Guild Wars 2

I want to start with a fun-fact: the first closed beta test, that the press was allowed to talk about was more then a year ago (the third weekend of Febuary, 2012). You can check lots of PvP footage from back then from various sources, be it IGN or GameSpot and TotalBiscuit or MikyB.

The first beta weekend was at the end of April and I’m sure most of you remember it well. Back then, there weren’t tiered skills and traits and no mystic forge (the armor/weapon skins were available directly from the corresponding rank vendors).
With the second beta weekend the skills and traits were tiered, the mystic forge was in place. In a stress tests between the weekends, they also added 2 new maps – Legacy of the Foefire and Raid on the Capricorn.
And then, we launched – 4 maps, free and paid 5v5 tournaments and 8v8 hotjoins.

Now, almost 8 months after release, we have 2 additional maps, no paids (changed to 2team tournament), slow and broken matchmaking, team colors, constant respawn timer, 5v5 hotjoins and a lot less players. Really nice progress for the last year, don’t you agree?

Once a game goes into release, it now has the pressure of actually dealing with customers (and funding that support) instead of spending their time only on coding. That and they probably saw PvE gave mad loot.

However I just spent 10$ on gems.
So get me custom arenas anet wtf. That’s enough for Jon to get two burgers at Wendy’s, I put food in yo belly, give me CA.

Ya, the transition from developing a game to managing a game hit em hard. I read a lot of people talking about if problems werent solved in beta they probably wouldnt be solved for months/years…..turns out this is true

The reality is that sPvP isn’t that popular simply because most people are enjoying other parts of the game. I do believe that WvW caught anet off guard.

The other thing is that people want to use their own gear. While the idea of even match-ups are appealing to you, the longer people spend gearing up, the less likely they are to want to use other equipment when they fight. If I spend a ton of time getting a legendary, why spend time in sPvP where I can’t use it?

Finally, the other death toll against PvP is that there are different balancing options there than in the rest of the game. Originally, PvP was the place where I’d go to check out new specs. Now that is no longer representative since there have been a lot more nerfs in PvP than in other parts of the game.

style.6173:

The reality is that sPvP isn’t that popular simply because most people are enjoying other parts of the game. I do believe that WvW caught anet off guard.

The other thing is that people want to use their own gear. While the idea of even match-ups are appealing to you, the longer people spend gearing up, the less likely they are to want to use other equipment when they fight. If I spend a ton of time getting a legendary, why spend time in sPvP where I can’t use it?

Finally, the other death toll against PvP is that there are different balancing options there than in the rest of the game. Originally, PvP was the place where I’d go to check out new specs. Now that is no longer representative since there have been a lot more nerfs in PvP than in other parts of the game.

which leads us to the obvious conclusion that spvp needs to go free.
draw in the appropriate audience which is interested in competitive play and offer gemstore purchases that they may want in order to monetize them. they may even want to buy the full game in order to wvw or pve.

i like this thread , because it makes the motto “when it is ready” meaningless.
i took a break untill the big pvp patch. let’s see.

gg no re!

style.6173:

The reality is that sPvP isn’t that popular simply because most people are enjoying other parts of the game….

The other thing is that people want to use their own gear….

Finally, the other death toll against PvP is that there are different balancing options there than in the rest of the game. Originally, [s/t?]PvP was the place where I’d go to check out new specs… [wut??]

Didn’t play any other part of the game besides S/TPvP.
Couldn’t give a rats kitten about gear short of appearances/customization.
Every decent, popular PvP MMO/MOBA I’ve played I dived into near religiously.

Hated GW2.
Couldn’t stand the terrible balance, terrible matchmaking, terrible scorecard, terrible looking gear and snails pace to change. To note, I did play for about 6~ months, which was, laughably, long after everyone I knew left.
The game, by far, had the best set of promises and expectations I’ve seen. GW2 was the first game I tailed into releasing, checking updates and crunching numbers for specs… but ya, worst by leaps and bounds.

They just couldn’t deliver worthwhile somewhat competitive PvP (I’m not the best, but being in roughly the 85~th percentile means I do want challenge)
If they didn’t have kitten matchmaking (its an utter pain in the kitten to find people of roughly the same skill in game, to fight and to group up with) I probably would have stuck around a bit longer or at least kept on the updates.