Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet has a major problem communicating with their players. They act like it’s impossible to have a good relationship with their customers and keep them informed about, well, pretty much anything concerning their product. They forbid their employees to discuss anything about the future of the game (outside of fluff marketing promos), to the point that even their own employees are fed up with it. They refuse to discuss even the simplest details with us or even mention if undocumented game changes are bugs or intentional.

And then we don’t trust them when they ask us to purchase their xpac blind (on faith, with many, many details left to reveal), and blow up at them as if they were some faceless corporate entity.

Hmm….think there might be some connection?

That said — I admit I’m one of the most negative people around on the forums, but I’m really saddened to hear that people have been lashing out at the devs, artists, etc personally.

Rage at the company, rage at the policies, rage at those who set them — but the people working in the trenches are not the ones who are creating this environment of distrust and frustration.

If they were allowed to, I have a feeling the people working on the game’s content would be very excited to talk with us about their work and maybe even be open to constructive criticism and suggestions. Perhaps if they were allowed to talk with us, we wouldn’t feel this giant disconnect between them and us.

This game had amazing potential and obviously a lot of talented, awesome people working on it. It’s a shame they refuse to embrace their community and treat them as if they valued their support.

It’s way past time to lift the obnoxious “don’t talk about anything not in live” policy. The community reaction to ArenaNet’s announcements has been consistently getting worse, and this trend is only going to continue as long as they insist on maintaining the enormous divide between developers and players.

Edited to remove incorrect link

Ignore pls, this was referring to an earlier version of the OP.

People are bashing the suits in charge of this mess.
Devs/artist are NOT the suits/corporate higher ups…
This all falls on their shoulders and nobody elses. What should have been a very eventful week for GW2 at E3 turned into a mess with this PR disaster.

How in the hell do you already plan out and launch options for pre purchase when there is no release window yet for the xpac and more than half the freaking details are missing? Its just terrible PR on their end…this is what you get when you screw over 99% of the playerbase thats actually going to BUY the xpac…
New players are completely going to be a minority case in buying the xpac.

Sadly there is a trend to see everything black or white. Not specifically speaking about OP, it is more general. What I mean is that recently passionate people are like “If I am playing a game, the company that makes it has to be the best. Now there is something I don’t like so they are the worst”. On the other side there are some developpers who might think "OMG people are so angry about our game, is that amount of job I have done and I am proud of suddenly so bad? ".
Like in every field of life, passion is good but its expression may be a disaster, artists learn to channel it but other people are easily overwhelmed by it.

Communication is a relationship that needs time to be built, they were a bit more open in the past but it ended up as other kinds of fiascos (craftable precursors anyone?). So there is a thin line between being too open and too secret, and finding the right spot takes a lot of time.

That said, past experience show also that ANET is able listen to their customer (commander tag is an example) but it is hard to listen to “the community” since nobody wants the same things in the game. Also there is always a hard question in video game development : “how much should the development of the game be driven by player ?”. What I mean is that we don’t boycott movies because the trailer doesn’t show the end, we don’t ask any writer to revamp the last chapters because we think the main character should not die. MMOs are a good opportunity for the player to have an influence on the development but we should keep humble and let the devs have the initiative, it is their work and our leisure. And on top of that one has to remember that devs are not paid to tell what they are doing on social media, they are not all community managers. If they do, it is on their free time… if they have some.

So in the end there is a lot of pressure on the communication team.
I must admit I found the team much more efficient before launch (even though I don’t think until Gaile arrived in the team there had been so much changes in term of people) but I can only imagine how hard their task is.

They surely can improve what they do, but we can surely improve our way to give feedback other than “that is typical Anet, they are bad” or “they lied to us since the beginning” “this game is dead since XXXX”.
In other words if communication fails, it is rarely only one side’s fault… if we ask for better we should also be able to give better.

Lord Kuru.3685:

dlonie.6547:

That said — I admit I’m one of the most negative people around on the forums, but I’m really saddened to hear that people have been lashing out at the devs, artists, etc personally.

Did I miss it? Because there’s nothing in there that says people were lashing out at devs, artists, etc. in a personal manner. It says that the devs are disappointed they put in hard work creating maps, etc. only to have this thing spoil it.

Hmm, you’re right — that link doesn’t say anything about that, my mistake — I’ll edit it and remove the link.

I remember seeing somewhere over the last few days that some of the devs/artists had been receiving nasty PMs, etc, and I though it was in that article that I saw it. Apologies for my error.

