 (compared to 2013).

Hell, NCSoft even specifically mention:

GW2 solidified its position as main revenue driver, by adding on expansion pack sales to stable in-game item sales

That’s not stuff you make up to fool investestors, stakeholders or shareholders. Especially when they could have left that out.

Now, I’m still waiting on any type of evidance where any MMO developer has provided any huge quality expansion free of cost. Or any type of research which has to do with digital goods and customer retention favoring getting new customers over old ones. All the literature I’ve read in the past has shown otherwise. Here is a small article which is semi current: http://oursocialtimes.com/70-of-companies-say-its-cheaper-to-retain-a-customer-than-acquire-one/

And while we are at the subject of customers, read this: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/177409-only-0-15-of-players-account-for-50-of-free-to-play-game-revenue

EDIT: the reason I’ve stuck to wikipedia was and still is that you’ve not provided any amount of qualified analysis which would warrent more effort from my part. You did not even get your loss leader definition as it is represented in the wiki right. Show me some basic understanding, and we’ll go from there.

DoctorDing.5890:

Arguing about the legalities and arguing with other posers is pointless. Neither will change anything.

it won’t, but if you bark loud enough with the fact that you’ll be losing money and customer trust, it will.

Gw2 —> Credit card swipe wars.
As mentioned so many times before, we don’t want the kittenty looking Black lion ticket skins. They are never delayed because they are gem related? Why don’t you move some of the very efficient people who mange to pump out a full weapon kitten nal of 9/10 times boring to mediocre skins and compress their effort to one really cool looking legendary a month instead?

Ashen.2907:

That said, giving an expansion away for free, with no effort to directly recoup multimillion dollar development costs, would require a very significant increase in gem purchases. I do not think that the gem sore, in its current, benign, state is likely to be able to support that kind of increase. I think we would have to see a paradigm shift in the gem store to a significantly more exploitive model. This seems likely to counter any possible benefit of using expansions as a loss leader in terms of retaining players who are willing to spend money on the game.

Or as I put it:

Cyninja.2954:

the alternative, a such massive money grab shift in the business model that no matter at what price the next expansion were to be sold, the game would be unplayable.

Thank you Ashen for spending a tad more time explaining.

This is almost unprecedented for a video game company. I mean the expansion almost cost as much as the full game did and it probably had less than 5% of the content. And even what was promised because it couldn’t be delivered on time is cancelled. I mean I’m sure the user agreement exempts Anet from any wrongdoings, but ethically, toward a rapidly shrinking player base, it’s not something you want to do.

What I understand is the bravery of it, that you are desperately trying to fix a mess caused by the previous management by reallocating resources.

What I don’t understand is why you had to break something that worked in the first place with the precursor collection. It would have been better to have 16 new legendary skins with precursors that drops randomly. One of the reason I left the game in the first place is because I had saved 4k gold to buy a new legendary when the expansion came out and all that gold was useless because of the grindy collection stuff.

Ashen.2907:

My company restricts its use of loss leaders to products that a customer will come back for very frequently (consumables generally) so as to ensure frequent exposure to other, profitable, products. We do not give these products away, but do sell them at or below cost.

It seems that an expansion that people keep logging in to play has at least the potential to serve that purpose. That is the basic business model of microtransaction funded F2P games after all.

The drawback to this model is that once you establish in the minds of your customers that the loss leader price is the price it becomes an expectation. Any futre attempt to charge a profitable price for the product will be overcharging in the minds of your customers.

That said, giving an expansion away for free, with no effort to directly recoup multimillion dollar development costs, would require a very significant increase in gem purchases. I do not think that the gem sore, in its current, benign, state is likely to be able to support that kind of increase. I think we would have to see a paradigm shift in the gem store to a significantly more exploitive model. This seems likely to counter any possible benefit of using expansions as a loss leader in terms of retaining players who are willing to spend money on the game.

Clearly a well though out knowledgeable response and the point you make about resistance to charging for future expansions is certainly something which needs to be taken account of.

Do bear in mind though, that the initial business model was Buy to Play with Free regular content updates (‘an expansions worth’ was I believe the quote) and for 2 years, Anet successfully delivered.

