Guild Wars 2

Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?

I mean this seriously.

When I talk about the various topics in guild that are brought up on these boards, the responses are totally different.

Some recent examples:

Ascended armour: forums consensus = bad, a treadmill. Guild consensus = could be good, let’s wait and see, only a “must have” for deep Fractal adventures.

Event: forums consensus = laggy, unfair, skews the economy etc. Guild consensus = one of the best events in online gaming ever.

Fractals: forum consensus = elitist, gated, treadmill etc. Guild consensus = excellent fun, innovative and rewarding.

On my guild forums, negative posters just get ignored or asked to stop being so attention seeking. We can all spot them. They enjoy dragging things down and foreseeing doom.

These forums seem to be riddled with this type of post like a cancer. It’s depressing. I come here to read about the game – people’s thoughts and experiences, some tips and info. But the majority of thread titles are just doom.

According to this forum – the game died 4 weeks after release, no one is playing except for hardcore grinders and treadmill lovers. My experience in game is the total opposite. Players that are casual, like to explore, to “potter”, to craft, to try a bit-of-this, a-bit-of-that are seeing this as the best game in years to cater to their playstyle.

Anyway, I’ll leave it there.

Although, if my theory is true, the following responses will be mainly negative as the forum population will see and answer this, whilst the regular players will miss it because they’re online and having fun

One of the best events in online gaming ever? hmmmm.

Luculus.9860:

_*Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?*

The reason why Ascended gear was introduced was because player feedback, arguably in this forum, told ArenaNet that people wanted more “progression” in the game.

If complaining worked to get a gear treadmill, do you really think people should stop complaining against it?

IMO, those complaining about the complaints (lol?) are being somewhat hypocrites, since they were complaining about the game until a very short while ago.

Basically translated, you disagree, you think the game is perfect, anyone that disagrees with you is a whiner. and you can’t cope that people have different views / experiences to you ranging from having ridicuous lag in events to being missold a product.

Pretty simple if you are a bit too delicate or insecure to cope with differing opinions, then don’t read those threads, most are pretty obvious from their title.

Players NOT enjoying are simply not logging in anymore. And ANet will see those metrics.

The so called “whiners” are actually the ones still giving a crap, though I agree there´s always the agony aunt addicted crowd.

But this is all out of our hands anyway. We´ll see by December where the current trend leads.

My prediction: No Overflow servers for Winter Day´s one time event.
Which will probably be during Christmas Eve to make really sure nobody logs in.

Erasculio.2914:

Luculus.9860:

_*Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?*

The reason why Ascended gear was introduced was because player feedback, arguably in this forum, told ArenaNet that people wanted more “progression” in the game.

If complaining worked to get a gear treadmill, do you really think people should stop complaining against it?

IMO, those complaining about the complaints (lol?) are being somewhat hypocrites, since they were complaining about the game until a very short while ago.

Personally, I believe they had this planned all along. It happened to fast to be reactionary.

Ill just say a lot of the people i know in game dident understand how the ascended gear was to work. Most of them thought it would work exactly like GW1 infusion’s. This led them to like the change. When informed of how it actually worked they had a different though on it. The content they were fine with. The gear not so much. In general i feel this is the case with most of the people in the forum’s.

My experience is the same as yours – everyone in game loving it, then a vocal minority bashing on the forums.

It’s called forum sabatoge.

Thirty people can really make a mess of a forum. Or 3 people with 10 accounts each

A certain big name game that is feeling very threatened by GW2’s popularity certainly has the budget to buy a few games and pay a couple peeps to go gamebashing on their forums.

My advice is to ignore it and focus on the game you love with the other millions of people loving it.

Luculus.9860:

Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?

No

I read the forums when I can’t log in. Because I’m at work. Which happens 5 days a week.

And I read the forum when I’m playing, to see if a problem I have is universal. And since when is saying your mind if you don’t like something “whining”?

(and I only stop “whining” about guesting once that has been implemented and I can actually play with some of my friends again)

It’s hard to argue with an entire overflow full of people saying how much they hated the one-time event and that they were glad it was over.

Also of course this thread is going to get negative responses because it portrays the entire population of the forum in a negative light.

The OP would be right if the servers were FULL like they were during the Halloween event. I haven’t seen the servers full. Has anyone else?