SkiTz.4590:

People are bashing the suits in charge of this mess.
Devs/artist are NOT the suits/corporate higher ups…
This all falls on their shoulders and nobody elses. What should have been a very eventful week for GW2 at E3 turned into a mess with this PR disaster.

How in the hell do you already plan out and launch options for pre purchase when there is no release window yet for the xpac and more than half the freaking details are missing? Its just terrible PR on their end…this is what you get when you screw over 99% of the playerbase thats actually going to BUY the xpac…
New players are completely going to be a minority case in buying the xpac.

Maybe there IS a release date? Ever think of that? It’s a release date they arent going give us until it’s something more certain than taxes or death. Why? People acting like the way you are. People flip kitten so hard over the stupidest things. Like rangers being a crap class. Like LS1 “ruining” LA (it was a kittenty place to begin with guys). Like precursor crafting was promised, verbatim, in 2013 or some such. Like Anet offering presales before all the information is out.

Peruse the forums with some detachment once in a while. It aint hard to see why people like John Smith are the only redposters outside of updates like next week’s.

dlonie.6547:

ArenaNet has a major problem communicating with their players. They act like it’s impossible to have a good relationship with their customers and keep them informed about, well, pretty much anything concerning their product. They forbid their employees to discuss anything about the future of the game (outside of fluff marketing promos), to the point that even their own employees are fed up with it. They refuse to discuss even the simplest details with us or even mention if undocumented game changes are bugs or intentional.

And then we don’t trust them when they ask us to purchase their xpac blind (on faith, with many, many details left to reveal), and blow up at them as if they were some faceless corporate entity.

Hmm….think there might be some connection?

That said — I admit I’m one of the most negative people around on the forums, but I’m really saddened to hear that people have been lashing out at the devs, artists, etc personally.

Rage at the company, rage at the policies, rage at those who set them — but the people working in the trenches are not the ones who are creating this environment of distrust and frustration.

If they were allowed to, I have a feeling the people working on the game’s content would be very excited to talk with us about their work and maybe even be open to constructive criticism and suggestions. Perhaps if they were allowed to talk with us, we wouldn’t feel this giant disconnect between them and us.

This game had amazing potential and obviously a lot of talented, awesome people working on it. It’s a shame they refuse to embrace their community and treat them as if they valued their support.

It’s way past time to lift the obnoxious “don’t talk about anything not in live” policy. The community reaction to ArenaNet’s announcements has been consistently getting worse, and this trend is only going to continue as long as they insist on maintaining the enormous divide between developers and players.

Normally i would be with you but based on current events im beginning to see why they cant talk about anything.

Its not because the players are childish, its because the company has some serious problems with following through, and with long term vision.

They told people they were going to sell an expansion, and now they changed thier minds, and arent selling an expansion any more. They are selling a stand alone game. It sucks that they dont know what they are commiting to, and what they arent. But thats the reality of how the company is currently working.

Thanks for the reply, Ranael. Just to clear up a couple things:

Ranael.6423:

“how much should the development of the game be driven by player ?”. What I mean is that we don’t boycott movies because the trailer doesn’t show the end, we don’t ask any writer to revamp the last chapters because we think the main character should not die. MMOs are a good opportunity for the player to have an influence on the development but we should keep humble and let the devs have the initiative, it is their work and our leisure.

This is a more fundamental issue in my eyes. It’s not about trying to get a story’s ending, it’s about taking care of addressing issues with your game. There is a large difference between showing a film’s climax in a trailer and telling your customers that you are aware of a defect in your product and working to correct it.

And on top of that one has to remember that devs are not paid to tell what they are doing on social media, they are not all community managers. If they do, it is on their free time… if they have some.

Absolutely! But it also appears that they are under strict instructions to not talk to us about future development of the game, and it extends to the point of not being able to give information on upcoming bugfixes (See the link to Lauren’s post in my OP). Even if they want to tell us what’s going on in their own time, they can’t.

So in the end there is a lot of pressure on the communication team.
I must admit I found the team much more efficient before launch (even though I don’t think until Gaile arrived in the team there had been so much changes in term of people) but I can only imagine how hard their task is.

Agreed. I don’t want to even imagine the frustration of having a job that centers on communicating with your customers but not having the leeway to actually give them the information they’re looking for.

