Guild Wars 2

I’d like to preface what I’m about to say with this: I ADORE your game. I have easily poured thousands of dollars in to Guild Wars 2. I have over 10 Legendaries. I have 11 characters decked out in full Ascended gear with a 12th on the way. I’ve done theorycrafting for my main class (Thief) and made countless guides, dungeon videos and so on. I’m co-leading what I believe to be one of the friendliest guilds in the game and an AMAZING place to be. Including time spent AFK and talking to my lovable guildmates, my total game-time reaches 8,500 hours. Unfortunately, even someone as dedicated as I am has to stand up when enough is enough.

I’m angry because I care. I care a lot. This game introduced me to an incredible community and to the current love of my life. I don’t want to see you completely squander it for preventable reasons.

I am not entirely sure what brought us to this stage. I am quite concerned that it is the success of the game’s launch that has got to your head – I’m getting a smugness or a narcissism vibe due to this. Whatever the case may be, I think that you have completely lost touch with us, the community, and you completely fail to understand what we actually want.

For those you don’t know what I may be referring to, check the latest Guildmag interview (supposedly part 1 of 2).

While it is true that these questions are being answered by Devon Carver, who is the WvW lead (unfortunately), and might not have any idea about any other systems in the game, there is also an ‘End Game Systems’ designer talking. More importantly, rather than say “I don’t know anything about xyz”, we receive actual answers. Non-answers, so to speak. This interview derailed any notion of a hype train for any of us.

its funny because Derailing a conversations on their website will induce a Warning and thread being fracted.

but when they do it in real life its ok…

im in for this. we need more Forum communication with ANET reps who have answers.

Good point and post, OP.

A mmorpg is organized into a small knit community, whether we like it or not, and as a small community, we have the ability to have a direct line of communication to the developers of this mmorpg, and of course, vice versa. Of course, they don’t HAVE to, but we are a community. We are not dealing with the governor’s office. (funny in that working with a senator there were PR liasons/assts that answered questions/comments at any time).

In saying as much, this lack of communication is poorly done and should not be the standard for mmo’s and GW2. Plenty of other mmo’s have had many instances of constant communication (SWG, TSW, SWTOR personal experience) that, yes at times, created a kitten-storm, but at least we know what we are dealing with in the future. But these terribad interviews are not communication – it’s a “we don’t know” and “on the radar” for the past 2 YEARS – and the lack of response on the forum is not even close to communication.

Following this post and the OP’s will certainly be posters saying “Anet doesn’t need to communicate” in which i’ll ask: why not?

sometimes i feel that they have all moved away from Guild wars 2 and are concentrating on Wildstar..

i feel this because of the lack of communication and Dodging the questions in interviews

Domino.1359:

Following this post and the OP’s will certainly be posters saying “Anet doesn’t need to communicate” in which i’ll ask: why not?

I think it’s clear that we need more clarity when implementation is initially this poor eg. the commander tag prices.

Arenanet hear, but they do not listen. There is a clear difference, and this is the fundamental issue.

“You want x? Okay, have x, but have mandatory y as well!” Nobody asked for y or wanted y. y makes x pointless/ruins x.

That sort of thing. That’s not even including the total silence and resistance to talking about anything that isn’t about the current Living Story.

Zardul.3952:

sometimes i feel that they have all moved away from Guild wars 2 and are concentrating on Wildstar..

i feel this because of the lack of communication and Dodging the questions in interviews

Wouldn’t really make any sense at all though. Seeing as Wildstar is developed by Carbine Studios while Guild Wars 2 is developed by ArenaNet, which are two completely different companies that does not share employees.

In before the obligatory “GW2 is healthy and will continue to be healthy without you” reply.

Auesis.7301:

Only politician-tier dodging.

This deserves more.

Hierarchy of dodging levels
=====

[Anet]
[Politicians]
[The Flash]
[Deadpool]
[Ninja]
[Hitman]
[Normal Human]
[Gohan]
[Grade schooler playing dodgeball]
[Zombie]

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Auesis.7301:

Only politician-tier dodging.

This deserves more.

