Guild Wars 2

stupid forum page bug…

We all know about those “big” things that came in the past. Nothing but hype. Usually it involves fixing tooltips and some tiny content update.
So the background project and where is Anet with their ~300 employees? Obviously they are not doing anything on GW2, because what we see is not a work from 300 people.
Most of the team has been deployed to Wildstar. Both studios, Carbine and Anet are owned by NCSoft. And WS was so bad at launch, needed lots of work. And now they fired 60 people from Carbine. Things just connect.
It’s very likely there’s no expansion, just trying to hold the leaving players as long as possible, to milk what they can. If there’s XP, don’t get your hopes, it won’t be anything Big™
Here are some fresh news from Korea – NCSoft has lost the trust of the players there. So I’d expect Q1-Q2 2015 significant drop in revenues there.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Vayne.8563:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Vayne.8563:

kuittaa.7360:

Vayne.8563:

They never said SAB wouldn’t be back. So it’s not a lie. They never said when it would be back.

So when they say nothing is off the table, it is meant to be understood as everything is coming, we just don’t want to say when.

To a new player, the fact that SAB has been in game in the past is no different than a new class/race not being in the game now. New player can’t access either. Those who had priviledge of playing SAB in the past can remember how it was, and some unfortune individuals can still stare their infinite continue coin in the bank.

OT: everything indicates strongly that there will not be a “boxed” expansion. Not next year, nor next, nor ever. The medium of delivering content is LS. It has improved from Season 1 – story is still same kitten, but at least content is nearly permanent – but it still has miles and miles to go before it can be said to be a good medium.

First of all, Colin said that SAB will definitely be back. It was said by someone or other that it wouldn’t be back during this season of the Living Story. It’s not a lie no matter how you slice it.

Someone brought it up as an example of a lie. If so, what was the lie?

I’m fairly certain Colin said the opposite of that… do you have a link?

The whole expansion argument is identical to the people who believe in big foot. You have one set of people who say that there is nothing to indicate that big foot is real, the past has shown that he probably isn’t real, and you just need to accept that. The other side is saying, you can’t prove that big foot isn’t real, and as technology gets better we will eventually see big foot “sometime” in the future. They pretend to be rational by saying things like “well one of us will be proven right eventually”. Well obviously… but only one of those positions is rational.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Super-Adventure-Box-merged-1/page/14#post4456748

Edit: By the way comparing believing that expansion content is coming and believing in big foot is not really the same thing. Even trying to compare that is disingenuous.

Thanks for the link, I missed that post.

I literally just took the arguments I’ve seen in this thread and replaced the word expansion with big foot. People keep asking to prove that there is no expansion coming. You simply can’t prove something that doesn’t exist.

Except that in two years if no expansion arrives, those of us who believe in it were wrong. In my mind anyway. I believe we’ll see an expansion annoucment the beginning of next year. At the very least, I believe we will see new professions, skills and possibly a race next year.

Vayne.8563:

Okay, so let’s recap.

Let’s pretend it took 4 hours to finish Sorrow’s Embrace instead of 3. And Sorrow’s Embrace was the dungeon. The dungeon was the new area. The quests all led into the dungeon. So saying it’s a new area and a dungeon is quite disingenuous since they’re one and the same thing.

Now, Anet sold Factions which is a whole game onto itself. That game could be finished in a week, even when it came out. People finished it staggeringly fast and people complained about finishing it fast. The DOA came out, the first Guild Wars 2 product that had no Elite area. DOA was added, but in my opinion it was always meant to be in the game. With DOA, Nightfall had really nothing because it didn’t offer any new PvP stuff either, like Factions did. So Anet charged for an entire game with no dungeons, no elite areas, and then added the elite area after launch.

In the mean time, Fractals is a dungeon, which was added to Guild Wars 2. But we didn’t buy a new game either. And Guild Missions (which most people seem to forget about), was something added to Guild Wars 2 including 3 guild puzzles. Not so Secret and Deidre’s Steppes were added. Southsun, the Karka Queen and Triple Thread were added. Tequatl might as well have been added since the new fight is much more involved than the old one. And yes, I’d definitely count the new TA path as added since it’s longer and probably better designed than most of the other dungeons. Fractals wasn’t only added once. We had 9 fractals originally and 5 more fractals were added. Sanctum Sprint, Southsun Survival were added.

There were also a bevy of things I played and experienced that are no longer in game, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Most notably of these was the Nightmare Tower, the Marionette Fight and Escape from LA.

The new zones that were added for free aren’t just new zones. They’re new zones with dynamic events and some of the bosses have unique attack and the AI for the creatures your fight are both better and harder.

I should also say SAB came out too, even though it’s not in the game right now, but I had a couple of months playing around in there.

This isn’t a full expansion worth of content, that’s 100% true. However, not everyone is a dungeon runner or a PvPer and for my money, the stuff I’ve played is better than any of the stuff added to Guild Wars 1.

Sorrow’s embrace was six quests, then, which took you through a dungeon. What it wasn’t was an entire new zone with a couple of dozen quests and new achievements and a new JP with new hard to get goggles.

It was a dungeon, and the quests took you through it.

I don’t quite understand this wall of text here , I’ve just corrected the mistakes you made … you’re welcome. But you’ve made a few this time too. Firstly I take you’re talking about Sorrow’s furnace, not embrace. Secondly, it was a new area AND a dungeon, unless you count GW1 areas as dungeons which would be a fair point.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Grenth%27s_Footprint
but in that case it was two new dungeon. Also you first said it can be completed in two hours, not three.

“The DOA came out, the first Guild Wars 2 product that had no Elite area. "
This is where I would like to raise a point. I suppose you meant NF. It did not have an elite area at release, like you said, but you often say something like this: “It’s understandable they don’t work on hard content since such a low percentage of player bothers with it anyway.” If this is true, why did anet feel the need to add an elite area even though they didn’t start with one? Also “Nightfall had really nothing because it didn’t offer any new PvP stuff either” is not true either. Heroes changed the meta for a quite long time and Hero Battle was quite popular .

I think things like the SAB story outline a really important factor, one simply needs to be careful not to loose objectivity. I mean it was widely circulated that SAB would not be back based on a statement that said its hard to see how SAB could fit in a living story season.

I mean how did that came about? Its like sometimes people feel so jaded they assume to worst. Not blaming anyone here and if I had to blame anything it would probably be Anet’s none communication policy.

Regardless though this is something that I notice fairly common at least on the forum. Its like for some Anet can do no good or at least they’re so angry at the bad they just filter out the good. SAB will never come back, Armor skins only get released in the cash shop, the game hasnt changed since release, we only get LS and will never see anything different etc..

This probably affects the expansion perception as well. There are many compelling reasons that point towards either an expansion or at least at the promised expansion like content through a different release mechanism but its like that same jadedness makes it hard for people to even consider the possibility. For better or for worst the Living story season 2 ends close to the end of the year, seems like an excellent time for Arenanet to outline what plans they have for the future, so hopefully we’ll know something then. If not I’d imagine whatever they have cooking is still at least 6 months away. but thats my personal observation on the subject.

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Okay, so let’s recap.

