Guild Wars 2

Some observations and speculation…

1. Arena Net (“AN”) never intended GW2 to be a smash, eSports success immediately at launch. At launch, AN knew that the absence of competitive features would cause an initial dip in the number of competitive teams and players and likely recognized and discussed this issue internally.

2. AN also did not intend Paid Tournaments to be AN’s eSport solution. Instead, Paids were simply an additional feature to separate pug/premade player pools and initially appease the more hardcore elements while other features were developed.

3. AN expected to have Paids at launch. However, Paids were delayed due to bugs. As a result, the rate at which hardcore, competitive players left the game was probably slightly higher than AN was hoping post launch, but not outside a predictable range. AN would likely admit that this was an unfortunate occurrence, which harmed the initial community of loyal tPvP players.

4. AN did not expect the late release of Paid Tournaments to be a perfect, stopgap cure for tPvP. AN likely realized that releasing Paids into a smaller overall tPvP population would likely result in the precise problem that has resulted — a smaller pool of participating teams, making it difficult for second tier teams to win (and thus want to participate in) Paids. Nonetheless, the feature was promised, and having Paids is better than not having Paids, for all the problems the late release caused.

5. AN’s plan for the eSports element of the game was always to grow it organically some months after release, relying on the predictably smaller, hardcore player base to act as a seed for its growth.

Predictions

1. AN will release ladders, rankings, private servers, spectator mode, and all of the other features that it said it would.

2. These features will not be released immediately, but will be slowly rolled out over the next 6-8 months.

3. More players will leave, and many players will complain.

4. December 21 will not mark the end of the world.

5. Around the time the major features are being rolled out, AN will announce a $350,000 cash tournament, likely to be held in late Summer 2013. AN will give new and rusty teams enough time to learn and practice the game, so there will be at least a 3-4 month qualifying period, where teams can earn entry into the invite tournament through participating in ranked ladder/tournament games.

6. AN will eventually offer s/tPvP trials of the game, which provide players with free, limited access to certain PvP features. To participate in certain ranked games and obtain gear from chests, players will have to buy the full version of the game, but this free trial will effectively provide players with an opportunity to practice and play the game at a high level for free.

7. In sum, the PvP population will likely continue to shrink over the next several months, but will start to grow slowly early next year when some of the new, major features are released, and will see a sudden spike after AN announces its plans for the first, major cash prize GW2 tournament and offers s/tPvP access as a limited free version of the game.

8. Specifically, GW2’s competitive PvP community will continue to shrink until early February 2013, when some of the more important competitive features start to roll out. That will bring back players who already purchase the game and are bored with the other holiday titles they tried. The major, cash tournament will then be announced on March 15, 2013, to be held in late July/early August 2013. After August 2013, GW2 as an eSport will start to take off.

Nothing wrong with hoping.

You talk about tournaments… but MOST OF THE PPL just want to PvP (WvsW being more a zergland or a sneaky-paradize, people willing to fight just come to the mists).

PvP is just boring, you just earn nothing, you just don’t have fun at all with 1) all those bugs 2) the variety of professions played (every match you face mesmers, thieves, guards).

Ok gear do not count and thats great… the hardcorers and casuals are “equal” buuuut what you just don’t understand Anet is : THEY ARE NOT (hardcorers play full premade, semi-casuals just join tournament as random)

TO SUM UP : willing to gather your community, you just split it up… at least you are losing your pvp community

/kiss

Can you explain to me why they would spend $350 000 + development costs when right now there are like ~30 players who are ‘competitive’ and you predict that number to shrink, and nobody watches streams.

The reason Riot can inject so much money is because they have a huge pvp player base paying them money. 90%+ of GW2 population is in PVE and WvW and couldn’t care less about competitive play.

Sure. First, the $350,000 may be optimistic. It may only be $100,000.

Second, the cash would be used as a marketing device to lure players to the game, once it is properly balanced and has all of the features to make it eSports ready. The amount has nothing to do with the players who are currently still playing the game seriously for free.

Third, I’m not sure I agree with your cause-and-effect assumption regarding League of Legends. My recollection — and I could be off base here — is that Riot was fairly bullish about promoting their cash tournaments, even before the game was huge, which in and of itself drove much of the interest in the game.

In other words, the cash brings the gamers, not necessarily the other way around.

IMO they could have spent more resources to develop more pvp for launch. Given the enormous scale of PVE and WVW we’re talking just a few % more effort toward sPVP and that with a quick fix policy for class bugs and I think they would have a lot larger and happier pvp community.