Hierarchy of dodging levels
=====

[Anet]
[Politicians]
[The Flash]
[Deadpool]
[Ninja]
[Hitman]
[Normal Human]
[Gohan]
[Grade schooler playing dodgeball]
[Zombie]

lol so true

You were infracted because you called out the developers on the forums. That has been expressly forbidden multiple times. It’s hardly something they’ve installed as a policy in secret yesterday.

Lol i didn’t know that there is censorship on this forum,but as i see it is(second post of thread opener deleted). Any way it would be nice to know what direction is game having, also if they say something by themself (like pre crafting) they should do it.

Good job on the censorship ANET. Looks like you picked up a few things from the Chinese with the launch of GW2 there.

Is it really censorship to enforce the very rules everyone did agree on before starting to use the forums though?

Rules are made to be enforced, otherwise they are pointless.

Agreed with OP. Its so sad to see a game as good as GW2 just thrown away. Nothing is off the table and we cant talk about it right now are not the things that the community wants to hear. Living World Season 2 is much better then 1 imo, but it wont keep a player interested in the game for 2 week. As someone said Living Story is like a good TV show that releases a episode every 2 weeks, you come and watch the episode and then for the next 2 weeks you dont know what to do.

Anet please for the sake of GW2 open up and speak to the community. What are your plans for the future what are you working on. Get some feedback and good ideas from the community. Everyone understands that you are just regular people and you cant do everything as the community wants, but this silence makes us feel like you dont care about us. Wouldnt it be better to ask the community what they want, then make something you think they want and in the end the community hates it.

Awaltir.5302:

Lol i didn’t know that there is censorship on this forum,but as i see it is(second post of thread opener deleted). Any way it would be nice to know what direction is game having, also if they say something by themself (like pre crafting) they should do it.

The “roadmap” that people ask for is a mixed bag from a developer standpoint, and a lot of it has to do with developers having no earthly clue how people work.

When they tried their roadmap in 2012, the end result FELT extremely negative, mostly because of a small minority of the player base who decided every declaration of intent was a promise and used it as an excuse to be combative and belligerent whenever any one of those little bullet points wasn’t met.

These people ARE entitled brats, and they exist in every MMO and think it is perfectly acceptable to be abusive and vicious whenever they don’t get everything they want exactly when they want it.

Where Arena.net made a critical mistake was by then retreating from further communication… and I think it’s because they don’t realize that these entitled brats didn’t rise up because of the roadmap. They rose up because THAT IS WHAT THEY DO. They’re little kittens, and they will ALWAYS exist. If you don’t give them something to rage about, they will MAKE UP something to rage about.

The retreat on Arena.net’s part only got worse because once they ran away from the table, that allowed the trolls to set the environment, one that was extremely toxic and vile, and they were given legitimacy BECAUSE Arena.net ran away from the table.

Interviews (like this one) are blown completely out of proportion because of that distrust. Reasonable explanations for why that interview would come off poorly are ignored. Changes are immediately assumed to be to players’ detriment and somehow intended to drive gem store sales. Any probes into forum sentiment is met immediately with hostility.

And now otherwise perfectly reasonable people here are fighting each other, because of that environment. There’s no trust or implied genial intent, it’s simple to slap a “white knight” or “hater” label on someone else and eschew any meaningful conversation that might require you to reassess just what HAS been said.

I remember in those first CDIs warning Chris Whiteside that you CAN’T run away for PRECISELY this reason.

It IS fixable, but I suspect many people wouldn’t find the fallout worth it. Arena.net would need to find some people with very thick skins and the power and willingness to drop the Perma BanHammer.

It’s going to kitten people off, but the only way to fix this environment now is with napalm; making it clear that if you refuse to approach in a cordial manner, and instead only with derision and scorn that you will get punched in the mouth and not be allowed to speak again.

chemiclord.3978:

Awaltir.5302:

Lol i didn’t know that there is censorship on this forum,but as i see it is(second post of thread opener deleted). Any way it would be nice to know what direction is game having, also if they say something by themself (like pre crafting) they should do it.

The “roadmap” that people ask for is a mixed bag from a developer standpoint, and a lot of it has to do with developers having no earthly clue how people work.

