Guild Wars 2

I just finished map completion today. It was long, boring, tedious and I didn’t really want to do it, but I did anyway. Why do I feel that way about it? Because it doesn’t matter (unless you want a legendary). Every month some new ride comes out in this Theme Parkiest of MMO’s and the entire game population flocks to one zone and one zone only. Nothing happens out in the world….well nothing other than what I saw while doing world completion. Tyria could just as easily not be there. Take away the world and what do you lose? Nothing. Dungeons are instanced, the monthly stuff all takes place in one zone and sPvP and WvW are their own instances. Other than grind crafting mats……bleh, there is no use to the world. If it weren’t for the new champion boxes, it wouldn’t even be good for that.

For the sake of comparison, WoW, the most successful MMO in history started losing subs at the end of its WotLK expansion (third expansion in the game) when Blizzard made Azeroth irrelevant. All content became instanced, mobs became irrelevant due to gear scaling (sound familiar Ascended gear?) and you didn’t have to travel for any reason or leave a city except to ……. you guessed it, grind for crafting mats. It’s only taken Anet one year to get to the exact same point in GW2. The problem is, that’s the point WoW started its decline, not its rise. Where do you think the same strategy is taking this game?

Gotta agree. Wish they’d spend as much time adding permanent DE’s and metas to the world as they did adding new gear tiers or changing things that were never broken to begin with in our classes.

Wish they’d add fun activities like fishing, digging, or climbing to make it more realistic.

They could even add a whole new craft to the game that handles these things. Since you bring up WoW they could have added their equivalent of Archeology by now!

tigirius.9014:

Wish they’d add fun activities like fishing, digging, or climbing to make it more realistic.

and other races …they would keep people playing :/ if there were more than 1 new race

1. Azeroth was irrelevant when Blizzard made the first expansion to WoW which was called “The Burning Crusade” which took place on another planet. Azeroth was irrelevant and the subs grew.

2. “Wrath of the Lich King”, “Cataclysm” AND “Mists of Pandaria” have all taken place in Azeroth.

3. Subs went down when Blizzard reduced the difficulty and gave everyone the ability to get to the level of hardcore raiders simply by waving their hands, completely taking away the journey from the game.

4. There will always be empty zones.

5. If you get into an MMO a year after launch and expect to see a ton of people in low level zones you will always be dissapointed. People have reached max level and are playing the end game.

6.You clearly haven’t played this game for very long. This game has one of the most living worlds in any MMO ever, as far as I’m concerned.

7. ArenaNet is activly working on making the entire world rewarding even after reaching max level.

8. I’d recommend you to find another genre of games to play. MMOs clearly aren’t your thing.

I agree somewhat.

The thing is though, Arena.net has already tried to get people to different areas with other means before they ended up with these event types of Living Story. They either failed to do it properly, or people just weren’t interested.

except that the end game here is in queensdale champion train and frostgorge. and the occasional invasion.
among people i know everybody want ascended weapons but nobody is running fractals (untill they’ll add the new level)

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

6.You clearly haven’t played this game for very long. This game has one of the most living worlds in any MMO ever, as far as I’m concerned.

In one respect, Wow 1 year after release was better than this. Open world pvp was mind blowing fun and they had players constantly crossing each others paths and joining up to screw around..maybe you weren’t around then tho. obviously they never developed it further and pushed everyone into instanced content and high level zones which ruined it.

Tyria is a wasteland.

Not the greatest piece of game design there. Arguably world bosses and champion loot do something to alleviate it, but all that accomplishes is herding people into a specific spot on the map for two minutes.

Easily improved with minor adjustments to, let’s say, Daily requirements. To fix it, though, you’d need to rethink your entire game. You know, something you claimed to be doing right from the start, but didn’t.

The invasions are a small step towards helping out the old zones with activity, but I agree mostly.

The problem is that there still isn’t quite enough incentive to push some old zones save a few used routinely for champion event chains for daily chests and whatnot. The new ascended weapons require many different aspects of PvE from jumping puzzles to champion event chains to dungeons, but for the most part there is only so much one could do with the current system in place to achieve some sort of…population I suppose on any given map.

One idea I thought of just now, I believe I read it somewhere else, would be something akin to Cross-Zone events, where it starts off in a low-level zone, do a chain there, finish up with some sort of chest, and proceed to the next zone and toggle the next line.

Do that ALL the way up to the high-level zones for a climax of some story-related proportions, and some nice loot!

Cool, you just increased the activity across many low to medium zones. But systematically that might seem rather…hard. I believe A-Net has designed events not to overlap with other zones like that, so it would be something out of the box, thus take a GREAT degree to make.

