Guild Wars 2

I mean, it will disappear shortly… Why such a great extra part of Guild Wars 2 world should disappear? Thinking about this makes me sad ;s Why You want to take from us this masterpiece? I already did all worlds in all modes and still i want to go back there and have a lot of fun with it so why You want to take it from us? We’ll have to wait again 1 or 2 years? What’s the difference if it will stay forever? You think it’s better to take it from us and make us wait?

Mostly maintenance overhead, Josh touched on it on this Fridays stream. The way SAB is made, makes it prone to breaking when changes are made and since GW2 engine is forever in flux there is no way to know when/if it will break again.

They may have done some work to prevent it from breaking, since they do say it is now a yearly festival on the release page itself. However, it is likely that there is still parts of it that might break when changes are made elsewhere.

Don’t get me wrong I would love SAB to be, if not permanent a more frequent thing, however, I do get why it being recurring festival benefits them, as not only with maintenance but also in keeping it fresh for players.

It does suck that its only here for two weeks though, for the first time it was around whole april, and same might be true for the second time it was around… can’t recall the specifics on that.

One year; they said it’s going to be an annual festival now.

It’s not like it’s the only content tied to a festival that comes but once a year – Halloween and Wintersday are fine examples of that. Dragon Festival, too. And, while it’s not an annual, don’t forget that the Queen’s Pavilion is waiting in the wings.

The way I see it, it keeps the content fresh. If it WERE up full-time, people would get used to it and it would just be another part of their GW2 routine, and people would lose the “passion” for it. With the threads I’ve seen lately where people seem to feel their GW2 experience is an obligation, and not enjoyable to them, I really don’t want to see SAB relegated to such a status.

I assume that, from the devs’ standpoint, there’s going to be the fact that having another permanent addition to maintain would siphon manpower from other areas. And we really don’t want that. And no, I don’t think they can just leave it up and forget about it; whenever things in the game change, they need to make sure it won’t break something else (and there’s so much code that things still slip by them and have to be fixed after).

Personally, I wouldn’t mind if they bumped it up to a full four-week festival (like Halloween and Wintersday), but I’m content with its transient nature – as long as I know it will come back next time.

After all, Guild Wars 2 is the real game here, and SAB, while insanely fun, is but a diversion within the game. That it has been promoted from a one-time April Fool’s joke to a recurring festival is already amazing enough, and for that, I’m very grateful.

Crise.9401:

It does suck that its only here for two weeks though, for the first time it was around whole april, and same might be true for the second time it was around… can’t recall the specifics on that.

The original release lasted, yes, all of April 2013.
Back To School lasted from September 3-30, also 2013.

The Box did not make an appearance at all in the years 2014 and 2015. (Understandable in the latter case; they were going full-bore at getting HoT done.)

Thank You all for response, no Dev needed ; d Now i understand everything ^^ I was mostly worried that i’ll have to wait again 2 years to participate in it because I have a lot of study now and I’m really happy that it’s annual festival now ^^ Collection has to wait till next year ; p

I think their most competent devs and artists came up with the SAB design and it was unexpected from Anet that it would be of such a high success and of such original quality.
Basically they see SAB as a competition to their own game, as something that will take players away from their open world, raids, dungeons, etc.

It was a huge mistake on their part not to make it a more important part of Guild Wars 2, since it’s probably the best thing that happened to Guild Wars 2 in it’s 4 years life-cycle. They could have made it work if they had more vision, just like WvW could have been 5 times more engaging than it was if they actually cared.

For me it’s over, I uninstalled the game last week even with the return of SAB. The cancellation of SAB future worlds, WvW complete disaster, removal of long terms rewards and the fact my friends have left already was enough to make me move on.

SAB has basically everything, is fun and brillant, has general and skill level rewards, good achievements, and different difficulty levels.

If people prefer SAB instead of playing other sides of the game is because SAB is simply better.

