Guild Wars 2

It doesn’t matter to me. There’s no way on earth that I will pay them for another expansion when I can’t even get halfway through the story in the current one.

Get rid of the gating, period.

Fix mapping. There’s simply no excuse for not being able to see places you’ve been before just because they’re not in your line of sight (i.e. up and down through trees and rocks).

Give us a HINT at least of how to get up or down to areas we have not been to yet.

Until those three are fixed, an expansion purchase by me simply won’t happen. I don’t have any problem spending money. But, I have a huge problem when the game is made impossible to play for some folks, most notably myself.

Kastiel.1947:

Vephar.8475:

ezhcim.3075:

Vephar.8475:

I’m so glad you decided to do this, AN. Living worlds were the most fun I’ve ever had in this game, having the world constantly changing around you and it just felt like things were happening in the world. You guys managed to push out a new LS every 2 weeks and they were amazing. It was great quantity AND quality.

I know a lot of people enjoy legendaries and I do too, but I would much rather have an amazing story and fun content to play and progress than to have a shiny weapon and I’m sure the majority of the player-base would agree. Most players play for the story and content and it’s legendary weapon hunters who are in the minority, sorry guys.

I’m looking forward to creating amazing memories and having fun progressing in the living worlds again.

Most people actually agree that false advertisement is not a good way to do business, and regardless of whether you like PvE content or Legendaries it is very scary to see a company completely disregard what they had promised to deliver while asking you to suck it up and be happy with what you have and some more story content they might put out at a later date.

That is very true, but I do believe they TRIED. I don’t think they had planned it out to cancel them when they released HoT. This was most likely, as Mike already stated, a difficult decision. I guess my excitement for Living Worlds is overriding my displeasure for their failed promise.

Hahaha, bro I used to be like you . See you in the July update when they scrap LS3 for expac2/“brand new WvW overhaul”/or pretty much what ever they feel like. Calling it now, nobody gonna see anything done there either

I think this might be the main issue now – lack of trust.

It doesn’t matter what they promise. No one believes what they say any more.

This is a really good decision, I think. The best thing GW2 had going was the frequent updates of a living story. That has been missing for a long time now and getting it back would be great, at least in my opinion. I loved living story season 1 and the way the open game world evolved and changed frequently.

Going back to a real living world and fixing the mac client would be great.

I’m not too surprised by this,

According to DICE’s rules of free to play monetization:

Reference: http://insights.dice.com/2012/10/23/make-free-to-play-games-pay/

You need to make a game that never ends in order to properly monetize it. Legendary weapons and items exemplify the pinnacle of completion of guildwars 2.

A long time ago, legendaries used to be sellable on the TP. In the early life of the game, from a monetization standpoint, this didn’t pose much of an issue because if you wanted a legendary once they settled in value, you would either need to buy a ton of gold through gem conversations or go through the material farm.

The old process and grind for obtaining a legendary was so intense and unenjoyable, that at some point in time, players would eventually submit to gem conversion in order to “finish the path.” Alot of players that I know that obtained legendaries began to play less after finish it simply because there was nothing left for them to do. By getting legendary they “beat” the game.

The grind for legendaries and an underlying series of badly planned living world events gave certain players opportunities to make absurd amounts of money. Soon obtaining legendaries became a joke because you had players that had excess of 10,000-20,000 gold in their inventories.

At this point in time, ANET submitted to constant player outcry and created alternate paths of obtaining legendaries -this also removed them from the TP. Immediately afterward, I’m sure there was regret on the monetization side because now obtaining legendaries just became a simple and boring grind through quests that requires less gem-to-gold than it did in the past.

Prior to this change players hated making a legendary but at least money was being made off the old system because people could buy their way out of the process.

Now with the “legendary paths” and account bound progress, there is less buying out and players still hate the process.

Now we’ve reached a point where the process is even more broken than it was before and legendaries are more problematic to the game than ever:

1.) Harder to monetize with account bound paths that offer grind paths over abusing the market and using gem-to-gold to finish.

2.) Offer players a way to “beat the game” and content with gemstore weapon sales, which is likely one of the game’s highest sources of income. Players with a legendary are likely not going to buy any gemstore skins because they have the “best” weapon possible.

3.) Creating new legendaries requires massive resourcing due to the need to create a whole new collection of quests and achievements for it for very little financial return.

So yeah, they just outright decided to kill them. No surprise.

