Guild Wars 2

Personally I’d get more invested. at this point I feel like I still have nothing to look forward to.

In theory, yes. In practise…not always, but sometimes.

The idea is, we know there will be a decreased amount of content coming into GW2 in the time between LS2 and HoT, so if players know the release date, they can easily think “Well, im gonna take a break until HoT comes, because im not missing anything.” but if they don’t know the release date, they will stay around to see what information comes up.

I personally, am sticking around anyway, to prepare my account for HoT. Clean out the bank for all those new items, get all my characters into ascended gear, ready to receive those juicy new skins, and maybe find a guild, if I can find something stable.

The main reason we don’t have a release date is because ANet themselves don’t know yet. It depends on how the beta goes.

It may turn out that some of the systems they put in place will be rather poorly received by the players, meaning they have to go back and try again before release.

Argon.1563:

In theory, yes. In practise…not always, but sometimes.

The idea is, we know there will be a decreased amount of content coming into GW2 in the time between LS2 and HoT, so if players know the release date, they can easily think “Well, im gonna take a break until HoT comes, because im not missing anything.” but if they don’t know the release date, they will stay around to see what information comes up.

I personally, am sticking around anyway, to prepare my account for HoT. Clean out the bank for all those new items, get all my characters into ascended gear, ready to receive those juicy new skins, and maybe find a guild, if I can find something stable.

These are good points. To be honest I actually stopped logging in for anything but dailys. I feel like gw2 has be stale for a long time now. I’m having trouble finding anything to do. I have the mats made up for 2 legendarY’s. I’m thinking about turning over some mats to make the time gated stuff for an ascended set. I’ve been holding off in case the zerker meta ended and now because I main switch mains with the specializations coming out.

Back to your original points though, I guess the safe bet is that it will kill most people’s hype. I never understood the unknown release date. within a month should be doable in any industry.

No, it will usually be something people look forward to. Certainty and all that. Of course failing to meet the promised release date will always result in a backlash of some degree.
So some developers/publishers chose to not risk it and only reveal a release date when they are sure of it.

I doubt arenanet doesn’t already have an idea of when HoT will be done, every professional project must have time management. But they feel there are to many things that could still mess with the time table that they keep it quiet.

I reckon HoT will be released end of August to early October.

Now you know the approx. date, happy now?

That’s when they expect GW2 to jump massively in earnings anyway.

A OK.8276:

Personally I’d get more invested. at this point I feel like I still have nothing to look forward to.

I feel they created a lot of hype that is dying pretty quickly due to the lack of the date and their usual lame pattern of revealing things at an extremely slow pace bit by bit like the feature packs creating a “that’s it?” reaction instead of “we got so much cool stuff!”

Even something like Q2 or Q3 2015 or August 2015 would do. I doubt most people want something in the format of “March 23rd, 2015 at 9:31:50 am PST” …

They did the same with the launch of GW2, they announced the project so far ahead of time that so many of us even forgot they were still working on it…

Meglobob.8620:

I reckon HoT will be released end of August to early October.

Now you know the approx. date, happy now?

That’s when they expect GW2 to jump massively in earnings anyway.

I hope you’re right, 2016 would be a marketing suicide & anything late-October is Time-To-Market suicide.

LostBalloon.6423:

I hope you’re right, 2016 would be a marketing suicide & anything late-October is Time-To-Market suicide.

And releasing it unfinished in 2015 would be even worse.

ArenaNet actually do real betas. And as such it is quite likely that they don’t actually have a release date yet, and for all they (and we) know it could end up being released in 2016 if there are much stuff that needs to be fixed/changed.

And to be fair, as far as I am aware they have never actually said that it would be released this year.

Of course they have a tentative release date based on their current back log, and any design changes that come up when they have a beta.

We’ll only get a release date when the core of HoT is for the most part completed and they feel comfortable that what they’re putting out is ‘right’.

They’re simply following a product/release road map that, I can only imagine based on experience, shows a minimum of 6 months of milestones.

Just sit tight, take in the information we receive on a weekly basis, and soon before you know it, HoT will be out.

Another ANet can’t win request.