Anet should not remove SAB and should improve the general game that has many faults in basically every areas.

it’s a no sense to remove from the game something is really good

Let me put it this way, in my opinion SAB has the best reward structure of any event in the game.

I mean, there are cool rewards and lot of them plus bunch of them are tied behind some real skill gates. This means real prestige (I am saying this knowing I will never have the skill to go for some of those rewards). Additionally, playing SAB is the first time going for event rewards doesn’t feel like a grind to me (yes it is still technically a grind, just as all the rest, but it doesn’t feel like it).

This is probably the only 20 days I will ever do my daily achievements without break on concurrent days, that is how much I think of SAB. I think it is a fantastic change of pace.

It sucks that it will forever remain just this, but all the while I am still insanely happy for Josh that his once wacky experiment has now been made a permanent yearly fixture of the game thus immortalizing it. But that doesn’t change the fact that I would want more, a lot more…

once a year is perfect, if AB was available all the time it would be dead after a few months. Imagine if xmas was every day :P

Xillllix.3485:

I think their most competent devs and artists came up with the SAB design and it was unexpected from Anet that it would be of such a high success and of such original quality.
Basically they see SAB as a competition to their own game, as something that will take players away from their open world, raids, dungeons, etc.

It was a huge mistake on their part not to make it a more important part of Guild Wars 2, since it’s probably the best thing that happened to Guild Wars 2 in it’s 4 years life-cycle. They could have made it work if they had more vision, just like WvW could have been 5 times more engaging than it was if they actually cared.

For me it’s over, I uninstalled the game last week even with the return of SAB. The cancellation of SAB future worlds, WvW complete disaster, removal of long terms rewards and the fact my friends have left already was enough to make me move on.

If you’re still compelled to post here, you haven’t moved on.

Ticky.5831:

Xillllix.3485:

I think their most competent devs and artists came up with the SAB design and it was unexpected from Anet that it would be of such a high success and of such original quality.
Basically they see SAB as a competition to their own game, as something that will take players away from their open world, raids, dungeons, etc.

It was a huge mistake on their part not to make it a more important part of Guild Wars 2, since it’s probably the best thing that happened to Guild Wars 2 in it’s 4 years life-cycle. They could have made it work if they had more vision, just like WvW could have been 5 times more engaging than it was if they actually cared.

For me it’s over, I uninstalled the game last week even with the return of SAB. The cancellation of SAB future worlds, WvW complete disaster, removal of long terms rewards and the fact my friends have left already was enough to make me move on.

If you’re still compelled to post here, you haven’t moved on.

+1 and +1 again. If it’s over for you, why are still posting about it? When it’s over you either rage quit and post a insanely-crazy-angry (and amusing) last post on the forum or. more commonly, you just fade away, playing less and less until one day you realise you have not played for a month.

Ticky.5831:

Xillllix.3485:

I think their most competent devs and artists came up with the SAB design and it was unexpected from Anet that it would be of such a high success and of such original quality.
Basically they see SAB as a competition to their own game, as something that will take players away from their open world, raids, dungeons, etc.

It was a huge mistake on their part not to make it a more important part of Guild Wars 2, since it’s probably the best thing that happened to Guild Wars 2 in it’s 4 years life-cycle. They could have made it work if they had more vision, just like WvW could have been 5 times more engaging than it was if they actually cared.

For me it’s over, I uninstalled the game last week even with the return of SAB. The cancellation of SAB future worlds, WvW complete disaster, removal of long terms rewards and the fact my friends have left already was enough to make me move on.

If you’re still compelled to post here, you haven’t moved on.

Well, now that I uninstalled it I will move on gradually. The thing is you can’t just make a sharp turn with a game you’ve invested over 3000 hours in. I will always be nostalgic about the first 2 years I played this game, specially the full WvW chaos, the rise of the GvG scene and these few epic PvE moments like the release of SAB.

You can’t just turn the page completely without coming here once in a while and see what’s happening. This forum has been entertaining. And since a lot has happened in the last weeks that confirmed my decision to leave I had to poke around.