MashMash.1645:

Kastiel.1947:

Vephar.8475:

ezhcim.3075:

Vephar.8475:

I’m so glad you decided to do this, AN. Living worlds were the most fun I’ve ever had in this game, having the world constantly changing around you and it just felt like things were happening in the world. You guys managed to push out a new LS every 2 weeks and they were amazing. It was great quantity AND quality.

I know a lot of people enjoy legendaries and I do too, but I would much rather have an amazing story and fun content to play and progress than to have a shiny weapon and I’m sure the majority of the player-base would agree. Most players play for the story and content and it’s legendary weapon hunters who are in the minority, sorry guys.

I’m looking forward to creating amazing memories and having fun progressing in the living worlds again.

Most people actually agree that false advertisement is not a good way to do business, and regardless of whether you like PvE content or Legendaries it is very scary to see a company completely disregard what they had promised to deliver while asking you to suck it up and be happy with what you have and some more story content they might put out at a later date.

That is very true, but I do believe they TRIED. I don’t think they had planned it out to cancel them when they released HoT. This was most likely, as Mike already stated, a difficult decision. I guess my excitement for Living Worlds is overriding my displeasure for their failed promise.

Hahaha, bro I used to be like you . See you in the July update when they scrap LS3 for expac2/“brand new WvW overhaul”/or pretty much what ever they feel like. Calling it now, nobody gonna see anything done there either

I think this might be the main issue now – lack of trust.

It doesn’t matter what they promise. No one believes what they say any more.

This.

Whether they meant the statement as a promise or not, people perceived it as such. And perception is reality.

There are only so many times people will take broken promises without a good enough explanation as to why it’s being broken before they distrust you. And it’s a whole lot easier to lose someone’s trust than it is to gain it back.

THIS is why people are upset. It could have been ANet pulling the people from LS3 to work on Legendaries with LS3 going on indefinite break and people would still have been this upset.

I get it plans change, but ANet’s had a lot of that. Have plans for things to come out at one time and then plans change and they either get cancelled or put on hold or changed.

I’d rather have more legendary weapons. The story stuff in game can be burned through in an afternoon. #finishwhatyoustarted

Vephar.8475:

That is very true, but I do believe they TRIED. I don’t think they had planned it out to cancel them when they released HoT. This was most likely, as Mike already stated, a difficult decision. I guess my excitement for Living Worlds is overriding my displeasure for their failed promise.

Unfortunately for me it’s the opposite – since they choose not to deliver something that they used as a selling point for a paid expansion, I have no hope at all regarding a living world. It makes me a bit sad that all I’m waiting for now is to see what they manage to break in the next update.

Vephar.8475:

ezhcim.3075:

Vephar.8475:

I’m so glad you decided to do this, AN. Living worlds were the most fun I’ve ever had in this game, having the world constantly changing around you and it just felt like things were happening in the world. You guys managed to push out a new LS every 2 weeks and they were amazing. It was great quantity AND quality.

I know a lot of people enjoy legendaries and I do too, but I would much rather have an amazing story and fun content to play and progress than to have a shiny weapon and I’m sure the majority of the player-base would agree. Most players play for the story and content and it’s legendary weapon hunters who are in the minority, sorry guys.

I’m looking forward to creating amazing memories and having fun progressing in the living worlds again.

Most people actually agree that false advertisement is not a good way to do business, and regardless of whether you like PvE content or Legendaries it is very scary to see a company completely disregard what they had promised to deliver while asking you to suck it up and be happy with what you have and some more story content they might put out at a later date.

That is very true, but I do believe they TRIED. I don’t think they had planned it out to cancel them when they released HoT. This was most likely, as Mike already stated, a difficult decision. I guess my excitement for Living Worlds is overriding my displeasure for their failed promise.

TRYING should never even happen in the first case. Thats why you normally do a whole lot of planning and analysing whether or whether not you can realize what you have in mind, in the given timespan.

Trying and failing time and time again just screams “bad project management”.
It shows that the available resources arent considered carefully, or overestimated, for that matter.

Arkvan.3561:

Sounds like you’re in dire need of more developers. Are you hiring?

Edit: it’s a serious offer.

They are hiring. In a good number of different positions, I should add. Including recruiter, which means they need help in looking for more help. You can check it on arena.net

I kinda want to try VFX intern or tech art intern but it’s been a while…

Daroon.1736:

It appears that the game is in a bit of a crisis at the moment and there is quite a lot of repair work to be done over the course of the next 12 months or so both in regard to rebuilding customer relations and in fixing some of the many broken things in the game.