HOT was in my opinion, nothing more than a slightly expanded version of the content that was already in development and slated to be released for free as LS3 and the various ‘issues’ that have arisen since its release have had a very negative impact of the general health of the game overall.

Many, Many people over on the Legendary weapons thread are calling for refunds and free gems as compensation, so a good will gesture such as I suggest may help avoid alienating the remaining player base any further.

I …. have no words. I guess I’m a little late coming to the party here, but just… wow. SO many conflicting thoughts regarding this.

This is a huge disappointment for people looking forward to the next expansion. Now what’s going to happen to the other legendary sets? (i;e Backpack, amour.) This seems like a huge step in the WRONG DIRECTION. I hope for the criticism coming your way that you have a reasonable answer to people that invested time because to some people it’s a huge slap in the face. So I ask you: what should we expect to look for next expack? Raids? New story? Again, a huge disappointment.

CodeHavoc.7926:

This is a huge disappointment for people looking forward to the next expansion. Now what’s going to happen to the other legendary sets? (i;e Backpack, amour.) This seems like a huge step in the WRONG DIRECTION. I hope for the criticism coming your way that you have a reasonable answer to people that invested time because to some people it’s a huge slap in the face.

Armour and backpack will remain being released.

This is only about weapons according to Mike.

Thank you, we appreciate the openess.
If its not happening, its a lot easier to swallow and wait, than to wander in dark and slowly lose interest.

Also, no comlains about the decision.

Where the pitchforks will be raised is the slow pace of work. Complex bugs, lore, paperwork, bad confusing managment or just not offending any puppies or whatever, the results just feel awfully slow.

Thanks again for being open, wish you better workflow.

CodeHavoc.7926:

This is a huge disappointment for people looking forward to the next expansion. Now what’s going to happen to the other legendary sets? (i;e Backpack, amour.) This seems like a huge step in the WRONG DIRECTION. I hope for the criticism coming your way that you have a reasonable answer to people that invested time because to some people it’s a huge slap in the face. So I ask you: what should we expect to look for next expack? Raids? New story? Again, a huge disappointment.

They just shoot themselves in the foot. I mean now they can’t release new legendaries in another expansion… It’s going to be like paying for the same content twice.

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

Dear Mike, it seems to me that you are too focused on the insults and not the messege they are trying to get across to you, and I take issue with that.
All the content of HoT is great. The new maps are great, but they need some adjustments, and until these adjustments happen they may feel half finished even though we’re talking about the 1% that needs tweaked. A good example is the tarir Meta event in AB. If i want a good map, i have to be there in good time and i do a trail and get an armor, and then there’s a 15min pointless waiting?! So if i don’t move around you lose the armor, if i move too far away i lose the armor. My conclusion is it is intended to waste a solid 15 mins every event to jump around in front of the gate? Where’s the fun here please explain?
Furthermore since a HoT maps reward gifts upon completion, necessary to craft legendaries, i find it kinda hard to back out of the legendary thing. You are pulling the red thread out of the HoT maps.

it come has no surprise…
even when im not working in anet company, i can already see how bad the game development schedule is in just by the quality of the game expansion itself when it was delivered.

i wonder where are the white knights that kept on attacking people like me who were only just emphasizing the obvious, calling us cynical or negative or hater.

kitten you Anet, bunch of scammers. Man, all that farming i did is useless now.

A good link for those who feel scammed: https://www.bbb.org/alaskaoregonwesternwashington/

Daroon.1736:

Ashen.2907:

My company restricts its use of loss leaders to products that a customer will come back for very frequently (consumables generally) so as to ensure frequent exposure to other, profitable, products. We do not give these products away, but do sell them at or below cost.

It seems that an expansion that people keep logging in to play has at least the potential to serve that purpose. That is the basic business model of microtransaction funded F2P games after all.

The drawback to this model is that once you establish in the minds of your customers that the loss leader price is the price it becomes an expectation. Any futre attempt to charge a profitable price for the product will be overcharging in the minds of your customers.

