Guild Wars 2

Also they didn’t hire 70 people, they assigned 70 people to start working on the next expansion while around twice that number work on polishing up the existing game and expansion. Because static content is death in an MMO. We don’t want another year of barely anything new to do, at least for us long time PvE players.

HoT zones was essentially another Orr, and I don’t know about you all but Orr was a one and done. I don’t know anyone who hangs out in Orr or enjoys playing there. They added these mini-games but they always seem closed when you go to them unless you check the timer first. These aren’t bosses or metas, they are activities that should always be open.

I don’t bemoan Raids. I think they are a positive for organized guilds, giving them some content that can be done weekly.

WvW was another example where phased release of a larger revamp failed miserably. It was like the fractal reset because of leaderboards that were coming shortly but never materialized.

PvP eSports doesn’t bother me. It’s an attempt to make PvP interesting to those who don’t. Along with the P4F it was meant to be a gateway to buying the full game. Problem is the Elites are virtually making it a requirement to buy the full game and that’s a turn off. In the investor’s conference call, NCSOFT said the conversion of P4F to paid is where they fell short in HoT sales. It’s also the reason I believe we got gliding in core Tyria so quickly. “Want to glide, buy the game.”

People tend to forget that a Legendary isn’t just one item. It’s the grind, the journey, the spiraling path towards the end.

Climbing a mountain is just the few minutes you spend at the top. It’s the climb, the achievement, the memories.

Mind however that I’m lamenting the loss of my new greatsword leggy. Q__Q

Basaltface.2786:

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

I’ve heard that there’s a special place in Hell for users of that skill when others are trying to melee.

Hey Mike’O, and the rest of the team at ArenaNet: I appreciate that you are taking risks in order to get kitten done, and being very upfront about it.

Despite the temporary PR storm right now, I am confident the long-term direction you are now taking this game will be largely positive.

Please do not be discouraged, and keep doing what you are doing.

The whole problem for me is the 70 employees they have allocated for a future expansion. If it wasn’t for that, I might not see anything cynical or sinister in the latest decision.

I want this game to succeed but I fear that this latest move hkittentered the trust of many gw2 customers. How does this decision affect pre-orders of the next expansion. I am railing at this latest move by Anet because I think it is bad for the future of gw2.

LucianDK.8615:

playable content is more important, legendaries is just fluff for the tiny 1%, they have to think of the masses.

REplayable content is the MOST important. This kind of content keeps people in the game.
After repeating the same things ten times, hundred times, boredom arises , inevitably. Supersaturation is easier to bear when is assigned to an end, a teddy bear, a trumpet, a donut aka long term goals. These long term goals, also consume, besides time, a lot of materials and gold, so they are beneficial to the game’s economy. Gold sinks are less harmful to the fun factor than low rewards .
Believe me, there are still people in this world who, when they start something, they will also successfully complete that thing. And they are more than 1%.

midsummer.8237:

As a curiosity question could you guys take some people off of a different team to work on the legendary weapons? Like maybe the fractal/dungeon team or something like that?

The fractal team that have produced one original fractal since release and still haven’t given a leaderboard after resetting everyone’s progress to 30?

For all the people thinking this is taking away from HoT’s value, wasn’t continuing LW part of HoT’s value as well? I think somewhere they said you’d need HoT for future LW updates. So isn’t moving Legendary Weapons team into LW team still keeping that development value within what was paid for HoT?

I’d like to point out two things before I weigh in:

• MO’s communication and willingness to talk here recently is a fantastic thing for this community.

• That said, his communication shouldn’t be taken for granted and we, as a community, shouldn’t be trash-talking in blind rage in his willingness to communicate. A good reason behind why ANet stopped communicating to begin with is probably for this exact reason. I’d rather keep the windows clean, thanks.

That doesn’t mean we need white-knighting, either. Criticism is the most important aspect of the process of improving something. That is, assuming such criticism is meant to help or try to help improve it.

We shouldn’t be arguing about the semantics of the expansion being half-baked. The community at large pretty much has come out since HoT’s release and has continued to state that the expansion was clearly rushed and shipped earlier than it should have, particularly regarding the design approaches themselves to many aspects of the game.
We don’t need an ANet staff member, regardless of position, to try and defend this product to make it look any better than it is; judgment for the most part has been passed already, and the addition of new content or adjustments to it is truthfully the only way to change perceptions of paying consumers. Coming out and saying it was a failure is definitely a bad business move, but I think stating the expansion was a success to the masses complaining is probably worse than silence. I applaud your first post, MO, because it suggests things didn’t work out as well as planned for HoT, and a lot of content in the game due to the change in direction needs tweaks. That alone would suffice for many.

I’m fine with legendaries being delayed. Frankly I’ve found most of them either excessive, ugly, and pointless gold sinks with the journeys as they are just being grinds.

