Guild Wars 2

Over the years of Guild Wars 2’s development, one question was asked above all others by excited fans: when is the game being released? And Arenanet always gave the same answer: When it’s done. It was a good answer, and one that gave many people, including myself, a lot of hope for the final product. We’d seen other MMOs rush out the door and fail horribly as a result; here at last there seemed to be a developer who understood that gamers wanted a complete, polished game at launch.

Arenanet themselves recognised this, as evidenced by comments such as this in an interview: "So many MMOs – and games in general, but MMOs in particular – have come out half-baked, they aren’t quite there yet, and the way the market is now you really don’t have the opportunity to grow.

“It’s not like seven years ago where you could come out, and if you stumble out of the gate and then make it grow and develop and say, ‘Oh, people like this content’ and slowly build your audience this way.”

Having played a character all the way through to 80, having completed the world 100%, done almost all of my personal story and ventured into most of the dungeons in the game, I have to ask: Whatever happened to “When it’s done”?

Quite simply, the game feels like it was rushed out the door. The further you progress through it, the more this feels evident. The early zones and early story feel excellent; there’s a good mix of mobs and events, and your personal story really draws you in. Even the voice acting and dialogue feel good. Perhaps it’s no co-incidence that only the early zones and story were opened up for large scale beta testing; they’re by far the most polished.

Past level 30 things start to get worse. Your story now heads down one of three paths, and your previous experiences are all but ignored. Zones start to exhibit more and more bugged events and skill challenges; I don’t believe I completed a single event in Gendarian Hills when I 100%ed it.

At level 50 comes in imfamous Claw Island mission, where everyone’s personal story stops being personal and becomes virtually identical. This more than anything else feels like Arenanet panicing at running out of time and simply deciding to homogenize all personal stories so that they wouldn’t have to spend time recording and coding personalised missions depending on your character choices. The quality of the story dives dramatically, details of which have been discussed to death already, but coupled with truly appaling voice acting this begins to look more and more like a rushed job.

Finally we reach the end zones, where bugged events are the order of the day, you’re forced to fight just one type of enemy ad nauseum, leading to combat fatigue after mere hours, the events feel lifeless and unimportant and the personal story becomes a tiresome drag of listening to Trehearne’s wooden and uninspiring dialogue whilst your character plays no significant role whatsoever, and every remotely interesting character gets killed off. Even the Dragon events, supposed to be the biggest of the biggest meta events on offer, are either trivially easy (Shatterer, Tequatl) or somewhat challenging but impossible to fail (Jormag). They function as loot pinatas and have absolutely zero effect on the zones they spawn in, and are on regular timers at that.

So I really once more must ask Arenanet: Whatever happened to “When it’s done”?

They possible simply ran out of time, their publishers couldn’t wait any longer. Or they actually saw the product as done. Unknown.

First up I really think that this game is as good as any mmorpg can get at release,
and Ixal, you should at least get your facts right, MOP´s launch was announced AFTER
GW2 launch was announced

Athaulf.1530:

First up I really thinkt that this game is as good as any mmorpg can get at release,
and Ixal, you sould at least get your facts right, MOP´s launch was announced AFTER
GW2 launch was announced

Because companies never have their own estimates on when a competitor will likely release their product which will completely trash you product on the market.

The longer ANet would have waited, the higher would have been the chance that MoP would have been released first which would have had a huge impact on the sales.

Also, it is quite interesting that you define a non functional auction house and loads of bugged events as " as good as any mmorpg can get at release"

Surely you have any evidence for your claim.. oh wait you don´t
On the other hand just name one MMO, one Game or even one pirece of software that
has been produced in the last 15 years taht didn´t have any bugs.
See? You can´t

Well, It looks as if someone read my thoughts exactly, though I’ve never reached level 80 myself yet, too much to do other then gaming I suppose.