Let’s pretend it took 4 hours to finish Sorrow’s Embrace instead of 3. And Sorrow’s Embrace was the dungeon. The dungeon was the new area. The quests all led into the dungeon. So saying it’s a new area and a dungeon is quite disingenuous since they’re one and the same thing.

Now, Anet sold Factions which is a whole game onto itself. That game could be finished in a week, even when it came out. People finished it staggeringly fast and people complained about finishing it fast. The DOA came out, the first Guild Wars 2 product that had no Elite area. DOA was added, but in my opinion it was always meant to be in the game. With DOA, Nightfall had really nothing because it didn’t offer any new PvP stuff either, like Factions did. So Anet charged for an entire game with no dungeons, no elite areas, and then added the elite area after launch.

In the mean time, Fractals is a dungeon, which was added to Guild Wars 2. But we didn’t buy a new game either. And Guild Missions (which most people seem to forget about), was something added to Guild Wars 2 including 3 guild puzzles. Not so Secret and Deidre’s Steppes were added. Southsun, the Karka Queen and Triple Thread were added. Tequatl might as well have been added since the new fight is much more involved than the old one. And yes, I’d definitely count the new TA path as added since it’s longer and probably better designed than most of the other dungeons. Fractals wasn’t only added once. We had 9 fractals originally and 5 more fractals were added. Sanctum Sprint, Southsun Survival were added.

There were also a bevy of things I played and experienced that are no longer in game, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Most notably of these was the Nightmare Tower, the Marionette Fight and Escape from LA.

The new zones that were added for free aren’t just new zones. They’re new zones with dynamic events and some of the bosses have unique attack and the AI for the creatures your fight are both better and harder.

I should also say SAB came out too, even though it’s not in the game right now, but I had a couple of months playing around in there.

This isn’t a full expansion worth of content, that’s 100% true. However, not everyone is a dungeon runner or a PvPer and for my money, the stuff I’ve played is better than any of the stuff added to Guild Wars 1.

Sorrow’s embrace was six quests, then, which took you through a dungeon. What it wasn’t was an entire new zone with a couple of dozen quests and new achievements and a new JP with new hard to get goggles.

It was a dungeon, and the quests took you through it.

I don’t quite understand this wall of text here , I’ve just corrected the mistakes you made … you’re welcome. But you’ve made a few this time too. Firstly I take you’re talking about Sorrow’s furnace, not embrace. Secondly, it was a new area AND a dungeon, unless you count GW1 areas as dungeons which would be a fair point.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Grenth%27s_Footprint
but in that case it was two new dungeon. Also you first said it can be completed in two hours, not three.

“The DOA came out, the first Guild Wars 2 product that had no Elite area. "
This is where I would like to raise a point. I suppose you meant NF. It did not have an elite area at release, like you said, but you often say something like this: “It’s understandable they don’t work on hard content since such a low percentage of player bothers with it anyway.” If this is true, why did anet feel the need to add an elite area even though they didn’t start with one? Also “Nightfall had really nothing because it didn’t offer any new PvP stuff either” is not true either. Heroes changed the meta for a quite long time and Hero Battle was quite popular .

They added an elite area because they really believed that the health of the game depended on it, like Trion believed that the health of the game depended on raids, like Wildstar wanted to make a hard core game.

There’s no real evidence that hard core players exist in enough numbers to support a triple A MMO. There’s plenty of evidence that causal players exist in those numbers.

My guess is DOA was meant to be included in the release, but NF was released so close to Factions that they didn’t have time to include it, so they added it when it was done.

I have the same feeling about fractals in Guild Wars 2. I don’t believe they programmed Fractals in a couple of months.

Ah monday morning…..

So, all I have to say on the topic is thus:

If one comes, it comes. If not, I’m not going to get my panties in a bunch over it.

The OP has a point in that there is no hard evidence supporting a coming expansion. Nothing has been said for certain, all we have is some interesting coincidences and speculation.

However, on the flip side, there is equally no hard evidence to say that one is not coming as well. Anet has not ruled out the possibility (to my knowledge) as yet, so essentially anything still goes.

So, I guess we see what the future brings.

Bigsexy.8302:

We all know about those “big” things that came in the past. Nothing but hype. Usually it involves fixing tooltips and some tiny content update.
So the background project and where is Anet with their ~300 employees? Obviously they are not doing anything on GW2, because what we see is not a work from 300 people.
Most of the team has been deployed to Wildstar. Both studios, Carbine and Anet are owned by NCSoft. And WS was so bad at launch, needed lots of work. And now they fired 60 people from Carbine. Things just connect.
It’s very likely there’s no expansion, just trying to hold the leaving players as long as possible, to milk what they can. If there’s XP, don’t get your hopes, it won’t be anything Big™
Here are some fresh news from Korea – NCSoft has lost the trust of the players there. So I’d expect Q1-Q2 2015 significant drop in revenues there.

Anet and Carbine are both owned by NCSoft but they’re still separate companies. NCSoft can’t move staff between them like that. (Which is not to say individual people can’t move from one company to the other, but it would be a case of leaving one job and applying for, and getting, another. Not simply being told "this week you’re working for this company.)

Video game publishers are like movie or book publishers. No one’s going to claim the next Song of Ice and Fire book is taking so long because George R. R. Martin’s publisher has him working on someone else’s novel instead, and it makes just as much sense to say NCSoft have put Anet’s staff to work on another game.

Obviously I don’t know what those staff are working on. I’m sceptical that it would be a traditional boxed expansion, just because Anet haven’t shown any inclination to follow the standard release pattern just because it’s what’s been done before.

But they are Anet’s employees and will be working on Anet’s projects. Which currently means either GW1 or GW2. GW1 has been largely abandoned except for a small support/maintenance team and I think it’s unlikely they’d commit themselves to making another new game now. So that means whatever they’re working on has to be something for GW2.

Danikat.8537:

Bigsexy.8302:

We all know about those “big” things that came in the past. Nothing but hype. Usually it involves fixing tooltips and some tiny content update.
So the background project and where is Anet with their ~300 employees? Obviously they are not doing anything on GW2, because what we see is not a work from 300 people.
Most of the team has been deployed to Wildstar. Both studios, Carbine and Anet are owned by NCSoft. And WS was so bad at launch, needed lots of work. And now they fired 60 people from Carbine. Things just connect.
It’s very likely there’s no expansion, just trying to hold the leaving players as long as possible, to milk what they can. If there’s XP, don’t get your hopes, it won’t be anything Big™
Here are some fresh news from Korea – NCSoft has lost the trust of the players there. So I’d expect Q1-Q2 2015 significant drop in revenues there.

Anet and Carbine are both owned by NCSoft but they’re still separate companies. NCSoft can’t move staff between them like that. (Which is not to say individual people can’t move from one company to the other, but it would be a case of leaving one job and applying for, and getting, another. Not simply being told "this week you’re working for this company.)

Sure they are separate companies, but with the same owner… And yes, they can. I didn’t say they just move them “like that” though. Of course there are contracts etc. And the work probably is remote, because the studios are in different states of U.S. Maybe some people even moved to California even. You will be asked nicely if you would like to transfer onto other project. You can say no and get fired.
But so far from what I’ve seen I’m convinced Anet is doing work for Wildstar.
Not going to believe all those people just sit all day, getting paid do nothing. And haven’t seen any real indications that something indeed big is coming up.