I also don’t really care about the release schedule of these weapons. They take time and developers are assigned to a lot of jobs at once, and that’s understandable.

Really, it’s just a matter of business trust at this point. So long as everyone involved in the funding and production of the next expansion is aware that it likely will not sell as well initially/period due to consumer concerns regarding the integrity of content delivered vs statements made about said content, keep moving along. Live and learn. So long as a lot of the issues occurring in the game now get fixes in the near-ish future or temporary holdovers are delivered, it’s salvageable.

Good to know another pack is being worked on (despite my disdain for the current, I appreciate knowing what’s going on and what to expect). Make sure that before a date or estimated date is set or an announcement is made about promised features in the next expansion, that such content is effectively ready-to-release. The “when it’s done” attitude with updates regarding the status of development is typically much more appreciated in the end over a set date or “when it’s done” with no communication.
This way your stakeholders are informed development is chugging along just fine and can see the progress being made, but your studio isn’t hellbent on releasing for a specific target date and needs to scrap features or produce lower-quality content. It also lets you get player input on the design ideology of things early on, allowing you to iterate a tad before any kind of release blunders like with what we saw with Hero Points/elite specialization gating. Coming out and giving said numbers early or the process early would likely have changed that substantially in your favor regarding sales and reputation on HoT’s release.

DaikonSamurai.6714:

For all the people thinking this is taking away from HoT’s value, wasn’t continuing LW part of HoT’s value as well? I think somewhere they said you’d need HoT for future LW updates. So isn’t moving Legendary Weapons team into LW team still keeping that development value within what was paid for HoT?

No. HoT’s value was supposed to be both LS and new legendaries. It doesn’t matter which one they’re giving us, it matters that they’re only giving us one.

(And to be fair, the LS3 was supposed to be in the game anyway. They aren’t giving us something with HoT, they just put up a paywall to something they were originally going to do for free.)

CrashTestAuto.9108:

midsummer.8237:

As a curiosity question could you guys take some people off of a different team to work on the legendary weapons? Like maybe the fractal/dungeon team or something like that?

The fractal team that have produced one original fractal since release and still haven’t given a leaderboard after resetting everyone’s progress to 30?

What would that leaderboard have been around anyways? an kitten show and tell about how many fractals you have run in the entire lifetime of your account, or your achieved fractal scale?

Nothing i could think of would fit a leaderboard when it comes to fractals.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Full story episodes have a long lead-time. But I don’t think LW content has to be all about the episodes.

This is the best thing to hear. Please, whether it is this group of people who worked on the fantastic Legendary collections or some other devs, have some people work on altering the current map events.

It would be absolutely awesome to have new events and updates to them. In between these larger quarterly updates it would be so nice to see patch notes that surprise us with something like one of the older zones getting an event mix-up and an achievement category (Especially since HoT added some nice QoL with the events/achievement tracking, etc that should really be incorporated into the whole game eventually).

Not every map needs masks/badges/coins to hunt for, and I don’t think anyone would want that on every map, but some amount of achievements/collections associated with them would be awesome (And, again, like in HoT maps – Seeing the events we have/haven’t completed would be great) and having new events to experience and drive players to new/different parts of each map would be a nice change of pace.

I am certainly bummed to hear about the rest of the Legendaries being shelved but I think more frequently adding quest-like collections or zone updates on a frequent basis is more important long term and I hope this move can get that aspect back on track.

Can we give Mike’O a love-bomb to balance out the rage?

midsummer.8237:

As a curiosity question could you guys take some people off of a different team to work on the legendary weapons? Like maybe the fractal/dungeon team or something like that? I ask mainly because I get the feeling people would rather see new legendary weapons over new fractals. I do realize that part of the reason why it is so difficult to put out the legendary weapons is because of the legendary journey & I feel like people are completely missing the point, its not just the weapon it is also the whooooole story that goes into it. I don’t know if you guys will read this or not but I feel like reminding people of the whole story that goes into it might help some people calm down.

& for all those people complaining they are looking to hire a LOT of people https://www.arena.net/ so if there were people to fill these spots it would probably lead to them having the resources needed to actually work on the legendary weapons.

Everybody knows about this “journey”. But I personanly didn`t ask for it. It was them who deceid that it would be funny for us to do that story for pre. People were complaining that obtaining pre is hell of a grind. And what Anet gave to us? This story that nevertheless grindy than actually buying pre from tp. And we get that stuff “We cant make any other legends cause its to time consuming to make a story for pre” But who cares? If I want a story, I would play my personal story, events, fractals, anything else. And actually, it is more satisfying to get pre for playing every ingame content, I myself got one as a combination of rare loot from personal story reward. We wer? just asking for better chances.
I want grind for a cool flashy weapons. I want this kind of endgame content, I want to actually look like someone who spend a lot of time in this game. I like this grindy goals. And now tell me why should I suffer because someone whom I paid my money dont have a resources to make their promises come true? Even though we already waited so long for this 3 new legendaries, and how know how long we will wait for the fourth. This just kittenes me off.

camcallahan.7035:

Mike O Brien.4613:

Full story episodes have a long lead-time. But I don’t think LW content has to be all about the episodes.