That said, giving an expansion away for free, with no effort to directly recoup multimillion dollar development costs, would require a very significant increase in gem purchases. I do not think that the gem sore, in its current, benign, state is likely to be able to support that kind of increase. I think we would have to see a paradigm shift in the gem store to a significantly more exploitive model. This seems likely to counter any possible benefit of using expansions as a loss leader in terms of retaining players who are willing to spend money on the game.

Clearly a well though out knowledgeable response and the point you make about resistance to charging for future expansions is certainly something which needs to be taken account of.

Do bear in mind though, that the initial business model was Buy to Play with Free regular content updates (‘an expansions worth’ was I believe the quote) and for 2 years, Anet successfully delivered.

HOT was in my opinion, nothing more than a slightly expanded version of the content that was already in development and slated to be released for free as LS3 and the various ‘issues’ that have arisen since its release have had a very negative impact of the general health of the game overall.

Many, Many people over on the Legendary weapons thread are calling for refunds and free gems as compensation, so a good will gesture such as I suggest may help avoid alienating the remaining player base any further.

The advantage held by the game in its first months/years is that everything in the gem store was new. We all needed or wanted bank slots, bag slots, and so on. Now we have all of the character slots we need, our banks and bags are maxed out, etc.

A cash shop, if it is to be a primary source of revenue, has to start with a robust selection. In order to continue to fund the game it has to increase its offerings dramatically so that veteran spenders always have something to spend money on. Or you have to flip veterans for new payers to a high degree. The problem there is the very real likelihood that people who wait until a game is four years old (as gw2 will be by the time of the next expansion) and has gone F2P to start playing may not be as willing to spend money on it as were early adopters.

So, in order to keep veterans spending at a rate comparable o when the game was new, or to entice new pkayers who waited for F2P to play the gam to spend in this manner, or a combiation of the two, you have to increase pressure to buy. This can take the form of better, and more expensive to produce cosmetic options, or it can involve some of the more exploitive options, which can be very inexpensive for the developer, seen in some other games.

With all the darn outfits and ticket weapon skins they shove out instead of making legendaries and other “nice things” stuffs they should have the money to do so. And yes i ascended from salt to hydrochloric acid, im fully aware of that no need to tell me… but i reached my limits of acceptance.

dAcIaW.5107:

A good link for those who feel scammed: https://www.bbb.org/alaskaoregonwesternwashington/

The better business bureau is a private company with no powers of censure, remedial action, or regulatory power.

Witte.3160:

Legendaries == content

The story/collection/grind is all content.

its equal to

PvP
WvWvW
PvE
Raids
Dungeons/Fractals

Legendaries might not appeal to some, but that is equally the case for all the other types of content.

If you don’t care for legendaries, so what?
There are people that don’t care for Living story.

Just think if they would scrap Living story, because they want to work on gemstore skins more.

How can you agree to them scrapping out promised content?

I just tried BDO and bought it.
Sorry Anet, I’m out,

Kappa

Please… Legendaries are Rewards not content. All the stuff you get to play (content) with the new legendaries is already there and will stay there.

If your aim is to improve core gameplay and allow faster and better quality releases of short term content, why in gods name would you not move staff that is working on long term projects, aka. “next expansion” to the core team, seeing how they seem to have plently people as is?
Its just mind boggling to me why you wouldnt pick the most logical path, and instead get rid of the legendary weapons team, to somehow duct tape them onto the core team.
Much rather, add more people to said team, and actually follow through with your promises for once instead of backing out of them.

But what do i know. I am just a mere player. I have only invested 7000+ hours into this game.

How much time have you actually spent in the game, Mike?

No mockery or anything intended, but being a developer myself, I am well aware of the fact that we often lose sight of what actually needs to be fixed in a product, or project environment, because we spend too much time looking at it from the wrong perspective.

An issue that could be well prevented by communicating with your customers on a regular basis, and not only when something is ready to release, or in other terms, “its too late to fix it by the time we make you aware of it”.

That is pretty much the whole idea of agile development to prevent from releasing something that doesnt live up to its expectations.

never going to happen.
the biggest thing keeping gw2 servers online are people buying the game.
take that away and the game goes too.
i hope this becomes obvious to you. being cheap and getting stuff for free creates massive imbalances somewhere along the line.

chaosmaster.3196:

kitten you Anet, bunch of scammers. Man, all that farming i did is useless now.

