Guild Wars 2

People don’t criticize ArenaNet because they don’t give “enough content” People criticize them because they compare Guild Wars 2 to the original Guild Wars . So lets not compare the whole life of GW2 to an expansion of the original GW. The original Guild Wars had a business model of a paid expansion every 6 month. Gw2 has a business model of Updates of a lesser amount of content every 2 weeks. So add up 12 LS updates (6 months) and compare it to an expansion of the original Guild Wars.

Now there are always those people who say “well the LS is free” but you have to take into consideration that the original Guild Wars didn’t have many micro transactions (Gem Store). So the player base should be supporting the content by Micro Transactions instead of the price of an expansion.

If you want to compare 6 months Gw2 content to an expansion if Guild Wars the expansion is a lot more. But the thing we have to look at is the cost of production. If you know how video game production works Gw2 cost significantly more due to no world limitations (jumping of walls.) being ale to see other players. But Idk how much it cost and there income and I can’t say.

In conclusion all the criticism comes from the standards of an expansion. My opinion is the content we get in 6 month is not as good as an expansion but who know there have been rumors of a 2015 expansion and if this is true Anet you nailed it. If I get content every 2 weeks and a paid expansion every two years that would be a great business model.

This is a massive simplification. People criticize for all sorts of reasons. Only part of it is about the expansions or lack thereof.

I think much of the expansion has to do with expectations of the game which were supported by stuff Anet themselves said. People come into the game with those expectations and when they’re not met, they get angry and then they complain.

I think Anet will sell an expansion sometime next year. In the mean time, the living story is nice as well. I wouldn’t want it to completely replace expansions, unless they start providing skills, races and/or professions through it. And more weapons.

Terrible oversimplification. Period.

People always keeps tossing the whole one expansion every six months when they talk about GW1.
This is blatantly false.

Firstly there was only one expansion, that that was released MORE THAN TWO YEARS after Prophecies.

Secondly only one of the releases had the stated six month gap, and that was between Factions and Nightfall while the time between Prophecies and Factions was almost exactly one year, and the time between Nightfall and Eye of the North was about 10,5 months.

Going to keep this response very short:

There are plenty of players who have not played GW1. Some players are voicing concerns based on expectations (many set by pre-release marketing from ANet), experience with other games (sometimes over a decade’s worth and then some), understanding of basic business principles (valued customer experience, vendor communication, etcetera)…

…I’ll just leave it at that.

lordkrall.7241:

People always keeps tossing the whole one expansion every six months when they talk about GW1.
This is blatantly false.

Firstly there was only one expansion, that that was released MORE THAN TWO YEARS after Prophecies.

Secondly only one of the releases had the stated six month gap, and that was between Factions and Nightfall while the time between Prophecies and Factions was almost exactly one year, and the time between Nightfall and Eye of the North was about 10,5 months.

A little play on semantics there, not worth the all caps. Yes, one expansion, and 2 “Campaigns” that were essentially as large as traditional mmo expansions, but standalone.

Declaring “Blatantly False” is exaggeration, and based upon a very narrow interpretation of a box label.

No doubt, to me, that Guild Wars put out more content that I was attracted to and played. I don’t like console game knockoffs so I didn’t play Pac Wurms or Pokasuramon. Other than those I did almost all.

Folks, usually the same folks, will claim GW2 has more content overall, even at launch. Maybe so. For this singular consumer, a lot of it was uninteresting. I’m not interested in story content after a bit of it, for me it is just too badly written, both generations of Iconics annoying and too center stage, and just getting worse. No interest in JPs, platforming at all. The spacebar wasn’t a revolution in gaming for me. WvW is enough pvp for me, I’ve never entered sPvP. The fractals format is uninteresting. Recyling old zones as “new content” is annoying and uninteresting, but that is more of an issue with who was causing the zone disruption more than anything.

So for me, this game has less content, because a lot of it seems aimed at a demographic that isn’t me. I never felt that way in GW. Now that more platforming has been mainstreamed into the story line, I feel even more alienated. New Content I can’t do isn’t content at all, for me.

I think it is perspective. If you are enthusiastic about every tidbit thrown into the game, that may be a lot of content. I’m not, so I don’t see a lot of new content. After an hour or so of failing what I am told are “infant” level jumps at Dry Top I don’t even want to return to the zone, and I no longer care what it gates me from, or even be around people so harshly judgemental regarding disabilities. I don’t care enough about the Superfriends or “What Scarlet saw this week” to bash my head against platforming.

Plus side.. I’m not paying anything for the new content. That’s great, for me, I’m getting exactly what I paid for. 0.

I still enjoy the scenery and my chars. Just harassing local wildlife away from the zerg can occupy me for a couple hours when I log on. I’m not done with the game, but I am convinced the game and genre are done with me. I don’t think an expansion matters, it will be the same directed path, the same insistence that I must love every aspect of the game, and the same concocted group of walking tropes I’m somehow supposed to love, and according to game text, do love. An expansion would include the megamerge as well, the biggest mistake of the game, IMO. I just cannot connect with a company and a demographic that tells me destroying home servers and communities is a “great” improvement.

No point bickering between the two Guild Wars. New game, new devs, new direction, new player demographics, new writers, new lore. And the new takes precedence over the old. GW is grandpa sitting on the porch wondering wtf his kid is doing. And Im gramma wondering the same.

I exhausted myself this week re Lore. I realized today, it doesn’t matter. Few care, and fewer care re gw lore. Caring about anything from GW isn’t going to fly here.