Well, birds of a feather flock together. In my guild most of the people seem to share my opinion:
- Ascended Gear is a big mistake, Arena Net broke a promise here
- The new dungeon is fun but grindy as hell and not really rewarding
- FotM scales below 10 are way to easy, nobody should be forced to start below 10
- Agony makes the dungeon harder, but not cause the encounters are more difficult, it’s just a gear check
- The event was good, but boring at the end and the lags were just horrible

Luculus.9860:

Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?

I mean this seriously.

I’ve always thought this and I think it’s true the majority of players (in any game) don’t get involved in the forums that’s easy to determine by the amount of posts vs players even in the large threads. But… it also means when this group are unhappy they don’t come to the forums to announce it to everyone so we can’t just assume that they are “happily” playing the game.

If mapchat is a guide my experience ingame is the ratio of generally unhappy to best ever is pretty much the same as here.

Xpiher.5209:

The OP would be right if the servers were FULL like they were during the Halloween event. I haven’t seen the servers full. Has anyone else?

They dramatically increased server cap for the event so we could play with our trial friends.

Still full, I spent over 90% of the weekend on overflow servers.

correct me if im wrong…in the lore mursaats were the only race with spectral agony isn’t it? gw2 twisted/swayed from the one true lore?

Karizee.8076:

Xpiher.5209:

The OP would be right if the servers were FULL like they were during the Halloween event. I haven’t seen the servers full. Has anyone else?

They dramatically increased server cap for the event so we could play with our trial friends.

Still full, I spent over 90% of the weekend on overflow servers.

Just to point out i get thrown into overflows in area’s that i know dont have all my servers players in. Overflow just means the area has enough people in it it needed to send some of them to a spare server. It has nothing to do with the true pop of a server.

That being said with the adding of free trial they may or may not have increased the server pop. Unless they say such theres no way to know though.

Luculus.9860:

Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?

No, from my experience this isn’t true at all.

The thing is, people on the forums are the more vocal part of the gaming population and they care more. The people who don’t will not bother coming to complain on the forums once they get fed up, they’ll just stop playing.

Forums are always ahead of the curve. The general reactions on the forums are just a precursor to what’s gonna happen ingame. Players that are in game, and that don’t follow the forums will catch on quite quickly to what’s happening. Mark my words.

I remember the same thing happening to Swtor. The game was broken, people complained on the forums, the staunch defenders kept saying that nothing is wrong and that the complainers were a minority. Fastforward a bit and you know how that game ended up.

Neither.

The only reliable indication we have is Xfire. And the numbers have been dropping. Just as with SWTOR the forums and the devs could say anything, but at the end of the day only the player activity counts.

Well, I mean, obviously people who are deeply unsatisfied are going to be the one who aren’t still playing. So, in response to the title: “Yes, but that doesn’t really mean anything one way or another.”

I think the specific issues you’re talking about are some different things.

Ascended Armour: You should note that the ‘good’ reaction from people in your guild is still a wishy-washy, vague sort of optimism.
“Could be good” – Why?
“Wait and see.” – This is an easy opinion to have when you haven’t really spent much time thinking through the implications. It’s been discussed from every angle here, and almost always comes out poorly.
“It’s only needed for…” – This isn’t an argument in favour of why it’s good. It’s just sort of an apology: “It’s bad, but it’s not that bad, because…”

The Event: There were technical issues with the event that could very justifiably ruin it for someone.
Some people experienced minutes of lag during the initial event and couldn’t actually do anything while it was going on. Then the NPCs for the first day’s events went missing or permanently died on certain servers/overflows, and their quests were completely unable to be completed, or even initiated. And due to the tight scheduling of the event, ArenaNet didn’t go back to fix them, and just ushered people on into the next portion of the event. The final part of the event ran into serious problems with culling for many people, where they would be killed by gigantic groups of hard-hitting enemies who they literally could not see or target – and then a lot of people got disconnected due to server stress, and didn’t get rewarded for the whole multi-hour event.
If your guild largely didn’t run into many of these issues, then naturally the event would have seemed really cool. I’m sure it was really cool, at least on paper – but the event didn’t seem to take the game’s technical limitations into consideration, and that’s a problem.
There’s also the issue that for some time zones, the entirety of the event took place during hours of the day where it’s just not reasonable for people to be playing the game.