Only if you processed the mats into account bound things. Otherwise you now have a gold mine.

I am worried about the implications of this decision but don’t feel scammed even though I’ve enjoyed working on HOPE and might have wanted a similar project a while down the road. My most immediate, self-servingly selfish concern lies in the dev comment a bit back that they were aware of the amalgamated gemstone issue and would possibly change that up. With the Legendary devs now off the project other than finishing the shortbow, will any polishing be done on the ones that were completed?

I’ve PM’d Mr. O’Brien as he said he was available by email. I don’t expect a speedy response, as he is surely swamped (maybe no response at all), but I do hope that someone at ANet will resolve that for those of us who have been waiting to start assembling amalgamated gemstones and other crystalline ingot mats based on the previous comment.

Ashen.2907:

dAcIaW.5107:

A good link for those who feel scammed: https://www.bbb.org/alaskaoregonwesternwashington/

The better business bureau is a private company with no powers of censure, remedial action, or regulatory power.

I agree, but if you read complaints submitted to Anet through BBB some individuals who were previously unable to get their issue resolved went through the BBB and then were able to have their problem fixed.

Here is the deal. I made a good post I thought about legendary weapons, precursor drops, and data analysis to look at it another way. Then I made a few quips about cupcakes

Here is the deal, in all honesty. If I was Arena Net I would not be concerned so much about the angst in this thread or hostility. But more worried about losing the foundation players. Those who have played the game since open beta(s) and head start. Those players, you know, who have a few years under their belt(s)…

You are losing them of the sPvP front. You are also losing them on the WvW front. You are gaining them a bit in the F2P market and then Raids. My suggestion would be to start really looking at the raw data you have and base your decisions on that. Not the small minority of those screaming the loudest…

Ascended gear introduction caused a similar uproar.
Map complete in WvW maps, siege in JP’s.
Obsidian sanctum and GvG
WvW new maps, edge of mist map has a sandbox
Crafting precursors
Precursor RNG
Fractals
Living story and dynamic events

Look – you guys/gals really have your hands full and I didn’t even really mention 3 metas of play, balance, and now raids all messing stuff up…no wonder why you wanted those developers back.

But you can’t add cool kitten to the gem store and remove crafting shinies. It really looks like you are becoming greedy sons of kittenes. You know, people put a lot of emphasis on playing dress up Barbie…

Donari.5237:

chaosmaster.3196:

kitten you Anet, bunch of scammers. Man, all that farming i did is useless now.

Only if you processed the mats into account bound things. Otherwise you now have a gold mine.

I am worried about the implications of this decision but don’t feel scammed even though I’ve enjoyed working on HOPE and might have wanted a similar project a while down the road. My most immediate, self-servingly selfish concern lies in the dev comment a bit back that they were aware of the amalgamated gemstone issue and would possibly change that up. With the Legendary devs now off the project other than finishing the shortbow, will any polishing be done on the ones that were completed?

I’ve PM’d Mr. O’Brien as he said he was available by email. I don’t expect a speedy response, as he is surely swamped (maybe no response at all), but I do hope that someone at ANet will resolve that for those of us who have been waiting to start assembling amalgamated gemstones and other crystalline ingot mats based on the previous comment.

He has a gold mine by having a ton of items with no use outside of the new legendaries and that can’t be sold?

Um … I did say if he hadn’t made them account bound. /points to her first sentence

Yargesh.4965:

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.

Well, in the UK at least, it doesn’t work like that. We have free government services that investigate individual cases of traders breaching the legal rights consumers have over here, and force the traders to rectify the situation with the consumer. Since ArenaNet advertised certain content, let people buy access to it, and then cancelled that content, technically the consumers should be entitled to a refund.

I’m aware of how backwards things can be, however, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if on Tuesday when I call Trading Standards I’m told I can’t do anything about it. If that’s the case then no big deal. I won’t lose sleep over it. I simply won’t ever buy anything from ArenaNet again.

Donari.5237:

Um … I did say if he hadn’t made them account bound. /points to her first sentence

They come account bound…..