They surely can improve what they do, but we can surely improve our way to give feedback other than “that is typical Anet, they are bad” or “they lied to us since the beginning” “this game is dead since XXXX”.
In other words if communication fails, it is rarely only one side’s fault… if we ask for better we should also be able to give better.

True, and I know I tend toward vitriol and snark more often than not. You weren’t accusing me of anything, but in the interest of an honest discussion: I am not innocent in this. However, I’d like to out that on the rare occasion that an ArenaNet employee pokes their head through the curtain to talk to us, my tone immediately becomes much more respectful and reasoned.

Which is sort of my point with this post. If we saw a human face on ArenaNet instead of a corporate fortress of silence that only occasionally delivers news in the form of fluffy marketing hype, I think the general tone of the player voices towards the development team would improve greatly. When we feel ignored and disenfranchised, well…that just breeds frustration and distrust.

You do realize that if people posted with reasoning and logic more often, they’d likely post more often? It’s often such vitriol and hate that keeps them AWAY from the forum unless they’ve got thick skin, love trouncing liars, or dont mind having an engaging discussion (John Smith squarely fits all 3 of those).

That link you removed may be the one you were thinking about, as it (or it did) show how Rubi was contacted on her personal account. It seemed to indicate the contact wasn’t favorable.

Basandra Skye.4031:

Maybe there IS a release date? Ever think of that?

The issue, as I understand it, isn’t whether or not a release date exists. I think we all assume that a tentative launch date is known internally at ArenaNet.

When people bring up the release date issue in regards to the expansion, they’re making a legitimate point that there are a lot of details missing about it, including that we (the players) have no idea when the expansion is coming. Giving the climate of distrust and history of disappointing releases, a lot of people feel that asking for money for a product that is mostly vapor at this point is asking too much.

phys.7689:

Normally i would be with you but based on current events im beginning to see why they cant talk about anything.

Its not because the players are childish, its because the company has some serious problems with following through, and with long term vision.

They told people they were going to sell an expansion, and now they changed thier minds, and arent selling an expansion any more. They are selling a stand alone game. It sucks that they dont know what they are commiting to, and what they arent. But thats the reality of how the company is currently working.

Heh, not to mention that at launch they said they wouldn’t be using expansions and that all of the ‘expansion-like content’ would be coming through the Living Story. You make a good point.

Basandra Skye.4031:

You do realize that if people posted with reasoning and logic more often, they’d likely post more often?

People do make reasonable, polite, logical posts on here fairly regularly. Obviously not every post is, but there are a lot that aren’t full of vitriol.

And they still get ignored because of ArenaNet’s policies.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

That link you removed may be the one you were thinking about, as it (or it did) show how Rubi was contacted on her personal account. It seemed to indicate the contact wasn’t favorable.

Aha! So I’m not crazy!

Well, that may be an overstatement

Thanks for clearing that up. I thought for sure it was that one, but it looks like that bit was edited out now.

Sorry for all the edits. 5 minute flood control is a kitten :P

Bottom line is that they have to face the music. Blizzard has basically said that flying will be removed from WoW going forward. Perhaps there’s been an about face because of the backlash, I don’t know, but I do know that they were up front about the change and didn’t hide it from the players. Transparency is part of running a good MMO.

SWTOR has been horrid because of EA’s stance on communication, but recently there have been changes to how changes are presented, and there’s much more detail overall about why things are put into place and what’s to come. A second large scale MMO being up front about the future. Anet needs to step their game up.

Prototypemind.4026:

Bottom line is that they have to face the music. Blizzard has basically said that flying will be removed from WoW going forward. Perhaps there’s been an about face because of the backlash, I don’t know, but I do know that they were up front about the change and didn’t hide it from the players. Transparency is part of running a good MMO.

This isn’t true..Blizzard has done a U turn and is added flying back into WoD due to “popular” demand. And their hasnt been a blizzard post on the shaman forums for years. Since this kind of thing happened to the old shaman rep. People went mental over silly stuff. So they removed their feedback to shamans.

Perhaps Anet MIGHT be more willing to communicate with the community if the community didn’t loose their kitten over the smallest, most meaningless thing. As this last week has shown.

Polite communication and respect is a two way street. The community after the way its responded this week, doesn’t deserve any better IMHO than total silence..

Unfortunately, in a customer/business relationship polite communication will rarely achieve anything.

“The squeaky wheel gets the grease” as they say.

ANet wants to use their current expansion pricing without change, they have motivation for keeping it, they will ignore any points or feedback that they can safely ignore because it does not cause problems for them.