I feel what you’ve explained throughout your post is very true in my experiences. I remember back in the day when ArenaNet went on, and on about how your personal story is going to be different from everyone else’s, however, in the end, it’s exactly the same, and maybe through the first 30 levels of gameplay has your story been different from 2 other people. Today I was just talking this over with my girlfriend, well actually last night, I was wondering whatever happened to everyone having some type of dramatic personally storyline, it seems we’ve lost our whole entire personal story for some type of end story that brings together all the races, which I’m fine with, but they should have at least tried to separate your personal story from the “Main” story a little more then what they have. However, ArenaNet still has the time, and I’m sure the fund to make a few changes, or even some major changes here and there, that could end up giving us an entirely new personal story all-together, I highly doubt it, but, things can happen.

I felt the voice acting was well done, and as you said, through the first 30 levels was great, now once you get passed level 40, all the voice actors start to sound exactly the same, I applaud the “We have over 10,000 dialogue in our game”, I do however disapprove that they used the same voice actor about 20 different times for “Not-so” important Npc’s, but one’s that still show a cut-scene. The work after level 40 does have that sort of rushed, and sloppy feeling to it, it’s hard for probably anyone to disagree, unless they’re not really paying much attention to the story at all, which I’m sure some players don’t really care, and skip through everything. But being the story driven game Guild Wars is known for, I too am sadly a little disappointed in where they took the game after level 40.

Good post Galen, many are afraid to tread your waters (Being honest).

Athaulf.1530:

On the other hand just name one MMO, one Game or even one pirece of software that
has been produced in the last 15 years taht didn´t have any bugs.
See? You can´t

Because GW2 has just “some bugs”. TOR was released in a much more finished state than it, so was Rift.

Shareholders happened.

A great chunk of the game was actually well polished on release. MMOs are just too big for everything to be top notch from the start. In this game, it’s when you get to higher levels that you start noticing the myriad of things still in need of work.

Now developers are probably working crazy hours to try and add missing elements and patch the game asap. :/

I can understand that they’re doing the best they can, but can’t help feeling unhappy when playing some parts of the game that are in need of improvement.

@ TOR was released in a much more finished state than it, so was Rift.

Neither of those games took significant risks in changing the gameplay, though. It’s a lot easier to do something that has been done before than it is to innovate. There are reasons that no one else has made a dynamic world with scalable events before at least on the kind of scale that GW2 does it! And if it takes a bit of time to get it to work optimally, then its well worth it.

roqoco.4053:

There are reasons that no one else has made a dynamic world with scalable events before at least on the kind of scale that GW2 does it! And if it takes a bit of time to get it to work optimally, then its well worth it.

Dynamic Events? Really? Such events have already been seen in Warhammer (Open Quests). And I fail to see how GW2 Events or Event bosses like Shatterer are more dynamic that the events in Rift.

I agree about the story. I was kind of dissapointed how fast my time with my “Order” just ends. I was an Agent for like 1 mission really, quickly advanced to top rank, and now it’s just undead undead undead I’m not an Agent anymore. I shouldn’t have made such a fuss choosing what order to go with lol.

what always happens, publisher needs & demands overrule developers. Though I do not understand your intention really, what is the alternative NOW, take the game off for a few months instead of patching while it runs?

Feel free to point out any other MMO over the past 8 years that was more complete than this game was at launch. The only one I can think of would be RIFT

Zzulu.5489:

Feel free to point out any other MMO over the past 8 years that was more complete than this game was at launch. The only one I can think of would be RIFT

Agreed, RIFT was very polished but what people for some reason seem to forget is that PVP was pretty much unplayable in RIft for the first month due to that massive armor bug… .. so even RIFT had bugs.

Athaulf.1530:

Zzulu.5489:

Feel free to point out any other MMO over the past 8 years that was more complete than this game was at launch. The only one I can think of would be RIFT

Agreed, RIFT was very polished but what people for some reason seem to forget is that PVP was pretty much unplayable in RIft for the first month due to that massive armor bug… .. so even RIFT had bugs.

also sever ques and i mean it only sold 120K its first week not a mil

Ixal.7924:

Dynamic Events? Really? Such events have already been seen in Warhammer (Open Quests). And I fail to see how GW2 Events or Event bosses like Shatterer are more dynamic that the events in Rift.