I can sit and laugh regarding the antics of the world boss scramblers and the Frostgorge trains, the unbridled zerg rage at the ones “not doing it right” but, the zergs are target market, not me. /shrug.

Personally, I’m done comparing two vastly different games.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

A little play on semantics there, not worth the all caps. Yes, one expansion, and 2 “Campaigns” that were essentially as large as traditional mmo expansions, but standalone.

Declaring “Blatantly False” is exaggeration, and based upon a very narrow interpretation of a box label.

The blatantly false part was more to the second part of my post, about how they didn’t actually release new campaigns every six months except in one case.

No longer worth the endless debate, Lordkrall.

That was then, this is now. Doesn’t matter how bitter the pill is for us GW fans. This isn’t GW. That wasn’t decided on the forums, it has been made clear by the owner of both games. Pro and con here is pointless.

We all have better things to do. I’m sorry I responded to you, but as I did the very futility of doing so hit me like a brick.

As others have said, this game isn’t Guild Wars 1. It’s made for a broader audience. It doesn’t have the same build variety. It requires more hand eye coordination. It focuses on different things.

Those that like the things in the game play it more, those who don’t like the thing in the games play it less.

But people who loved Guild Wars 1 as it was are understandably frustrated, because they’ve lost a game. The game they loved won’t be updated again and the game that was supposed to replace it didn’t follow suit.

Even though I’m not a young guy, I’ve played a lot of games, including platformers, so I welcome that into the Guild Wars series. A lot of complaints about the game don’t bother me personally but I certainly understand why other people would be bothered.

But trying to fit all people’s complaints into one or two or even five categories is doomed to failure. There are some people complaining because this game isn’t enough like Guild Wars…there are others complaining because it’s not enough like WoW.

Fact :
More content was added to GW1 2 years after its release than was added to GW2 2 years after release.

They now have:

-More money
-More people
-Overall more resources.

Also the quality of the content that has been delivered so far has mostly been sub-par.

Most of season 1, the whole Southsun fiasco, and I could go on.
Permanent additions to the game have been few, and of those few only some are actually good.

That’s why people are complaining.

Fact:
More armor was added to GW1 after 2 years since its release than we’ve had in GW2 since release.

This is in my opinion inexcusable considering GW2 is a cosmetically driven game and that almost all new armor and weapon sets have been introduced via the gem store so they’ve made a profit by introducing them.

How is it that even though they have more resources and more people they seem to put out less armor sets?

Even worse is the fact is that people have been asking for GW1 armor to be brought back to GW2 ( which would be simpler since you wouldn’t have to start from scratch) and yet we’ve seen nothing.

Another big issue is the constant hype created by statements they make – including things they want to do and then never get around to doing.
I understand plans change, things come up, and so on – but at least keep us updated or don’t say anything at all.

I’m very unhappy about the “new legendary weapons and a new type of legendary item in 2013” – I saved up money ( since there were only a few months of 2013 left) and didn’t buy things I wanted or made investments specifically because they told us this was coming.

It’s now July 2014 and nothing came. I understand they must have gotten sidetracked or something but at least come out to the player base and say something like “we’re not going to be able to deliver on this or that until -insert some time frame here-”.

I find it unfair and annoying that they throw buzzwords on the forums then not only fail to live up to the created expectations but also keep us completely in the dark. Which is the worst of it.

So why are people mad at Anet? I can’t speak for everyone but personally I’m disappointed with them.
I considered them top-tier as far as video game development went back in the days of GW1 and had immense faith in them.

Given these past 2 years I’d say I’ve become rather disappointed because of the lack of courtesy and seriousness they’ve displayed recently.

Harper.4173:

Fact :
More content was added to GW1 2 years after its release than was added to GW2 2 years after release.

They now have:

-More money
-More people
-Overall more resources.

Also the quality of the content that has been delivered so far has mostly been sub-par.

Most of season 1, the whole Southsun fiasco, and I could go on.
Permanent additions to the game have been few, and of those few only some are actually good.

That’s why people are complaining.

Fact:
More armor was added to GW1 after 2 years since its release than we’ve had in GW2 since release.

This is in my opinion inexcusable considering GW2 is a cosmetically driven game and that almost all new armor and weapon sets have been introduced via the gem store so they’ve made a profit by introducing them.

How is it that even though they have more resources and more people they seem to put out less armor sets?

Even worse is the fact is that people have been asking for GW1 armor to be brought back to GW2 ( which would be simpler since you wouldn’t have to start from scratch) and yet we’ve seen nothing.

Another big issue is the constant hype created by statements they make – including things they want to do and then never get around to doing.
I understand plans change, things come up, and so on – but at least keep us updated or don’t say anything at all.

I’m very unhappy about the “new legendary weapons and a new type of legendary item in 2013” – I saved up money ( since there were only a few months of 2013 left) and didn’t buy things I wanted or made investments specifically because they told us this was coming.

It’s now July 2014 and nothing came. I understand they must have gotten sidetracked or something but at least come out to the player base and say something like “we’re not going to be able to deliver on this or that until -insert some time frame here-”.

I find it unfair and annoying that they throw buzzwords on the forums then not only fail to live up to the created expectations but also keep us completely in the dark. Which is the worst of it.

First of all, about the precusor crafting, they did say something, you just missed it. They were working on something that had to be scrapped because of other changes they made. So they’re back to the drawing board on it. Sad, but that’s what happened and they did post about it. Right here in these forums.