It is the complaints to a supervisor, or a call to the media, or a bad review that will motivate a business to change its policies to the consumer’s benefit, not reasonable arguments, because you could be right, but they have no reason to care.

shiney.4629:

The community after the way its responded this week, doesn’t deserve any better IMHO than total silence..

Then they can expect the resentment, frustration, and hostility to grow.

The error in this line of thinking is making the assumption that everyone in the community is reacting poorly. There are a lot of reasonable people trying to spark reasonable discussions with ArenaNet. Just because some people are being loud and ridiculous doesn’t mean ArenaNet should permanently circle their wagons and neglect their players.

shiney.4629:

Prototypemind.4026:

Bottom line is that they have to face the music. Blizzard has basically said that flying will be removed from WoW going forward. Perhaps there’s been an about face because of the backlash, I don’t know, but I do know that they were up front about the change and didn’t hide it from the players. Transparency is part of running a good MMO.

This isn’t true..Blizzard has done a U turn and is added flying back into WoD due to “popular” demand. And their hasnt been a blizzard post on the shaman forums for years. Since this kind of thing happened to the old shaman rep. People went mental over silly stuff. So they removed their feedback to shamans.

Perhaps Anet MIGHT be more willing to communicate with the community if the community didn’t loose their kitten over the smallest, most meaningless thing. As this last week has shown.

Polite communication and respect is a two way street. The community after the way its responded this week, doesn’t deserve any better IMHO than total silence..

As I said, I wasn’t sure if they changed their minds, I just know that they didn’t hide it. I also know that they don’t hide what’s coming with each expansion. Player’s know what they’re getting well before hand.

As to Anet, can you honestly say that threads like bring back SAB and Bunny Ears have been less than civil? Players have asked and asked and asked, the majority of them politely, for these things to be re-included and Anet basically remains silent on them. If they can’t even communicate in the small things, I think it’s silly to expect more as a whole.

Like I said, EAWare has made recent changes, so perhaps Anet will as well. It’s definitely needed if they want this game to retain its players.

I see a lot of people taking everything anyone associated with Anet as a promise, preventing them from changing their minds later. If people allow Anet to change their minds without it being a breach of trust, then it would be safer for them to speak.

As an example, look at what happened because of the art with the land spears. If they (hypothetically) said they were thinking of adding them and took them away before release, how would people react?

On the other hand, I think they could stand to either bring back the Collaborative Development Initiative or start something similar in its place.

dlonie.6547:

That said — I admit I’m one of the most negative people around on the forums, but I’m really saddened to hear that people have been lashing out at the devs, artists, etc personally.

This, I believe, is nothing but misinformation regarding the Love and Lash post on Reddit. There hasn’t (to my knowledge) been any harassment toward individual artists or designers at Anet. In fact one dev has denied ever claiming that, and that their tweets were taken out of context.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3aamx8/gw2_lash_and_love/csbep7t

phys.7689:

They told people they were going to sell an expansion, and now they changed thier minds, and arent selling an expansion any more. They are selling a stand alone game

The core game is free and HoT cost $50 dollars.

reapex.8546:

phys.7689:

They told people they were going to sell an expansion, and now they changed thier minds, and arent selling an expansion any more. They are selling a stand alone game

The core game is free and HoT cost $50 dollars.

if the core game is free, then everyone who buys it gets a copy, but they dont.

if its part of a package deal then you can buy it seperately, but you cant.

there is one, and only one version of gw2 being created by anet now, and it is the HoT edition.

not everything someone trying to sell you something says actually makes sense in the eyes of logic, the english language, or the law.

if i tell you you get a hammer free when you buy nails at my store, EVERYONE who buys nails gets a hammer, whether they have one at home or not. (copyright someone else in this forum somewhere)

ANet has a major problem communicating, but I strongly disagree with the OP about what it is. I wholeheartedly approve of them rarely releasing details of what they are working on until it’s ready — there are just too many players who can’t accept that plans can and will change, depending on planning and programming issues, changes to the game environment, etc. People still try to hold to the letter of high level goals offered by ANet before GW2 was announced.