Yeah people are going to complain nomatter what but I think its pretty justified to say sPVP got the short end of the stick when it comes to content and features. Even if its justified from anet that PVE pays their bills. Things are what they are and we would have to content ourselves with waiting or leaving but the game was hyped as e-sports this and that so it just creates frustration when we’re still waiting on basic features.

And where did you get that information from? That’s speculation? You’ve even speculated a tournament and it’s prize pool! You’re a true clairvoyant!

Go home Atlas, You’re drunk.

Ammandril.9150:

And where did you get that information from? That’s speculation? You’ve even speculated a tournament and it’s prize pool! You’re a true clairvoyant!

Go home Atlas, You’re drunk.

More, he basically went over the cycle that GW1 experienced though it launched with only PvP as any sort of aspect to its end-game play (the PvE of GW1 was made to train you for PvP style maps) but was idiotically railroaded into an imbalanced mess by terrible design decisions like tying PvE grind to your equipment for PvP.

It was about six months in, the first world championship, that GW1 PvP truly hit its zenith. It took close to three months for Faction (the ability to unlock PvP gear through PvP) to be introduced (and we had been crying for that update since almost launch). It took ~never happened~ for TA and HoH to be balanced.

Updates back then (the starting days of GW1) were as sought after as they are now, Wednesdays (or was it Mondays? Its been so long, my memory is fading) were big days of either celebrating or crying when nothing got fixed. It really wasn’t until that championship that the game as a well known PvP-sport took off.

Atlas.6901:

Sure. First, the $350,000 may be optimistic. It may only be $100,000.

Second, the cash would be used as a marketing device to lure players to the game, once it is properly balanced and has all of the features to make it eSports ready. The amount has nothing to do with the players who are currently still playing the game seriously for free.

Third, I’m not sure I agree with your cause-and-effect assumption regarding League of Legends. My recollection — and I could be off base here — is that Riot was fairly bullish about promoting their cash tournaments, even before the game was huge, which in and of itself drove much of the interest in the game.

In other words, the cash brings the gamers, not necessarily the other way around.

Ok granted they might spend cash as a marketing tactic, but still you are not addressing that most of the people interested in GW2 do not play or care about the competitive side. Anet or NCSoft would probably be more inclined to spend that 350k on new PVE content since they already have a huge base of people in that area of the game.

If you look at other aspiring eSports titles, many of them have extensive balance and combat testing before they are release ready. SC2 had an open beta that included beta tournaments. DOTA2 has been in beta forever. CS:GO, also a long beta.

GW2, by contrast, did not have a PvP-balance focused beta. As such, even if the eSports features were ready at launch, it would have been a balance disaster. Because there was no such beta, launch was a necessary precondition to any sort of meaningful balancing.

Current PvP’ers have every reason to be frustrated. Essentially, you are beta testing the s/tPvP content while — according to my prediction — AN gears up to earnestly launch the game as an eSport at a strategic and opportunistic time.

However, once you accept all this, you will realize just how deeply accurate Chaplan’s “tip of the iceberg” blog post was.

Jacobin.8509:

Ok granted they might spend cash as a marketing tactic, but still you are not addressing that most of the people interested in GW2 do not play or care about the competitive side. Anet or NCSoft would probably be more inclined to spend that 350k on new PVE content since they already have a huge base of people in that area of the game.

Not necessarily. As you recognize, PvE is huge already. It would be rational for AN to conclude that the marginal return on additional PvE investments is not worth it, when that same investment could be made to tap into a completely separate market — the eSports aspiring gamers that are currently playing LOL, Tribes, DOTA2, etc.

GW2 is a very ambitious game. And the strategic plan for it is obvious, building a three-pronged game to tap into three very different markets of players, the PvE crowd, the open-world crowd, and the competitive/eSports crowd. I guarantee you that AN still sees legitimate growth prospects for the s/tPvP-portion of the game, in which they would be willing to invest. They already have a strong base.

Yeah I agree with a lot of what you said. There is an untapped market here.

What concerns me is that very few MMOs have been able to come back after the initial interest dies off.

Refreshing thread.

I’d like to let it be known that I plan on doing mainly WvWvW, with some PvE. I also plan on following the competitive PvP scene closely, and dabbling every once in a while in sPvP. If I could have a little window up showing a competitive match while I man a trebuchet, or farm mats, or grind events, that would be impossibly awesome.

Don’t assume that people who don’t sPvP aren’t interested in following sPvP. I hated playing 1v1 SC2, but loved watching the competitive scene, at least for a while.

Jacobin.8509:

Yeah I agree with a lot of what you said. There is an untapped market here.