“Don’t wait to the last minute to tell us stuff is coming! Let us give you feedback!”

“Don’t tell us so far in advance that we lose interest!”

“When you tell us something it had better be available Right Now!”

“What you’ve told us would be horrible if implemented as is Right Now!”

lordkrall.7241:

LostBalloon.6423:

I hope you’re right, 2016 would be a marketing suicide & anything late-October is Time-To-Market suicide.

And releasing it unfinished in 2015 would be even worse.

---

ArenaNet actually do real betas. And as such it is quite likely that they don’t actually have a release date yet, and for all they (and we) know it could end up being released in 2016 if there are much stuff that needs to be fixed/changed.

And to be fair, as far as I am aware they have never actually said that it would be released this year.

Yup, I agree, but the xpac is the continuation of the current LS. So they kinda locked themselves in somewhat of a deadline. It will be an interesting thing to see how they handle this whole thing, but I would not hold my breath. My guess is it will get released in 2015 with very little beta testing and adjustments will occur with subsequent patches.

Donari.5237:

Another ANet can’t win request.

“Don’t wait to the last minute to tell us stuff is coming! Let us give you feedback!”

“Don’t tell us so far in advance that we lose interest!”

“When you tell us something it had better be available Right Now!”

“What you’ve told us would be horrible if implemented as is Right Now!”

The issue is they have locked out any potential LS actually happening until the xpac and that we will be getting nothing or just fillers such as the current event or another wvw tournament with nothing going on in pve. On the bright side we will probably get another SAB event (world 3) if they happen to have those few resources freed up.

Precursor crafting was a known issue since launch and they kept saying “soon” until they went totally silent on the issue and now are bringing it behind a paywall. That is a slap in the face.

The rest I think just comes from people’s excitement and eagerness to play the new stuff. And again, as we’ve all said when complaining they don’t talk to us enough, there will always be those who whine, but at least we won’t be hit with huge surprises. The commander tag crisis that was avoided only happened because they communicated their intention and the forums ignited on the topic leading to ANET making the proper adjustments.

Oh, I agree there’s a severe break in the story due to the decision to set things “ten minutes later.” Their LS team has done a lot with a small group of people, so I can hope for some side adventures that aren’t necessarily synchronous with the LS.

My point was aimed at those decrying ANet for telling us they’re working on something big, and giving us a lot more details about it than they are wont to do, when its very size means they can’t set a release date yet. They aren’t hiding it from us, they are inviting us in on the development process earlier than they have before and thus are telling us things that aren’t ready for live.

So let’s try to be happy we’ve learned this much already. For those who can’t keep up their excitement levels, go be excited about other stuff (e.g. I hear a really good movie debuted this weekend — snow kept me from seeing it yet, though). A casual check of forum thread titles will tell you when something interesting happens and you won’t get ulcers from stressing over not getting it Right Now.

My hype was killed long ago when HoT was announced without a release date or price. In the words of Julia Roberts…

lordkrall.7241:

LostBalloon.6423:

I hope you’re right, 2016 would be a marketing suicide & anything late-October is Time-To-Market suicide.

And releasing it unfinished in 2015 would be even worse.

---

ArenaNet actually do real betas.

Ow, I contest this.

Starting the game with an Engineer it was glaringly obvious that upon release that profession was not finished. Took months before basic stats applied to kits, or kits got autoattacks, or sigils worked. Same thing with conjured weapons for Ele’s.
Grouping was not implemented at launch, you were at the mercy rng whether or not you got into the same overflow as your friends. Backslots were practically none existent at launch just one from personal story, maybe somewhere else.
And than there was of course the karma exploit that resulted in a bunch of early bans. Pretty big oversight.
Let’s not forget the culling in WvW, that got so bad they had to nerf stealth in general because of how terrible it was.

Was it enough to delay a whole game for? Probably not. Something like the grouping thing got implemented, and than fixed, fairly quickly.

But to say only completely finished products get released is just not true. And I’m sure people could chime in more things that weren’t done or very well polished at the time of launch.
The expansion will, just like the base game, be released when it’s complete enough. Meaning it’s got the big things covered, and whatever is missing in content or polish can be done shortly in the post-launch period.

