Guild Wars 2

There was a lot of disappointment about the announcement that there would be a six week gap between the release of episodes 7 and 8. I put this down mostly to the fact that we have only had seven episodes of season 2 this year. Even being generous and counting from when season 2 started on July 1 (after a looong break), that’s seven episode in the last 26 weeks of 2014. Closer to an an episode every four weeks than every two.

So should Season two have been released every four weeks rather than every two? In the end having a two week schedule has led to expectations that can’t be met.

It seems like anet doesn’t actually want to acknowledge that they simply can’t make the biweekly thing happen. It would probably have saved a lot of us a ton of frustration if we had to wait longer between chapters from the get go, instead of being promised biweekly and seldom getting what we were promised. There may not have been such a huge community backlash about it if it happened only once a month but was a little more substantial.

The reason we do not get monthly updates is because during the first year of release some corporate metric obsessed member of Arena Net started telling them that after two weeks players loose interest and stop playing. So to combat this they have a two weeks schedule to retain player interest, which unfortunately they are completely incapable of providing enough quality content for, hence the regular prolonged hiatus.

Unfortunately everything has to be focused on the living story due to this two week rush, so festival events are disregarded and often are a rehash of last years with the only change being the quickest, rewards.

A monthly cycle would mean twelve episodes a year, players would have time to complete the story arc each month and four of those months (Wintersday, Haloween, Zepher, April Fools) would be festivals with proper work put into it and content added rather than rehashed. The bonus being no overly long dry spells and having to wait several months for content because of a disappointing feature pack did not grasp your attention.

Problem is they will not move a finger unless metrics say so, somewhere along the way Arena Net lost its common sense.

Bean counting and common sense are often mutually exclusive. It’s impossible to account for every variable in those metrics. They have become a fixture in corporations and good management will take their analysis and factor in the common sense. This is not a dig at Anet’s management, only a comment on good business practice.

I feel there’s definitely something to be said for a monthly LS schedule. If the 1st of the month were reserved for LS releases and the 15th for Annual Events, PvP, WvW and Feature Packs. 11 scheduled LS updates (January 1 is out) free up development to insure good product and keep expectations reasonable for both players and development teams. Halloween and Wintersday would run from 15th to 15th extending the Holiday for those of us that enjoy them and it would also give players a solid month to log in and lock LS content to there account.

Seems a good compromise to me and I think the community as a whole would gratiously accept this schedule if maintained. There will always be the trolls but if not fed they tend to fade away and the rest of us can get back to enjoying the game.

Interesting fact: there were exactly 12 living story updates in 2014, starting with Origin of Madness on Jan 13 and ending with Seeds of Truth on December 2.

I think a monthly cadence would be less jarring to players and more fluid for the storyline.

By the end of the year, there will have been 17 updates in 2014. This includes the 12 living story and an additional 5 updates in 2014 that aren’t related to the LS – 2 feature packs, The Festival of the Four Winds, Blood and Madness and Wintersday.

IMO, they need to do something like the following:

12 Living Story Updates: Once a month
4 Feature Packs: Once a quarter
4 Holiday/Special Events: Wintersday, Blood and Madness, April Fools (SAB potentially), and one other based on the living story (Dragon Bash after we defeat an Elder dragon, for example).

That would come to 20 updates a year and would hopefully allow them to spend more time delivering a wider range of content on a more consistent basis (including new guild missions, dungeons, world events, traits, skill points, etc).

Increasing Arena Nets workload would not solve the issue Blaeys, it would worsen it. They obviously do not have enough time to create 17 updates, which is why festivals have been a copy paste. It would be better to get 4 festivals and 8 living story updates with feature packs released with festivals to help pad them out, an update once a month.

More time for content creation and testing for Arena Net and a month for players to enjoy it, seems like the perfect compromise to me. Also it really bothers me that the current schedule we get updates every two weeks but randomly have a long break when Arena Net decides it is time.

I appreciate their effort, but they need to work on a better and more evenly balanced timetable for content.