Crisis? What crisis? AFAIK GW2 is doing pretty well on the income side. There may be broken things but people still throw money at it.

The only thing Anet need to do to keep us interested is to:

- Work on WvW.
- Continue with sPvP seasons and obligatory tournaments.
- Start doing LS in PvE to keep the world going forward.

If they can do that while working on a larger expansion in the future, I see no issues with another €50 “all inclusive expansion” in a year or two (ie GW2+GW2HoT+GW2WhateverIsNext). All they need to do is not be god kitten kittened and botch the marketing. Just say yeah so you own GW2 HoT already? Here have a €15 discount or whatever. GW2 vanilla owners get a €5 discount and a pat on the back for finally getting with the program.

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.

Gem sales keep the game afloat, now GW1, it was game sales for a very long time. As the game didn’t get a cash shop till after or about the time of Eye of the North, don’t really care when it came to be tbh, but they had very few things on there, character slots, bank tabs, pvp skill packs and game upgrades(game of the year ect). They did start to add costumes with guild wars beyond. I have most. Back then I had a very well payed job, and no kids or anything else taking my money. So I got just about everything from there store.

When GW2 launched, I didn’t the same as most, got bank tabs, bag slots, a load of gem to gold. Up untill about a year ago I’d buy something from the gem store at least once a month, if not more.

Bye mikey, chuka and champawat! After my 3000 hours in game i call it shenanigans. I am off to other games. really dont see the point. Wvw is dead, no new legendaries i paid for, but grind is real – and what for? I enjoyed looking at legendaries even if i dont have them. Why did we collect all masteries? I will look for what is happening here from time to time but i am off of this kitten. There is planty fish of in the sea. Lets face it gw2 is a grind without goal. Living ever changing world was selling point of a game and that vanished after ls1, so this is not first time you broke promise.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Am I supposed to wait for next half baked expansion?

btw how dare you mikey? we bought that kitten with our money and now you cant afford 6 people to work on that? try reallocate yourself to some other country with cheap labor and give your self smaller paycheck. or kick yourself out if you cant deliver.

What a peculiar situation.
The Legendaries aren’t done six months after HoT.
I wonder what the deal is here. Are the models done, or is it taking ages to set up all the quests to acquire them? Either way, it seems there’s too much effort going in – judging by the SXSW panel, the developers spend FAR too much time thinking. Just my humble opinion. I like that they are pouring love into their work, I just think the balance is off.

Klipso.8653:

not even the classes that can use shortbow ever touch one

There are rangers that use long and short bows.

Vephar.8475:

ezhcim.3075:

Vephar.8475:

I’m so glad you decided to do this, AN. Living worlds were the most fun I’ve ever had in this game, having the world constantly changing around you and it just felt like things were happening in the world. You guys managed to push out a new LS every 2 weeks and they were amazing. It was great quantity AND quality.

I know a lot of people enjoy legendaries and I do too, but I would much rather have an amazing story and fun content to play and progress than to have a shiny weapon and I’m sure the majority of the player-base would agree. Most players play for the story and content and it’s legendary weapon hunters who are in the minority, sorry guys.

I’m looking forward to creating amazing memories and having fun progressing in the living worlds again.

Most people actually agree that false advertisement is not a good way to do business, and regardless of whether you like PvE content or Legendaries it is very scary to see a company completely disregard what they had promised to deliver while asking you to suck it up and be happy with what you have and some more story content they might put out at a later date.

That is very true, but I do believe they TRIED. I don’t think they had planned it out to cancel them when they released HoT. This was most likely, as Mike already stated, a difficult decision. I guess my excitement for Living Worlds is overriding my displeasure for their failed promise.

Don’t get me wrong I would LOVE more and quality content and story. But I paid these guys money for an expansion, and mind you I also paid full pre-order deluxe digital edition core game, and when money is involved there is no ‘trying’. If you sell me something telling me it’ll include A to Z but you deliver X,Y,Z you either have to compensate me for what you didn’t deliver or you reimburse my money. If they would have sold an expansion only promising the content that was actually delivered there wouldn’t be an issue here.

Well I preorder HOT the 100€ edition and all I fell is I will not preorder anything more from ArenaNet the xpac was disapointing, short story, grind lvls(masteries), wvw dead, no legendarys, no new fractals, dungeons are dead… the only think that is good in my opinion was the pvp that its better then it was before and raids … well no new content but i’m sure there will be new black lion weapons soon … disapointing… thats all i can think when i think about gw2 right now.