The sub par comment is your opinion. Anet isn’t doing a bunch of stuff every single game has done. They’re pretty much in unchartered territory. I’d say the start of the living story was unimpressive, but it got better as time went on, for me anyway. Because I could see improvement, I was happy to wait, because it meant they were on the right track (again my opinion only). The new season 2 stuff is better than anything in Season 1, but the last part of season 1 was pretty kitten ed good anyway. So I don’t agree with that.

I do agree on the armor comment, however, that said, if you look at the amount of elite armor total in Guild Wars 1, you’ll find there is currently far more variety in this game, because of transmutation.

See in Guild Wars 1, even at the end of it’s reign, you only had X number of elite armor sets and level 80 sets (some of which were dreadful in my opinion). However, you have to realize that in Guild Wars 2, with transmutation stones and the ability to mix and match and use ANY skin at level 80, it means there’s more armor in Guild Wars 2 for level 80s than Guild Wars 1. What they don’t have a special unique armor sets. But there are certainly more cosmetic options.

Harper.4173:

Fact :
More content was added to GW1 2 years after its release than was added to GW2 2 years after release.

You should get your facts straight sir. Stopped reading there.

…

kitten , I fed the troll :/

Ouroboros.5076:

Harper.4173:

Fact :
More content was added to GW1 2 years after its release than was added to GW2 2 years after release.

You should get your facts straight sir. Stopped reading there.

…

kitten , I fed the troll :/

He’s right actually. More content was added, but less content existed originally. For the two year mark, about now, they amount of content is actually equal. But by the two year mark, Guild wars 1 had added four new professions and many new skills. On the other hand, if you add up every quest in all Guild Wars 1 products put together, there were still more dynamic events in Guild Wars 2 at launch. If you count dungeons as 32 paths, Guild Wars 1 never had that many dungeons.

Just depends on your point of view.

Demonts.4593:

People don’t criticize ArenaNet because they don’t give “enough content” People criticize them because they compare Guild Wars 2 to the original Guild Wars . So lets not compare the whole life of GW2 to an expansion of the original GW. The original Guild Wars had a business model of a paid expansion every 6 month. Gw2 has a business model of Updates of a lesser amount of content every 2 weeks. So add up 12 LS updates (6 months) and compare it to an expansion of the original Guild Wars.

Now there are always those people who say “well the LS is free” but you have to take into consideration that the original Guild Wars didn’t have many micro transactions (Gem Store). So the player base should be supporting the content by Micro Transactions instead of the price of an expansion.

If you want to compare 6 months Gw2 content to an expansion if Guild Wars the expansion is a lot more. But the thing we have to look at is the cost of production. If you know how video game production works Gw2 cost significantly more due to no world limitations (jumping of walls.) being ale to see other players. But Idk how much it cost and there income and I can’t say.

In conclusion all the criticism comes from the standards of an expansion. My opinion is the content we get in 6 month is not as good as an expansion but who know there have been rumors of a 2015 expansion and if this is true Anet you nailed it. If I get content every 2 weeks and a paid expansion every two years that would be a great business model.

I treat gw2 as a completely separate game with no basis for comparison.
Also I don’t care about expansions. I don’t like change.

Wanna keep telling me the reasons I criticize Anet some more?
Jaguar.

Vayne.8563:

First of all, about the precusor crafting, they did say something, you just missed it. They were working on something that had to be scrapped because of other changes they made. So they’re back to the drawing board on it. Sad, but that’s what happened and they did post about it. Right here in these forums.

The sub par comment is your opinion. Anet isn’t doing a bunch of stuff every single game has done. They’re pretty much in unchartered territory. I’d say the start of the living story was unimpressive, but it got better as time went on, for me anyway. Because I could see improvement, I was happy to wait, because it meant they were on the right track (again my opinion only). The new season 2 stuff is better than anything in Season 1, but the last part of season 1 was pretty kitten ed good anyway. So I don’t agree with that.

I do agree on the armor comment, however, that said, if you look at the amount of elite armor total in Guild Wars 1, you’ll find there is currently far more variety in this game, because of transmutation.

See in Guild Wars 1, even at the end of it’s reign, you only had X number of elite armor sets and level 80 sets (some of which were dreadful in my opinion). However, you have to realize that in Guild Wars 2, with transmutation stones and the ability to mix and match and use ANY skin at level 80, it means there’s more armor in Guild Wars 2 for level 80s than Guild Wars 1. What they don’t have a special unique armor sets. But there are certainly more cosmetic options.

I didn’t say anything about precursor crafting.
I was talking purely about their advertisement of “new legendary weapons and a new legendary type” in 2013.
I’m not that interested in precursor crafting since I could most likely afford to buy it if I really wanted the legendary.
Still – Precursor crafting would be a great addition to this game.

Regarding the whole “sub-par” season 1 – I understand that the episodic format was new and uncharted – but the issues weren’t that. The issues were :

1)buggy releases that gave achievements out easy to those who did them quickly after patch before they got “fixed”.

2)exploitable mechanics that meant players that would play after a patch could make a lot of profit off it before it was fixed.

3)poor story writing – I don’t see how the episodic format or the new model has anything to do with the poor writing that was and still is part of our current in-game story. It’s gotten much better since S2 started but I feel that where the level of quality we have now was the level we should have had at the start of S1, and it should have gotten better.

GW1 had very well written stories and I doubt you’d disagree with me on this part.
GW2’s story – especially the living story should have been better especially after players criticized the Personal Story.

On the transmutation issue – I guess that brings some diversity – but why are you only counting elite armor? Regular level 20 sets were also sets you could wear that gave max stats.