Bigsexy.8302:

Danikat.8537:

Bigsexy.8302:

We all know about those “big” things that came in the past. Nothing but hype. Usually it involves fixing tooltips and some tiny content update.
So the background project and where is Anet with their ~300 employees? Obviously they are not doing anything on GW2, because what we see is not a work from 300 people.
Most of the team has been deployed to Wildstar. Both studios, Carbine and Anet are owned by NCSoft. And WS was so bad at launch, needed lots of work. And now they fired 60 people from Carbine. Things just connect.
It’s very likely there’s no expansion, just trying to hold the leaving players as long as possible, to milk what they can. If there’s XP, don’t get your hopes, it won’t be anything Big™
Here are some fresh news from Korea – NCSoft has lost the trust of the players there. So I’d expect Q1-Q2 2015 significant drop in revenues there.

Anet and Carbine are both owned by NCSoft but they’re still separate companies. NCSoft can’t move staff between them like that. (Which is not to say individual people can’t move from one company to the other, but it would be a case of leaving one job and applying for, and getting, another. Not simply being told "this week you’re working for this company.)

Sure they are separate companies, but with the same owner… And yes, they can. I didn’t say they just move them “like that” though. Of course there are contracts etc. And the work probably is remote, because the studios are in different states of U.S. Maybe some people even moved to California even. You will be asked nicely if you would like to transfer onto other project. You can say no and get fired.
But so far from what I’ve seen I’m convinced Anet is doing work for Wildstar.
Not going to believe all those people just sit all day, getting paid do nothing. And haven’t seen any real indications that something indeed big is coming up.

Why should NCSoft fire staff from Carabine just to move ANet staff there ? That
makes no sense at all since those Carbine staff members already know the game
while ANet members have to learn everything first.

Bigsexy.8302:

Sure they are separate companies, but with the same owner… And yes, they can. I didn’t say they just move them “like that” though. Of course there are contracts etc. And the work probably is remote, because the studios are in different states of U.S. Maybe some people even moved to California even. You will be asked nicely if you would like to transfer onto other project. You can say no and get fired.
But so far from what I’ve seen I’m convinced Anet is doing work for Wildstar.
Not going to believe all those people just sit all day, getting paid do nothing. And haven’t seen any real indications that something indeed big is coming up.

I am going to assume you have no experience in development by this theory. Well let me tell you why what you’re suggesting would not work.

In order to add / change code on a project you need to understand that project. Failing that whatever you do is likely to break a million things you didnt know depended on something you changed. That’s not a couple lines of code, its generally millions of lines. That getting familiar with a project generally takes 6 months – 1 year just to get to a point where you start being productive. Its much worst when you get no proper handover.

That alone is a bad idea for NCSoft cause lets assume they force Anet developers to switch over for a couple of years, they’re only going to take 1 year of actual production value and loose 2 years minimum (1 year for the anet developer to get up to speed + 1 year for the new developer coming in to replace the anet developer after they go back)

Also Anet is in Washington area, Carbine is in California so okey Ncsoft is going to ask a bunch of Anet developers to go work for carbine for a while … well that means spending a ton of money to move those devs to california only to move them back when the time comes.

But perhaps the biggest reason why NCsoft would never even consider such a move has got to be what they understand best… MONEY. Such a move would cost them colossal amounts of money.

1. Employee + family relocation – TWICE
2. 2 years of downtime on wildstar development that really can be cut in 1/2 if you hire new full time staff.
3. damaging your 2nd most profitable product in lieu of a product that’s unfortunately 2nd worst product and thats the quarter after release. why would they do that? there is no guarantee the problem with wildstar is one of development and even if that can be fixed its by a team you’re going to loose what if the one that comes after isnt going to be able to deliver either?

Most likely there will be a expansion next year I’m thinking right around the third anaversory of Guildwars2. This being the 10th anaversory of the GuildWars franchise they really need something big to go with that event why not a expansion and also maybe new content in Guildwars1. With the desaster that was Wildstar the only thing Ncsoft has making any money right now is guildwar2 and maybe Aoin. So they need a new cash flow. What better way than a payed Guildwars2 expantion

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Most likely there will be a expansion next year I’m thinking right around the third anaversory of Guildwars2. This being the 10th anaversory of the GuildWars franchise they really need something big to go with that event why not a expansion and also maybe new content in Guildwars1. With the desaster that was Wildstar the only thing Ncsoft has making any money right now is guildwar2 and maybe Aoin. So they need a new cash flow. What better way than a payed Guildwars2 expantion

Yay for someone that sees the bigger picture and posts something… dare I say hopeful! amidst all the “doom and gloom” and “oh woe is me GW2 is dead posts”

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@DeceiverX.8361

What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.

Each episode consists of:

• one section of a new map
• a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
• an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
• a new type of enemy
• some dynamic events
• some achievements

I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.

Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.

Only a small team is working on the current season. And we see the maximum of content it can provide. Assumed much bigger teams are working on the big projects – let us call them season 3 and 4 – it is easily possible to deliver larger quantities of content: bigger maps, skills, new weapons etc.

If Arenanet fear balance issues caused by new skills we will never see them – not via LW and not via X-pac. If it is too much work to design gear and animations for a new race the reace will never be released.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe Anet has a secret team working on an expansion in the background. And you have no idea how big the living world team is. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. All we know is there is no official statement on an expansion, and they seem to be going ahead with the current living world model full steam.

Xenon.4537:

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@DeceiverX.8361

What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.

Each episode consists of:

• one section of a new map
• a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
• an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
• a new type of enemy
• some dynamic events
• some achievements

I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.

Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.

Only a small team is working on the current season. And we see the maximum of content it can provide. Assumed much bigger teams are working on the big projects – let us call them season 3 and 4 – it is easily possible to deliver larger quantities of content: bigger maps, skills, new weapons etc.

If Arenanet fear balance issues caused by new skills we will never see them – not via LW and not via X-pac. If it is too much work to design gear and animations for a new race the reace will never be released.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe Anet has a secret team working on an expansion in the background. And you have no idea how big the living world team is. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. All we know is there is no official statement on an expansion, and they seem to be going ahead with the current living world model full steam.

Anet said there are 20 people on the living world team now and they said the rest of the team is working on longer term bigger projects. They even said as one big project gets launch they work on the next ones.

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@DeceiverX.8361

What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.

Each episode consists of:

• one section of a new map
• a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
• an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
• a new type of enemy
• some dynamic events
• some achievements

I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.

Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.

Only a small team is working on the current season. And we see the maximum of content it can provide. Assumed much bigger teams are working on the big projects – let us call them season 3 and 4 – it is easily possible to deliver larger quantities of content: bigger maps, skills, new weapons etc.

If Arenanet fear balance issues caused by new skills we will never see them – not via LW and not via X-pac. If it is too much work to design gear and animations for a new race the reace will never be released.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe Anet has a secret team working on an expansion in the background. And you have no idea how big the living world team is. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. All we know is there is no official statement on an expansion, and they seem to be going ahead with the current living world model full steam.