This whole conversation makes me laugh. A month ago, people were saying we just want to know if you’re working on an expansion or not. We don’t need a date. We don’t need anything, just let us know.

Of course, once you do that, people complain that they’re losing hype because they don’t have a date.

I can’t imagine too many businesses that face this many lose/lose propositions.

Yes revealing the date does kill hype if the date of release is too far from the current date, or too close that someone would have to postpone purchasing it. Remember it’s all about numbers and aiming to get the #1 bought MMO of 2015 slogan which brings forth the possibility of bringing back old player’s and bring in new one’s, but most of all obtaining the results from the purchases within that current week or month.

I assume it’ll come out for the 3rd anniversary, but that’s not what I’m overly concerned with. If it comes out earlier, yay, if later worry has even more wait.

What are we going to do until it launches? I really loved the 2 week release cycle (I never wanted an xpac if things continued as planned), it gave me and my friends something to look forward to doing. But what are we going to do for the next 4 (min) to 8 (most likely) to 10 (I hope not) months while they’re finishing HoT. There’s only so many WvW tourneys/festivals/nothing that can keep people’s interest.

Vayne.8563:

This whole conversation makes me laugh. A month ago, people were saying we just want to know if you’re working on an expansion or not. We don’t need a date. We don’t need anything, just let us know.

Of course, once you do that, people complain that they’re losing hype because they don’t have a date.

This whole post makes me laugh, thinking “People” are one coherent mind. What experience could possibly make you think that “People” wouldn’t have inconsistencies in their collective behavior?

If you set a date and miss it you create a lot of negative ill will, else you will hit your date and release something that is buggy and uncompleted and create a different type of ill will. If you don’t set a date you will still create some ill will but only a fraction of what you would do if you missed it or released with bugs.

Plan on it being sometime in the next 2 years and then be pleasantly surprised when its Aug-Oct this year. Good hunting!

Only if it’s a close date. If ArenaNet said “Heart of Thorns will launch on GW2’s Fifth Anniversary!”, most peoples hype would die immediately. If they said “Heart of Thorns launches March 31st!” People would start hyping even more.

Morsus.5106:

Only if it’s a close date. If ArenaNet said “Heart of Thorns will launch on GW2’s Fifth Anniversary!”, most peoples hype would die immediately. If they said “Heart of Thorns launches March 31st!” People would start hyping even more.

By people “hyping more” you mean “the retailers screaming they weren’t given industry norm advance warning and telling NCSoft to get stuffed because they aren’t juggling their shelves on short notice to display the rogue product”, right?

Nike.2631:

Morsus.5106:

Only if it’s a close date. If ArenaNet said “Heart of Thorns will launch on GW2’s Fifth Anniversary!”, most peoples hype would die immediately. If they said “Heart of Thorns launches March 31st!” People would start hyping even more.

By people “hyping more” you mean “the retailers screaming they weren’t given industry norm advance warning and telling NCSoft to get stuffed because they aren’t juggling their shelves on short notice to display the rogue product”, right?

To some people the concept of supply chain management doesn’t exist.

Nike.2631:

Morsus.5106:

Only if it’s a close date. If ArenaNet said “Heart of Thorns will launch on GW2’s Fifth Anniversary!”, most peoples hype would die immediately. If they said “Heart of Thorns launches March 31st!” People would start hyping even more.

By people “hyping more” you mean “the retailers screaming they weren’t given industry norm advance warning and telling NCSoft to get stuffed because they aren’t juggling their shelves on short notice to display the rogue product”, right?

In my hypothetical/pipe dream “March 31st” release date, I was sort of assuming retailers had been notified far in advance.

Retailers aren’t exactly bastions of secrecy .

Obviously they’re too far from release to give us an ETA. And that’s wise. So many MMOs have given release dates too early and when they don’t materialise on time there’s various downsides.

IMO ArenaNet announced HoT when they did to draw attention away from ESO. Until now GW2 has been THE premier B2P MMO and the payment model has been a big part of its success. Now ESO’s moving to the same one.