This is the best thing to hear. Please, whether it is this group of people who worked on the fantastic Legendary collections or some other devs, have some people work on altering the current map events.

It would be absolutely awesome to have new events and updates to them. In between these larger quarterly updates it would be so nice to see patch notes that surprise us with something like one of the older zones getting an event mix-up and an achievement category (Especially since HoT added some nice QoL with the events/achievement tracking, etc that should really be incorporated into the whole game eventually).

Not every map needs masks/badges/coins to hunt for, and I don’t think anyone would want that on every map, but some amount of achievements/collections associated with them would be awesome (And, again, like in HoT maps – Seeing the events we have/haven’t completed would be great) and having new events to experience and drive players to new/different parts of each map would be a nice change of pace.

I am certainly bummed to hear about the rest of the Legendaries being shelved but I think more frequently adding quest-like collections or zone updates on a frequent basis is more important long term and I hope this move can get that aspect back on track.

+1 to you , good sir.

There are so many points that could be made more up to date. Kessex Hills is the best map you currently have in this regard, but I guess it needs a break from the action.
My ideas would be like:
*Let the pact finally and actually win ground against the forces of Zhaitan.
*Let Thaida Covington actually do something. Maybe a confrontation with a power mad Tequatl or something.
*Let the Nighmare court do something! They have lost very important people, why does nobody of them care? Rekindle the alliance with the krait a little bit? They still work together in toxic events.
Replace some undead in general with other factions. Nothing screams more “static!” to me than to vanquish some type of opponent who is not only leaderless but incapable of making decisions alone.

should have reflected the new classes and elite specs that could’ve used them. with the coming of revenant and daredevil, i was expecting something that resembled Bo for the legendary, only a lot flashier, like a plasma Bo staff or something. a scythe looking greatsword would’ve been sweet too, maybe even a very teched out hammer for scrapper, or something more suited to revenant. Oh well!

It’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s pretty hypocritical, for, al least, me, to complain about how HoT was composed of mostly big ticket grind items that reduce it down to a generic MMO and then get mad at Mike for making the hard choice to abandon that and the promises associated with it to focus on content.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

(And to be fair, the LS3 was supposed to be in the game anyway. They aren’t giving us something with HoT, they just put up a paywall to something they were originally going to do for free.)

Well yeah it was, then players demanded an expansion and LW kinda got tossed into it.

Well that’s what the specialization collections were for…no?

Edit: sure, not as flashy but they captured the essence of the class…

Content is exactly what they need and they would have been way ahead of the curve had they not spent so much time wasted on reworking existing systems like traits, beginner areas and the like. that was a colossal waste of good development time which could have been spent doing what they needed to do like build more content like expansions. Their constant tweaking of things nobody thought was necessary to fix is what caused them to be in this mess, not including the rush to get this out in china.

Refocus and go back to your roots and build content people ask for and you’ll be just fine.

DaikonSamurai.6714:

Well yeah it was, then players demanded an expansion and LW kinda got tossed into it.

Some players demanded an expansion. Even then, a lot of the reason for that was because the LS stuff kept being temporary for some reason. If they’d just stopped remaking Lion’s Arch, redoing systems that already worked, and made content that stayed longer than a month, a lot of those players would have quietened down.

It’s hard to justify HoT on the grounds that players ask for it. Even the ones asking for an expansion didn’t mean “Take a year and a half break from doing other content, stick the content you’ve already said you’ll make behind a paywall, offer an expansion that isn’t as big as we’d expect for the price, then give us about half of it.”

Yes, players complained during the old system, but it nowhere near excuses what we’ve got now.

I’m glad Mike is communicating more, and it does look like the game might finally turn around, but we’re over a year into a content drought now. Honesty about abandoning things we were promised is better than the silence we used to get, but it’s still a bad thing happening.

AysonCurrax.3254:

Honestly, some people dont seem to understand that the issue isnt that they are scraping the new legendaries in particular.

The Problem is that they pull workforce from a project that was a selling point for the current expansion and relocate them to another project, instead of pulling workforce from the next expansion, so that they can deliver what they already had us pay for.

Instead, they remain just as focused on the next potential cash grab, instead of giving what they already took money for.

Ding Ding Ding!