Anet said there are 20 people on the living world team now and they said the rest of the team is working on longer term bigger projects. They even said as one big project gets launch they work on the next ones.

Where did they say that?

Galen Grey.4709:

I am going to assume you have no experience in development by this theory. Well let me tell you why what you’re suggesting would not work.

In order to add / change code on a project you need to understand that project. Failing that whatever you do is likely to break a million things you didnt know depended on something you changed. That’s not a couple lines of code, its generally millions of lines. That getting familiar with a project generally takes 6 months – 1 year just to get to a point where you start being productive. Its much worst when you get no proper handover.

That alone is a bad idea for NCSoft cause lets assume they force Anet developers to switch over for a couple of years, they’re only going to take 1 year of actual production value and loose 2 years minimum (1 year for the anet developer to get up to speed + 1 year for the new developer coming in to replace the anet developer after they go back)

Also Anet is in Washington area, Carbine is in California so okey Ncsoft is going to ask a bunch of Anet developers to go work for carbine for a while … well that means spending a ton of money to move those devs to california only to move them back when the time comes.

But perhaps the biggest reason why NCsoft would never even consider such a move has got to be what they understand best… MONEY. Such a move would cost them colossal amounts of money.

1. Employee + family relocation – TWICE
2. 2 years of downtime on wildstar development that really can be cut in 1/2 if you hire new full time staff.
3. damaging your 2nd most profitable product in lieu of a product that’s unfortunately 2nd worst product and thats the quarter after release. why would they do that? there is no guarantee the problem with wildstar is one of development and even if that can be fixed its by a team you’re going to loose what if the one that comes after isnt going to be able to deliver either?

Sorry to burst your bubble of convince but I do in fact have an idea of development. And moving onto new project is not really that hard when you are seasoned developer. 6 months is more than enough, that’s not some NASA spaceship…
Aside GW2 has been out for 2+ years.
And of course you missed the part where I mentioned the possibility of work from distance.
Do you know how many big game companies outsource work to 3rd parties? Mostly assets, not code, but there are devs who do that and it’s not hard.
There’s nothing new.

Here’s an example for you
http://www.liquiddevelopment.com/about.php

edit: and btw GW2 as a product is beyond damaged already. Wonder why…

Vayne.8563:

If this is all you can bring up for spotty honesty then Anet is more honest than most companies.

I’ll give you a better example.

“We think everyone, including casual players, should have the best gear by the time they hit level 80.” vs “We didn’t expect players to get the best gear so quickly.”

There are other, equally egregious examples, but I think the point is made.

CMM.6712:

Yay for someone that sees the bigger picture and posts something… dare I say hopeful! amidst all the “doom and gloom” and “oh woe is me GW2 is dead posts”

Don’t blame the players posting it wasn’t them who put a freeze on all information it was management at Anet/NCSoft. People need to direct their disappointment at them and not the players here asking for information, because frankly they’re not at fault here.
What absolutely blows my mind is just how unconcerned or even oblivious management seems to be by all this negativity.

Bigsexy.8302:

edit: and btw GW2 as a product is beyond damaged already. Wonder why…

Why do you continue to play the game and/or post on the forums if you believe that the game is beyond damaged? Do you have to ruin the game and experience for everyone else because you’re unhappy that it’s not moving in the direction that you feel that it should?

Where LW is improving lack of general content from content updates kinda sucks we should never be able to max out our guild upgrades it is GW2 after all

Hard to believe that at it’s 3rd Wintersday anniversary the Anet devs will only have been able to make 2 healing skills per class that do not make the gameplay any more interesting and that literally nobody uses. The Elementalist doesn’t even have an elite skill worth using. This is particulary shocking when considering that the battle mechanic is the most successful aspect of the game yet it has been left to gather dust.

It’s wasted potential and It’s really sad considering GW1 had so much more to offer in terms of skills and builds.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

CMM.6712:

Yay for someone that sees the bigger picture and posts something… dare I say hopeful! amidst all the “doom and gloom” and “oh woe is me GW2 is dead posts”

Don’t blame the players posting it wasn’t them who put a freeze on all information it was management at Anet/NCSoft. People need to direct their disappointment at them and not the players here asking for information, because frankly they’re not at fault here.
What absolutely blows my mind is just how unconcerned or even oblivious management seems to be by all this negativity.

I’m not blaming anyone really, but negativism and trolling is certainly not the answer and those things are disappointing. What are they supposed to say? “You bad bad fans saying all these mean things about us, the nerve!” As I have said before I wouldn’t want to deal with a bunch of the crap that goes on here either. That said I too would like to know what Anet has up their sleeve, but I am not proclaiming the game is dead and no one wants to play it anymore and such. Clearly those things are not true, and saying them certainly isn’t going to force Anet to tell us anything. If people acted in a mature manner then maybe there would not be a “freeze” on information. I do not think there has been a freeze exactly, I feel it is more of a poker type situation of not showing their hand at the wrong time… maybe I’m wrong I guess we will see.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

CMM.6712:

Yay for someone that sees the bigger picture and posts something… dare I say hopeful! amidst all the “doom and gloom” and “oh woe is me GW2 is dead posts”

Don’t blame the players posting it wasn’t them who put a freeze on all information it was management at Anet/NCSoft. People need to direct their disappointment at them and not the players here asking for information, because frankly they’re not at fault here.
What absolutely blows my mind is just how unconcerned or even oblivious management seems to be by all this negativity.

If you check the Structured PVP forums the devs have been very informative lately there. They are really working together with the community so the patch tomorrow will be as good as possible (one can hope). So that’s at least one aspect of the game that gets loads of dev participation.

I know WvW hasn’t gotten much attention since like ever, yet there is at least one of the Game Support Leads that is actively talking to the community there. Maybe something will come out of it… probably not WvW is abandoned by the devs

We had some CDI threads lately, like discussing Raids and Guild Halls, that was a great way for devs to get some direction by the community.

So they are talking with us. It’s just the most important parts that they don’t discuss with us, like content updates…

Xillllix.3485:

Hard to believe that at it’s 3rd Wintersday anniversary the Anet devs will only have been able to make 2 healing skills per class that do not make the gameplay any more interesting and that literally nobody uses. The Elementalist doesn’t even have an elite skill worth using. This is particulary shocking when considering that the battle mechanic is the most successful aspect of the game yet it has been left to gather dust.

It’s wasted potential and It’s really sad considering GW1 had so much more to offer in terms of skills and builds.

GW1 also didn’t have the trait system like GW2 does. The runes and sigils (inscriptions) are also more complex than GW1 where you mainly got just attribute changes and condition duration changes.

There are also a lot of builds in GW2. Many build can be created for a specific thing. I remember creating a build specifically for my guardian when fighting the destroyer boss in the Crown Pavilion. There are a lot of builds that you can make for other bosses and challenges including how other players’ builds can synergize with yours. The major difference between GW1 and GW2 is the difficulty. GW2 has very little difficulty so is more forgiving if players stuck to just one or two builds.

Xenon.4537:

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@DeceiverX.8361

What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.