I’d have to say it’s worked a little on me. I’ll probably still give ESO another look once the sub goes but I also came back to GW2 and finished levelling a few professions to 80 which I otherwise would not have done. And some of the new stuff in HoT is shiny enough that I’m strongly considering just sticking with GW2.

who cares? you can pretty much guess it’s going to be mid-late summer. beta in march will likely last 2-3 months. then launch. like for the original release. don’t think we’ll have to wait till august tho.

Caeledh.5437:

Obviously they’re too far from release to give us an ETA. And that’s wise. So many MMOs have given release dates too early and when they don’t materialise on time there’s various downsides.

IMO ArenaNet announced HoT when they did to draw attention away from ESO. Until now GW2 has been THE premier B2P MMO and the payment model has been a big part of its success. Now ESO’s moving to the same one.

I’d have to say it’s worked a little on me. I’ll probably still give ESO another look once the sub goes but I also came back to GW2 and finished levelling a few professions to 80 which I otherwise would not have done. And some of the new stuff in HoT is shiny enough that I’m strongly considering just sticking with GW2.

HoT was officially announced on 24 January after people being invited via an in-game add on 13 January, ESO “B2P” was announced on 21 January which is more than a week after ArenaNet told us about the announcement.

Nike.2631:

Vayne.8563:

This whole conversation makes me laugh. A month ago, people were saying we just want to know if you’re working on an expansion or not. We don’t need a date. We don’t need anything, just let us know.

Of course, once you do that, people complain that they’re losing hype because they don’t have a date.

This whole post makes me laugh, thinking “People” are one coherent mind. What experience could possibly make you think that “People” wouldn’t have inconsistencies in their collective behavior?

I don’t think people have coherent mind and I can’t imagine what part of my post makes you think that I’m trying to imply it. It’s a fact that there were people who asked for this and complained that Anet could at least give us this.

What you’re saying is sort of my point.

I didn’t say they were the same people.

Does no one remember “When It’s Done” while the main game itself was under development?

I really don’t understand the folks who HAVE to have a date months and months and months and months and months in advance. Does knowing the precise and exact instant the game will drop for two years before said game drops really make the wait any shorter? It never has for me.

Seriously, folks. “When It’s Done” isn’t ArenaNet trolling its player base – that’s when the game is going to release. They don’t know when it’ll be done. They likely have a pretty good guess given their own knowledge, but ‘pretty good guesses’ that turn out to be not quite good enough – or that turn out to be completely off base – are orders of magnitude worse than a firm release date announced later in the development cycle than people may otherwise like.

Trust me, guys. I play MechWarrior Online. Back in 2013, those guys would hand out ‘firm release dates’ on a kitten near monthly basis, and they missed every single one of them. Within a year the situation got so bad that third-party gaming news websites were documenting the open rebellion of the MWO player base against Piranha’s practices. It was awful. The game was starting to show signs of potentially going under completely, in large part because the development team would not, could not, hit the dates Marketing kept ladling out there and trying to force on them.

(Also for numerous other reasons, but the “in 90 days” and “Soon™” issues were an undeniable factor.)

I get it. These are the official GW2 forums, and nobody on an official forum ever has anything nice to say about/to/around the developers of the game they’re on the official forum for. I have yet to see an official forum that hasn’t seemed more like a spike-strewn snake pit with a flamethrower floor than an honest community appreciative of the game they get to play, and I’m used to it at this point. But stupidity will never stop bothering me, and if you haven’t figured out that they say “when it’s done” because that’s when they intend to release it...well, if the shoe fits, I suppose.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

I assume it’ll come out for the 3rd anniversary, but that’s not what I’m overly concerned with. If it comes out earlier, yay, if later worry has even more wait.

What are we going to do until it launches? I really loved the 2 week release cycle (I never wanted an xpac if things continued as planned), it gave me and my friends something to look forward to doing. But what are we going to do for the next 4 (min) to 8 (most likely) to 10 (I hope not) months while they’re finishing HoT. There’s only so many WvW tourneys/festivals/nothing that can keep people’s interest.