I’m still surprised people are trying to justify putting it into LS3 at all. Yeah, the stories are fun, but it’s like, what? 4 hours MAX of content? If they fix the sinks of legendaries then legendaries are a far better time investment; more to achieve, better reward, longer time investment. The people who try to justify this or who complain about how much legendaries cost are either newbies or people who have no idea of how to properly make gold.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t work for better stories, I love the story in this game, but in the grand scope of things, legendaries keep you busy and reward you way more than the story. I’m happy that they’re trying to roll out a part of HoT, but in terms of content, legendaries are just better.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Thanks for all the comments. I know there’s nothing I’m going to say that will make you feel better, but I’ll share some final thoughts for the night.

I said three weeks ago I’d focus on sustainability and quality. I want to reiterate the part about sustainability. Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but how about the recent drought of content? That kind of thing happens when we spread ourselves too thin, and when we let the content development pipeline empty out so we can fight fires. What I think we actually owe you is sustainable, predictable, high-quality content. I’m making a decision that’s painful in the short-term so we can position ourselves to deliver that.

Akuni.8604:

Consider this… HoT currently has: 3 new maps (which are still buggy looking at DS) which are grindy as hell, Elite Specs which are heavy powercreep (pay to win in PvP…), a Story which is short but at least good (if you ignore the myriad of bugs f.e. in the Mordi battle), Guild halls, 2 Raids with 5 1/2 bosses, a new PvP map (which is quite unbalanced) and now only 4 legy weaps (3/4 being rarely used thanks to being underpowered or buggy)… That’s it?

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

And no mention about the fact that they have people already working on a future expansion and people working on gliders and weapon skins that are released almost weekly.

I would agree with what he’s saying but when the facts show that you spread your resources too thin and the first thing you do is cutting down the promises you made instead of cutting down the things you will SELL us in the future, then I just can’t really respect you much.

I already paid you money based on the promises that you made about the content you would deliver me for the money I paid you.

Deliver your promises first and then sell me new stuff. Not the other way around.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

DaikonSamurai.6714:

Well yeah it was, then players demanded an expansion and LW kinda got tossed into it.

Some players demanded an expansion. Even then, a lot of the reason for that was because the LS stuff kept being temporary for some reason. If they’d just stopped remaking Lion’s Arch, redoing systems that already worked, and made content that stayed longer than a month, a lot of those players would have quietened down.

It’s hard to justify HoT on the grounds that players ask for it. Even the ones asking for an expansion didn’t mean “Take a year and a half break from doing other content, stick the content you’ve already said you’ll make behind a paywall, offer an expansion that isn’t as big as we’d expect for the price, then give us about half of it.”

Yes, players complained during the old system, but it nowhere near excuses what we’ve got now.

I’m glad Mike is communicating more, and it does look like the game might finally turn around, but we’re over a year into a content drought now. Honesty about abandoning things we were promised is better than the silence we used to get, but it’s still a bad thing happening.

I didn’t mean to blame players in that last post, just stating what led to LW getting combined with xpac. But yeah, I think even Mo thinks losing legendary weapons is a bad thing. If the skins are there it’s a waste not to use them after all so I doubt this decision was made lightly.

ezhcim.3075:

Mike O Brien.4613:

Thanks for all the comments. I know there’s nothing I’m going to say that will make you feel better, but I’ll share some final thoughts for the night.

I said three weeks ago I’d focus on sustainability and quality. I want to reiterate the part about sustainability. Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but how about the recent drought of content? That kind of thing happens when we spread ourselves too thin, and when we let the content development pipeline empty out so we can fight fires. What I think we actually owe you is sustainable, predictable, high-quality content. I’m making a decision that’s painful in the short-term so we can position ourselves to deliver that.

Akuni.8604:

Consider this… HoT currently has: 3 new maps (which are still buggy looking at DS) which are grindy as hell, Elite Specs which are heavy powercreep (pay to win in PvP…), a Story which is short but at least good (if you ignore the myriad of bugs f.e. in the Mordi battle), Guild halls, 2 Raids with 5 1/2 bosses, a new PvP map (which is quite unbalanced) and now only 4 legy weaps (3/4 being rarely used thanks to being underpowered or buggy)… That’s it?

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

And no mention about the fact that they have people already working on a future expansion and people working on gliders and weapon skins that are released almost weekly.

I would agree with what he’s saying but when the facts show that you spread your resources too thin and the first thing you do is cutting down the promises you made instead of cutting down the things you will SELL us in the future, then I just can’t really respect you much.

I already paid you money based on the promises that you made about the content you would deliver me for the money I paid you.

Deliver your promises first and then sell me new stuff. Not the other way around.

I couldn’t have said it better myself, the elephant in the room is the endless gem store junk that keeps being released. You can’t have a legitimate excuse as a developer for allocating development time elsewhere because you can’t focus on legendarys, when you’re using development time to pump out new glider skins and outfits every other day.

Mike O Brien.4613:

I’ve asked that we indefinitely suspend work on new legendary weapons. This team of developers will instead shift their efforts back to Living World style content, building new journeys and events for everyone to participate in.