Each episode consists of:

• one section of a new map
• a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
• an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
• a new type of enemy
• some dynamic events
• some achievements

I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.

Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.

Only a small team is working on the current season. And we see the maximum of content it can provide. Assumed much bigger teams are working on the big projects – let us call them season 3 and 4 – it is easily possible to deliver larger quantities of content: bigger maps, skills, new weapons etc.

If Arenanet fear balance issues caused by new skills we will never see them – not via LW and not via X-pac. If it is too much work to design gear and animations for a new race the reace will never be released.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe Anet has a secret team working on an expansion in the background. And you have no idea how big the living world team is. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. All we know is there is no official statement on an expansion, and they seem to be going ahead with the current living world model full steam.

Anet said there are 20 people on the living world team now and they said the rest of the team is working on longer term bigger projects. They even said as one big project gets launch they work on the next ones.

Where did they say that?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Enough-of-your-GMPC-please/page/3#post4193277

Here. If it is really true that only ~ twenty people works on the living story releases that , including the maps & dynamic events that would mean most of anet’s resources is spent on something else, however the twenty people on the LS team could mean only the story part of the releases…. also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant, perhaps we already got them with the new zones, megaservers or china release.

Xenon.4537:

@DeceiverX.8361

What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.

Each episode consists of:

• one section of a new map
• a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
• an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
• a new type of enemy
• some dynamic events
• some achievements

I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.

Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.

Like I said, I don’t care whether or not we get this in the form of an expansion. I just want these important kinds of new content which freshen the game experience to happen. There’s nothing stopping ANet from releasing new races, weapon types, skills, traits, mechanics, dungeons, etc. with the release of a new LS explaining the release of content. LS is just lore behind the world. For those who care, they’ll do it. For those who don’t, they won’t look into it further.

That’s what I’m saying. We don’t need an expansion. We just need the important content that often comes associated with them. I don’t need new geography and maps to explain new weapon types. I don’t need new weapons to let ANet give them to mobs to make mobs more diverse. I don’t need new mobs to get new dungeons.

And that’s why this game is getting stale and has been getting stale. So far all we know is that something “Big” is in the future, and so far, literally nothing has happened aside from a few new map chunks which for the most part outside of loot and farming are bad, and some more lore and armor pieces, which for the most part, aren’t very exciting.

It does not take an expansion to properly release new content for the maintenance of a game. Hell, the game I’m employed for in its eight years of uptime has never released an expansion, but has released two new races, eight new classes, upped the level cap four times, six new types of weapons, overhauled entire segments of PvP and the game engine, performed two UI updates, performed multiple skill and stat updates, added over eighty new skills to the game, fifteen new armor set releases over five-hundred crafting recipes doubled the size of the map, tripled the number of available dungeons, multiple game-wide rebalance efforts and near-monthly subtle changes and additions during normal maintenance.

And that entire company has had thirty developers total since the game launched and has a fraction of GW2’s income due to massive player upheaval due to pay to win problems caused by a new CEO’s micromanagement and poor decisions.

So no, an expansion is not necessary. Simply, new content is, however.

So far in two years – a quarter of this other game’s lifetime – I’ve seen only minimalist updates targeting “low-hanging-fruit” fixes which target things like tooltips, some new armors, a few new map chunks, very, very poor attempts at balancing builds, etc.

This is a AAA game with AAA hype and AAA funding. It’s being wasted.

TL;DR – Everybody relax….

When people mention those 300 or so Anet employees I automatically asume we’re also, in that number, talking about the people who work in their cantina, security guards, people who vacuum the building and clean the windows and what not.

You can’t honestly believe things like:" Oh, hi. We’re Arena Net. We have 300 employees and all of them are either programers or some-fancy-computer-engineering-title-person, bla". I somehow think that 300 people who work there equate everyone who’s in that building- not just programers or similar.

And I know sigh..I know some people here want gaming as a hoby and play GW2 as their main freetime focus but seriously….This game, this game…is not like WoW model of expansion sets. You believe a expansion from ANet can “save” the game? (Even tho I like it the way it is…uhmmm maybe I’m easely satisfied IDK)- This is not Blizzard with their multi million dollar comercial hype train- it’s ANet.

And for god’s sakes don’t eat up content like there’s no tomorrow. Go out with your family, GF or BF. Have a beer or a juice with you best buddy. Have a laugh and then…when everything of that is over…go on, power on your computer, launch GW2, play a little (1-2 hours) and go to sleep. But nooooooooooooooooooooooooo………………………..you want more. more, more….Go play EvE Online if you want “real hardcore-second-job-I feel-important-spread sheet-my desk and monitor-are-full-with-various-coordinates-and-jump-codes-that-make-me-feel-super-smart-carebear-free” game. Somehow I think most of you want something like….

A game that is not too easy and not too hard. Where you can know who is a noob and who is a veteran. Veterans on one hand get rewarded for staying true to the game and the newcomers are constantly reminded that they can also be one of the veteran dudes who look down on them. (Carrot and a stick thesis) A game where there’s content- LOT’S of content. Because some people have 12 hours a day free time to pursue that inner hero of ours in the game and feel special…

As you see…I’m all over the place here. I hope you catch my drift.

DesolateDunes.9526:

TL;DR – Everybody relax….

When people mention those 300 or so Anet employees I automatically asume we’re also, in that number, talking about the people who work in their cantina, security guards, people who vacuum the building and clean the windows and what not.

The mentioned people are not employed by Arenanet. These services are provided by the owner of the building.. Arenanet just pays for the services.

Scipio.3204:

Xenon.4537:

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@DeceiverX.8361

What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.

Each episode consists of:

• one section of a new map
• a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
• an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
• a new type of enemy
• some dynamic events
• some achievements

I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.

Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.

Only a small team is working on the current season. And we see the maximum of content it can provide. Assumed much bigger teams are working on the big projects – let us call them season 3 and 4 – it is easily possible to deliver larger quantities of content: bigger maps, skills, new weapons etc.

If Arenanet fear balance issues caused by new skills we will never see them – not via LW and not via X-pac. If it is too much work to design gear and animations for a new race the reace will never be released.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe Anet has a secret team working on an expansion in the background. And you have no idea how big the living world team is. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. All we know is there is no official statement on an expansion, and they seem to be going ahead with the current living world model full steam.

Anet said there are 20 people on the living world team now and they said the rest of the team is working on longer term bigger projects. They even said as one big project gets launch they work on the next ones.

Where did they say that?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Enough-of-your-GMPC-please/page/3#post4193277

Here. If it is really true that only ~ twenty people works on the living story releases that , including the maps & dynamic events that would mean most of anet’s resources is spent on something else, however the twenty people on the LS team could mean only the story part of the releases…. also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant, perhaps we already got them with the new zones, megaservers or china release.

That’s very interesting. I was under the impression that they had far more than 20 people. I mean during season 1 they said they had 4 different living world teams, each with around 20 people, which would bring it to about 80 people in total working on living world. That still leaves over 200 people, around 300 total working at Anet. But I still feel like Anet’s idea of “big background project” is something like the wardrobe or the NPE, not a full blown expansion.