For now, GW2 will have to suffer this similar problem many MMOs have…for now. Unless they do come up with something really cool, then I will be happy.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

1. Azeroth was irrelevant when Blizzard made the first expansion to WoW which was called “The Burning Crusade” which took place on another planet. Azeroth was irrelevant and the subs grew.

2. “Wrath of the Lich King”, “Cataclysm” AND “Mists of Pandaria” have all taken place in Azeroth.

3. Subs went down when Blizzard reduced the difficulty and gave everyone the ability to get to the level of hardcore raiders simply by waving their hands, completely taking away the journey from the game.

4. There will always be empty zones.

5. If you get into an MMO a year after launch and expect to see a ton of people in low level zones you will always be dissapointed. People have reached max level and are playing the end game.

6.You clearly haven’t played this game for very long. This game has one of the most living worlds in any MMO ever, as far as I’m concerned.

7. ArenaNet is activly working on making the entire world rewarding even after reaching max level.

8. I’d recommend you to find another genre of games to play. MMOs clearly aren’t your thing.

lul

They need to do what they did in Orr, on a larger level.

If you go to Orr, the entire region is progressive. It’s literally, get to the coast of Orr, get to ML and take Balthazar on the way, get to Lyssa temple and fix a few places on the way, get to Dwayna and fix more stuff, get to the last spot, get into CS, then work your way through CS and secure locations, get into Arah and blast Zhaitan out of the sky.

Problem is, hardly any of the other zones have any progression in them like that. And none of them influence eachother like how Orrian temples do, so yeah .-.

Maybe for example, while the Shatterer is up, Branded enemies will be found outside of the dragonbrand in Ascalonian zones, for example? That’d be a bit of a step in the right direction.

I agree. They need to do a few big things to the world. What irritates me the most, is that whenever they talk about big things their usual response is ‘Oh but we are working on them, but we won’t tell you anything’

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

They need to do what they did in Orr, on a larger level.

If you go to Orr, the entire region is progressive. It’s literally, get to the coast of Orr, get to ML and take Balthazar on the way, get to Lyssa temple and fix a few places on the way, get to Dwayna and fix more stuff, get to the last spot, get into CS, then work your way through CS and secure locations, get into Arah and blast Zhaitan out of the sky.

Problem is, hardly any of the other zones have any progression in them like that. And none of them influence eachother like how Orrian temples do, so yeah .-.

Maybe for example, while the Shatterer is up, Branded enemies will be found outside of the dragonbrand in Ascalonian zones, for example? That’d be a bit of a step in the right direction.

Shame that everyone just crowds in CS and Straits and ML are left as ghost towns new players have to walk alone through to get to the zerg of CS, the events unfinished and enemies untouched.

One of the things I have the greatest difficulty with is Anet’s apparent focus and goal around creating a living, breathing world in the face of their behavior which has only served to empty the living world and make it lifeless. Certainly all the temporary content (and time-limited achievements) fits here, SAB, open world PvE which caters to a mythical hardcore player, all this and more simply empties the open world and makes it lifeless.

I actually am very attracted to what they say they want to create in the living world. I just can’t reconcile it in terms of what they actually do.

yea map explore is tough and boring after a while.

i especially find it hard at 80s maps when mobs do enough dmg to kill me

Maybe it’s because of the lack of unique things in each area that so many places are desolate?

GW2 actually has some really cool dynamic event chains. People just need to be assisted to do them together.

Like a ‘join a random alliance’ feature which assigns you a group of about 200 players to complete a dynamic event chain on some map.

As mentioned before, the Entire game can be played in Pvp, Wvw, dungeons, LA and Queensdale.
Why do we go out? Daily needs to be done somewhere…. go to one of the starting zones.
Dungeon? Teleport to the wp and go in. Map completely irrelevant.

My idea would be to get rid of 75% of waypoints, each zone should have like 3 maximum. And run through the map.
Also more event should slow you down, compelling you to do it, like roadblocks.
If you had to run to COF and Fireheart Rise had a meta event blocking the path they would complete it. Similar to the event to free the wp.

Get rid of the waypoints.

Sykper.6583:

The invasions are a small step towards helping out the old zones with activity, but I agree mostly.

The problem is that there still isn’t quite enough incentive to push some old zones save a few used routinely for champion event chains for daily chests and whatnot. The new ascended weapons require many different aspects of PvE from jumping puzzles to champion event chains to dungeons, but for the most part there is only so much one could do with the current system in place to achieve some sort of…population I suppose on any given map.