I played Warhammer (and Rift) and actually thought it had some pretty good ideas, although unfortunately some major flaws as well. However, neither of those games had chaining scalable dynamic events that remotely approach the complexity of what Guild Wars 2 is trying to achieve. It’s true that currently there are some problems with DEs, but they do have massive potential.

Warhammer is rather a good example, because originally Mythic were intending to be innovative in many different ways – for instance the original design had no levelling, which made much more sense of the integrated PvP. However, Mythic changed horses midstream (that possibly might have had something to do with their relationship with EA), frantically adding mainstream features at the last moment, and that’s now history.

They said when its done, not when its perfect. And its completely playable and fun. less than 1% of the content is bugged. I’d rather have this imperfect game than wait another year.

Less than 1% of current content is bugged? I suggest you log in on your 80 and go and play the game.

As for the comment about when its done, go watch their manifesto videos. It is plainly obvious that “when it’s done” actually means when the game is complete and when it is polished. Something which they clearly ignored in the race to beat blizzard.

This game unfortunatley is becoming nothing more than a glorified version of Diablo 3, when they hyped it up to be a full featured MMO on par with Wow/SWTOR/RIFT etc.

It is a very VERY long way off from those games.

Don’t get me wrong, i enjoy some aspects of the game. What i don’t enjoy is the devs constantly lying or trying to shift attention focus from something major to some little gimmick they have planned.

i never run itno any of the bugs i see most people complaining about on these forums. so i feel like guild wars 2 is a highly polished game.

Quite a few promises were never delivered on. For example:

1. Dynamic Events – Events in GW2 are not dynamic, they are the opposite of dynamic, they are in fact static. That exactly the same things trigger all events whether that be other pre-cursor event or timers – so absolutely nothing dynamic about the events system.

2. Persistent World – I don’t know where ANet get their dictionary from but they clearly have a different definition to Persistent than I find in my dictionary. I have yet to see anything even remotely resembling persistence (apart from the persistence of bots). What happened to the whole “You help one village and that will be remembered forever.” eveything I kill respawns, that isn’t persistence – bosses, champions, veterans, regular mobs, wild life – it all respawns – every single “sprite” in the game respawns over and over again – that is not persistence.

3. Personal Storyline – I agree with the OP here, the storyline is anything but personal.

I went back and watched the original game preview video on Youtube last week and compared what you see in the video to what you actually get in the game (despite the video saying actual game footage) and I was shocked at just how different we were told it would be compared to how it is. If you don’t believe me go back and watch the official preview videos again and you will see for yourself.

ANet have basically failed in everything that was supposed to make GW2 a paradigm shift for MMOs – which is sad and I hope they deliver on their promises sooner rather than later.

Looks like this thread got the Mods attention.
They are deleting any speculation about GW2 being released in the state it was to beat a certain other MMO Expansion.

Dynamic events meaning you will never know exactly when one is going on, they are hardly static in comparison to WoWs quest, where you start the quest and then finish and BAM its like it never happened. at least in guild wars 2 when you complete certain events theres an aftermath, the best example i have of this is when you help the little norn boy in the 1-15 zone and when he builds the guard statues they stay there.

I asked why it’s not yet done myself… then remembered the video on youtube where it showed what the company built up from and how they were managing at the current time.

Comparing Anet to Blizzard/Activizion is the mistake. Anet has done a good job bringing together a whole lot of game mechanics that are not only different from their past experiences but enhancements on other games they took influence from. Are the Dynamic Events bugged sure, but saying they’re nothing fancier than what Rift had is incorrect.

Complaints about the personal story not being personal enough? Sure the storyline seems to dwindle down to one point and I would love to join the Nightmare court instead of kill the same Dragon everyone else does… Trying to compare it to experiences you’ve had from Bioware is also a poor thing to do because of the experience Bioware’s had. And TOR being a more finished product on release makes me laugh… it was more finished because you could finish the game in a week? There’s nothing to TOR content wise, or course a company making an MMO of the same game they’re produced previously will do it faster, don’t be so proud of that point.