Maybe I’ll be wrong. Maybe the reason Anet has been so quiet and slow to talk about an expansion is because they are working on a stand alone GW2 side-quel just like they made Factions and Nightfall. Maybe its taking them longer than a usual expansion because it needs to be a full stand alone game.

Xenon.4537:

Scipio.3204:

Xenon.4537:

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@DeceiverX.8361

What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.

Each episode consists of:

• one section of a new map
• a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
• an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
• a new type of enemy
• some dynamic events
• some achievements

I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.

Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.

Only a small team is working on the current season. And we see the maximum of content it can provide. Assumed much bigger teams are working on the big projects – let us call them season 3 and 4 – it is easily possible to deliver larger quantities of content: bigger maps, skills, new weapons etc.

If Arenanet fear balance issues caused by new skills we will never see them – not via LW and not via X-pac. If it is too much work to design gear and animations for a new race the reace will never be released.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe Anet has a secret team working on an expansion in the background. And you have no idea how big the living world team is. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. All we know is there is no official statement on an expansion, and they seem to be going ahead with the current living world model full steam.

Anet said there are 20 people on the living world team now and they said the rest of the team is working on longer term bigger projects. They even said as one big project gets launch they work on the next ones.

Where did they say that?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Enough-of-your-GMPC-please/page/3#post4193277

Here. If it is really true that only ~ twenty people works on the living story releases that , including the maps & dynamic events that would mean most of anet’s resources is spent on something else, however the twenty people on the LS team could mean only the story part of the releases…. also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant, perhaps we already got them with the new zones, megaservers or china release.

That’s very interesting. I was under the impression that they had far more than 20 people. I mean during season 1 they said they had 4 different living world teams, each with around 20 people, which would bring it to about 80 people in total working on living world. That still leaves over 200 people, around 300 total working at Anet. But I still feel like Anet’s idea of “big background project” is something like the wardrobe or the NPE, not a full blown expansion.

Maybe I’ll be wrong. Maybe the reason Anet has been so quiet and slow to talk about an expansion is because they are working on a stand alone GW2 side-quel just like they made Factions and Nightfall. Maybe its taking them longer than a usual expansion because it needs to be a full stand alone game.

I do believe if anything major will happen to GW2, it will in 2015. GW 10 year anniversary is coming and the three old year characters will get the title “Faithful” … but most likely I just read signs that do not exist. But if nothing major will happen in 2015 I’ll take my suspicions of anet working on a completely different game confirmed.

Also creating a new campaign shouldn’t be longer than creating an expansion, nightfall was a stand alone yet they released it 6 month after factions (and before anyone jumps in, yes, I know they are different games ,but expanding a game should be much less time than creating one, no matter what game we are talking about. )

darkace.8925:

Vayne.8563:

If this is all you can bring up for spotty honesty then Anet is more honest than most companies.

I’ll give you a better example.

“We think everyone, including casual players, should have the best gear by the time they hit level 80.” vs “We didn’t expect players to get the best gear so quickly.”

There are other, equally egregious examples, but I think the point is made.

Now when the game launched that was true. The situation changed when they saw people getting exotic gear and leaving the game. So were they dishonest, or did they change their mind. There is such a huge difference in this.

Years ago, due to doctors advice, everyone gave up butter to eat margerine. The doctors believed at the time that it was healtier. Now they tell you margerine is a killer and you’re better off with butter. Did the doctors lie? Were they dishonest.

The first paragraph says “we believe” and I’m sure when they said that that’s exactly what they did believe.

Only the least forgiving person could call that a lie, unless you have proof that when they said it they didn’t believe it. Things change in my life all the time and I make statements based on now. I’m not lying if the situation changes.

Xenon.4537:

Scipio.3204:

Xenon.4537:

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@DeceiverX.8361

What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.

Each episode consists of:

• one section of a new map
• a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
• an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
• a new type of enemy
• some dynamic events
• some achievements

I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.

Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.

Only a small team is working on the current season. And we see the maximum of content it can provide. Assumed much bigger teams are working on the big projects – let us call them season 3 and 4 – it is easily possible to deliver larger quantities of content: bigger maps, skills, new weapons etc.

If Arenanet fear balance issues caused by new skills we will never see them – not via LW and not via X-pac. If it is too much work to design gear and animations for a new race the reace will never be released.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe Anet has a secret team working on an expansion in the background. And you have no idea how big the living world team is. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. All we know is there is no official statement on an expansion, and they seem to be going ahead with the current living world model full steam.

Anet said there are 20 people on the living world team now and they said the rest of the team is working on longer term bigger projects. They even said as one big project gets launch they work on the next ones.

Where did they say that?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Enough-of-your-GMPC-please/page/3#post4193277

Here. If it is really true that only ~ twenty people works on the living story releases that , including the maps & dynamic events that would mean most of anet’s resources is spent on something else, however the twenty people on the LS team could mean only the story part of the releases…. also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant, perhaps we already got them with the new zones, megaservers or china release.

That’s very interesting. I was under the impression that they had far more than 20 people. I mean during season 1 they said they had 4 different living world teams, each with around 20 people, which would bring it to about 80 people in total working on living world. That still leaves over 200 people, around 300 total working at Anet. But I still feel like Anet’s idea of “big background project” is something like the wardrobe or the NPE, not a full blown expansion.

Maybe I’ll be wrong. Maybe the reason Anet has been so quiet and slow to talk about an expansion is because they are working on a stand alone GW2 side-quel just like they made Factions and Nightfall. Maybe its taking them longer than a usual expansion because it needs to be a full stand alone game.

If they do anything they’ll do an expansion. They wont’ be doing a stand alone game. They said it a long time ago, but the logic that works against them doing a traditional expansion works against that too. They don’t want to divide the player base.

This game is ever-expanding. The way I see if if you lumped ALL the stuff we’ve gotten over the last year and a half and sold it as one package.. that’d be an expansion in most games? Not ALL expansions have to come out with new races/classes etc etc to be an expansion… To me that kind of stuff is fluff and filler and not always needed. I wouldn’t begrudge it to happen if it did but I certainly like this “trickled” content delivery system WAY more than I thought I would. As proven to me by recent updates to other games I play and how quickly I burned through the content. I never paid attention to how fast I would eat through something when there was nothing tempering me from over indulging. Then I got bored and put the game down again. =/ I like this “DLC” smaller but more often quite a lot. And I have grown very fond of two week release cycles between couple month breaks.

Considering all the talk this community does about an expansion on this forum and elsewhere, I would think aNet would at least verify that they’re not actively working on an expansion (which doesnt seem to violate their “we dont talk about what we are working on” policy).

I wonder what would happen if the community were to just demand an answer by posting “aNet, are you working on an expansion?” over and over, and reply with that same line, indefinitely until they responded concisely about it, without posting any other point of discussion, forsaking all other communication.

Cole Eyre.8471:

Considering all the talk this community does about an expansion on this forum and elsewhere, I would think aNet would at least verify that they’re not actively working on an expansion (which doesnt seem to violate their “we dont talk about what we are working on” policy).

I wonder what would happen if the community were to just demand an answer by posting “aNet, are you working on an expansion?” over and over, and reply with that same line, indefinitely until they responded concisely about it, without posting any other point of discussion, forsaking all other communication.