And there were a lot of sets.

Vayne.8563:

Ouroboros.5076:

Harper.4173:

Fact :
More content was added to GW1 2 years after its release than was added to GW2 2 years after release.

You should get your facts straight sir. Stopped reading there.

…

kitten , I fed the troll :/

He’s right actually. More content was added, but less content existed originally. For the two year mark, about now, they amount of content is actually equal. But by the two year mark, Guild wars 1 had added four new professions and many new skills. On the other hand, if you add up every quest in all Guild Wars 1 products put together, there were still more dynamic events in Guild Wars 2 at launch. If you count dungeons as 32 paths, Guild Wars 1 never had that many dungeons.

Just depends on your point of view.

That’s exactly my point.

Why is it that they could add more content then – with less money, less people, less resources?

Why are we getting so little content now?
And yes people I understand that it’s a matter of perspective but look at it this way:

We’ve had very little cosmetic updates, very little skins and traits added, very few new zones and areas.

GW1’s new campaigns brought more than just mechanics, skills and armor – they brought a new setting and atmosphere – somewhere new to go, something new to explore and a new setting to get yourself lost in.

That’s what GW2 has failed to add in my opinion.

Demonts.4593:

Now there are always those people who say “well the LS is free” but you have to take into consideration that the original Guild Wars didn’t have many micro transactions (Gem Store).

except Gw1 did have a cash shop and micro transactions..

for costumes
skill unlocks
content unlocks
and in-game items.

no it wasn’t on the bloated what scale that Gw2 adopted but it was there.

lordkrall.7241:

Firstly there was only one expansion, that that was released MORE THAN TWO YEARS after Prophecies.

At the risk of invoking an argument over semantics, Factions and Nightfall expanded the game. Yes, they could be played as standalone campaigns; but they expanded the game for veteran players by offering existing characters new areas, new skills to use, new weapons and armor to collect, and a host of other things to do. If those things don’t meet your criteria for an expansion, then I’d posit your definition if far too narrow.

Original Guild Wars was just an overall better game with younger devs that wanted to create a good game with interesting stories to tell and mechanics to show.

Guild Wars 2 has removed a lot of those devs and now got a completely new dev crew that only milks for money with very uninteresting content that gets completed in an hour or three. With everything else added in the cash shop.

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

First of all, about the precusor crafting, they did say something, you just missed it. They were working on something that had to be scrapped because of other changes they made. So they’re back to the drawing board on it. Sad, but that’s what happened and they did post about it. Right here in these forums.

The sub par comment is your opinion. Anet isn’t doing a bunch of stuff every single game has done. They’re pretty much in unchartered territory. I’d say the start of the living story was unimpressive, but it got better as time went on, for me anyway. Because I could see improvement, I was happy to wait, because it meant they were on the right track (again my opinion only). The new season 2 stuff is better than anything in Season 1, but the last part of season 1 was pretty kitten ed good anyway. So I don’t agree with that.

I do agree on the armor comment, however, that said, if you look at the amount of elite armor total in Guild Wars 1, you’ll find there is currently far more variety in this game, because of transmutation.

See in Guild Wars 1, even at the end of it’s reign, you only had X number of elite armor sets and level 80 sets (some of which were dreadful in my opinion). However, you have to realize that in Guild Wars 2, with transmutation stones and the ability to mix and match and use ANY skin at level 80, it means there’s more armor in Guild Wars 2 for level 80s than Guild Wars 1. What they don’t have a special unique armor sets. But there are certainly more cosmetic options.

I didn’t say anything about precursor crafting.
I was talking purely about their advertisement of “new legendary weapons and a new legendary type” in 2013.
I’m not that interested in precursor crafting since I could most likely afford to buy it if I really wanted the legendary.
Still – Precursor crafting would be a great addition to this game.

Regarding the whole “sub-par” season 1 – I understand that the episodic format was new and uncharted – but the issues weren’t that. The issues were :

1)buggy releases that gave achievements out easy to those who did them quickly after patch before they got “fixed”.

2)exploitable mechanics that meant players that would play after a patch could make a lot of profit off it before it was fixed.

3)poor story writing – I don’t see how the episodic format or the new model has anything to do with the poor writing that was and still is part of our current in-game story. It’s gotten much better since S2 started but I feel that where the level of quality we have now was the level we should have had at the start of S1, and it should have gotten better.

GW1 had very well written stories and I doubt you’d disagree with me on this part.
GW2’s story – especially the living story should have been better especially after players criticized the Personal Story.

On the transmutation issue – I guess that brings some diversity – but why are you only counting elite armor? Regular level 20 sets were also sets you could wear that gave max stats.

And there were a lot of sets.

The story telling did get better toward the end of season 1. That was part of the improvement. Guild Wars 1 story telling was up and down. The Prophecies story was relatively cliche. Many of the stories had annoying oversights. It wasn’t Shakespeare.

The personal story in Guild Wars 2 was mediocre storytelling (for the most part). But the end of Season 1 was a lot better.

Exploits and bugs exist in every game in almost every patch. I’ve yet to see otherwise. The faster you release stuff, naturally the more bugs it will have. They went with an aggressive schedule, they’re going to have more bugs. It happens to most games these days, because people can’t wait long enough to release stuff.

Welcome to the present.

I suppose if you compare LS2 to the canned fanfic tripe that was Ls1 it is an improvment.

So is adding 3 raisins to a bowl of watery gruel.

Yay. Raisins.