Svarty.8019:

What a peculiar situation.
The Legendaries aren’t done six months after HoT.
I wonder what the deal is here. Are the models done, or is it taking ages to set up all the quests to acquire them? Either way, it seems there’s too much effort going in – judging by the SXSW panel, the developers spend FAR too much time thinking. Just my humble opinion. I like that they are pouring love into their work, I just think the balance is off.

Given how quickly they can bang out Black Lion skins, it’s highly unlikely the models are the bottleneck. It’s more likely that the framework for Collections is flawed in some way that bogs down development, like every collection item requiring a change and testing of every associated mob, event, and/or loot table (so one Legendary is the equivalent of tweak 30 different events) or something.

I suspect they only managed to get the first three out by skipping testing, since any amount of testing should have told the devs it was stupid to have collection items in events that would only spawn after failed events.

DoctorDing.5890:

I think it is a good decision. They need to make HoT more attractive to normal players whilst they are still here.

And if you ever wonder why the official bods don’t post much on here, just look at some of the rude responses they get when they do.

yeah ofc, false adversiment is a good decision and not a crime.

luckly this game and its lead is taking what deserve:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/455ybt/ncsofts_earning_report_4q_2015_disillusioning/

players like you who defend blindly any anet wrong choice ruined the game even more than dev blindness.

every crap they do, you defend them, keep on till the game last and enjoy your ls3 cause, remember my words, there wont be a 4th.

Pandaman.4758:

Svarty.8019:

What a peculiar situation.
The Legendaries aren’t done six months after HoT.
I wonder what the deal is here. Are the models done, or is it taking ages to set up all the quests to acquire them? Either way, it seems there’s too much effort going in – judging by the SXSW panel, the developers spend FAR too much time thinking. Just my humble opinion. I like that they are pouring love into their work, I just think the balance is off.

Given how quickly they can bang out Black Lion skins, it’s highly unlikely the models are the bottleneck. It’s more likely that the framework for Collections is flawed in some way that bogs down development, like every collection item requiring a change and testing of every associated mob, event, and/or loot table (so one Legendary is the equivalent of tweak 30 different events) or something.

I suspect they only managed to get the first three out by skipping testing, since any amount of testing should have told the devs it was stupid to have collection items in events that would only spawn after failed events.

This definitely makes sense. Although I remember the collections being horribly bug-ridden as well as badly designed.

aelfwe.4239:

DoctorDing.5890:

I think it is a good decision. They need to make HoT more attractive to normal players whilst they are still here.

And if you ever wonder why the official bods don’t post much on here, just look at some of the rude responses they get when they do.

yeah ofc, false adversiment is a good decision and not a crime.

luckly this game and its lead is taking what deserve:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/455ybt/ncsofts_earning_report_4q_2015_disillusioning/

players like you who defend blindly any anet wrong choice ruined the game even more than dev blindness.

every crap they do, you defend them, keep on till the game last and enjoy your ls3 cause, remember my words, there wont be a 4th.

I’m not defending ANet’s actions in this, however the source you posted talks about conversion of f2p to paid being weaker than expected (where they are talking about conversion in that site), not the sales overall of the expansion to the already paid for accounts.

“To talk about the Guild Wars 2 performance, it is weaker than what we have expected." According to Ncsoft in the conversion from play for free to the paid expansion. This conversion rate is not as high as expected/hoped by NCsoft. The amount of gem sales and item sales versus active players is ok. “ but it is more the issue of the conversion to the paid expansion pack that we have not seen the level (of sales) we have hoped”

To address the issue there are two strategies, that Ncsoft is currently trying to look at:
First strategy is to induce more conversions. They try to tdentify what is hindering the people from converting over. They try to address this with events or maybe ingame systems.

