Guild Wars 2

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What kills the hype, imho, is that we know we won’t get anything substantial before the release. So expecting a playerbase, that has been wishing for new content over the past months, to hang on things that have probably already been done for the next 2 to 10 months (I use a very broad range) is a bit of an interest killer.

Of course if HoT is released in April, it will have bugs. But if it’s released in December, it’ll also have bugs. I doubt this will be the main argument against “early” release (and they probably have far less to test since they have pretty much everything in the base game).

I don’t ask for a release date before Rezzed and maybe the 1st beta. Until then, my interest for the game is summarized to my interest for the blog posts we have regarding HoT. Else, I’m just fighting against the same servers in WvW (I sooo miss the mixed matchups we had like a year ago) and it’s getting boring.

And if the game stays in the same state for another 4 months, I’ll find something else to do than spending time and money on the game… It does kill the interest for the story, because “10 minutes after the end of LS2” is ridiculously long (even LS2E8 was too far aay from E7 and I barely remembered the important parts) and we will certainly forget most details…

So revealing the release date probably will kill the hype if it’s too far from now, but not because it is far, but because we won’t have much to do while waiting for it (except throw our money in the cash shop).

lordkrall.7241:

Caeledh.5437:

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.

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.

Question – do you follow ESO at all? I appreciate based on those few dates it may seem my theory is backwards but the truth is it isn’t. Here’s all the facts.

The first clear indication of ESO going B2P was when they removed the six-month subscription option in December last year. The second was when they recalled unsold boxes from retailers in mid January. Both occurred prior to HoT’s official announcement or any public hint of it.

Granted, Zenimax didn’t officially announce the payment model change until after a very small number of people had already been told about HoT, but the ArenaNet execs would have to be every kind of stupid not to know ESO was soon going B2P.

And sure enough, HoT was publicly announced a mere 3 days after ESO officially announced going B2P. That’s perfect timing if you want to distract attention away from a competitor – which ESO will soon be.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not criticising them. That’s the nature of business and there’s nothing immoral about it. Purely from unselfish perspective of informing potential customers, it’s good to get the message out there that “this is what’s coming to our game” so they can make informed decisions.

The timing could just be a coincidence. Those happen. But given the multi-million dollar nature of this business so do strategic PR decisions and I’d bet this is one.

You seem to imply that the HoT announcement was due to ESOs B2P announcement. Which makes no sense whatsoever, seeing as the HoT announcement was quite clearly planned over a week before the ESO announcement, even if it didn’t happen until a few days after.

One can speculate all one wants, but until there is an official announcement, there is no official information. Sure people could have assumed it would have happened (people have speculated on it for months after all) but speculations != facts.

ArenaNet basically announced their announcement on 13 January, which means that the announcement itself was planned over a week before the ESO announcement came.

Of course I’d like to have the expansion rather sooner than later.

But there are is one thing in the gaming-industry I despise with a burning hate:
Early release-dates that lead to rushed and half-developed content.

Also I prefer having no release-date at all over having one that is being shoved and shoved into the future. (Still better than rushed bug-crap though).

For me the hype is dependant on the features and content I can expect. And my further investment in the brand is dependant on how Anet lives up to what they promise in the final release.

Hype doesn’t matter. The reason they don’t have a release date is a simple business move: don’t publicly commit to a deadline if you aren’t sure you will meet it. Delays are bad PR. If they were to announce a release date now, when they have already said numerous times that they are still working out some of the game’s new systems and features, they would have to commit to unfinished/unpolished systems.

Announcing a release date doesn’t kill hype, but delays certainly do.

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.

They don’t have to play the game to keep in touch with any info released.

lordkrall.7241:

You seem to imply that the HoT announcement was due to ESOs B2P announcement.

The announcement, no. Obviously not. HoT was always going to be announced.

The timing, yes. All signs point to that.

lordkrall.7241:

Which makes no sense whatsoever, seeing as the HoT announcement was quite clearly planned over a week before the ESO announcement, even if it didn’t happen until a few days after.

That’s completely illogical. It doesn’t follow at all that the HoT announcement date was set in stone the moment they revealed it to a smaller subset of players. They couldn’t have sat on it indefinitely but they didn’t need to pin down a public announcement date. Just like they haven’t pinned down a launch date.

It’s also not like it was a nice round number, is it? 11 days between selective and public reveal. Not a week. Not 10 days. It was 11 days.

So.. what were they planning on announcing on PAX if ESO had not announced their B2P? Should they just have stood around on the main stage for 90 minutes doing nothing at all?

The ESO B2P announcement had a grand total of nothing at all to do with the HoT announcement. Seeing as they already had the announcement planned for that specific events over a WEEK before the ESO announcement came.

It sure would help me to decide whether to allocate resources toward finishing up characters or stockpiling for insta-fully-geared-lvl80 Revenant.

So torn….

You should be stockpiling anyways.

They already said that leveling will give mastery points, so your tomes of knowledge and daily exp scrolls ought to be saved for masteries.

nekretaal.6485:

You should be stockpiling anyways.

They already said that leveling will give mastery points, so your tomes of knowledge and daily exp scrolls ought to be saved for masteries.

I thought they would retroactively reward players for these achievements.