Guild Wars 2

For the past month and a half or so, new players began complaining that low level zones were dead. With no one around, events were hard to complete for the new players and low level instances were near impossible.

The problem in GW2 seemed far worse than in most MMOs. Why? In other MMOs, the games are focused on gear grind. The PvP, the PvE- all of it. So, players who want nothing to do with that would simply reroll an alt and start fresh in order to keep having fun. It kept the low level zones flowing with fresh faces. But GW2? Most of the people playing this game came here to avoid the WoW clones and their gear treadmills, so the endgame here kept them happy. Exploring. WvW. 100% map completion. Karma gear for looks, not stats. With the exception of the handful of content locusts who got 100% in the first few weeks, the population was still happily trudging along through the content. There was no real reason, besides map exploration, to go back to low level zones.

Enter Ascended Gear.

Suddenly, the forum posts all look the same: 80 zones, except for FotM, are dead and empty. Newbie zones, however, are having to go to overflow maps. And what if that was the point? What if the point was to push a large portion of the playerbase away from endgame, away from dungeon running and WvW and all that, and get them to start rolling alts instead? What if, in the end, the point really was to kill the end game of GW2? I know it sounds like it should be sarcastic or maybe just a really out there conspiracy theory, but remember how much work they put into 1-80. For them, it wouldn’t be so bad if we kept going back and making alts, instead of playing our 80s to the end. If every player rolled a single 80 and that’s it, then they would miss how much content? ~3 personal story arcs per race, 4 races? Maybe they wanted the game to be more focused on that.

Food for thought.

Flame on.

Doubt it. But nice theory.

I thought all the people who hate the idea of Ascended gear would be smart enough to quit (especially since they’re not paying $15 a month – they feel no obligation to stay), not reroll alts. The shift in population is noteworthy, however.

Well a little exaggerated but some elements of truth.

It is not ascended that will kill the game. The game while it has many upgraded elements of design that made it interesting from 1-80, the reality is…

End game is boring and they can’t fix it now.

There is no subscription so they make no money from end game players.

I had the highest hopes for this MMORPG but it was not realized due to end game.

Oh well wait for the next one.

Oh yes, it will push the people away from the endgame. Away from the whole game as well.
I seriously doubt your conclusion – that would be a very convoluted and counterintuitive way of achieving said goal – unless of course you wanted to pull all players to LA.
The new players, by the way, are likely invitees from the event. And as it is with invitees, most of them will be gone in a month or so.

Pretty much everyone in my guild with a level 80 character has a reasonably played alt. I myself have 4 alts and didn’t even recognize them as alts because I could achieve max builds with them all. Now, I will barely play them because I’m not going through all those difficulty levels of FotM with more than one character (if even with one character at all), and I can only gear one character (and that only if I don’t “waste” time with leveling and gearing alts).

So, no.

I was already doing that anyway. The lower levels are far more enjoyable and less grindy than the rest, not to mention cheaper waypoint costs and usually more people to do the DEs with.

I must be the only level 80 with 100% map completion that tools around old zones looking for trouble. Starting to see more 80 drops, but mostly sell stuff. Healthy amount of whites to salvage and seem to get a fair amount of the higher cloth, ore and wood doing it.

why in the world would I reroll when it’s now absurdly hard to fully gear out one character let alone 2-3? In fact I was working on my 5th(60) and 6th(24) 80’s and ascended gear has stopped me in my tracks. I like having a variety of toons to play in both PvE and WvW, but now with upwards of 100+ hours per character to gear them it’s sucked all the fun out.

i dont think acended gear is effecting anything, and more importantly the game was dieng long before it. Thus why they pushed it out along with other changes.

Just scroll back on the forums, before it was 2000 posts about ascended gear, it was 2000 posts about “no end game”.

I was in a guild of 50 players many who were friends irl. They had all quit before the halloween patch. With the new FOTM patch, a few have come trickling back while others showed small interest. Those who came back thought fotm was a ton of fun and said they might be on more. A couple really liked the new pvp map and the new changes to pvp and are keeping their eye on it.

End point, ascended gear has nothing to do with anything..it doenst even change how the game is played or effect your play style. Whatever you were doing before if it was fun, you can still do it. If people are in there instead of other places, its because they find it more entertaining. I know thats hard to swallow but its the truth. If they’re there just because they want “the best gear”. Well, guess what…thats the only reason they were mindlessly farming karma or doing “speed runs” trying to pass all the content and fun of the dungeons to get through it as quick as possible to have their gear so they can come here right after and cry no end game.

Seriously people open your eyes and stop saying “baa baa” on the forums.