Mo

This part of the post seems to indicate that LS3 is no longer intended to be gated behind purchasing the expansion. The fact that this topic was posted to GW2 discussion rather than Heart of Thorns discussion seems to support that.

Wander.5780:

I couldn’t have said it better myself, the elephant in the room is the endless gem store junk that keeps being released. You can’t have a legitimate excuse as a developer for allocating development time elsewhere because you can’t focus on legendarys, when you’re using development time to pump out new glider skins and outfits every other day.

It’s the “gemstore junk” and the expansion that brings them money and pays their salaries, so they can’t merely stop working on it for the sake of an ideal.

Ultimately, the choice is about more content vs less content but more legendary skins.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Wander.5780:

I couldn’t have said it better myself, the elephant in the room is the endless gem store junk that keeps being released. You can’t have a legitimate excuse as a developer for allocating development time elsewhere because you can’t focus on legendarys, when you’re using development time to pump out new glider skins and outfits every other day.

It’s the “gemstore junk” and the expansion that brings them money and pays their salaries, so they can’t merely stop working on it for the sake of an ideal.

Ultimately, the choice is about more content vs less content but more legendary skins.

Wrong, just wrong. The choice is between developing content we haven’t paid for yet versus cancelling content we already paid for. The choice of which one they should do is very clear. Even entertaining the idea that they should develop the next expansion when this one is woefully incomplete is a disgusting thought.

Manoa.5897:

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

This went through my mind today

First they came for the dungeons, but I didn’t say anything because I don’t play dungeons

Then they came for world v world and still I said nothing because I didn’t play world v world

Then they came for player v player and still I said nothing because I didn’t play player v player

and then they came for legendaries and I said nothing because I don’t want a legendary

And when they came for my content, there was no one left to stand up for me.

As much as I disagree with the development direction GW2’s taken in the recent past, I’d hardly compare it to the Holocaust.

I wasn’t comparing it to the holocaust. It is the concept that people on this thread that are actually happy that those of us that have invested 100s of hours into gameplay that will not be connected to HoT would be just as outraged if Living World was “indefinitely suspended” and the team that works on it sent to complete legendary weapons. Many people are just fine with other people being hurt as long as it isn’t them, in fact, even supporting the harm to other players. And yes, people that bought and paid for this game and invested so much time have been harmed by this decision. It galls me and angers me that so many in this community are actually applauding this.

Look there are a number of issues with the game right now… lots of people are unhappy with the new zones, content drought that is being made worst if you dont like the new zones, lack of new legendaries (obviously this is a problem as well) and others that fall outside this scope.

Now the you dont like expansion issue is a problem for all and the only way to address that is to release a new one thats more in-tune to what people were looking for. Move people from here and that problem goes unsolved for longer and longer.

Living story Season 3 is the glue to connects the two expansion, taking people from this to address the more immediate content issue just wouldnt work because this would be a zero sum game the more immediate content you create, the longer you need to do it for because essentially you’re stopping work on LS3 to do it.

sPvP/WvW ? do we even need to stop and consider this?

Most likely the only options they have open to them is either risk having the expansion issue longer with sever risks to the game.

Ignore the content drought hoping people will be okey with that for a few more months.

Take some resources from somewhere to create some filler content while work continues on S3.

It may be easy to say take people away from the expansion but consider this. The first expansion didnt sell well, no one can deny this. Season 3 will not provide content to people who didnt buy the expansion.

Clearly they are spread too thin and thats with a team bigger then most other MMOs out there. What happens if their revenues fall and NCSoft reduces their budget?

It is easy for us to look at ANet and blame them for taking decisions we dont like but lets not forget who’s fault they find themselves in this conundrum in the first place. Anet was happy giving us all content for free using the living story model but no we demanded an expansion like they had explained in the first year of launch there are reasons why they were steering away from expansions especially in an MMO like this that loves to take risks and try new things. Expansions tie your hands. Expansions fragement your community. Thats not on them, thats on us, they merely gave us what we wanted. What did we do? rather then thanking them for giving us what we wanted, for going to extra mile and giving us base game and future expansions for free where as other companies simply put out discounts, lots of people went on a massive negative marketing spree. posting everywhere that allows why they felt people shouldnt buy the expansion. Well guess what those things have consiquences.. lots of people listened to you, others came to the same conclusion on their own, be it as it may Anet better do something about it fast or risk loosing all those players forever.

This is an MMO people, there is such a thing as the common good, going out and try to steer people away from the game by overblowing every decision they take you dont like way out of proportion to try and force their hand will at some point literally explode. You dont like they’re taking 6 people away from legendaries to give us content to player quicker then they originally intended to ? guess how better you’ll like if they’re forced to lay off say 50 people. 50 people who will not be working on something else like these 6 people will and if those 6 people were deemed to be the most “expandable” when seeking to fix the more immediate issues guess who’d be on the top of the list of those 50 people to be let go?