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

First of all, about the precusor crafting, they did say something, you just missed it. They were working on something that had to be scrapped because of other changes they made. So they’re back to the drawing board on it. Sad, but that’s what happened and they did post about it. Right here in these forums.

The sub par comment is your opinion. Anet isn’t doing a bunch of stuff every single game has done. They’re pretty much in unchartered territory. I’d say the start of the living story was unimpressive, but it got better as time went on, for me anyway. Because I could see improvement, I was happy to wait, because it meant they were on the right track (again my opinion only). The new season 2 stuff is better than anything in Season 1, but the last part of season 1 was pretty kitten ed good anyway. So I don’t agree with that.

I do agree on the armor comment, however, that said, if you look at the amount of elite armor total in Guild Wars 1, you’ll find there is currently far more variety in this game, because of transmutation.

See in Guild Wars 1, even at the end of it’s reign, you only had X number of elite armor sets and level 80 sets (some of which were dreadful in my opinion). However, you have to realize that in Guild Wars 2, with transmutation stones and the ability to mix and match and use ANY skin at level 80, it means there’s more armor in Guild Wars 2 for level 80s than Guild Wars 1. What they don’t have a special unique armor sets. But there are certainly more cosmetic options.

I didn’t say anything about precursor crafting.
I was talking purely about their advertisement of “new legendary weapons and a new legendary type” in 2013.
I’m not that interested in precursor crafting since I could most likely afford to buy it if I really wanted the legendary.
Still – Precursor crafting would be a great addition to this game.

Regarding the whole “sub-par” season 1 – I understand that the episodic format was new and uncharted – but the issues weren’t that. The issues were :

1)buggy releases that gave achievements out easy to those who did them quickly after patch before they got “fixed”.

2)exploitable mechanics that meant players that would play after a patch could make a lot of profit off it before it was fixed.

3)poor story writing – I don’t see how the episodic format or the new model has anything to do with the poor writing that was and still is part of our current in-game story. It’s gotten much better since S2 started but I feel that where the level of quality we have now was the level we should have had at the start of S1, and it should have gotten better.

GW1 had very well written stories and I doubt you’d disagree with me on this part.
GW2’s story – especially the living story should have been better especially after players criticized the Personal Story.

On the transmutation issue – I guess that brings some diversity – but why are you only counting elite armor? Regular level 20 sets were also sets you could wear that gave max stats.

And there were a lot of sets.

The story telling did get better toward the end of season 1. That was part of the improvement. Guild Wars 1 story telling was up and down. The Prophecies story was relatively cliche. Many of the stories had annoying oversights. It wasn’t Shakespeare.

The personal story in Guild Wars 2 was mediocre storytelling (for the most part). But the end of Season 1 was a lot better.

Exploits and bugs exist in every game in almost every patch. I’ve yet to see otherwise. The faster you release stuff, naturally the more bugs it will have. They went with an aggressive schedule, they’re going to have more bugs. It happens to most games these days, because people can’t wait long enough to release stuff.

Welcome to the present.

Man, I didn’t expect you to still be here in full force after this much time. a few hundred posts in the last week alone… You’re bigger and badder than ever before.

P.s. there was this guy named Nage.1520 that was posing as you. He was rather good at it too.

Everyone complaining stuff on the internet. Get use to it.

Farzo.8410:

Original Guild Wars was just an overall better game with younger devs that wanted to create a good game with interesting stories to tell and mechanics to show.

Really wish they told an interesting story then, instead of reheated cliche heaped onto stereotype . . . really, Prophecies was the worst storyline which has been connected to ArenaNet.

Bar none.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Farzo.8410:

Original Guild Wars was just an overall better game with younger devs that wanted to create a good game with interesting stories to tell and mechanics to show.

Really wish they told an interesting story then, instead of reheated cliche heaped onto stereotype . . . really, Prophecies was the worst storyline which has been connected to ArenaNet.

Bar none.

Eh. I have a hard time believing that any story not featuring The Scarlett Snowflake has any hope of winning the coveted “Anet Worst Story” Razzie.

pssh. Prophecies didn’t even have Ley lines.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Farzo.8410:

Original Guild Wars was just an overall better game with younger devs that wanted to create a good game with interesting stories to tell and mechanics to show.

Really wish they told an interesting story then, instead of reheated cliche heaped onto stereotype . . . really, Prophecies was the worst storyline which has been connected to ArenaNet.

Bar none.

Eh. I have a hard time believing that any story not featuring The Scarlett Snowflake has any hope of winning the coveted “Anet Worst Story” Razzie.

pssh. Prophecies didn’t even have Ley lines.

No, but it did have the most transparent traitor-turn yet. And a runner-up for “how did we not know this guy was going to betray us?” . . .

On the plus side, they offed Rurik early on, instead of making us continue escorting him. Oh, and it had Oink The Incredible.

I was honestly most annoyed by Nightfall’s story line.

They basically turned everything in GW1 up to that point into “Because Abaddon.”

Vizier Khilbron no longer made a tragic mistake that set him down a dark path. Nope, he knew all along what was going to happen… because Abaddon.

Shiro Tagachi no longer had some legitimately understandable reasons to think his Emperor was actually trying to have him killed. Nope, he was just a rube easily duped by some charlatan… because Abaddon.

Then to top it all off, Arena.net basically destroys everything that made those antagonists potentially compelling to… do absolutely nothing with them. They don’t impact Nightfall’s story at all. Nope, Arena.net ruined them so that we could get one more boss fight with the both of them.