That’s fair. I’m just saying you have more work to do.

Duke Darkwood.4237:

Crise.9401:

It does suck that its only here for two weeks though, for the first time it was around whole april, and same might be true for the second time it was around… can’t recall the specifics on that.

The original release lasted, yes, all of April 2013.
Back To School lasted from September 3-30, also 2013.

The Box did not make an appearance at all in the years 2014 and 2015. (Understandable in the latter case; they were going full-bore at getting HoT done.)

It makes sense for it to only last a few weeks if there are slated changes coming in the April patch which could potentially break it, as was mentioned by ANet themselves for not keeping it as a permanent feature. I’d rather have the April patch than permanent SAB, to be honest.

DeceiverX.8361:

It makes sense for it to only last a few weeks if there are slated changes coming in the April patch which could potentially break it, as was mentioned by ANet themselves for not keeping it as a permanent feature. I’d rather have the April patch than permanent SAB, to be honest.

While you are absolutely correct about potential incoming breaking changes, when you put it like that and they just spent a relatively long time fixing SAB, it’s a huge shame to think that it will be broken in but two weeks time… even though no matter how small scale the update to SAB itself was, fixing it must have taken longer.

And if this is true now, why would the commit to do the same thing each year. Yeah SAB may be a wonder of creative thinking under the hood prone to breaking because the engine was designed for an MMO not a platformer… but if they have any sense now that they have commited to an yearly thing, it doesn’t make any sense to keep deliberately breaking the thing either.

I and many other players have SAB Fever and the only cure is more SAB! But I do see the points about having to make sure it’s constantly working with each update. Plus yeah it would be taken for granted if it were around all the time.

This is my first time playing SAB and I have to say it’s one of my favorite events in the whole game thus far. So kudos to whoever worked on it. It says a lot that many want this around permanently.

Crise.9401:

DeceiverX.8361:

It makes sense for it to only last a few weeks if there are slated changes coming in the April patch which could potentially break it, as was mentioned by ANet themselves for not keeping it as a permanent feature. I’d rather have the April patch than permanent SAB, to be honest.

While you are absolutely correct about potential incoming breaking changes, when you put it like that and they just spent a relatively long time fixing SAB, it’s a huge shame to think that it will be broken in but two weeks time… even though no matter how small scale the update to SAB itself was, fixing it must have taken longer.

And if this is true now, why would the commit to do the same thing each year. Yeah SAB may be a wonder of creative thinking under the hood prone to breaking because the engine was designed for an MMO not a platformer… but if they have any sense now that they have commited to an yearly thing, it doesn’t make any sense to keep deliberately breaking the thing either.

They may have made some adjustments to get it to cooperate better in the future, but may not have the assurance nothing will break within their strict timeframe of an April release of the update, and as such, are not taking the gamble. It’ll probably justify the festival as a yearly event with lots of hype around it as well.

Crise.9401:

DeceiverX.8361:

It makes sense for it to only last a few weeks if there are slated changes coming in the April patch which could potentially break it, as was mentioned by ANet themselves for not keeping it as a permanent feature. I’d rather have the April patch than permanent SAB, to be honest.

While you are absolutely correct about potential incoming breaking changes, when you put it like that and they just spent a relatively long time fixing SAB, it’s a huge shame to think that it will be broken in but two weeks time… even though no matter how small scale the update to SAB itself was, fixing it must have taken longer.

And if this is true now, why would the commit to do the same thing each year. Yeah SAB may be a wonder of creative thinking under the hood prone to breaking because the engine was designed for an MMO not a platformer… but if they have any sense now that they have commited to an yearly thing, it doesn’t make any sense to keep deliberately breaking the thing either.

It actually took about 2 weeks. They talked about it in Guild Chat.

Xillllix.3485:

I think their most competent devs and artists came up with the SAB design and it was unexpected from Anet that it would be of such a high success and of such original quality.
Basically they see SAB as a competition to their own game, as something that will take players away from their open world, raids, dungeons, etc.