When they tried their roadmap in 2012, the end result FELT extremely negative, mostly because of a small minority of the player base who decided every declaration of intent was a promise and used it as an excuse to be combative and belligerent whenever any one of those little bullet points wasn’t met.

These people ARE entitled brats, and they exist in every MMO and think it is perfectly acceptable to be abusive and vicious whenever they don’t get everything they want exactly when they want it.

Where Arena.net made a critical mistake was by then retreating from further communication… and I think it’s because they don’t realize that these entitled brats didn’t rise up because of the roadmap. They rose up because THAT IS WHAT THEY DO. They’re little kittens, and they will ALWAYS exist. If you don’t give them something to rage about, they will MAKE UP something to rage about.

The retreat on Arena.net’s part only got worse because once they ran away from the table, that allowed the trolls to set the environment, one that was extremely toxic and vile, and they were given legitimacy BECAUSE Arena.net ran away from the table.

Interviews (like this one) are blown completely out of proportion because of that distrust. Reasonable explanations for why that interview would come off poorly are ignored. Changes are immediately assumed to be to players’ detriment and somehow intended to drive gem store sales. Any probes into forum sentiment is met immediately with hostility.

And now otherwise perfectly reasonable people here are fighting each other, because of that environment. There’s no trust or implied genial intent, it’s simple to slap a “white knight” or “hater” label on someone else and eschew any meaningful conversation that might require you to reassess just what HAS been said.

I remember in those first CDIs warning Chris Whiteside that you CAN’T run away for PRECISELY this reason.

It IS fixable, but I suspect many people wouldn’t find the fallout worth it. Arena.net would need to find some people with very thick skins and the power and willingness to drop the Perma BanHammer.

It’s going to kitten people off, but the only way to fix this environment now is with napalm; making it clear that if you refuse to approach in a cordial manner, and instead only with derision and scorn that you will get punched in the mouth and not be allowed to speak again.

Well there are some ppl that they are not upset because THEY DON’T DO WHAT WE WANT but because WE DON"T KNOW WHAT THEY EVEN INTEND TO DO. When the game was new devs keep us informed in some ways where we could have speculate what will be next but right now we have a black wall.. It is bad because if it will be like that for more time people start to think " why should i even support this game if i don’t know if it have any future".

I hope that new feature pack will give us some answers but right now I can only hope and cross my fingers

Also in my opinion(!!!!) they should rather go for expansion if they want keep ppl happy but it is only small chance because gemstore do the job just fine.

Awaltir.5302:

Well there are some ppl that they are not upset because THEY DON’T DO WHAT WE WANT but because WE DON"T KNOW WHAT THEY EVEN INTEND TO DO. When the game was new devs keep us informed in some ways where we could have speculate what will be next but right now we have a black wall.. It is bad because if it will be like that for more time people start to think " why should i even support this game if i don’t know if it have any future".

I hope that new feature pack will give us some answers but right now I can only hope and cross my fingers

Also in my opinion(!!!!) they should rather go for expansion if they want keep ppl happy but it is only small chance because gemstore do the job just fine.

And that is exactly the mistake Arena.net has and continues to make. Because they SHOULD continue to present their roadmap if they want good dialogue. They SHOULD continue to keep the communication channels open. They SHOULDN’T have been run off by the little twerps that make unreasonable demands and refuse to accept anything less than everything.

But at this point, in order to resume that, they’d need to napalm these forums, because now there is too much distrust, venom, anger, and spite for any attempts to met with anything other than bitterness, scorn, and disdain. The pool is now poison. The water is acidic. It needs to be drained and chlorinated before they have any hope of trying again.

Truth be told they made this acid partially by themself. Because when ppl see that at start they want to talk but there is no other side for conversation they become angry mob which is unable to talk anymore ( like with revolutions). I think they should slowly rethink the way of informing ppl – like start with at least telling what they do with degree of this work like: SAB return – considering in future. Because people can be angry but they at least should know on what ground game stay.Here we have the worst problem what we that we face right now because from this interview everything is soon considering etc which give us only 1 information – the only thing we know they work is ls and gemstore skins .