I think we can both agree that people getting mad about the economy being skewed are being a little bit unreasonable. Getting angry that you participated and got no reward? Fine. Feeling insulted that ArenaNet made no provisions to your entire time zone? Absolutely. Being mad that there was a glut of randomly-distributed rare items, and you weren’t lucky enough for the RNG to give you one? Not so much.

On the Fractal dungeon: You’ll find that the vast, vast majority of people – even the ones doing the complaining on here – think that the dungeon itself is very well-made and a great addition to the game.
What people take issue with is that A) The gating mechanism is incredibly stifling toward party formation, and no matter what level of the dungeon you’ve made it up to, it’s going to be hard to find a party that’s a perfect fit for you, that B) The nature of the rewards essentially force people into doing FotM, and only FotM, if they want to make the most effective use of their time in terms of rewards/progression (and that they suddenly feel as though they have to worry about rewards and progression, because of the introduction of Ascended items), or that C) All of the gating is arbitrary; you’re limited either by how many previous levels you’ve completed, or how much gear you have Infused, instead of by how skilled and capable a player you are.

These are all very valid concerns that do arise when you start thinking about this dungeon in the long term, or start taking a close look at the exact mechanics that govern it.

If you’re not putting much thought into the specific ramifications of each of these changes, and you don’t personally run into any of the more egregious problems with them, then yes, it’s easy to see all of the problems as “no big deal”. And few of them are a “big deal” at this point – I think most people here will admit that the biggest problems with Ascended gear and the Fractal dungeon have yet to really manifest themselves. That doesn’t mean that they won’t, or that the problems don’t exist – it just means that at the moment they’re relatively easy to ignore if you don’t care about the long-term or philosophical design issues that they raise.

I agree that the forums are depressing.

Yes, the event yesterday was laggy (and in the reinforcements stages I wanted to scratch my eyes out) and no, I did not get a precursor. And I did dream a lot about karkas last night.

But overall, I had great fun, met some new people, got challenged by the new dungeon (2.5 hours for the first difficulty with a friend-only party xD), got more l00tz than I expected at the end of the run.

When I’m ingame, I feel motivated and challenged by the FOTM, and I want to do it a lot more. I don’t care about ascended gear. My legendary is such a Long Term Goal, that I don’t care about farming. Orr is a zone I only go to when I feel like somewhat of a solo-challenge. I don’t farm orichalcum, I don’t time the dragons. I have some great people in my friends list, and I’m never bored when I log in. Map chat is often a blast and maps are never devoid of players.

When I’m on the forum, I can literally feel myself get dragged down into negativity. The ascended gear suddenly becomes something unreachable that I need to have (why? beat me. If you see that it took us 2.5 hours to beat the first difficulty, I won’t be needing ascended gear for a very, very long time. hell, my friends aren’t even level 80 yet, so I have to wait for them to catch up anyway). On the forums, the superfun FOTM dungeon becomes That Thing That Separates The Community And Makes It Impossible To Find A Group and I’m worried about that (doesn’t bother me ingame, I do any dungeon only with friends). On the forum, the lag that I expected and wasnt put off by ingame, suddenly becomes The Next Big Technological Failure.
On the forum, servers are empty and The Game Is Dying.
Not to mention the consortium chests, that I didnt even look at ingame, but are The Proof That Anet Sold Their Soul To Nexus on the forums.

Why visit the forums then? Obviously it tries (I say try, because at the end of the day, i’m still able to make up my own mind) to ruin my fun in the game.
But the forums are still the best place to get some interesting discussions about lore. I love reading and posting constructive criticism. And getting a different insight in the game allows me to understand it better, making me a better player overall and the source of all information for my guildies.
And most importantly, I don’t have anything better to do at work (yes, sad, I know).

Luculus.9860:

Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?

I

This is the exact question someone has put back in SWTOR. And then BOOM. the game died.

my guild did two things last night:

helped each other start the refeund process

tried a new game together.

granted not everyone was on board with that. but our leadership doesn’t treat our members like children either.

it really came down to me for the refund was that no company has gone back on throwing themselves over a cliff like this. i’ve nver asked for a refund for a game before. i already lament that i won’t be able to hop in and play my toons anytime i like.

i had planned to have this game on my hdd to play whenever for a very long time. but this game company told me to go kitten myself faster than any mmo i’ve ever played.