Man, I’ll be honest, I didn’t finish Nightfall for two weeks after the Gate of Madness mission. It took me that long to get over that empty waste of characters.

chemiclord.3978:

I was honestly most annoyed by Nightfall’s story line.

Most annoyed by is more Factions for me, and as a whole. The incredibly distracting Kurzick/Luxon stuff after the halfway point made me wonder if they’d even listened or paid attention to what was going on with Shiro. Then there was the Faction mechanics . . . and, of course, Master Togo.

But Prophecies was the one which made me go “what a letdown”. And I know it’s only because the story was supposed to exist to get the characters through the hoops and into PvP. Still, it was . . . disappointing. And they did better with Nightfall.

(The aforementioned link to Abaddon notwithstanding – that felt forced and unnecessary to try to tie the three together into a trilogy. I went with it, mostly because the alternative was to just stop caring.)

Farzo.8410:

Original Guild Wars was just an overall better game with younger devs that wanted to create a good game with interesting stories to tell and mechanics to show.

If we’re talking about story/storytelling, I think this game does it slightly better than its predecessor. If we’re just talking game/design, I think this game is miles better than the original. The stagnation we’ve had since launch is disappointing, but the core game is better by leaps and bounds in just about every way.

I dont know about you, but even thou GW2 is based around the cash shop, which gw1 also did have, that is not really an issue for me. Living story is not original to GW2 either, WoW has been doing it for years with every expansion gating content and updates through its life cycle which essentially results in the same thing.
What bothers me and most people i read, is that this game simple has little to do with GW1, it is not building up on its predecessor its a completely different game, which many people dont like. Take the skills and class system, the buff and debuff system, weapon switching system, all this things have nothing to do nor are an improvement on the previous game, they are flat out different. And many dont like them.

And while they could implement more weapons the problem remains the same, lack of customization. In all honestly, the best thing they could do to get this game closer to GW1 is add say 10 skills for every weapon each class uses and let you customize your skills, that is it.

I do criticize AN because their decisions aren’t logical at some times. Let’s see some examples! ;

• They do not offer realistic skins for Medium classes.
• They do not communicate about plans to fix Ranger class, CDI gone trashbin.
• There is no Living World. There is only a world that gets destroyed time to time. Destroy Forts in Tyria (after LA…), which isn’t a good call by far when there is already very low amount of them…
• They overdesign skins instead making a good visual hierarchy between players
• Some serious topic is hypocritically punished.
• Lack of polishing existing content – maps and world, + skins. – with exception of very few.
• No capes because one race that could wear it with a simple cut or lenght difference.
• RNG. Everywhere. A Lot. (Let’s play S2 with an underpowered ranger that can not charge sigil with kills now and getting its dumb pet being transformed to Llama 3 times instead us by the Skritt Burglar)

Other than these, I’m good with it. Season 2 isn’t that childish as previous stories was.
There is content now if you spend only ~2 hours playing / day and not rushing/dulfysearch.

My observation is that people complain when it’s not what they, personally,think is the way things “should” be done. Since here are millions of potential players with licensing to this game, it should not be surprising that there are a portion of the player bar who feel that the game isn’t what they want it to be.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Farzo.8410:

Original Guild Wars was just an overall better game with younger devs that wanted to create a good game with interesting stories to tell and mechanics to show.

Really wish they told an interesting story then, instead of reheated cliche heaped onto stereotype . . . really, Prophecies was the worst storyline which has been connected to ArenaNet.

Bar none.

Eh. I have a hard time believing that any story not featuring The Scarlett Snowflake has any hope of winning the coveted “Anet Worst Story” Razzie.

pssh. Prophecies didn’t even have Ley lines.

No, but it did have the most transparent traitor-turn yet. And a runner-up for “how did we not know this guy was going to betray us?” . . .

On the plus side, they offed Rurik early on, instead of making us continue escorting him. Oh, and it had Oink The Incredible.

Oink the Wonderpig. Savior of Noobs. Master of One word Dialog.

I was actually a bit upset with Ruriks demise. Here I’m more Yeah.. whatever.

I also didn’t see The White Mantle are bad guys! coming. I was a bit WTF there. Vizier Jafar.. er.. Khibron, yeah, obvious enough cept for when. That was a reveal early on with the Lich appearing and doing the muaa haa haa. Easy dots to connect.

Without comparing the Games though, Scarlett is/was terrible, astoundingly terrible. No “terrible as compared to”. Surprises were, for me, on the order of.. oh god no.. ANOTHER impossible alliance/ability!! My emotional reaction was and still is “Please stop” and it isn’t directed at the NPC.

Tossing a canned fantasy staple in and rewriting everything to fit, I dunno, it just strikes me as uninspired and lazy. Ley lines. Whatever. 10 mins on google will demonstrate that Ley lines can explain anything someone wishes to explain. Anything. Nothing in fantasy is really new, but take the time to change the names at the very least. Use the concept instead of dropping it in “in toto”.

I guess as well this applies to character tropes. They didn’t have to be so glaring. The Honey Boo Boo adorably precocious Tiami didn’t also have to be the disability poster child. Braham becoming Braham One Eye or Braham One Arm would have been far more interesting to actually see and develop in-game. Sam Spade and the Blonde got old fast. My teddy bear… sob. Yeah, I cried a bit inside, for the writing, not Kasmeer. Eh, whatever.