So once again, consider your actions. You think removing people off legendies is a bad idea, please do say so but consider the greater good, consider the extend you want to take your actions. Things have consiquences.

Also preemptively cause this always becomes an issue when I do posts like this.. No I am not Gaile Gray in disguise, I am merely a concerned player with no contention to Anet what so ever besides buying their games and expansions + some gems.

Wow, what a rage, more than 53k views in 3 days.
Personally, I’m dissappointed. Nothing less, nothing more. I was looking forward to new legendary sword. But.. well.. you are not cancelling it completely right? You are just stopping the development indefinitely (right?).

Well, only things that can compensate this for me are SAB (still in 2016, pls pls pls!) and LS rich both in quality and quantity (as soon as possible). If we get these, I’ll be ok if you introduce new legendaries later (December 2016? Early 2017? Maybe? MAYBE?? PLS???).

I am glad this decision was made. More playable content is far more exciting and interesting than a legendary grind. I just want to play. So thank you, Mike and ANet, for this announcement. I’m also hoping (fingers crossed!) that any new legendary armor never happens, too!

That said, before you stop working on Legendaries altogether…would you mind removing the obnoxious sound from The Dreamer, please?

Koomaster.9176:

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

That people are angry, I do get that but what makes me sad is that there are so many rude people who are cursing and blaming Anet for being all kind of monsters without any facts and to little information.

That’s because Anet hasn’t provided any facts or information. People want accountability when promises aren’t kept. What was the real allocation of resources on the legendary weapons project? How many of the weapons have been worked on and what percentage of ready are they? There is NO WAY a team has taken 5+ months to only have 1 weapon to show for it. If so the management of that team is way off kilter because to finish the rest of the weapons would take another 4 and a half years!!! At some point someone managing them would have had to step up and say – ‘What in the world are you guys doing?! You need help or what?!’

Probably because those same 5 or 6 people are also fixing the broke-kitten kitten for the current collections as well?

Gregori.5807:

M-m-m-manifesto?? I don’t care one whit about the legendaries, what I heard was “manifesto.” As in you are steering the boat in the general direction of the Manifesto??

I have one thing to say to this:

BOOYAH! and Thank you!

I’ve been thinking about it and changed my mind to a degree.

I am very happy with the announcement that they are bringing the game back towards the living world. Now, whether or not that will happen is very much up in the air. I have been noodling around in vanilla waiting for one of two things to happen: getting bored again and leave or they change things back towards what I want.

My initial thought on hearing the news was “woot!” and it still pretty much is. However, in addition to this I think they should finish the legendaries because this is going to drive even more players away. A lot of players left because of the direction of HoT and now they are going to lose more.

So, my opinion is somewhat changed: “woot” for going back in the direction of living world, but they really should finish what they started. If I had a say, I would say to stop working on the next expansion, put the devs working on it on finishing the legendaries, fixing the existing bugs and unfinished content, working on the living world. Make this expansion close to the equivalent of the core game in content and scope.

As far as the Manifesto, the Living World was a core aspect of it. That is what I was referencing. Yes, I know it was tossed but getting that part back will help for me.

When Colin left, I was pretty sure it wasn’t for as nice a reason as he said. These changes kind of prove it.

I’d say discard the development of new legendary journey collection and just let the new legendary precursors drop in specific areas. No need to worry the resources on fixing the collection bugs anymore.

It’s been 5 months since HoT. I’m pretty sure you guys made a number of new legendary weapons by now and just sorting about the journey collections which I think the reason it took this long to release the new ones.

A similar situation happened to EA in 2011 when the company backed off on their promise after ppl had already bought a copy of the game. A class action lawsuit was filed and won.

Compensation may not be much, but it’s the principle and not being lied to after a purchase.

I think it’s very important to have the new Legendaries. They were part of the selling of the expansion and people paid real money for it. It’s unethical, even if it’s legal, for ANet to not do what it said it would do when the HoT was promoted.

If the legendary journey is the sticking point, then drop that part. Make new Legendaries and put them in game as drops/mystic forge items. Allow them to be sellable and set up the old system to craft them with these new precursors. Just make the new Legendaries account bound on acquire.

I think it’s important to the reputation of this company to put them in. If not, this is something that people are going to hold against ANet from now on and everytime ANet makes a promise it will be brought up.

It’s profoundly bad business to sell something as part of a package and then renege on what the agreement was, even if ANet can point to ‘weasel words’ such as eventually or regularly. If your customers as a group feel they’ve been misled, tricked or cheated, then any future expansions will be heavily criticized and it will affect sales.