Luculus.9860:

Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?

I mean this seriously.

When I talk about the various topics in guild that are brought up on these boards, the responses are totally different.

Some recent examples:

Ascended armour: forums consensus = bad, a treadmill. Guild consensus = could be good, let’s wait and see, only a “must have” for deep Fractal adventures.

Event: forums consensus = laggy, unfair, skews the economy etc. Guild consensus = one of the best events in online gaming ever.

Fractals: forum consensus = elitist, gated, treadmill etc. Guild consensus = excellent fun, innovative and rewarding.

On my guild forums, negative posters just get ignored or asked to stop being so attention seeking. We can all spot them. They enjoy dragging things down and foreseeing doom.

These forums seem to be riddled with this type of post like a cancer. It’s depressing. I come here to read about the game – people’s thoughts and experiences, some tips and info. But the majority of thread titles are just doom.

According to this forum – the game died 4 weeks after release, no one is playing except for hardcore grinders and treadmill lovers. My experience in game is the total opposite. Players that are casual, like to explore, to “potter”, to craft, to try a bit-of-this, a-bit-of-that are seeing this as the best game in years to cater to their playstyle.

Anyway, I’ll leave it there.

Although, if my theory is true, the following responses will be mainly negative as the forum population will see and answer this, whilst the regular players will miss it because they’re online and having fun

I am the only one from a guild of 35 who writes in this forums. What our guild did since patch? They all quitted playing the game without posting a word here.

Karizee.8076:

My experience is the same as yours – everyone in game loving it, then a vocal minority bashing on the forums.

It’s called forum sabatoge.

Thirty people can really make a mess of a forum. Or 3 people with 10 accounts each

A certain big name game that is feeling very threatened by GW2’s popularity certainly has the budget to buy a few games and pay a couple peeps to go gamebashing on their forums.

My advice is to ignore it and focus on the game you love with the other millions of people loving it.

That certain big name game is now being copied here and I don’t like that game, I loved this one till 2 weeks ago, hate it now, hope it will get better. I complain for attention, attention of Arenanet so they can make this game better.

Luculus.9860:

Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?

I think so. Forums from what I’ve seen tend to be quite unrepresentative, and tend to attract those with very strong opinions. I put myself in that category – I often enjoy the forum ‘game’ more than the real combat-based one, and I can’t wait until there is an MMO that pulls all its debates, ideas and politics in-world (which yes, is admittedly probably a terrible idea).

Despite being hardly representative, I think forums are still incredibly valuable – players can offer unique perspectives and great feedback, and it’s a good way to share knowledge and experience directly between players. I also don’t think there’s any need to ‘counterbalance’ perceived negativity – it’s still feedback, and I’m sure the game developers are quite good at filtering out any threads that are excessively hyperbolic without our help.

xtorma.1283:

Erasculio.2914:

Luculus.9860:

_*Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?*

The reason why Ascended gear was introduced was because player feedback, arguably in this forum, told ArenaNet that people wanted more “progression” in the game.

If complaining worked to get a gear treadmill, do you really think people should stop complaining against it?

IMO, those complaining about the complaints (lol?) are being somewhat hypocrites, since they were complaining about the game until a very short while ago.

Personally, I believe they had this planned all along. It happened to fast to be reactionary.

You think they planned to have a fuchsia colored item tier? Really?

This exact same “observation”, in all its infinite variations, was put forth by a lot (A LOT) of people on SW:ToR forums, less than a year ago.

I guess we all know how that turned out.

It is one of the paradoxes of humanity that we love to complain, but we rarely raise our voice to praise. Makes it really hard to tell what the “popular” opinion really is.

arcaneclarity.5283:

xtorma.1283:

Erasculio.2914:

Luculus.9860:

_*Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?*

The reason why Ascended gear was introduced was because player feedback, arguably in this forum, told ArenaNet that people wanted more “progression” in the game.

If complaining worked to get a gear treadmill, do you really think people should stop complaining against it?

