Guild Wars 2

First I want to say to the devs and everyone, like so many others have, just how impressed we are with the living story content you guys have brought out on a monthly (and soon to be 2-weekly) schedule. Any other MMO with a subscription model would be in fantastic shape having new content releases like that; and the fact that ArenaNet isn’t making us pay monthly (unless we want to via GemStore, and I for one certainly do) is just huge.

However, I have to say that I hope this isn’t all ArenaNet is wanting to get out of this game.

GW2 is a fantastic theme park game that just has huge amounts of activities for us to do.

1. We’ve got the “basic” (I say “basic” but it’s in truth head and shoulders above other MMOs) PvE of dynamic events, karma hearts, etc.
2. We’ve got the personal story missions which are really great especially from levels 1-30.
3. We’ve got world exploration including waypoints, vistas, POI’s, etc, as well as more hidden exploration areas.
4. We’ve got two forms of solid PvP: sPvP and WvW.
5. We’ve got two forms of group PvE: Dungeons (with Explorables) and Fractals.
6. We’ve got jumping puzzles.
7. A crafting system that is easy and accessible, if not really worthwhile aside from XP.

With each of these new living story events, you bring in new things to plug into one or more of these existing channels, like a Living Story story mission, or a living story dungeon, or a living story or holiday jumping puzzle, and a good amount of mini-games associated with these events. I can understand why you would plug new content into the existing systems above, it certainly makes sense.

But if you’re going to be cranking new things out every 2 weeks…or even every month…I just wonder about the amount of resources and effort going into feeding new content down the same pipes.

What about a little less content in the same channels, and some expansion into new types of channels?

Let me give two examples of what I’m getting at.

In the Dragon Bash event, there was a sort of mini-event in Lion’s Arch where we could bet on a moa race. It made me wish that instead of just betting on an RNG (and losing 2 gold, I have horrible luck, lol), that there was actually a mini-game of moa racing a la FFVII Chocobo Racing. And that made me want to actually have a system of breeding and raising Moas to continually compete in moa racing against other GW2 players. Related to the game or story of the Elder Dragons? Probably not, but it would still be fun (you should see how many hours of my life I lost to chocobo racing in FFVII) and you put moa-racing stuff in the gem store and here is my credit card.

And the new Sky Pirates event has only gotten one reaction from me, which is “Wait, there are Sky Pirates in this game? With their own airships? And I can’t have one???”

New content for the same things is of course a lot of work and A-Net is doing a great job, but I’m worried that we might feel one day that we’re just doing the same types of activities with a different backdrop or color theme, instead of doing new types of activities.

And here, FINALLY, we hear a legit concern about the new schedule change, though I am willing to let it play out a bit before getting antsy about it.

As per usual, the majority of the comments have been silly complaints about “you’re overloading us with content!” Further evidence that some people will gripe about anything.

My thoughts are thus: let’s see how it goes. If it doesn’t work as promised, then say “hey, you might want to slow down so you can polish these things more!” Until then, my socks are knocked off that they’re even ATTEMPTING something this ambitious.

Rahne.7521:

And here, FINALLY, we hear a legit concern about the new schedule change, though I am willing to let it play out a bit before getting antsy about it.

As per usual, the majority of the comments have been silly complaints about “you’re overloading us with content!” Further evidence that some people will gripe about anything.

My thoughts are thus: let’s see how it goes. If it doesn’t work as promised, then say “hey, you might want to slow down so you can polish these things more!” Until then, my socks are knocked off that they’re even ATTEMPTING something this ambitious.

Thanks for describing my post as “legit”. I just hope it’s not too legit, too legit to quit (hey heeeyyy).

slap

You’re right, of course. I think it’s only fair to wait and see how ArenaNet does their 2 week scheduling for a while, and see how they feel about it, how we feel about it, etc. I didn’t mean to come across as antsy or anything, sorry if I did. I think that the only honest thing anyone can say about ArenaNet’s 2-week announcement is that the effort and commitment is astonishing—especially when you consider this already fantastic game that nobody has had to pay a dime for beyond the box purchase.

I just wonder if that effort and commitment won’t have diminishing returns with such rapid deployment of content which may, unfortunately, devolve to being different dressings on the same attractions. I am confident that ArenaNet have great teams with good leaders though that have to make those decisions, and I’m hopeful that they’ll evaluate in due course and decide where and how and when to reallocate resources if need be.

But yes, we should definitely give them the chance to try this for a time. I mean, it’s not like any of us players will feel like our subscription fee is wasted during that time….

Colin Johanson’s gonna come around thanking you for your compliments (which are, of course, true), and telling us there will be a blog post in late July detailing answers to your concerns.