I really don’t care about legendaries cause I don’t like how they look but all that situation seems unfair (for now).
people payed to be able to get new legendaries.
At least I hope it is worth it. Though I hope there will be second expansion, even better than HoT.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

It’s profoundly bad business to sell something as part of a package and then renege on what the agreement was, even if ANet can point to ‘weasel words’ such as eventually or regularly. If your customers as a group feel they’ve been misled, tricked or cheated, then any future expansions will be heavily criticized and it will affect sales.

Would this not mean that this also would have happened with HoT then and has affected sales?

Mr O`Brien speaks of the manifesto in his opening post, a set of ideas that helped to sell vanilla GW2 to the people that were sick of grind and raids. When you followed the board for the last 6 or so months, we had heated debattes about the same stuff, and many white knights did not see this even as an argument.
Or was the manifesto to vague?

I personally would have sacked another 6 man team before the legendary team, but that is another story.^^

Hi Mike,

Here is you being quoted saying that expansion 2 shouldn’t affect developement of Live, two times:

’’We’ll all miss Colin. And yes, Living World should come back around the time of the July quarterly update. We took it down at the beginning of 2015 to focus on HoT, and now we’re rebuilding. My goal now is sustainability: we shouldn’t ever have to sacrifice Live to ship an expansion.’’

‘’Hi Mireles. You’re right that in 2013 we were really focused on Living World, and then we decided to do split and do both. We decided to do both because there are big, fundamental improvements that you just can’t do when you’re only shipping Living World.
There are a couple things we’re focusing on going forward. First of all, sustainability. We don’t want to shift back and forth, so we need to make sure Expac2 doesn’t need us to pull down Live devs and vice-versa. Second, quality. When we’re shipping every two weeks, we just have to ship. But going forward it’s much more important for us to be proud of everything we ship, and for you to be proud of everything we ship, than to hit a specific cadence.’’

Now why is it that you are pulling on the Live team working on finishing the product you sold to us, instead of the 70 developers working on Expansion 2, hmmm?

I am sure the whole lot of your playerbase want an answer to this but I imagine you won’t give us an answer now.

reported you to the trading standards of UK and hopefully the rest of the people in this topic will report you to their country trading standards too.

Dear Mike,

Thank you for communicating this to us in a very honest way. I also applaud you for your AMA on the GW2 subreddit. One of the things that really turned me off this game many months ago was the frankly awful communication. It is by no means perfect now, but there have been definite steps to have discussions with us and from the top level. Certainly an improvement.

As for the content of your message, I like many are supremely disappointed by this. Once again it is a promise undelivered. You say you refute the allegation that you only gave us half an expansion. That is your right to disagree, but if this is the prevailing thought among the playerbase, I fear it may adversely affect interest and sales of the next expansion. Players are unlikely to want to be burned twice.

I understand promises and plans can be made that seem feasible at the time, and once the path has been started on, you realise it just can’t happen. That is the natural consequence of the narrowing of vision upon the details that comes from making plans and dreams a reality. But to do it now, many months after HoT shipped, does nothing to give confidence to players. It was part of the stated content of HoT, that the 16 would eventually be released. many may have bought the game in part on the basis of that promise. If you changed tack before the release of HoT, it would have been disappointing, but it would have been understandable, in much the same way as this conversation has been before over the years. An intention that just couldn’t happen. It’s disappointing, but it happens. But once you committed to marketing the content to include this, then release the expansion as paid content, you set up an expectation that the promised content of the expansion, which you are buying on the basis of, will be delivered. I’m not looking to debate what qualifies as an expansion, or whether the expansion content is of sufficient quality to justify the price. But Anet set out a list of features that together make up HoT. You have announced that certain features (new legendaries) will not now be released. Objectively, you have failed to deliver all the content in the expansion. You may argue as to how much of an expansion is released, but it cannot be argued that you delivered the full expansion as advertised, and will now be unable to do in the coming updates. By definition, it is incomplete. I don’t see it as a deliberate fraud. I do see it as incompetence. As to who perpetrated that incompetence, I still think the jury is out.

Despite that belief, that we are now certainly not getting the full set of expansion selling points, I do agree with your general direction. You spoke of the choice between getting substantive content and delivering these. The truth is that prior to HoT we had very little of anything added, and those things that were weren’t particularly good. I hope you’ll understand the skepticism of seeing more features pruned and more promises of quality content that already has a reputation for not materialising.