There’s a lot of room left for improvement, but comparing this game to other games when at their base it’s like comparing an apple pie to a shepards pie is foolish. If you’re going to complain about parts being broken that’s all fine and good, I can agree with those for the most part. All these people saying that Anet’s doing a bad job because other people have done things better in THEIR opinion, is just stupid. I would really appreciate this thread more if people would stick to what they’d like to see improved (ie the stories not being Personal for very long) rather than turning it into another WoW vs GW2 quarrel.

Deth.4109:

Dynamic events meaning you will never know exactly when one is going on.

Shatterer and other big “dynamic” events are quite reliable with their spawn time.

Deth.4109:

Dynamic events meaning you will never know exactly when one is going on, they are hardly static in comparison to WoWs quest, where you start the quest and then finish and BAM its like it never happened. at least in guild wars 2 when you complete certain events theres an aftermath, the best example i have of this is when you help the little norn boy in the 1-15 zone and when he builds the guard statues they stay there.

But you do know exactly when one is going on, just press M or set your watch to the same timer as the events…

When enter a map for the first time, sure, you don’t know where events spawn or when – but by time you have “completed” the map you know the events very well unless you have walked around the map with your eyes closed.

I’ve lost track of how many times someone has come into Frostgorge or Sparkfly and asked when the dragon is going to spawn, and several people piped up with “well, he died at X so he’ll be back around Y”

It’s as if these events are on fairly reliable static timers and people have learned what those timers are. Weird, right?

Ixal.7924:

Because GW2 has just “some bugs”. TOR was released in a much more finished state than it, so was Rift.

But, TOR didn’t push the envelope….at all. Remember, the Bioware head dude said “not following the WoW formula would be foolish.” It’s easier to be in a finished state if you copy-paste and not include features common in other games. You must also not remember Rift’s first few months. Great game, yes, but go back and look at the first few patch notes. Very, very lengthy bug and balancing fixes. Not to mention a very severe security flaw.

I don’t think Galen is being entirely fair. GW2 does not seem like a game that was rushed out the door. Its bugs are more to do with design than time spent in development.

There seem to be one or two game mechanisms extremely prone to breaking once large volumes of players use them. That’s not something that could necessarily have been picked up pre-launch.

My personal opinion is that anyone who thinks TOR was more finished than GW2 is mad. TOR was buggy AND incomplete and much thinner for the content too.

TOR is not a good game at all. And it shows, the majority of the publishing staff is gone, fired or left as they knew the game was headed for the outhouse.

And now they are trying to go F2P with a starwars gemshop, but they will give no in game currency conversion, and reportedly a lot of garbage ideas about what to sell in their shop. Gouging and relying on “games of chance” in buying random lockboxes that are reported to have a small percentage chance of dropping an exclusive armor.

That game is a disaster.

TOR was a good game. But you are forgetting one thing. It has SWG’s management behind it. The devs that are working on it are nothing short of brilliant. However, the management that destroyed SWG and other MMO’s struck again and are slowly killing it off.

Notice how after the games launch, we didnt hear anything from the senior devs/game producer/game director? Yea..

The apologists in this thread give me a good laugh. Thank you for that.

I especially liked the only “Less then 1% of content is bugged” one. Hahaha…hah.a…hah… sobs

Oh well the only saving grace of the game is its payment model allows me to walk away from the game guilt free and wait for them to fix all of the bugs and poor gameplay decisions. Look forward to what the game looks like by next year.

I agree with a lot of things said in this thread. There are certain aspects (I feel the biggest glaring issue for me is dynamic events) that aren’t necessarily as advertised.

I’ve seen a handful of mmos that have been around long enough undergo massive changes to clean up things that needed cleaning, and improve the overall gameplay experience. I would certainly hope we wouldn’t wait years, but I’ll definitely stick around to see if Anet starts making changes to improve upon what they’ve already done so that the game is more like what they claimed it would be.

An MMO is never ‘done’.

Having seen the manner in which Jumpgate Evolution fell apart, I am certain if this game was pushed to production early because they were running out of time, that this is preferable to what happened to JGE. I would much rather have the opportunity to play a game that still needs work than to never get the opportunity because the publisher pulled the plug.

Just like “Soon™”, “When it’s ready” are just words to get the consumer to quit asking.