So kick and scream and beat fists on the floor ’til you get your way? Yeah ok. I will be glad to wait til “whatever” is ready, whenever it is ready. Thanks.

Cole Eyre.8471:

Considering all the talk this community does about an expansion on this forum and elsewhere, I would think aNet would at least verify that they’re not actively working on an expansion (which doesnt seem to violate their “we dont talk about what we are working on” policy).

I wonder what would happen if the community were to just demand an answer by posting “aNet, are you working on an expansion?” over and over, and reply with that same line, indefinitely until they responded concisely about it, without posting any other point of discussion, forsaking all other communication.

Why would they verify they’re not working on an expansion? It looks like a lot of people are sticking around hoping and praying for an expansion. They’re probably gone if Anet makes such an announcement: like all the dungeon vets who left the game right after Anet announced there would be no more new dungeon content.

As for posting the same thing over and over: that’s just asking to get forum banned. (The WvW forum has tried this because of Anet disregarding WvW.)

Hmm…if ArenaNet does not talk about what they are working on, then not saying they aren’t working on an expansion could mean they are working on one. Lol.

I mean, that is just as logical as what those posters who say they aren’t saying what they are working on because they aren’t working on anything. ; )

Scipio.3204:

also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant

My bet is on the twice-a-year feature packs.

Vayne.8563:

darkace.8925:

I’ll give you a better example.

“We think everyone, including casual players, should have the best gear by the time they hit level 80.” vs “We didn’t expect players to get the best gear so quickly.”

There are other, equally egregious examples, but I think the point is made.

Now when the game launched that was true. The situation changed when they saw people getting exotic gear and leaving the game. So were they dishonest, or did they change their mind. There is such a huge difference in this.

Yes, there’s a big difference. Unfortunately, the wording suggests that they didn’t change their mind – that they expected that the game would not follow their previously stated designs for it. First statemet is in the present, but second is about the past.

Vayne.8563:

The first paragraph says “we believe” and I’m sure when they said that that’s exactly what they did believe.

Then there are only two possibilities. Either they designed the game based on this belief (in which case they should not have been suprised that it does, indeed, follow the design well), or they didn’t design the game based on their statements, in which case those statements were dishonest.

Vayne.8563:

Things change in my life all the time and I make statements based on now. I’m not lying if the situation changes.

And there lies the problem. One o those statements wasn’t based on “now”, but on the past.

Astralporing.1957:

Scipio.3204:

also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant

My bet is on the twice-a-year feature packs.

Vayne.8563:

darkace.8925:

I’ll give you a better example.

“We think everyone, including casual players, should have the best gear by the time they hit level 80.” vs “We didn’t expect players to get the best gear so quickly.”

There are other, equally egregious examples, but I think the point is made.

Now when the game launched that was true. The situation changed when they saw people getting exotic gear and leaving the game. So were they dishonest, or did they change their mind. There is such a huge difference in this.

Yes, there’s a big difference. Unfortunately, the wording suggests that they didn’t change their mind – that they expected that the game would not follow their previously stated designs for it. First statemet is in the present, but second is about the past.

Vayne.8563:

The first paragraph says “we believe” and I’m sure when they said that that’s exactly what they did believe.

Then there are only two possibilities. Either they designed the game based on this belief (in which case they should not have been suprised that it does, indeed, follow the design well), or they didn’t design the game based on their statements, in which case those statements were dishonest.

Vayne.8563:

Things change in my life all the time and I make statements based on now. I’m not lying if the situation changes.

And there lies the problem. One o those statements wasn’t based on “now”, but on the past.

The problem is that people take what is a handful of lines and they completely ignore all the lines that completely disprove what they’re saying.

My favorite complaint about this game is when people bring up the “everything they loved about Guild Wars 1” line, because we knew a LOT of GW 1 stuff wouldn’t be making an appearance long before launch, including second professions, huge numbers of skills, instanced areas, and heroes. We knew it. To go and take that line literally after knowing that feels a lot like wishful thinking to me. I knew it wasn’t going to be the same game.

But anyone who plays any MMO and doesn’t expect stuff to change as it grows and as the devs learn, well I’m not sure what to tell them.

Sure, things change when you see the reaction of the audience. Most recently it was the commander tag fiasco and the NPE unlocks for skills, both of which were changed.

It’s funny because changes that people want aren’t called lies. No one, no one person, posted on this forum to say Anet lied when they said that the elite skill wouldn’t unlock until level 40.

So why is it a lie when Anet sees people leaving the game and makes a change in the best interest of the game from their point of view.

You may or may not like the decision, but that doesn’t make it dishonest or a lie.

I don’t understand the “it’s lies because one statement is in the now, and one is in the past”.

The first statement was made before the game launched. The second some time/months after launch, and the Devs saw what transpired. If we, as humans, can’t change our opinions based on new evidence/facts, we must all learn to be prescient.

Changing their minds is not what made for it being a lie. Claiming that they never expected for something that they previously said that they did expect did.

1) We intend X
2) We have changed our mind and no longer expect X

Is very different from:

1) We expect X
2) We never expected X

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I don’t understand the “it’s lies because one statement is in the now, and one is in the past”.

The first statement was made before the game launched. The second some time/months after launch, and the Devs saw what transpired. If we, as humans, can’t change our opinions based on new evidence/facts, we must all learn to be prescient.

…
Okay, let’s simplify both statements so it is more clear.

1. Before launch: “We want situation A in our game”
2. After launch: “Hey, Situation A happened in our game. We totally didn’ expect that”.
From that there are only few possibilities:
Possibility 1: Before launch: “We want situation A in our game. That’s what we say to you, but that’s not how we’re going to design the game. And we’re not going to mention that little detail to you”
Possibility 2: After launch: “Hey, we totally didn’t believe that we would succeed in pulling off that part of desigh. We honestly thought we’re going to fail at that”.
Possibility 3: After launch: “Um, yeah, the game works as designed, but we didn’t predict the consequences fully and now we’d rather it worked differently. We’re not going to say that, however. Instead we will insist that it’s something that doesn’t follow our original design.”

They were straight out claiming that they didn’t expect that two months after launch the game will be following the design they said earlier it will follow. And we still ignore the third explanation for the ascended gear thay have made, which conflicts with both of those mentioned here (the one where they claimed that ascended were planned from the beginning).

This not the case of them changing their opinion (which is obvious they did). It’s the case of them claiming they didn’t change them.

Ashen.2907:

Changing their minds is not what made for it being a lie. Claiming that they never expected for something that they previously said that they did expect did.

1) We intend X
2) We have changed our mind and no longer expect X

Is very different from:

1) We expect X
2) We never expected X

Fortunately for Anet out of literally thousands of statements made, only a handful turned out to be questionable.

Why not apply that same standard to your family, work colleagues and friends. See how that works for you.

People have to dig through countless pages to find a handful of things. You might find or or two things you can question.

I should be so honest.

Vayne.8563:

My favorite complaint about this game is when people bring up the “everything they loved about Guild Wars 1” line, because we knew a LOT of GW 1 stuff wouldn’t be making an appearance long before launch, including second professions, huge numbers of skills, instanced areas, and heroes. We knew it. To go and take that line literally after knowing that feels a lot like wishful thinking to me. I knew it wasn’t going to be the same game.