Just putting my 2 cents in here and I know it’s been said before. I’m glad you’re being honest about this, but I have to agree with the sentiment that we still do not have all of HoT. Yes you gave us a good bit of what was promised, but there are still more aspects to be rolled out with HoT, and axing the legandaries is not a good start. It was promised with the expansion, and 4 is not what you meant. If you truly have 70 people working on the next expansion, then I am deeply saddened. I pre-purchased HoT with the anticipation that you would deliver and what wasn’t ready at launch would come by in a reasonable amount of time.
Raids, I am totally cool with the pace that they’re coming out. But why is the legendary backpack not out? It’s been over 5 months and there has been 0 progression since launch towards the backpack. So those of us who love our fractals continue to sit here and twiddle our thumbs waiting for it to come.
I’m glad you’re looking to the future, but if the focus is on the next expansion and not finishing what you promised to deliver, then I too will be taking a long hard look at buying the next expansion. Pre-purchase is already off the table. The disappointment we have experienced in the HoT release leaves me (and I know others) skeptical that you’ll produce a finished (or even half-finished) product for us to purchase. You’re a business, I get it. But don’t alienate us and tell defend that you delivered everything, when you didn’t. We aren’t claiming you didn’t give us anything, we know you put a lot of time and energy into a lot of this expansion and we thank you for that. We simply want you to follow through on your word, and deliver what was promised.
As others have suggested there are other ways to address this issue. So get rid of the scavenger hunt if that’s really the problem and bring back the RNG. It worked just fine for the first set, so why not do that for HoT legendaries?

TLDR; disappointed with lack of complete follow through as many others are

Dawdler.8521:

Daroon.1736:

It appears that the game is in a bit of a crisis at the moment and there is quite a lot of repair work to be done over the course of the next 12 months or so both in regard to rebuilding customer relations and in fixing some of the many broken things in the game.

Crisis? What crisis? AFAIK GW2 is doing pretty well on the income side. There may be broken things but people still throw money at it.

When the Game director ‘leaves’ taking a number of staff with him, the president takes over the role and within weeks is issuing statements that effectively reverse decisions taken by the previous incumbent, something quite serious is going on behind the scenes.

Either there was always a fundamental difference of opinion on which way the game should be developed or more likely the decision to drop legendary weapon development and rush to get content out, was the result needing to do something quickly to arrest falling player numbers and in turn revenues.

I think what’s really happening here is the discontent just found a way to let itself out now. You know, like the straw that broke the camel’s back sorta deal.

So all the complaints are coming forth and a lot of pent up anger is finally being released.

Siobhan.5273:

Klipso.8653:

not even the classes that can use shortbow ever touch one

There are rangers that use long and short bows.

and bears

Oh? What staff did Colin take with him? I’ve not seen any announcements about that. Could you provide a link, please?

Thx.

Sir Mad.1092:

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

KittyCat.2059:

I have made all the mats pre made and ready too and it saddens me that I wasted all my time and energy and some gold. Is there going to be a way to break down the items to get back the mats since now they are account bound items and useless.
Gift of Magumma Mastery 724 gold
Mystic Tribute 593 gold
Crystalline Ingots

I would contact support and see if they’ll send you the components of those items in exchange for you deleting them. It’s worth a try.

I had some sort of intuition not to make my ore into ingots “just in case”, I have all the components banked and uncrafted until they are needed. I have all the ore to make the ingots, I played dragon stand every day for months, sometimes without getting one ore because it failed. My disappointment is extremely deep. Nevermore was to be my first weapon, and then I was going to make others that were nontradeable. I don’t see a reason to make nevermore even though I have almost all the components banked and halfway through the journey. I don’t feel like playing this game anymore.

So… You wanted Nevermore, but now you don’t want it anymore because they won’t release legendaries you have never seen? I fail to understand the reasoning.

I didn’t want just nevermore. Nevermore was the FIRST of what I considered a long term goal of making several legendaries. You are aware that the cost of the first is the greatest in both terms of content completion (masteries and maps) and other inputs that only have to be bought the first time you craft one. I bought this game in October on the premise that the type of content I was thrilled about would be there. The entire reason I invested was to craft. I invested in extra bank space, as well. It isn’t about one skin, it is about the entire process. Your lack of understanding shouldn’t be surprising. It would be like me saying “well you got one story, what the heck do you need another one for”

Making tough trade-offs. Sounds fine.

But then…

Cysgod.8523:

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

Yea I thought that might have been an exaggeration until I confirmed this quote….

But then there’s the realization that you have devoted a good chunk of people to working on the next expansion when this one isn’t exactly complete yet. Not exactly inspiring confidence in your priorities. I certainly hope you will not repackage missing things behind yet another paywall.

Sorry, I think you underestimate your customers. You seem to think it’s okay to present a false dilemma making people choose between one or another, but in reality it’s because you are spending time on churning out the next expansion that’s causing all this. That runs the risk of all three things being done half hearted. And you’re expecting people to just accept this. I hope you realize that faith people put in this expansion is already spread thin, and there’s the audacity of thinking about the next one?