It was a huge mistake on their part not to make it a more important part of Guild Wars 2, since it’s probably the best thing that happened to Guild Wars 2 in it’s 4 years life-cycle. They could have made it work if they had more vision, just like WvW could have been 5 times more engaging than it was if they actually cared.

For me it’s over, I uninstalled the game last week even with the return of SAB. The cancellation of SAB future worlds, WvW complete disaster, removal of long terms rewards and the fact my friends have left already was enough to make me move on.

Where did you see the cancellation of new worlds?

Khyan.7039:

Where did you see the cancellation of new worlds?

Guild Chat from a few days ago, though it doesn’t seem to be off the table entirely.

Or as I like to put it:

DusK.3849:

Khyan.7039:

Where did you see the cancellation of new worlds?

Guild Chat from a few days ago, though it doesn’t seem to be off the table entirely.

Or as I like to put it:

Yeah, but they don’t speak about cancellation during Guild Chat. They said it was time consuming so chances are slim. I mean they just want to keep the surprise imo.

Khyan.7039:

DusK.3849:

Khyan.7039:

Where did you see the cancellation of new worlds?

Guild Chat from a few days ago, though it doesn’t seem to be off the table entirely.

Or as I like to put it:

Yeah, but they don’t speak about cancellation during Guild Chat. They said it was time consuming so chances are slim. I mean they just want to keep the surprise imo.

I actually legit wouldn’t be surprised at this point, but Josh seemed pretty sincere. I don’t think new worlds are coming.

Also, it was mentioned during the SAB blog post that went up on the 31st.

DusK.3849:

Khyan.7039:

DusK.3849:

Khyan.7039:

Where did you see the cancellation of new worlds?

Guild Chat from a few days ago, though it doesn’t seem to be off the table entirely.

Or as I like to put it:

Yeah, but they don’t speak about cancellation during Guild Chat. They said it was time consuming so chances are slim. I mean they just want to keep the surprise imo.

I actually legit wouldn’t be surprised at this point, but Josh seemed pretty sincere. I don’t think new worlds are coming.

Also, it was mentioned during the SAB blog post that went up on the 31st.

I’ll be so sad if SAB is abandonned. The whole thing say world 3 and world 4 everywhere, when we enter to the box we see 4 houses.

Anyway, it’s off-topic but I just love your remixes when I play tribulation mode. Especially the world 2 zone 1, the eagle “shortcut” (trollcut lol), and the world 2 zone 3. I don’t want to be spoiled for the wizard boss music and the yeti, I will see this probably tomorrow.

Oh and please do another remixes like these one if ever world 3 come out next year. :>

Khyan.7039:

I’ll be so sad if SAB is abandonned. The whole thing say world 3 and world 4 everywhere, when we enter to the box we see 4 houses.

Oh, I will be too, but it’s completely understandable, and acceptable. Guild Wars 2 didn’t become one of my favorite games because of SAB, and I doubt it’ll stop being one of my favorites if it’s never expanded.

Khyan.7039:

Anyway, it’s off-topic but I just love your remixes when I play tribulation mode. Especially the world 2 zone 1, the eagle “shortcut” (trollcut lol), and the world 2 zone 3. I don’t want to be spoiled for the wizard boss music and the yeti, I will see this probably tomorrow.

Oh and please do another remixes like these one if ever world 3 come out next year. :>

Yes, that’s hugely off-topic, but THANK YOU!

vesica tempestas.1563:

once a year is perfect, if AB was available all the time it would be dead after a few months. Imagine if xmas was every day :P

Personally I would LOVE if it was Christmas or Halloween every day since those festivals are really fun and I really can’t stand to step foot in pve land since they got rid of key-farming which was the only pve thing I enjoyed doing. I mean I dabbled in HoT area and simply hated it so yea festivals every day would be nice it would give me something to do.