Stand The Wall.6987:

never going to happen.
the biggest thing keeping gw2 servers online are people buying the game.
take that away and the game goes too.
i hope this becomes obvious to you. being cheap and getting stuff for free creates massive imbalances somewhere along the line.

The greatest source of revenue is gem purchases, not game sales.

Personally I think that expansions as loss leaders, particularly if they include the base game (witout F2P restrictions), could work by recouping some of the development cost via relatively low price combined with significant, benign, expansion of the gem store.

Dinks.2478:

Donari.5237:

Um … I did say if he hadn’t made them account bound. /points to her first sentence

They come account bound…..

that’s literally what he just said, verbatim

Ok I Did It.2854:

Id hate to be the person responsible for this PR clean up, and if they think its bad on here, reddit is a mine field, I don’t think they where expecting this kind of back lash to be honest, it looks like they have actually pulled the plug on HoT in general now, and moved onto the next project, and anything that is currently bugged isn’t likely to be looked into,

Furthermore why did they choose to post this on Good Friday, with most people probably away for easter weekend, this just allows several days of hate to build up.

They need to make the new pre’s come from the forge also, this would allow the “team” working on the legendary’s to work on,

I feel its been dropped due to the crafting being linked to events that stick or are just broken, and its causing so many issues to try and fix, so its easier to remove it from the game altogether, from reading reddit, you can see there next expansion is going to be a massive headache for the PR team trying to sell it.

The ONLY upside to this is, they have now fix the problem around Amalgamated Gemstones as no one will want them now LOL.

Yeah guess we can kiss the new found communication policy bye bye and who could blame them, why is it so hard to disagree with something without taking it as far as possible. Posting on ever gaming related subreddit calling for people not to spend money on anything, threatening to sue, calling them liars, scammers, asking for refunds and what else. Ironically had Mike not said anything some of us would be cheering for getting new content before LS3 launches after 3rd raid wing.

We just cannot have nice things.

So, it looks like the April and subsequent following updates will be make or break for me, if I don’t like the direction of the game I will move on to another game.

The ability for developers to over promise and under deliver in game releases is becoming more of an issue for me lately. Therefore I would like to think that come April release I will know if Guild Wars is still worth playing.

I wait with bated breath Mike to see where you direct the game and what the team around you come up with.

Testudo.4620:

Dinks.2478:

Donari.5237:

Um … I did say if he hadn’t made them account bound. /points to her first sentence

They come account bound…..

that’s literally what he just said, verbatim

um no… they said “Only if you processed the mats into account bound things. Otherwise you now have a gold mine.”

There is no processing, they literally start out account bound.

Galen Grey.4709:

Please… Legendaries are Rewards not content. All the stuff you get to play (content) with the new legendaries is already there and will stay there.

Yet they affect the game just as much. Each of the old legendaries, for example, require a minimum of 250 of each T6 material, if not more (Bifrost requires something like 750 crystalline dust).
Add to this the grindfest that is TII precursor crafting, and legendaries actually have a rather measurable impact on the economy in the game.
I suspect that’s why the new ones got cut. Not enough of a gold sink/not enough of a catalyst to get people to buy gems.

sauce.1790:

So… exactly what have the devs been working since the release of HoT?

Good question. But mostly it seems to have been esports

Galen Grey.4709:

Witte.3160:

Legendaries == content

The story/collection/grind is all content.

its equal to

PvP
WvWvW
PvE
Raids
Dungeons/Fractals

Legendaries might not appeal to some, but that is equally the case for all the other types of content.

If you don’t care for legendaries, so what?
There are people that don’t care for Living story.

Just think if they would scrap Living story, because they want to work on gemstore skins more.

How can you agree to them scrapping out promised content?

I just tried BDO and bought it.
Sorry Anet, I’m out,

Kappa

Please… Legendaries are Rewards not content. All the stuff you get to play (content) with the new legendaries is already there and will stay there.

It is content when you use the fact that you will be able to get 16 new legendaries as a leverage point for getting people to drop 50 buck on your expansion.

Gotta keep those shareholders happy don’t worry about the community

NEW SALE ON THE GEM STORE NEXT WEEK!