I have to agree that I feel certain elements of the game have been rushed somewhat. I also believe this is probably due to commercial pressures, given that the game was in development for such a long time, I can imagine that a return was needed.

Virtually the only thing for me that really spoils an otherwise fantastic game, (putting aside the small niggles) is the way the mobs have been added and spawn.
The gameworld itself is utterly gorgeous, one of the best looking I’ve seen in any genre and it’s clear that a lot of time,effort and painstaking love has gone into the various landscapes and cities. It then sometimes feels like it was turned over to a team who were told “We need to get these areas populated and playable,pronto”.

It’s like they couldn’t bear to take their finger off “place monster here” for more than a millisecond. A lot of the zones feel way too crowded with mobs I think you could easily lose 5-10% of them overall and there’d still be a ton of stuff to kill. There are hardly any spots to stop and chill outside of the walled areas ( and I’m not just talking about Orr, i expect that of all places to be busy and hard, it’s a lot of the mid-range zones that are really bad).

Also there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the way many particular mobs are placed. For instance I think it’s Diessa Plateau, my wife and I encountered Tar mobs, Earth Elementals, Dinosaurs and Ghosts literally all within less than a minutes travel.

It seems like a lot of the mob placement/spawn time was a bit of an afterthought and for me just doesn’t allow for any enjoyment of the beautiful world. I really hope this area of the game get’s some love in the future because quite honestly it deserves it.

And just to add, so this doesn’t seem too negative, we’ve been having an absolute blast in Tyria and overall think it’s a fantastic achievement. I can’t wait to see it in a few months when it’s been polished.

I’m enjoying the game quite a bit, but it does feel like it could have used some more time in development to smooth things out a bit more. I have faith that a lot of brilliant stuff will be added in the future, the game certainly isn’t lacking in potential – but these next few months are going to be very crucial.

-When I think of when it’s done, I think of the repetitive event systems… H
-ow they should branch out more, but rather, they just cycle on repeat all day long…
-Or the fact that most of the game is a faceroll of the same skills day in and day out.
-The dungeons do not feel epic anymore…
-The armors are ugly, and there are not many to choose from…
-The game never gets any harder… Level 80 zone is just as much a walk in the park as the starter area is… Unless I’m just in God-Mode.
-The PvE enemy variety feels like it goes down as you progress. Less drakes, bandits, wasps… more Risen Brutes, Risen Brutes and more Risen Brutes.
-Titles have no meaning anymore. Me salvaging does not make me even the slightest bit better. I also have no lockplicks for chests…
-PvP needs Fort Aspenwood. (Like what I designed in my sig-link.) Aka, a fast to join, fast to fight PvP format with attack and defend roles.
-The chat feature for ! @ # $ is not /map /say /party. They made it harder to chat…
-Call target has been dummed down 5x more than what it was. You cannot ping your health, endurance or even what skill you are using on what target. You can only ping the target itself. Not much work was put into this system…

Bugs can be fixed. I’m fine with bugs. Lacking content. Bleh. Do not release a game with lacking content.

Fort Aspenwood link:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Abridged-Fort-Aspenwood/first#post293310

They said when it’s ready, not when it’s done.

Two very different things.

An MMO is never “done”.

“When it’s done” hasn’t happened on a consistent basis since the good ole N64/PS2 years. Sure, every now and then you’ll find a truly polished game, but for the most part this phrase is simply just a talking point or goal that developers and programmers pseudo-aspire towards achieving.

Athaulf.1530:

Surely you have any evidence for your claim.. oh wait you don´t
On the other hand just name one MMO, one Game or even one pirece of software that
has been produced in the last 15 years taht didn´t have any bugs.
See? You can´t

Guild Wars 1

CelticWish.2314:

Athaulf.1530:

Surely you have any evidence for your claim.. oh wait you don´t
On the other hand just name one MMO, one Game or even one pirece of software that
has been produced in the last 15 years taht didn´t have any bugs.
See? You can´t

Guild Wars 1

Do you mean bugs on release? None. But what are the nature of the bugs? D2 bugs, for example, were mostly issues relating to bnet connectivity, not content (infrastructure vs. programming).