Honestly, even those things are hardly priorities for me anyways that sounds insulting. Seriously, it seems like there’s more explanations, rationalizations, and excuses than anything else. Perhaps you should have named the expansion Heart of Excuses.

Now, if you excuse me, I’ll be trying to salvage what’s left of WvW, which by the way, doesn’t mean I’m really into pve.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-colin-johanson-leaves-arenanet

Google it – there are many more articles

This situation reminds me so much of Asheron’s Call, when they made the decision to stop making monthly patches they had done for almost a decade to pour all their resources into their expansion, within months they lost most of their player base. The more things change the more they stay the same.

All the wasted efforts and development time in designing new game mechanics instead of focusing on what people actually asked for over and over again. Bet you’re regretting those choices now. Should have stuck with what made you great instead of listening to a director who was bored of the same old and you wouldn’t be in this shape today. Can you just imagine how well GW2 would be doing right now if you’d have stuck to the format of GW and pumped out expansions c/w races, classes, armor, dungeons, all the things people enjoyed to begin with, well you best put the peddle to the metal and get everyone churning out content because after this your time will be short.

Testudo.4620:

Siobhan.5273:

Klipso.8653:

not even the classes that can use shortbow ever touch one

There are rangers that use long and short bows.

and bears

and LB #4 whenever they see a melee char attacking something

It will be free. Once expansion 3 comes out.

On a more serious note, no, I don’t believe it should be free. I believe it should deliver everything on its feature list on release day, no more of this pre-pre-purchasing (yes, double pre) nonsense. If people want to throw their money at potentially broken promises, they should invest in Kickstarter MMOs.

Personally I could care less about legendaries or lw or anything of that sort. All I really do is WvW.
And let me remind you that THE MAIN SELLING POINT FOR GW2 WAS WVW!!! WvW was all the hype made by arenanet before it was released. And yet anet has since turned its back on it. The only reason I purchased gw2 was for WvW. And had to buy HoT cuz you essentially made it a p2w game as the elite specs for the classes are way overpowered compared to the normal classes.
I’ve been teetering on the edge of quitting gw2 for good as is the same for so many gw2 players and you’ve already lost a huge percentage of the wvw players. Maybe it’s time anet cut its losses and rethought priorities here. Mainly, balance, fixing wvw and adding new content, maps etc. forget about legendaries, new skins on trading post and other non essential things anet keeps throwing at us to distract us.

EDIT: I have to add that all it’s going to take to make anet fail for good is another game being released that has the content players are looking for. A game with a mode like WvW that is balanced and that will be the end of gw2. And I’m pretty sure there are some developers out there working on it. Time is ticking.

At least thieves will be happy lol. Hardly EVER see Rangers use them. They would have been better off releasing a new speargun lol

Daroon.1736:

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-colin-johanson-leaves-arenanet

Google it – there are many more articles

Sorry. That article talks about people that left in the months before he did but says nothing about staff he took with him, so, not a valid source for answering a question about the statement When the Game director ‘leaves’ taking a number of staff with him

You do all realize we are only finishing the fifth month of the expansion correct? Many of you seem to expect everything within days of an expansion release. Nothing was ever promised early into the expansion.

I am also thinking many of you have no experience with any other MMO’s. The MMO that has been considered the top MMO for years hasn’t shipped an expansion since it’s first one that has come close to even 50% of the things that were promised for those expansions’ betas.

The reality is some things will always get pushed back and delayed in an expansion. It’s a fact of life. There will always be bugs, the community will ask for different things and so things will be fluid. But Anet has done more to keep their word more than any other game I have played.

PlagueParade.7942:

Out of all the new legendary weapons to choose from and short bow is it? One of the weapons that is least used by most classes

I doubt that ANet “chose” shortbow deliberately — it was probably just the Legendary that was closest to completion (in terms of animations, design, and collections).

I think they were deciding between stopping all work on all legendaries or finishing any that were nearly done… and the SB was it.

Incidentally, there’s at least one new legendary for each class already, so unless ANet was going to release another 3, there was bound to be some additional salt about any single weapon.

“things will always get pushed back”

That’s fair…… Perhaps Anet should push back the next expansion and work on the current one

This is getting beyond a joke now. As a company ANET your ability to screw up just baffles me. Sort. Your. kitten. Out.

Here is your current breakdown of content with noted disappointments/poor decisions/mismanagement:

WvW – New Borderland design – flawed, un-fun, ignored the player-base’s desires.