Duke Darkwood.4237:

… their GW2 experience is an obligation, and not enjoyable to them, I really don’t want to see SAB relegated to such a status.
…

Thats the thing though. It currently is an obligation, since we only have it for two-ish weeks. If it was permanent, I wouldn’t feel the need to only play SAB and pretty much ignore everything else. When they make things temporary, it makes it feel more like a job to have to play that content, at least for me, because it’ll be the only time I get to play the content. And it would allow me to work on trib mode (at least world 2) more on my own pace instead of trying to grind it out in two weeks.

If SAB goes away on april 19th, i’ll cancel my subscription!

Ellie.5913:

vesica tempestas.1563:

once a year is perfect, if SAB was available all the time it would be dead after a few months. Imagine if xmas was every day :P

Personally I would LOVE if it was Christmas or Halloween every day since those festivals are really fun.

I agree with you on this one hundred percent, though my reasoning is bit different… I have seen people say that SAB is fine as a yearly festival (which it is, to be fair) because if it was around more it would siphon away players from the rest of the game.

Well for me, if SAB wasn’t around I wouldn’t even be logging in until the new story updates kick off… I have actually been playing bunch of other games instead. I tried this PvP thing everyone kept talking about with the seasons and I quite quickly decided not engage as soon as I had gotten out of amber and had my face kicked in.

So for me SAB is bringing me back into the game, when I haven’t really been present ever since after wrapping up HoT story and map completion… and once SAB leaves I will not have any reason to login until the narrative content starts rolling again.

skullmount.1758:

Duke Darkwood.4237:

… their GW2 experience is an obligation, and not enjoyable to them, I really don’t want to see SAB relegated to such a status.
…

Thats the thing though. It currently is an obligation, since we only have it for two-ish weeks. If it was permanent, I wouldn’t feel the need to only play SAB and pretty much ignore everything else. When they make things temporary, it makes it feel more like a job to have to play that content, at least for me, because it’ll be the only time I get to play the content. And it would allow me to work on trib mode (at least world 2) more on my own pace instead of trying to grind it out in two weeks.

You’ll get to play it a year from now.

1) I was mightily (and pleasantly) surprised they DID bring it back after some threads that it wasn’t going to come back at all…!
2) I love it being back and being able to continue where I left
3) I would love it, if it was up a full month though. I cannot do too much in one go and still like to explore, 19 days seem not enough to me.

Ticky.5831:

Crise.9401:

DeceiverX.8361:

It makes sense for it to only last a few weeks if there are slated changes coming in the April patch which could potentially break it, as was mentioned by ANet themselves for not keeping it as a permanent feature. I’d rather have the April patch than permanent SAB, to be honest.

While you are absolutely correct about potential incoming breaking changes, when you put it like that and they just spent a relatively long time fixing SAB, it’s a huge shame to think that it will be broken in but two weeks time… even though no matter how small scale the update to SAB itself was, fixing it must have taken longer.

And if this is true now, why would the commit to do the same thing each year. Yeah SAB may be a wonder of creative thinking under the hood prone to breaking because the engine was designed for an MMO not a platformer… but if they have any sense now that they have commited to an yearly thing, it doesn’t make any sense to keep deliberately breaking the thing either.

It actually took about 2 weeks. They talked about it in Guild Chat.

Two weeks to fix issues yes, but what about the new stuff they went in and added or QA?

While this is not an universal truth, when you ask a developer how long will doing something take, the response you usually get is a rough estimate on how long it will take to get something implemented or done for the first pass. As a programmer I can tell you most of the time when estimating our own work we don’t account for QA time or any other high level things that have to happen before deployment.

There is a saying that I am quite fond of. When you ask a developer for an ETA be prepared to at least multiply it by two, maybe even move it up once to a larger unit of time to get a more realistic estimation.

For example, I have said once that we’d be to push a release for a project of ours in a day… well as it turns out the more realistic estimation is usually one or two weeks from the time I said that.

Also, to be specific about what Josh said was that they got two weeks to pursue things that they are passionate about some time after HoT crunch. He didn’t exactly say that preparing this release only took them that two weeks.