Renegadeimp.8439:

This game unfortunately is becoming nothing more than a glorified version of Diablo 3, when they hyped it up to be a full featured MMO on par with Wow/SWTOR/RIFT etc.

Glorified D3? D3 still has sold 2 to 3x more and GW’s doesn’t really have loot hunting and a total different perspective. And RMAH is a defining feature that GW’s doesn’t have.

To play devils advocate with the RMAH (which I despise personally)… It’s actually quite an ingenious way to make some money off the bots while also “trying” to thin their numbers.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

CelticWish.2314:

Athaulf.1530:

Surely you have any evidence for your claim.. oh wait you don´t
On the other hand just name one MMO, one Game or even one pirece of software that
has been produced in the last 15 years taht didn´t have any bugs.
See? You can´t

Guild Wars 1

Do you mean bugs on release? None. But what are the nature of the bugs? D2 bugs, for example, were mostly issues relating to bnet connectivity, not content (infrastructure vs. programming).

Guild Wars came out complete and virtually bug free, yes there are always a some little one’s, I don’t think those that complain about buggy releases are after perfection, they know that won’t happen. But there is a point where it’s a bit more then something should be.

Those that defend the game will throw down the “No game is perfect” card every time, they know that isn’t what is being alluded to, but they just always have to be defensive about things and seemingly just can’t talk straight. There isn’t a person that paid $60 for GW’s that wanted it to be bad.

GW1 was pristine for a release, Rift probably 2nd. And there have been other fairly clean releases, things have improved for the genre and releasing overall. I thought it was quite obvious that at release time, the game didn’t live up to their own release words.

If you bring in D2, then someone else could bring in TL2 or BL2 as well, both solid launches.

I just threw in D2 cause I was the most familiar with it in terms of bugs and I wanted to show that bugs vary. Not being able to have a stable connection, or connect at all, sucks… but is usually fixed real fast; and if a game only has these types of bugs then the rest of the game is smooth once you can get in. Buggy content/gameplay is exactly that and takes awhile to fix; which can be annoying since it takes longer to fix, but in the meantime you have to deal with it.

I wouldn’t call D2 a smooth release due to the connection issues… and even then it had “end game” issues similar to this game. It took them a few months to get it to the D2 that folks praise, and then the X-pack raised that bar even more.

Another whine thread.

Every game to ever have been released has bugs. This is why F.E.A.R. has nine patches, and why Half-Life 2 was updated for a straight year continuously after release. SWTOR was a mess of a game with countless bugs that plagued it until four to five months after release, which by then half of their subscribers had left. Rift also had numerous bugs but the developers were able to patch them fairly quickly. All the Diablos had bugs. World of Warcraft at release was a bugfest. Guild Wars launched with hundreds of bugs and it took the developers over a year to fix a grand majority of the bugs present in Prophecies. They also released huge balance patches that changed almost every single skill in the game.

Give the game time. This is ArenaNet’s baby. If a year from now this game is still plagued with bugs and a lack of depth, then I think it’s time to give up any hope that the game will evolve into anything better.

What would you prefer, having an open beta for several months so people can beta test the end-game content, just for it all to get wiped afterwards? Don’t be silly.
I would muuuuuch rather play a game that is still in the process of refinement than to beta test all the content in the game for a few months and then get it all wiped before release.

This is a typical example of “Overhyping” a game. You expect more than Arenanet could offer you. If you can’t live with bugs, quit playing for now and come back within a couple months when most major bugs etc are fixed.

Bugs aside I think that we can all agree that this game would be well served by the removal of Trahearne from the story. Either that or patch in a different voice actor. At the very least please add in some kind of mini game where you can kill him. Worst NPC ever.

The thing that excited me most about his game was that it was going to be personal. It was going to be a game where your choices mattered. It was going to have unique factions. It was going to have unique personality types, allowing for character customization. It was going to have unique and interesting armor and weapon skins. It was going to have a compelling story that you wrote through your actions.

I know that this is a large list but it all comes down to the word personal. Maybe instead of Guild Wars 2 the game should be called Trahearne Saves the World: How I met Tyria’s Greatest Hero.