IMO, those complaining about the complaints (lol?) are being somewhat hypocrites, since they were complaining about the game until a very short while ago.

Personally, I believe they had this planned all along. It happened to fast to be reactionary.

You think they planned to have a fuchsia colored item tier? Really?

It had to be planned before the game was released.

Content like this does not just show up 2 months after release.

MagnusLL.8473:

This exact same “observation”, in all its infinite variations, was put forth by a lot (A LOT) of people on SW:ToR forums, less than a year ago.

I guess we all know how that turned out.

On any MMO forum. I see this on the WoW forums as well, and that game is far from “dying”.

I really don’t judge the state of any game by its forums anymore.

“On my guild forums, negative posters just get ignored or asked to stop being so attention seeking. We can all spot them. They enjoy dragging things down and foreseeing doom.”

Maybe your guild doesn’t feel the same because you silence anyone that doesn’t share your opinion?

Sounds like a really fun guild to be a part of. I disagree with you, does that make me attention seeking too?

your words not mine.

MagnusLL.8473:

This exact same “observation”, in all its infinite variations, was put forth by a lot (A LOT) of people on SW:ToR forums, less than a year ago.

I guess we all know how that turned out.

yeah, I remember when they increased the PvP tiers. People were floored and many (including myself) left.

I recently resubed for a month to check things out in their new Free to Play model. It still needs time to develop and I didn’t do more than just look through their cash shop and rename ALL my characters (took me about an hour because so many names were taken).

What you are talking about is “the vocal minority”…which has been proven time and time again to be false.
Just recently EVE onlines producers CCP very nearly paid the price for assuming the vocal minority was just that, a minority.
After ignoring the “whining” on the forums and stating they believed that the vocal minority didnt speak for the majority of players, they pushed ahead with their plans….almost over night they lost a reported 20%-25%, with some speculating that the numbers were much higher, the numbers of canceled subscriptions grew throughout the week…so much so that CCP were forced to make a very public and humble apology, they also threw out all the work they had done and completely changed the direction of the game, this was greeted with a surge of re-subscriptions almost immediately…this is a multi-million dollar company that almost over night went bust by assuming the vocal minority on the forums didnt speak for the majority, they do.
The point is that you ignore the vocal minority at your peril, you can bet that they do speak for a very sizeable portion of your player base.

To the OP:

I have experienced the same thing – guild chat and guild forums (2 guilds) are opposite of what I read here.

Luculus.9860:

Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?

I mean this seriously.

When I talk about the various topics in guild that are brought up on these boards, the responses are totally different.

Some recent examples:

Ascended armour: forums consensus = bad, a treadmill. Guild consensus = could be good, let’s wait and see, only a “must have” for deep Fractal adventures.

Event: forums consensus = laggy, unfair, skews the economy etc. Guild consensus = one of the best events in online gaming ever.

Fractals: forum consensus = elitist, gated, treadmill etc. Guild consensus = excellent fun, innovative and rewarding.

On my guild forums, negative posters just get ignored or asked to stop being so attention seeking. We can all spot them. They enjoy dragging things down and foreseeing doom.

These forums seem to be riddled with this type of post like a cancer. It’s depressing. I come here to read about the game – people’s thoughts and experiences, some tips and info. But the majority of thread titles are just doom.

According to this forum – the game died 4 weeks after release, no one is playing except for hardcore grinders and treadmill lovers. My experience in game is the total opposite. Players that are casual, like to explore, to “potter”, to craft, to try a bit-of-this, a-bit-of-that are seeing this as the best game in years to cater to their playstyle.

Anyway, I’ll leave it there.

Although, if my theory is true, the following responses will be mainly negative as the forum population will see and answer this, whilst the regular players will miss it because they’re online and having fun

This is an excellent post.
I share the exact same theory as you.
My entry guild loves the new dungeon and all the casual gamers I play with.
It seems the people I play with at least and the people I speak to share the complete opposite view to the negative view on the forums.
I do believe that the majority of the players do not look on the forum at all.
It is true that some people will never be happy unless their complaining.

The bottom line is that while you cannot draw a direct correlation between forum complaints and what the majority of your current game population thinks, things like a 125k views thread still represent a significant indication which would be totally foolish to ignore.