There are loads of reasonable complaints about that line too, just to name a few: no gear progression, weapon dyeing, alliance system, Guild halls/GvG , elite endgame zones , progressing title system. When they released the manifesto, we didn’t know for sure if these thing will be still present, and not all of us actively followed the next two year’s development. I can understand why some ppl got kittened up by this line.

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

My favorite complaint about this game is when people bring up the “everything they loved about Guild Wars 1” line, because we knew a LOT of GW 1 stuff wouldn’t be making an appearance long before launch, including second professions, huge numbers of skills, instanced areas, and heroes. We knew it. To go and take that line literally after knowing that feels a lot like wishful thinking to me. I knew it wasn’t going to be the same game.

There are loads of reasonable complaints about that line too, just to name a few: no gear progression, weapon dyeing, alliance system, Guild halls/GvG , elite endgame zones , progressing title system. When they released the manifesto, we didn’t know for sure if these thing will be still present, and not all of us actively followed the next two year’s development. I can understand why some ppl got kittened up by this line.

Well that’s funny. Do we in fact have a gear treadmill or did they add one single tier of gear when they found out that peoiple playing the game left after they were geared up (which was what happened). If you think it’s reasonable to complain about something that Anet felt they had to change, go right ahead.

Guild Halls were never supposed to be in at release and Anet said so. They gave no date or time. The closest information we got was from Martin Kerstein on guru who talked about housing and said they’d probably be introduced with Guild Halls in some type of expansion. Yes, he said that. Anyone following the game knew GvG wouldn’t be included before launch because I did. Arguably there is a progressing title system in as far as achievements go. You get a new title every 5000 achievement points.

The question isn’t whether you can find a handful of complaints. The question is, knowing in advance that there were numerous changes from one to the next, why assume anything is going to be there.

This is a case of people seeing what they want to see.

Edit: To be clear, I’m not saying there aren’t faults to the game. I’m not saying that people should or shouldn’t like it. I’m saying that calling a company dishonest is a bit rich from the amount of evidence we have.

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

My favorite complaint about this game is when people bring up the “everything they loved about Guild Wars 1” line, because we knew a LOT of GW 1 stuff wouldn’t be making an appearance long before launch, including second professions, huge numbers of skills, instanced areas, and heroes. We knew it. To go and take that line literally after knowing that feels a lot like wishful thinking to me. I knew it wasn’t going to be the same game.

There are loads of reasonable complaints about that line too, just to name a few: no gear progression, weapon dyeing, alliance system, Guild halls/GvG , elite endgame zones , progressing title system. When they released the manifesto, we didn’t know for sure if these thing will be still present, and not all of us actively followed the next two year’s development. I can understand why some ppl got kittened up by this line.

No, Vayne has a point here. That line alone didn’t promise that any single part of design from GW1 would make it into gw2. It was never more that a general statement for GW1 players that GW2 will be a game for them.

Remember, where that statement came from. A game that was originally meant to be nothing more (and nothing less) than an upgraded Guild Wars, targeted primarily for original GW players, evolved into something created for a much bigger crowd, where, due to lot of changes, gw1 veterans were marginalized in design decisions. That statement was Anet’s way of reassuring those vets that the core ideals of their old game (that doesn’t mean specific mechanics) will still be followed. That in GW2 they would still feel at home.

I still think that this statement tuned out to be at least a bit untrue, but it’s entirely possible (in fact, it’s quite probable) that the devs really meant what they said. They may have been not fully correct here, but it doesn’t mean they were being consciously dishonest.

Astralporing.1957:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

My favorite complaint about this game is when people bring up the “everything they loved about Guild Wars 1” line, because we knew a LOT of GW 1 stuff wouldn’t be making an appearance long before launch, including second professions, huge numbers of skills, instanced areas, and heroes. We knew it. To go and take that line literally after knowing that feels a lot like wishful thinking to me. I knew it wasn’t going to be the same game.

There are loads of reasonable complaints about that line too, just to name a few: no gear progression, weapon dyeing, alliance system, Guild halls/GvG , elite endgame zones , progressing title system. When they released the manifesto, we didn’t know for sure if these thing will be still present, and not all of us actively followed the next two year’s development. I can understand why some ppl got kittened up by this line.

No, Vayne has a point here. That line alone didn’t promise that any single part of design from GW1 would make it into gw2. It was never more that a general statement for GW1 players that GW2 will be a game for them.

Remember, where that statement came from. A game that was originally meant to be nothing more (and nothing less) than an upgraded Guild Wars, targeted primarily for original GW players, evolved into something created for a much bigger crowd, where, due to lot of changes, gw1 veterans were marginalized in design decisions. That statement was Anet’s way of reassuring those vets that the core ideals of their old game (that doesn’t mean specific mechanics) will still be followed. That in GW2 they would still feel at home.

I still think that this statement tuned out to be at least a bit untrue, but it’s entirely possible (in fact, it’s quite probable) that the devs really meant what they said. They may have been not fully correct here, but it doesn’t mean they were being consciously dishonest.

Well that’s my point. I’ve always said that line turned out not to be true. I’ve also said that it’s not necessarily dishonesty behind the words.

I do agree Anet probably have no big plans for the game and are happy they have the target market interested. This is people happy with repetitive content and achievements with various currencies and collectibles as carrots to keep them chasing.

For me the game is stale. It is burnout with me but because of the heavy reliance of repetitive content to keep people involved. I think the LS2 has not delivered on the impressions we were giving by Anet at the beginning of the year. It is no better than the LS1 and infact Im sure its less content than delivered that season.

What Anet have done is tried to create an illusion of giving us more than LS 1 by giving us bigger chunks but less often, by making stories and more events repeatable at any time and making it that each character must repeat it and do achievements. The story may be okay but its not very imaginative. However it seems there are plenty that are happy with this.

It depresses me as I do love the world and the general game play and now and again great group content. But all my guild and most folks I know play the living story solo and do not want to play with others. It appears to me its strange if that’s working as intended. I moan because I truly wish the game would pick up with a really expansive amount of content but it wont because enough people are happy for now.

Vayne.8563:

Now when the game launched that was true. The situation changed when they saw people getting exotic gear and leaving the game. So were they dishonest, or did they change their mind. There is such a huge difference in this.

Years ago, due to doctors advice, everyone gave up butter to eat margerine. The doctors believed at the time that it was healtier. Now they tell you margerine is a killer and you’re better off with butter. Did the doctors lie? Were they dishonest.

The first paragraph says “we believe” and I’m sure when they said that that’s exactly what they did believe.

Only the least forgiving person could call that a lie, unless you have proof that when they said it they didn’t believe it. Things change in my life all the time and I make statements based on now. I’m not lying if the situation changes.

Only the most naive person would pretend it’s anything other than a lie. There’s simply no amount of spin that reconciles “we expect X” and “we never expected X”. into anything other than a lie. If they’d said “we expect X” and “we now believe not-X is best for the game” it wouldn’t have been a lie. But that’s not what was said.