Subtlety may be hard to write into a game, but I don’t see how that means Characterization has to be done with the Club of 1000 Bears. I personally hate how the dialog doesn’t allow the PC to dislike a snowflake NPC. “talk to the group” instead of “talk to your friends” works fine. For some reason the “friends” thing has ticked me off since I was told to say farewell to my “friend” Logan. What. Who.. when did this happen.. NO, just NO.

Comparing GW2 to no other game would still end up with me finding the PS/LS to be canned, tepid and uninspired.

This won’t end well.

By biggest criticism of Anet is their inability to communicate with us. They keep us in the dark about everything. I want to know exactly what they’re working on fixing, and features they’re working on implementing. And I want to be kept up to date. Hiding everything from us for some big feature pack is just dumb.

Yeah, it would help on their work and our content if we could work Together.
We Rangers, we’re completely in black.

Anet needs to hire a community manager who’s job is to engage the community, all the time. But a lot of questions still won’t be answered.

Vayne.8563:

Anet needs to hire a community manager who’s job is to engage the community, all the time. But a lot of questions still won’t be answered.

Community manager are not devs, they can forward info to devs but if the answer is “no comment” then there is not much they can do about it.

Well, what you will generally find in cases where a company IS “communicating” with their players… guess what? It’s generally through community managers and not developers.

Developers in pretty much EVERY “AAA” game talk sparingly with the players. They don’t have the time to spend hours bouncing back and forth getting the okay from upper brass to talk about [x] and their plans for [y] so that the fans can be mollified. They have too many responsibilities and deadlines to meet to sit down with the fans more than once in a blue moon.

That’s what community managers DO. They do the legwork so that all a developer has to do is look at what is about to be said (what questions can be answered, what that answer will be, etc…) and give the thumbs up.

I do concur that Arena.net needs another CM for the expressed purpose of handling the forum community.

It seems to me that so much of the complaining about lack of content stems from a lack of understanding of the complexity and gargantuan amount of time involved in creating the content they do see.

And then there’s the complaining that stems from people not understanding that ANet tries to build at least a little bit of content for everyone and they will never start making 100% of their content to perfectly cater to just one small subset of their player base.

And then there’s the complaints about changes they would like made but will never happen because they haven’t considered or can’t understand the ramifications or technological limitations of such a change.

And then there’s the complaints that are perhaps legitimate and well formed and that ANet are probably already working or aware of but ANet isn’t going to say anything about because if they say they are working on it or aware of it, they’ll get more complaints every month forever about “why haven’t you fixed this yet? It’s been X years!”.

I think there was this one dev who did talk extensively with players, what was his name . . . oh, Josh Foreman.

That didn’t go very well.

Firstly there was only one expansion, that that was released MORE THAN TWO YEARS after Prophecies.

Wrong, Factions was released 1 year later with Nightfall appearing 6 months after that
From Wiki..
Guild Wars is the first game created by developer ArenaNet. Senior developers from Blizzard Entertainment, some involved in the early development of World of Warcraft left to create ArenaNet to develop a game which took risks with game design and business model. Guild Wars development was first announced in April 2003. Guild Wars Prophecies, initially marketed simply as Guild Wars, was released in April 2005. Sorrow’s Furnace added further playable content to Prophecies in September 2005. Guild Wars Factions was released exactly a year after Prophecies in April 2006 followed six months later by Guild Wars Nightfall in October 2006. A fourth campaign was in development, but after reviewing feedback from fans and the sort of changes they wanted to make, ArenaNet elected to focus on an expansion pack, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, released in August 2007, a series of updates known as Guild Wars Beyond, and Guild Wars 2.

Demonts.4593:

Now there are always those people who say “well the LS is free” but you have to take into consideration that the original Guild Wars didn’t have many micro transactions (Gem Store). So the player base should be supporting the content by Micro Transactions instead of the price of an expansion.

In conclusion all the criticism comes from the standards of an expansion. My opinion is the content we get in 6 month is not as good as an expansion but who know there have been rumors of a 2015 expansion and if this is true Anet you nailed it. If I get content every 2 weeks and a paid expansion every two years that would be a great business model.

Gem Store profits NCsoft. NCsoft gives budgets to ANet for GW2.
NCsoft then decides if it wants to make expansion for, with profits from everything they literally own.

Part of the blame goes to NCsoft…

Demonts.4593:

In conclusion all the criticism comes from the standards of an expansion. My opinion is the content we get in 6 month is not as good as an expansion but who know there have been rumors of a 2015 expansion and if this is true Anet you nailed it. If I get content every 2 weeks and a paid expansion every two years that would be a great business model.

Not all criticism comes from the standards of an expansion.

Ashen.2907:

Demonts.4593:

In conclusion all the criticism comes from the standards of an expansion. My opinion is the content we get in 6 month is not as good as an expansion but who know there have been rumors of a 2015 expansion and if this is true Anet you nailed it. If I get content every 2 weeks and a paid expansion every two years that would be a great business model.

Not all criticism comes from the standards of an expansion.

Some criticism, and I’d say the bulk of it, comes from ways the core game doesn’t satisfy a player or group of players in some manner.

Strangely, it is usually the most constructive criticism.

People criticizing Anet and Gw2 because they aren’t infallible, they have things wrong with them, and they deserve to be criticized. The criticism, as with any game, is multifaceted and stems from several sources, some of which are subjective and based upon players personal preferences making the situation even more difficult to pin down. You can’t just find a single source for the criticism (or problems).
The numb-brained GW1 fanatics can just be ignored. Nothing will ever replace their precious, they’ll forever hail it as being a god-tier game, and they’ll never forgive Anet/GW2 for daring to change.

