Guild Wars 2

Let me preface this by saying I actually really enjoy HoT, and I don’t regret my purchase. I’m also not here to slight Anet, or the ball of awesome that is Gayle. This is consructive criticism in regards to the launch of HoT.

However

The number of things that are flat out untested, not iterated on, or just plain unfinished is just plain staggering.

• Final story boss fight saddled with numerous bugs.
• Selling point scribing and guild hall decoration systems missing key recipies, vendor ingredients, and a button to actually enter decoration mode with nothing in the guild inventory.
• Elite spec balance is laughably bad for PvP, yet you’re pushing pro tournaments.
• WvW revamp design requires copious amounts of non-wvw play, and still does not address the basic flaws of building a primarily team oriented mode with a primarily personal reward mechanism.
• Map completion for characters the expansion was designed for doesn’t reward properly.
• Halloween event bug prevented progressing in the new mastry system.
• Easy farms subvert your long term advancement systems.
• More rewards added to the gem store since release than can be acquired in the entirety of the expansion’s playable content.
• Several selling points simply haven’t materialized.
• No communication with the community since launch in regards to critical, progression blocking bugs.

Many of these things were discovered by players immediately or within a day of release and still haven’t been so much as commented on by arenanet staff.

I understand that you guys have a long history, going back to GW1, of “spoiler free” releases, but honestly you need a live test environment, and you need to be on the ball with communication in regard to critical bugs and player issues.

Gayle spends the majority of her time placating account issues, and she does an amazing job at it, but would it be so strenuous to hire one additional community rep just to say “hey, we know scribe is broken, and the fix will be out x” or “Oh, that sounds like a nasty bug, I’ve notified the team about it” or “we’re looking at the costs of X”

The HoT beta weekends may have helped you field test a few things, but it’s pretty obvious that large parts of your systems and content simply didn’t recieve the QA needed to make them release ready. You have players willing to do that QA for free in the interest of a better game, and the deployment of test clients can’t possibly be more of a logistical pain than attempting to find enough internal QA to give all this stuff a fair shake.

I love GW2, and it makes me sad when I see things in such rough shape enter a game that is known even among people who hate it for its high degree of polish and design consistancy. Please let us help you, and please don’t be afraid to push back releases in the future to ensure better releases.

Thanks! You guys are awesome.

Good review. The two most important things in an MMO above all else is PvP balance (segregate skills like how in PvP certain skills have a shorter effect in PvP than PvE) and the economy. If everyone runs around in Infinite Light because charged lodestones drop like candy for example then the sword wouldn’t be cool anymore.

My biggest beef with HoT so far unanimously is needing to have a sylvari player get the sylvari solidarity achievement for you. I shouldn’t have to make a race I have no intention of making just for a marauder ascended trinket that has a defensive (not utility) infusion slot. I’m going some marauder on all my characters (except for maybe the elementalist, who is celestial all the way) and that’s why I wanna get the quest done. I shouldn’t have to bother guildies to stop what they’re doing just to help me with an achievement that doesn’t even require skill but just a race. I have an asura, human, char, and norn at level 80 and have no sylvari. I shouldn’t be punished simply because I don’t wanna make a certain race.