I’d say they ought to have people qualified to do serious market analysis and should ask them to sift through the data… if only I didn’t believe that they actually do not have them and/or whoever they have is not able to do it properly.

After discounting the effect of the paid blizzdrones you still can never please 100% of the people 100% of the time.

Some people think dungeons are too easy.
Some people think dungeons are too hard.

Some people think DEs cycle too quickly and like the one off events for a truly Tyria changing experience.
Some people don’t like the one off events because of their personal schedules.

Some people think gearing up is too easy.
Some people think gearing up is too hard.

Etc.

But at the end of the day the servers are busting at their seams packed full of people that love the game. That’s all that matters. No game will ever appease everyone.

Kari, if you think people here are just whining, you are wrong, very wrong. Just enter item progression or gear treadmill at google and you will see that this direction change is quite a big issue which the gaming media on the web are quite aware of and may decide if this game lives or dies.

People are not only discussing here but in almost every gw2 forum, I even saw threads on battle.net.

Luculus.9860:

_*Do people think, in general, that these forums (and game forums in general) are so negative because the people who are really enjoying themselves just play and don’t come here to whine?*_

I mean this seriously.

Not really
Of the folks I am friends with / I know who have the game, it’s pretty evenly split between liking the game and not really enjoying it. I am one of the only ones who seems to have an interest in reading and posting on the official forum.

I never bothered with the forum in the first game, but as I recall most everything was on GWGuru. I was content to enjoy the game, use vent/teamspeak, and read the Wiki for updates and news.

Sometimes I feel like I should do that now, as there are a lot of negative threads on the forums.

But I think it’s worth noting that there are probably a lot of people with some passionate feelings with respect to video games, especially MMOs. Many of us have been Guild Wars players since 2005, and there are a lot of facts and characteristics about that game that I think it’s fair to say we assumed might translate over to this one that haven’t. And there are certainly many players new to the Guild Wars universe, be they coming from a different MMO or new to these games in general, drawn by the press and teasers that may also feel that things have come up short of expectations.

These people are likely more motivated to post, as the implication is that a post with a complaint or critical feedback, etc. points out something wrong with the game that should be changed and may help motivate change or improvements made in the future. Someone who’s happy with a feature of the game or an event, for example, probably doesn’t have that same motivation to post, as that game aspect is already present and working to their satisfaction.

We could go on and discuss the tone of many of the posts, but, well, welcome to the Internet. People aren’t happy, and it’ll show.

Karizee.8076:

After discounting the effect of the paid blizzdrones you still can never please 100% of the people 100% of the time.

Some people think dungeons are too easy.
Some people think dungeons are too hard.

Some people think DEs cycle too quickly and like the one off events for a truly Tyria changing experience.
Some people don’t like the one off events because of their personal schedules.

Some people think gearing up is too easy.
Some people think gearing up is too hard.

Etc.

But at the end of the day the servers are busting at their seams packed full of people that love the game. That’s all that matters. No game will ever appease everyone.

Well said.

I had a guild-member on last evening, he even hadn´t heard of ascended items already.

I´m sure there are tons of people not on the forums – but the forums and related links are the best source of information what´s coming here, most still very slowly and disguised.

If everyone ingame had to take a look for example at the wiki-page for ascended items and what it needs to get them and has an idea about the stats, things would already look different ingame.

Karizee.8076:

It’s called forum sabatoge.

Thirty people can really make a mess of a forum. Or 3 people with 10 accounts each

A certain big name game that is feeling very threatened by GW2’s popularity certainly has the budget to buy a few games and pay a couple peeps to go gamebashing on their forums.
.

I read this and had a small chuckle. Was thinking/wondering how many Anet employees haunt this forum………………………. anonymous like. Just a thought.

That Anet put up a forum in the first place is astounding, given their reliance on others to do so in the past. Have to wonder if they are regretting that decision somewhat.

To stay on topic with the thread….. I try and speed read til I get to something that is not a raving rant or a gushing love fest. Having said that, imo any complaint is valid as is any praise. I don’t have to agree with any of it nor does anyone else.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

MagnusLL.8473:

This exact same “observation”, in all its infinite variations, was put forth by a lot (A LOT) of people on SW:ToR forums, less than a year ago.

I guess we all know how that turned out.