SAB! :O

Vayne.8563:

Nike.2631:

Vayne.8563:

This whole conversation makes me laugh. A month ago, people were saying we just want to know if you’re working on an expansion or not. We don’t need a date. We don’t need anything, just let us know.

Of course, once you do that, people complain that they’re losing hype because they don’t have a date.

This whole post makes me laugh, thinking “People” are one coherent mind. What experience could possibly make you think that “People” wouldn’t have inconsistencies in their collective behavior?

I don’t think people have coherent mind and I can’t imagine what part of my post makes you think that I’m trying to imply it. It’s a fact that there were people who asked for this and complained that Anet could at least give us this.

What you’re saying is sort of my point.

I didn’t say they were the same people.

Like I said earlier, there will always be someone who complains. Heck, even I wanna know the release date and much more. But you come out as an kitten . Many of us prefer ANET actually saying what is going on in dev for feedback purposes and all this speculation actually helps them gage what people would like to see and what could really kitten people off.

The forums are a much better place then they were when they were quiet. Heck, ANET had stickies threatening bans to peoples actions, the forums were like a warzone between the mods and the playerbase… don’t need to go back to the dark age, thx.

It doesn’t affect the hype in any way (at least for me) wether it will be released in a few weeks or in a year the content will be the same. All not revealing the release date does is kitten me off. They could at least give us a rough estimate. Are we talking weeks or months, or next year?

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

It doesn’t affect the hype in any way (at least for me) wether it will be released in a few weeks or in a year the content will be the same. All not revealing the release date does is kitten me off. They could at least give us a rough estimate. Are we talking weeks or months, or next year?

100% agreed. And again, their basic communication failures…

Vayne.8563:

We don’t need a date.

I never said that.

No .

Does knowing that Christmas falls on December 25th every year kill the hype for it? If anything, a release date gives you a target to be hyped about instead of burning yourself out wondering and then forgetting about it.

Jokubas.4265:

Does knowing that Christmas falls on December 25th every year kill the hype for it? If anything, a release date gives you a target to be hyped about instead of burning yourself out wondering and then forgetting about it.

Well said.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Jokubas.4265:

Does knowing that Christmas falls on December 25th every year kill the hype for it? If anything, a release date gives you a target to be hyped about instead of burning yourself out wondering and then forgetting about it.

Well said.

Christmas day might not be a secret but THE PRESENTS PEOPLE give tend to be a secret so you two made a bad comparison.

Terrible comparisons seem to be the new black. Why do companies such as apple and samsung make a big deal about the date of their released and spend a lot of resources to hide it. Could it be because the release date is actually very important not only for the fans but also for the company?

silvermember.8941:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Jokubas.4265:

Does knowing that Christmas falls on December 25th every year kill the hype for it? If anything, a release date gives you a target to be hyped about instead of burning yourself out wondering and then forgetting about it.

Well said.

Christmas day might not be a secret but THE PRESENTS PEOPLE give tend to be a secret so you two made a bad comparison.

So you are saying it would be better if we had absolutely no clue as to what Heart of Thorns contains? Besides it doesn’t even make sense, even if I knew what the presents were I would still be hyped if they contained something I really want (which HoT does).

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

silvermember.8941:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Jokubas.4265:

Does knowing that Christmas falls on December 25th every year kill the hype for it? If anything, a release date gives you a target to be hyped about instead of burning yourself out wondering and then forgetting about it.

Well said.

Christmas day might not be a secret but THE PRESENTS PEOPLE give tend to be a secret so you two made a bad comparison.

So you are saying it would be better if we had absolutely no clue as to what Heart of Thorns contains? Besides it doesn’t even make sense, even if I knew what the presents were I would still be hyped if they contained something I really want (which HoT does).

Clearly they are reasons why companies choose not to disclose then a product is coming out. IT is not my job to speculate why, but there are reasons whether you agree with them or not.

Make no mistake, I don’t particularly like the fact I don’t know the date but i won’t sit here and pretend like they aren’t reason why companies withhold release date. Contrary to popular believe, it isn’t always about the fans, the fans are going to buy it anyways.

This hype train isn’t about the fans AT ALL. We’re an easy sell.