WvW (GvG) – Unsupported, left and ignored resulting in an unavoidable split within the community.

sPvP – Lack of new conquest maps, unwanted deathmatch mode.

Stronghold – Developed and then left unsupported, unadvertised and poorly incentivised.

sPvP Leagues – Hit. Good Job (late but still appreciated).

Raids – Hit. Overall, best new PvE content since the game launched.

Fractals – Poorly Incentivised and mismanaged.

Guild Halls – Poorly structured and gated. Undemocratic. Basic functionality should have been base-line (e.g arena).

Living World – Late. Divisive.

Legendaries – Shelved when advertised as a selling point. Inexcusable.

In all honesty, have you even considered the very obvious question? How many GW2 players trust you anymore?…not many.

It becomes clearer every week that you never expected to make expansions – and your first attempt is shaky at best.

You’re going to have to act very fast over this (you are setting a very dangerous precedent with this news). You can start by changing HOW you relate to your playerbase if want to regain their trust.

For anyone who wants to spout some ‘oh, well i guess it’ll come in time’ nonsense. This game is not a ‘Privilege’ , its an item for sale. I’ve spent around £350 across 2 accounts myself – does it hold up against this list of hits/misses… its a clear No. Would I trust you with another £350….80% sure its a No – a lot would have to change.

Engel.6029:

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.

Okay, point me at another game that will let me be a great big fluffy kitten dragoncat in a bright, vibrant and dynamic world, please.

Looks like I’m a bit late to the party, so I try to keep it short.
- great decision to stop working on more HoT legendaries to have some more resources for more important stuff; the way the exisiting ones aswell as the precursor hunt for the old ones were implemented was so not apealing (legendary journey my kitten, run dumbed down collections and spend absurd amounts of materials just to get the precursor? no thx)
- not sure if shifting those ressources towards LS 3 is a smart move; existing content has such a huge need for improvements (e. g. the WvW mess, no raid lfg, the HoT map issues, tons of known bugs, etc. etc.) I think focusing the next 6 months strictly on that should have top priority
- though I doubt I can convience you to do what I wrote on my second bullet, I want to express my hopes for LS3 being more like LS2 (log in to unlock the chapters but play them when you want) instead of LS1 (stupid time gated open world zerg fests)

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

Sir Mad.1092:

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

KittyCat.2059:

I have made all the mats pre made and ready too and it saddens me that I wasted all my time and energy and some gold. Is there going to be a way to break down the items to get back the mats since now they are account bound items and useless.
Gift of Magumma Mastery 724 gold
Mystic Tribute 593 gold
Crystalline Ingots

I would contact support and see if they’ll send you the components of those items in exchange for you deleting them. It’s worth a try.

I had some sort of intuition not to make my ore into ingots “just in case”, I have all the components banked and uncrafted until they are needed. I have all the ore to make the ingots, I played dragon stand every day for months, sometimes without getting one ore because it failed. My disappointment is extremely deep. Nevermore was to be my first weapon, and then I was going to make others that were nontradeable. I don’t see a reason to make nevermore even though I have almost all the components banked and halfway through the journey. I don’t feel like playing this game anymore.

So… You wanted Nevermore, but now you don’t want it anymore because they won’t release legendaries you have never seen? I fail to understand the reasoning.

I didn’t want just nevermore. Nevermore was the FIRST of what I considered a long term goal of making several legendaries. You are aware that the cost of the first is the greatest in both terms of content completion (masteries and maps) and other inputs that only have to be bought the first time you craft one. I bought this game in October on the premise that the type of content I was thrilled about would be there. The entire reason I invested was to craft. I invested in extra bank space, as well. It isn’t about one skin, it is about the entire process. Your lack of understanding shouldn’t be surprising. It would be like me saying “well you got one story, what the heck do you need another one for”

Not at all. I’m just saying you sound like a kid breaking his toys because he can’t have a new one. Really.

If you like Nevermore, why wouldn’t you craft it? If you don’t like Nevermore, why would you craft it?

I understand people are kittened because they won’t get the legendaries they were promised, but how does it relate to how you view the current legendaries? I love Nevermore for instance, as much as I hate Quip. And rationally, the fact we won’t get new leggies can’t change that.