On any MMO forum. I see this on the WoW forums as well, and that game is far from “dying”.

I really don’t judge the state of any game by its forums anymore.

Exactly, WoW is far from dying. GW2 is not very far from that, on the other hand. You do the math.

BUT! If the devs play it right, you get the following result:

non subscription “WoW” >>>>>> original WoW with subscription

The company makes a fortune, AND you have satisfied customers. It’s a win-win situation.

Luculus.9860:

On my guild forums, negative posters just get ignored or asked to stop being so attention seeking. We can all spot them. They enjoy dragging things down and foreseeing doom.

Your guild does not represent good supporting evidence for your suggestion. By your own admission – anyone in your guild who criticises, is simply ignored, shouted down, or treated like a whiney brat.

That gives you a picture that’s just as distorted as these forums, if indeed these forums are distorted in the way you suggest.

@OP
what you describe is a simple mathematical problem in statistics.

I’ll try to explain.
Let’s say we have one million active players total and 100,000 visit the forum on a regular basis.
10,000 of them post on the forum if they are satisfied or not.
Now lets say 3000 people are satisfied while 7000 are not.
this gives us 70% unsatisfied and 30% satisfied players.
if you only ask 10 or so people from your guild there is a large margin of error in your result.
so maybe 8 people of your guild are happy and 2 are not.
but if you expand this and instead ask 100 people in local chat you will probably get closer to the 70% / 30% distribution.

What I’m trying to say is, the overall mood reflected in a forum with more than 1000 people is always more accurate then your guild (unless your guild has more members than the forum has users)

If the forums were representative of the player base, no one would be playing.

What I notice about this forum is that it is filled with heavy-handed opinions about the game being bad, about people demanding refunds, demanding game changes, demanding, demanding, demanding.

In fact, I have seen thread titles formulated as “If you don’t believe [X], you must be in denial”, or “This game is dying, you just don’t realize it yet”. People who post such things tend to have such strong opinions that any person disagreeing with them is treated as an ignoramus who “apparently” does not know how the game really works.

Ironically, that is exactly what the OP is currently accused of.

My conclusion is that this forum (or at least this thread) is filled with droves of people who like to shout around their opinions, without any interest in listening to other people’s opinions. Which makes for unhealthy discussions.

And me? I enjoy playing the game. I am not trying to convince anyone that the game is fun, perfect, smooth and successful. I am not trying to convince anyone that the game is unfun, bugged, laggy and doomed.
And I am not stating my opinion as fact, either.

I am kind of agree with OP, but i can’t say i don’t understand the worries about the ascended gear.

First of all, me and my guildmates are casual players. No matter how much new contents they added, we are not able to enjoy it any sooner. Yes we are far from getting exotic gears. We paid and play this game without monthly so we have tons of times to play our ways to ascended gear. We don’t give a crap what agony is, because we still have tons of dungeon story mode we need to go through, tons to skin we want from dungeon.

If Anet claims there will be no treadmill, then we will see, and hope they are telling the truth. I don’t even sure if i am still playing the game before i get into ascended gears, so it is just seems so the gear cap is extended or so.

Finally, i do hope Anet kept their promise GW2 will not have treadmill, if if they do; it is not end of the world, since i am enjoying the contents that i originally paid for with or without ascended gear.

Dividing us into “players” and “whiners” is a terrible misunderstanding.
OP, you fail to notice that there are thousands of equally important players who did not get the equal chance to play the game as it was intended (disconnects, overloaded and very laggy overflow servers). Some were deprived of their expected “rewards” (which also should be equal if the event is something you cannot repeat).

I hardly ever post – the only other thing I wrote is in the Feedback thread because I felt that was the place to voice my concerns. I believe the developers do need a cold shower.

To call someone a whiner because that person could not fully participate in a widely-advertised one-time event is pathetic and unsympathetic.

Look at every MMO forum out there. If you go by forums alone, you would think that there is literally no good MMO out there, that they are all terrible. Yet there are millions upon millions upon millions of MMO players out there, playing terrible MMOs.

Forums are never a good indicator on how good or bad a game is, the numbers are far to skewed towards the negative side, and there is evidence of this based on how every MMO forum out there is skewed towards the negative, yet the MMO industry has several millions of players playing.