One idea I thought of just now, I believe I read it somewhere else, would be something akin to Cross-Zone events, where it starts off in a low-level zone, do a chain there, finish up with some sort of chest, and proceed to the next zone and toggle the next line.

Do that ALL the way up to the high-level zones for a climax of some story-related proportions, and some nice loot!

Cool, you just increased the activity across many low to medium zones. But systematically that might seem rather…hard. I believe A-Net has designed events not to overlap with other zones like that, so it would be something out of the box, thus take a GREAT degree to make.

For now, GW2 will have to suffer this similar problem many MMOs have…for now. Unless they do come up with something really cool, then I will be happy.

Invasions are just another gimmick ride in the rotating carnival that GW2 has become. Yet another attraction that draws the entire population to one single place all at the same time. Mindless zerg fests that mimic the champion farms in Orr and Frostgorge that are themselves simply mat farms.

Ascended mats dropping at various locations amounts to farming mats. It’s a boring grind and the only useful thing the game world currently provides. Not to mention the fact that the entire Ascended tier of gear further invalidates the world because it makes it even easier. For those that enjoy grinding/farming it will hold them till they get their weapons. For those that don’t, they’re already looking elsewhere or waiting till the next patch.

I do like your idea about cross zone event chains. In fact, the way Anet advertised (and still does) that’s what I thought “Living Story” was going to be. Sadly, that’s nowhere close to what it is.

Permanent content

GW2

Pick 1

Balkanwarrior.5132:

Permanent content

GW2

Pick 1

Unfortunately this seems to be where we are. It’s not where we should be though.

The open world is good. It has better stories and game immersion than any other content. The events are often fun. There are jumping puzzles, vistas, all sorts of stuff out there. The only things the open world events miss are high level rewards.

So should the events across the world all have high rewards? No. The content is too simple and it is there for players to learn to play while leveling up. So how do you get players back into open world PvE zones? That’s probably a problem for players to work out since they are personally putting loot grind ahead of some nice content (that they haven’t even done once). The designers are repeatedly taking players back into the open world with the living story.

if they combined all explorable zones into an overflow you’d see alot more people around, they kittened up by splitting the community into worlds

The designers are repeatedly taking players back into the open world with the living story.

No, they aren’t. That’s the problem. They take people, everyone, the entire server population and put them in a single zone. That’s not getting people into the open world. Not by a long shot.

I’ve made completely different experiences. There is so much life in the zones below max level. I’ve played a lot of MMORPGs by now (including wow) and they all suffered from low population at zones below max level, because there was nothing left to do in a zone that’s below your level. In fact, the population was so low it was a kinda shocking moment when you’ve met someone else outside of a town.

It’s less the game design and more the fact that the average gamer simply isn’t interested in exploration.

For those of us that are, though, GW2 is the first MMO in years to present us with a decent game world.

You’re correct about GW2, but you’re making things up about WoW.

All arena net has to do is just start putting things to do in the older area’s. I’M really starting to hate this temp.stuff. Just beef up the older zones so players have a reason to go back to them. I want to see new mobs to fight. Those early lvl zones were so much fun to play in. The game scales your lvl so they should take advantage of this. Some of those pre 80 zones were really my favorite area’s but i have no reason to go back as i’ve finished them.

I must say I agree as well. I played warcraft for a long time and it always drove me crazy how it was all about sitting in a city and porting around. Guild wars is at a huge disadvantage due to the fact that there are no mounts and it is all portal based already, so they really need to step it up and give reasons to visit zones.

All Anet needs to do is add event tokens that can be used to buy unique racial gear skins ( afterall that is supposed to be the progressions in gw2 ) in each zone. We as humans have different tastes in our styles of appearance. So depending on what skins you want you would just do events in that specific zone that is inhabited by a race that you find cool looking or whatever. "Oh i love the way the quaggan armor looks hm ill go to the Maguuma Jungles and do events there and eventually ill be able to get quaggan armor skins! "…. " i am a sylvari and kind of want to look like a norn, let me do events in norn areas so i can achieve this appearence…. ill do 15 events in wayferer foothills so i can get wayferer tokens and buy the boots, then ill head over to frostgorge so i can get frostgorge tokens and purchase the chestpiece.." yeah it would be like grinding events but hell that is what end game is anyways. it would put people back in zones for a reward that can be obtained by anyone at any level. AND it would give Anet a chance to put in a trillion more skins so medium armor wearers aren’t forced to wear trench coats their whole life.

What MMO has a world that’s populated in every area? Honest question.

runescape…..

Most basic mmo ever even knows how to do it right.