We are skeptic because we have been treated so poorly in the past. That has been an institutional thing. Attitudes need to change, and despite the criticism here, i do see the beginnings of that. But we need more. We need more foreknowledge to upcoming features so you can gauge reactions to upcoming content and features. It may be that we think of issues or ideas that could be useful. More than once, players have identified potential issues that had later come to pass. It may be better for all concerned for us to have some ability to see changes in a reasonable timeframe prior to shipping that allows you to alter and adjust during the development process. That way you won’t be left with broken system and content (for reference: the year-long traits fiasco) and satisfaction won’t suffer so much. Also, try to find a better balance between what you hype and what would be realistic. So much crushing disappointment isn’t based on how bad the game isn’t (for the most part, it isn’t, though I think the HoT areas need some serious work), but the gulf between the potential (and hype) and what we actually get. I like your businesslike attitude in that it seems there is a greater structure that should yield better, more consistent and better timed content. And i understand to create this better place where things get delivered and are of higher quality you need to make drastic changes now. I’m grateful they are being done now rather than ina years time, but until we see the fruits of the labour, we are going to go by a lot of how things have been before, and how well this change fits into the old narrative. For the love of the Six, please deliver on this and make GW2 and Anet the developer it was before. I’d forgive anything to see a return to that path. Just make sure we are truly on it going forward.

Pretty sure I can sum up the last 25 pages as “We’re tired of being jerked around.”.

Hi Mike,

Here is an acronym you should adopt in the company. It might help avert more disasters.

Characteristics of a well-run project: PROJECT CRAMPS

Planning (full)
Risks (thoroughly researched)
Objectives clear/meet needs of customers
Judge/monitor developments
Excellent communication
Conflict management
Thorough testing at all stages

Critical path analysis
Relationship with external suppliers stable & challenging
Appropriate pace
Milestone review schedule
Performance & quality standards
Supportive environment

I have been actively reading this thread for a few days now. Interesting how every now and then I refresh this thread and the page count on the thread decreases. Someone must be very busy suppressing opposing viewpoints. Shouldn’t Mike o’Brien get an infraction for calling out players who accused him of releasing half an expansion and that post hidden?

dAcIaW.5107:

I have been actively reading this thread for a few days now. Interesting how every now and then I refresh this thread and the page count on the thread decreases. Someone must be very busy suppressing opposing viewpoints. Shouldn’t Mike o’Brien get an infraction for calling out players who accused him of releasing half an expansion?

wait- what? can you screenshot this next time it happens?

Finalfreefall.8247:

dAcIaW.5107:

I have been actively reading this thread for a few days now. Interesting how every now and then I refresh this thread and the page count on the thread decreases. Someone must be very busy suppressing opposing viewpoints. Shouldn’t Mike o’Brien get an infraction for calling out players who accused him of releasing half an expansion?

wait- what? can you screenshot this next time it happens?

they also seem to be merging other topics in here, which makes keeping track of things a bit of a mess. for instance, one of my post, when i made it yesterday, was on page 20 or 21. today, i found that post on page 23 instead, so there definetly must have been posts merged into this, too.

I’ve only seen the page count going up. It’s at 25 now. Either you’re glitched or you’re checking just as they delete foaming mad cussing types who aren’t saying anything remotely nice — or are off topic, eg the one that talked about how easy it is to get legendaries if you work at it which has nothing to do with the merits of cancelling production of new legendaries (can’t work at the ones that are never implemented, after all).

I’ve been actively reading morning, noon, and night, and not once have I caught the page count at less than the last time I read it.

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

Ok, your post made me log on a post here for the first time. I am a long time poster on MMO Champions and supporter of GW2. I have given a few copies (that I bought myself) away to try and get more people on MMO Champions to play the game. Now, HOT has been a huge let down for me. We have 4 GW2 licenses at the house and I upgraded 3 of them to HOT. All of us have battled to get into HOT. There is no desire to play.

You mention a lot of things that you gave us with HOT. What you don’t realize is that very little of those things appeal to everyone. A new region full of content? Come on, at launch you had 25 zones, with HOT you added 3. At a stretch you could say that was 9 because of the layers but it’s still way less content than you had at release. To make matters worse, the new content is the same grind that you gave us with Dry Top and Silverwastes. That’s not content, that’s grind. To make matters worse, that’s content that requires groups of people. For anyone who likes to play in a solo or small group environment it’s not exactly welcoming.

The mastery system, gliding, new profession and elite specializations are nice but without a decent amount of new content, they lose a lot of luster. The raids are not something that I am interested in doing with my family. The guild hall is wasted because my guild (4 in the family) is too small to get it.

In short, you didn’t give me content, you gave me grind. Where is the GW2 that I bragged about? You are listening to people but it’s not the silent majority. Raids is not a bad addition to the game but it caters for a very small portion of players. When you release content, there needs to be a balance between grindy repeatable content and content that you can savor and only need to experience once or twice. Every single new zone since release has been the former. That’s why I was so desperate to see an expansion and all you gave me was more of the same.

The legendary decision doesn’t affect me at the moment and it’s unlikely that it will. My comment is in response to you because you guys let us down. If I were you I would take a big look at your priorities because at this point I won’t even consider another expansion and I know that other people are thinking the same thing. You need to fix what is here and forget about whats happening next year or the year after because there won’t be a next year or the year after if you don’t. At least for me.