With regards to expansion, I don’t really understand it. They’re fundamentally the same as regular patches, and anything they can deliver can be delivered in patches as well. In my experience (talking about other games as well here) it’s really just a matter of packaging.

Arewn.2368:

With regards to expansion, I don’t really understand it. They’re fundamentally the same as regular patches, and anything they can deliver can be delivered in patches as well. In my experience (talking about other games as well here) it’s really just a matter of packaging.

Longer time to develop content can lead to higher quality work, the ability to delay/scrap bad content, cohesive design and story, content that tailors to many groups simultaneously.

Arewn.2368:

With regards to expansion, I don’t really understand it. They’re fundamentally the same as regular patches, and anything they can deliver can be delivered in patches as well. In my experience (talking about other games as well here) it’s really just a matter of packaging.

A traditional expansion allows the developers to release content when it’s ready, while the Living Story forces developers to release content when it’s due.

Openly admitting that I didn’t read this entire thread, but as a Gw1 player myself I’d like to explain a few strong reasons why we (the gw1 playerbase) are entitled to complain/criticize Anet.

In Gw1 there were many things that, if you asked any Gw1 player, were done very well. There were flaws. But, ultimately there was very little that we sat around and complained about because we knew what this game was capable of and it delivered to an acceptable range on that exact scale.

However, when we take our standards of acceptance from Gw1 and transfer it to Gw2 we see many things that don’t meet that level of expectation.

An example would be very large amounts of content that haven’t been refined and hold a vast amount of bugs. I’ll admit I didn’t play from day 1 of Gw1, but I did start about 1 year after its release. Within that time they had refined a vast majority of bugs that were in existence that I was unaware of prior to my engagement of that game. We’ve been live in Gw2 for 2 years now and coming up on 3, and we’re still able to find many large amounts of bugs in the game. This is because they keep trying to introduce far too much without refining it first like they did in Gw1. Expansions came out tested and fairly stable from day 1 with minor changes and balances made to fix anything that was found. The content every 2 weeks is lessening the amount of time Anet can focus on the current issues and just adds more issues to the pile.

There were many things in Gw1 that were utility based features that helped us greatly in communication and coordination that haven’t been passed into this game.

/resign: a very useful emote to pull you out of any instance at any time. It had its drawbacks; like if not every player wrote it – it wouldn’t work, but the intent and usefulness was fantastic.

Template Codes: equipment and skill templates were able to be shared instantaneously from anywhere (it worked better in towns, but you could still send codes in instances if you copied the code from the notepad in your Gw1 folder). These held every last skill, attribute point, and equipment piece that was on your character in 2 simple hyper linked clicks. These things never made it into Gw2. Heck – we can’t even ping traits around yet.

Divided Game Types: PvP and PvE were essentially divided areas entirely. A PvP character could never enter PvE, but a PvE character could enter PvP. In Gw2 we are forced into PvP type situations with WvW. Many players don’t like being inhibited from progression and the only way to pass that barrier is to do something they don’t like. If you’re a Gw1 player it’s like telling us to reach T6 Gladiator before you can get an elite skill or Tiger rank in Hall of Heros. If you’re a Gw2 player it’s as simple as pointing out that you can’t have 100% map completion without going into WvW on a server that has no WvW presence and the enemy is camping your spawn point.

We understand that Gw2 isn’t Gw1, but we also understand that the people who made Gw2 are the same people who made Gw1 – the same people that we gave feedback to in both games since day 1 and praised various aspects of the game to. What we as Gw1 players are now feeling is that all that praise and guidance that we gave back in Gw1 about what we liked and didn’t like seems to have begun falling on deaf ears.

So the reason we complain is because we devoted up to 8 years in Gw1 helping shape it into the acceptable game that we as the players had asked for before Gw2 came out. We signed up for the Gw2 Beta and began helping point out the things we felt were missing from Gw1 that would make it feel more like home – and at the start – we thought they were listening. Now we don’t feel like we’re being heard and we’re trying to get attention. We’re trying to get the “old Anet” back. The ones who listened, were helpful, kind, cortious, and sent holiday letters to GL’s that thanked them for being a key component in the games livelihood. We simply want a better game and a better gaming family. Nothing more, nothing less.

So when you next see a Gw1 player trying to compare Gw1 to Gw2 sit back and ask yourself (and I use a metaphor here) if you put almost 10 years, a decade, of your life into a marriage and equally helped shape it to become the best it could be, and suddenly after you moved/tried to “improve” something in your lives you started to slowly go down hill because the other side started to care less and less and ignore you more and more – wouldn’t you feel a little betrayed?

Except that you weren’t ever married, and that the other person just considered you one of millions of people they paid attention to?

You can feel betrayed all you want… but you wouldn’t be justified to any compensation or sympathy.

It’s a different game, and frankly, they don’t “owe” you anything, no matter how many years you put into GW1 (and this is coming from a person whose played since Beta Weekend #1 of Prophecies).

I will never understand why the official game forums easily have the most negative comments about the game from anywhere. I can only assume it stems from the One True Comment of the internet: “I know you can read this, and I think you are terrible.”

Either enjoy the game for what it is or find something else that you like better, but all this endless whinging is really irritating. It’s a new game, lots of new developers, new designers, of course it’s not going to be the same. And if what they have delivered isn’t what they promised, then just maybe what they promised wasn’t plausible. If you want to criticize anything, then criticize that they promised something undeliverable. But do it a year ago, when that criticism was actually something not said a million times over.