It’s about seizing space in the news cycle. Getting the product into the eyes and minds of people who may have heard of Guild Wars but never felt that powerful urge to actually research/buy it.

So they have to keep spinning out articles that reach a (much) broader audience than just here on their own boards where they’d be preaching to the choir.

Silence is the thing that kill hype. A release date can only be a carrot and maintain the hype.

As an example with ESO, every EU player was hyped for the REAL release with the EU servers. But days turned to weeks. Weeks to months. All they could say was soon, we promise, blablabla. All we wanted was a date and they didnt give it to us. They literaly killed entire guilds by not giving a date. When it finally came, ESO was an already sunken ship.

Look, no one is saying that Anet should go back to the days of not saying anything about anything, but a release date is, and has always been different. Companies announce stuff and don’t give a release date all the time. This is normal.

Very rarely does a company provide the release date on the announcement or anywhere near it. What’s Landmark’s release date?

Anet can’t provide date they don’t have. And they really shouldn’t make one up to appease people who can’t wait.

They said the story will directly continue in the extension with no more living story between that. I think the extension might really not be to far because staying several months with any new content will be not nice. Really not nice.

LostBalloon.6423:

Meglobob.8620:

I reckon HoT will be released end of August to early October.

Now you know the approx. date, happy now?

That’s when they expect GW2 to jump massively in earnings anyway.

I hope you’re right, 2016 would be a marketing suicide & anything late-October is Time-To-Market suicide.

“They” means a NCSoft earnings report, and August to early October seems to be a guesstimate based on said earning report talking about increase in earning come 3rd quarter of 2015 (which would be July to September). However since I doubt ANet will release an unfinished game, we’ll still have to look at how that beta is going to go (or that’s the official word from ANet during the post-announcement at Pax).

LostBalloon.6423:

The issue is they have locked out any potential LS actually happening until the xpac and that we will be getting nothing or just fillers such as the current event or another wvw tournament with nothing going on in pve.

Honestly I think that’s the only issue, the content dirge before an xpac launch. I feel as if they could have planned S2 a bit better, or planned the xpac development a bit better or done something that would have aligned the end of S2 a bit better with the launch of HoT. Of course I don’t like thinking about it too much since it automatically brings up the questions: why not, and how long have they been working on it.

Nike.2631:

By people “hyping more” you mean “the retailers screaming they weren’t given industry norm advance warning and telling NCSoft to get stuffed because they aren’t juggling their shelves on short notice to display the rogue product”, right?

Yeah, there’s going to be at least a months delay just to get the disks made and boxes and then another month or two just to make the brick and mortar guys happy.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t think people have coherent mind and I can’t imagine what part of my post makes you think that I’m trying to imply it.

Huh, I’m pretty sure group psychology is a thing though…

Not revealing the release date kills hype. Vaporware…

Anyways, the investor analysts who follow the company are confident that release will be in Q3. Q3 is July, August, and September. So probably release is in august, which would have disappointed us in late January but will please us in May.

Expect dribbles of stuff every two weeks until then.

Thelonger we have to wait, the more the game has to live up to. As it stands, 1 new profession, 5 new skills per class and some changed traits, 1 new Pvp map, 1 new WvW map, 1-4 new zones, and new content that is locked behind grind gates… This will not cut it if the wait is too long.

nekretaal.6485:

Anyways, the investor analysts who follow the company are confident that release will be in Q3. Q3 is July, August, and September. So probably release is in august, which would have disappointed us in late January but will please us in May.

You mean the same company that have been confident that it would be released in 2013 and 2014?

nekretaal.6485:

Thelonger we have to wait, the more the game has to live up to. As it stands, 1 new profession, 5 new skills per class and some changed traits, 1 new Pvp map, 1 new WvW map, 1-4 new zones, and new content that is locked behind grind gates… This will not cut it if the wait is too long.

I agree with your argument but disagree with the assumption. We’ve already waited 3 years for this expansion, at this point a month or two isn’t going to massively alter the already large expectations. No matter what ANet produces I’m pretty sure we’ll see plenty of “is this all, after 3 years!” comments flying around.