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

Wow, how can someone in your position even fathom spewing such bile. What if you bought a house with the promise of free stamp duty only to be told afterwards the free stamp duty would be voided and the only answer you got was, “well you still have the house you bought”. You lied, its as simple as that. Be ashamed, you’re a terrible person.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Daroon.1736:

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-colin-johanson-leaves-arenanet

Google it – there are many more articles

Sorry. That article talks about people that left in the months before he did but says nothing about staff he took with him, so, not a valid source for answering a question about the statement When the Game director ‘leaves’ taking a number of staff with him

Please allow me to correct my error by rephrasing the original comment.

‘When, over the course of a few months the Game director and a number of other key staff leave, the president takes over the role and within weeks is issuing statements that effectively reverse decisions taken by the previous incumbent, something quite serious is going on behind the scenes.’

Thanks, Mike.

There’s so much of the game I just couldn’t care less about, while the open, “living world” was the whole reason I bought it in the first place.

Raids? Don’t care. Grindy-to-obtain weapon skins? REALLY don’t care. Dungeons, PvP, gear treadmills? Nope, seriously if I wanted to play WoW I would just go play WoW again… cause… well, I can do that.

Take this moment to shine and make the best “living world” in the gaming industry. What you’ve already made is, by far, the most interesting open world experience I have had in an MMO and I’ve played a lot of MMOs in the last 14 years or so. Whoah… I got old!

Thanks for the correction. Glad to know I didn’t miss some important information.

Free expansion?

No.

Sell features for $5 each (real money, not gems) as well as lumping them all together into a single large purchase?

Yes!

As far as HoT goes, I wouldn’t have a problem paying $5 for the ability to fly in base game areas and an additional $5 for the mastery system and elite specs. The rest of the content in HoT doesn’t interest me at all. So, instead of the $0 Anet has earned from me with HoT, they would have earned $10.

Food for thought.

Hi Mike, long time player, loved the series since I first started playing it, love Guild Wars, heck, got GW tattoo’s cos I love it that much,

This will probably get buried below everyone else’s yelling and shouting. I just want to say this quick, we understand that sometimes design goals can change, it’s a fact of all business decisions, but what is rubbing players the wrong way is, there are bugs in HoT (Heck, I was hit by a bug during the mission where I am chased by Faolain, thus stopping me from getting the achievement for taking no damage, that’s a progress hindering bug, and that’s been in since the start, and I also can’t get the other achievement for collecting the glint echo’s, cos I don’t have the jump skill!), and you have a majority of staff working on the NEXT expansion which may not come out for like a year and a half.

We aren’t questioning your staff’s commitment, I spoke to a number of staff at EGX Rezzed last year, Tyler Bearce was really in to WvW, I spent hours trying to convince him to add AsuraCatapults, he wouldn’t budge, i’m pretty sure he got quite annoyed with me as well with all my questions, and I spoke to another member of the PvE team, I don’t remember her name unfortunately, and she was really excited about the new Hammer, she wouldn’t give me any details or anything about the name, just that it was pig related. So your staff are clearly motivated and enjoy working for you, which is kudos to you, not alot of companies can say that.

People are just angry because, if they are like me, bought the Collector’s Edition, spent lots of money on gems, pre-purchased HoT, still spent money on gems, and we lose a pretty big feature of the expansion, i’m not going to argue back and forth, ANet promised legendaries, we got some, not the 16 they announced. I will make the Shortbow if it’s worth it.

Then there’s the whole gemstore thing, if you guys release a new gemstore weapon skin/outfit within the next two weeks, this kittenstorm is going to go way out of control. That’s just my friendly advice… Do what you did with GW2 when it was announced, say “You aren’t going to hear from us for a while, we are gonna work on making the game better.” Get your priorities started, bug fixes, finishing these little things, then come back and say Expansion 2 is in full flow! People will quickly stop.

Cheers for taking the time to read this essay, tell Tyler I said “Hi! And AsuraCatapults!”

The longer I think the angrier I get about this. Should take ALL the devs on the next expansion and put them into finishing this expansion. Grind it out like you make the players grind. Stop being lazy and give us what you’ve promised!

Koomaster.9176:

The longer I think the angrier I get about this. Should take ALL the devs on the next expansion and put them into finishing this expansion. Grind it out like you make the players grind. Stop being lazy and give us what you’ve promised!

Not just what they promised, what they sold.

Asazi.7561:

Koomaster.9176:

The longer I think the angrier I get about this. Should take ALL the devs on the next expansion and put them into finishing this expansion. Grind it out like you make the players grind. Stop being lazy and give us what you’ve promised!

Not just what they promised, what they sold.

What we bought.