So, I think the communication issue is that ANet does not really know how to hype their own product. They over-market minor things (e.g. home instance portal) and downplay huge things. They announce GW2/HoT the same week they are going live with the biggest rebalance the game has seen to date (arguably bigger than anything that happened during GW1 days), affecting all professions, all trait lines, etc. They chose prices and tiers for HoT that invite controversy, diminishing the big news…that the game’s first expac is on sale! (Worse, nearly any poster to these forums could have told them that, fair or not, those tiers/price points would create insanely distracting controversy.)

tl;dr Yes, ANet communicates poorly. I think the OP has it wrong, though: the type of communicating advocated wouldn’t have changed what happened this week.

Bingo. Communications or lack thereof is the bigger issue. While I get some of the defending, I don’t understand most of it. Why is it such a bad thing to ask to see some of the content we’re being asked to buy?

Heck . . . we don’t even know a release date. . . .

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

ANet has a major problem communicating, but I strongly disagree with the OP about what it is. I wholeheartedly approve of them rarely releasing details of what they are working on until it’s ready — there are just too many players who can’t accept that plans can and will change, depending on planning and programming issues, changes to the game environment, etc. People still try to hold to the letter of high level goals offered by ANet before GW2 was announced.

So, I think the communication issue is that ANet does not really know how to hype their own product. They over-market minor things (e.g. home instance portal) and downplay huge things. They announce GW2/HoT the same week they are going live with the biggest rebalance the game has seen to date (arguably bigger than anything that happened during GW1 days), affecting all professions, all trait lines, etc. They chose prices and tiers for HoT that invite controversy, diminishing the big news…that the game’s first expac is on sale! (Worse, nearly any poster to these forums could have told them that, fair or not, those tiers/price points would create insanely distracting controversy.)

tl;dr Yes, ANet communicates poorly. I think the OP has it wrong, though: the type of communicating advocated wouldn’t have changed what happened this week.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, I do agree with your points. Perhaps my message was unclear in the OP, but I didn’t mean to suggest that announcing all of the details of the expansion would have prevented the kittenstorm. I believe it would have mitigated part of it, but there were a lot of complaints coming together at once and the lack of details was only one piece of the puzzle.

The point I was attempting to make was that the distrust of the company makes it easy for things like the HoT prepurchase fiasco to spiral out of control. Things like ignoring large defects/issues in the game (broken dungeon waypoints, broken bosses, out-of-order and plothole-laden personal story, horribly broken PvE balance, Ogre Wars, …) for months or years on end without really acknowledging the issues or showing that they have any actual interest in fixing them…that sends out a negative image of themselves.

Combine that with the content drought, history of underwhelming living story content, and nearly complete lack of developer/community interaction and you start to foster a very bad reputation among your customers. We will be significantly less forgiving of errors as a result.

There’s a big difference between asking for story spoilers and asking ‘hey, this changed and wasn’t in the patch notes. Is it a bug, or is it staying this way?‘. Or saying ’hey, your main story line is out of order. What’s up with that?’ and not hearing a response for months — if at all. A company that can’t even bother to offer that basic level of customer support does not have my respect, and I’m not going to view them positively or give them the benefit of the doubt when they slip up with something like what happened this week.

I don’t view ArenaNet as a team of designers and developers who are in touch with their players. Rather, they present themselves as uninterested in what their players desire and are ‘above’ keeping us pesky peons informed about the product they’re producing. Speaking personally, my attitude towards them would be significantly more positive if it were the other way around.

Xenon.4537:

dlonie.6547:

That said — I admit I’m one of the most negative people around on the forums, but I’m really saddened to hear that people have been lashing out at the devs, artists, etc personally.

This, I believe, is nothing but misinformation regarding the Love and Lash post on Reddit. There hasn’t (to my knowledge) been any harassment toward individual artists or designers at Anet. In fact one dev has denied ever claiming that, and that their tweets were taken out of context.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3aamx8/gw2_lash_and_love/csbep7t

Thanks for the info. I suppose that’s why the article has since been edited — I sincerely hope that there was a misunderstanding and that those devs/artists were not caught up in the mess, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they had.

I’ll quote a guildie in response to that, because they nailed it:

Don’t you know…if you disagree you’re just a stupid hater, elitist, entitled brat, and if you agree you’re a fanboy, Blind Supporter, drinking the ANET kool-aid. No one’s opinions are valid when everything gets dismissed out of hand ad hominem.

There’s so much hate being thrown around that reasonable discussions are very difficult to have, because people like to put others down to get a nice ego boost and feel superior — on all sides of the issue.

Funny how people can call for ‘more reasonable’ and ‘less vitriolic’ discussion, and then turn around and start ranting about ‘fools having nervous breakdown’ and passing out passive aggressive snark and insults at the ones trying to discuss things reasonably.