What concerns me is that very few MMOs have been able to come back after the initial interest dies off.

And this might be what separates GW2 from many other MMOs, the fact that the game is free to play when you want to try it again. As the OP said, when AN hosts a cash tournament with a large payout many of the players who own the game and have any ambitions in eSports are likely to pick it back up and play it and train for that tournament. It’s a pretty easy solution AFTER the balance has been obtained, whether they will be able to get a good balance from the limited number of players until that point is a question that must be recognized.

MMOs generally have a sub fee, and paying for a few months sub to play in a tournament no matter how much money is involved is not encouraging. This is where GW2’s power of subscription-less play becomes more powerful, coupled with the fact that face it, LoL gets mindless repetitive and boring too. DoTA and DoTA2 is in the same boat, it’s the same map(s) all the time, the same development, no matter how many new champs they include with new abilities you will either have the same Meta or some variation of the same thing. PvP is good simply because it’s a comparison to your (and your teams) skill versus another person or persons. The gear methods they’ve chosen set a standard, once balanced players will set the meta, and then playing your best within that meta will designate how good you really are both individually and as a team.

Jacobin.8509:

Yeah I agree with a lot of what you said. There is an untapped market here.

What concerns me is that very few MMOs have been able to come back after the initial interest dies off.

With anything new you tend to get a surge of customers who simply want to partake of something new. This eventually fades (as the sheep get bored) leaving you with a core base who really enjoy the product for what it is and want to support it. Your base then grows as these people draw in similar customers, and word spreads about the quality of your product.

Most new MMO-RPGs suffer a pretty hard implosion during the fade for various reasons, lack of content is one, but more commonly being passive on part of the developers and thinking you’ve got the next big thing and not working on the game is a big one. Anet has already demonstrated that they are not slacking off with the content they’ve put out, and more importantly the fixes they have rolled out.

How about this: instead of some 300k grand prize, ArenaNet can organize some monthly tournaments and give out smaller prizes liek NVIDIA gfx cards or 27" monitors? Or simply just like $300 for top spot every month.

Smaller prizes and more frequency of giveaways allows a more steady growth of the pvp scene, rather than accidentally hosting a 300K give-away for an unexpectatedly small player pool. Plus the smaller rewards will entice more casuals to join in on the fun, rather than only the super-24/7-pro hardcore players.

I support gaming peripheral prizes more becaue that would catch the attention of sponsorships and help boost the esports scene.

How close were these predictions to Chap’s talk regarding the state of the game?

The thing is.. will they EVER recover from the huge blows the pvp population is taking atm?

Yeah well, it’s same 30-40 player farming everyone else who just joins for the daily. I predict the end of tPvP very soon. But yeah, hope is good, but with Anet attitude and skill, I doubt that anything good will happen.

Delofasht.4231:

Jacobin.8509:

Yeah I agree with a lot of what you said. There is an untapped market here.

What concerns me is that very few MMOs have been able to come back after the initial interest dies off.

And this might be what separates GW2 from many other MMOs, the fact that the game is free to play when you want to try it again. As the OP said, when AN hosts a cash tournament with a large payout many of the players who own the game and have any ambitions in eSports are likely to pick it back up and play it and train for that tournament. It’s a pretty easy solution AFTER the balance has been obtained, whether they will be able to get a good balance from the limited number of players until that point is a question that must be recognized.

MMOs generally have a sub fee, and paying for a few months sub to play in a tournament no matter how much money is involved is not encouraging. This is where GW2’s power of subscription-less play becomes more powerful, coupled with the fact that face it, LoL gets mindless repetitive and boring too. DoTA and DoTA2 is in the same boat, it’s the same map(s) all the time, the same development, no matter how many new champs they include with new abilities you will either have the same Meta or some variation of the same thing. PvP is good simply because it’s a comparison to your (and your teams) skill versus another person or persons. The gear methods they’ve chosen set a standard, once balanced players will set the meta, and then playing your best within that meta will designate how good you really are both individually and as a team.

I think this is a big thing that people keep forgetting. People keep demanding things get added “before players leave,” but they forget that if Anet adds something down the line, it’s free for those players who already own the game to come back and try it out. I don’t play SC2, LoL, or DOTA 2 regularly, but if they host something interesting, I can go back and play it a bit again for free. If WoW were to host something, I wouldn’t even consider it because I’m not paying $15 (plus expansion cost!) to see what’s new.

But, on this point, I think Anet really needs to add a download and install system like the original GW had (and other games like WoW and SC2 have implemented now as well). Players might be interested in trying it out again, but are they >10GB download interested in seeing the new changes that have been added?