Perhaps their arguments would carry more weight if they’d set an example instead of acting in the exact way they’re complaining about.

Just my 2c.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Basandra’s kind of response really boggles me. No where, any where, have I said I’m being forced to do anything nor do I feel I’m missing out. Nor am I having a ‘mental breakdown’ nor I am following ‘the rest of the fools on the forum.’ Nice job insulting an entire community by the way.

Yeah, I love how Basandra posts things like

I pity society and the direction it’s going in.

AND

Frankly I dont know why I bother with these threads, other than to prove to myself every once in a while why I have little faith or empathy for society.

and still feels level-headed enough to accuse others of having a mental breakdown. That there’s some irony.

The only “communication issue” is that the player response to anything they don’t like even remotely is just disgraceful and revolting.

I don’t think they have particularly bad communication issues, especially around the release of new content. Virtually every game company wants to keep leaks about big content updates on a tight leash so they can reveal it tactically in big events to generate excitement and discussion, and I don’t think A.Net has been lax in that regard – between the developer livestreams and main page announcements they’ve done a pretty good job of community engagement.

Now clearly things got pretty disjointed with the presale going up – that very clearly should have been accompanied with a big promotional push on the size and scope of the expansion to build a bunch of hype, amongst other things. Sticking it right in the middle of the week leading up to a huge live feature pack was…not good timing, to say the least.

This isn’t A.Net doing a bad job communicating with players, this is A.Net doing a bad job communicating with themselves, an example of the proverbial left hand not knowing what the right is doing.

I do understand the frustration about developers not being able to talk about what they’re working on or upcoming patch changes, but let’s be clear, this is not a company with a 2 week patch cycle, this is a company with a 3 to 6 month patch cycle. Talking about and building hype about a bugfix that’ll go live in 6 months ends up being disappointing and really highlights how slow things move. Yeah, it’s frustrating, but it’s not stemming from communication but organizational issues.

I agree with the OP and I’d like to let ANet know what they could have done better is one of the recent events: The profession changes announcement.

What they should have done in my eyes is sending devs who have worked on the changes to the profession subforums, based on which professions they were working, to clear out questions and misinformation, to gather initial feedback and to discuss the impact these changes will make. That would be truly good communication and a lot of hassle could have been prevented.

I believe the main culprit here is the lack of real knowledge about various aspects of Heart of Thorns.

The price complaint comes mostly from fans. They have the game, they know the value of the game. If these fans complain now, then because the game still ahs a high value to them. These fans then see “the bundle” and attribute most of its value to the base game. Players know lots about the base game, next to nothing about the expansion. So if the bundle costs $50, then what does that tell you about the size of the expansion? Past comments about Living World basically being the same as an expansion have not helped here.

Then all the questions rush in. If you are eager to play the new class, but have no empty slots, then is that an attempt to upsell you right away? If you are an explorer, will the map be big enough? If you want new class experiences, will they differ enough? What about new coordinated small team PvE, such as instances? Why does the PR center on a free feature trait upgrade at the same time the expansion is sold? Shouldn’t the PR focus on something that projects more value on the expansion rather than the base game?

I could pick this apart for pages without end and while I do not agree with most of the complaints, I can understand from where they are coming. It is amazing how many different player demographics are confused right now and express their uncertainty in the forums. This being the Internet, most of the comments are hardly high quality.

The goal is clear, sell people on the coming game, do not upsell them an a $100 edition. Personally, I like that newbies are getting the base game fro free. But I can also see how Heart of Thorns does not exactly stack up to the base game right now. GW2 is a victim of its own world size in that regard.

I have been saying two things for a long time already. One is that the Gag Order is hindering ANet’s consumer relations. It’s postponing rather than preventing fan backlash about ANet decisions, and providing a new source for complaints. They’re actually catching more flack from consumers than they would otherwise get if they relaxed that restriction.

The second is that Anet should consider getting someone who’s savvy about psychology on staff. This worthy’s job would be to look at decisions and the wording of what releases there are and say, “Fans are likely to react this way to this. Are you sure you want that kitten-storm?”

That said, communication is a two way street. There are a lot of fans who could learn that the tactics of shaming, insulting, deriding, demeaning and belittling are reprehensible and will in no way help them to get their way. All that such tactics do is generate agreement among those who already think that way, and generate resistance in their targets and in more reasonable fans.