Guild Wars 2

A bit off topic but, anyone else remember when the Coca-Cola company tried back in the 80’s to replace Coke with New Coke? Almost instantly the consumer base nation wide responded negatively to the new product. I really disliked the taste of it too. Though they rapidly responded the consumer backlash and in just over a couple of months switched back to the Original flavor.

In WvW, we have the new Desert Borderland map and it reminds me an awful lot like the New Coke scenario. The only difference is, unlike the Coca Cola Company’s rapid response reversion, Anet has dug their heels in and won’t give the consumers the original product they liked. So I’m left wondering, it’s the Desert Borderland map going to go down in history as the “New Coke” of gaming? Has the slow response time now done irreparable damage to the community and consumer base?

The things I ponder while I sit here bored and have no Friday Reset to enjoy

I remember coke-gate. And yes it was awful LOL. I don’t blame them for wanting to bring something fresh to wvw. But the industry as a whole needs to have a better understanding of their playerbase before taking leaps into great change. Players for the most part hate change, and prefer little tweaks here and there.

It is going to go down as " what killed GW2" I am afraid. They overlooked the fact that Actual WvW players were spending more $$ than both their PvE and PvP players combined and they are all leaving because Anet decided that catering to PvE gold farmers was more important than listening to what their actual WvW players had to say.

This is very much like it.

I think the problem is that whatever the development process is, it’s rather stubborn and unwilling to change despite the poor reception. That’s how we got a terrible trait system that required unlocking of every single trait via gold or sometimes absurd things like killing the grub. Fortunately, that was buried and missed by nobody but fact is that they have a tendency to impose sweeping changes and look at you funny when you say otherwise. I guess they listen too much to too many yes-men/women.

And you have more examples, such as Saturday Reset, where things are just going to be “We’re changing it to reset on Saturday” all of a sudden, and yea, that’s it, we are.

I’d rather not pour any more pessimism in, but the failures go far beyond implementation, but also the fact that they can’t really even form the thought of this WvW overhaul into a few organized thoughts beyond the vaguest of soundbites. Even if they were actually good, this is just not a good way to handle things.

Confirmed now they have not started on any system to bring back Alpine yet, and that they are currently trying to bandaid fix ‘chokes’ ‘line of sight’ and ‘fall points’ on the Deserted BL’s.

It’s on Reddit ofc, not here.

This comparison has been made before. It’s exactly like New Coke… except that Coca-Cola reacted really fast for such a large company. Anet, however hasn’t reacted at all. They still talk as if it’s 2013; as if population imbalance is WvW’s biggest problem; as if the features from HoT weren’t a complete disaster.

The game is no where near popular enough for it to remembered as any watershed though it is a blatant example of what not to do when running an online game.

If WoW ever pulls something similar, then maybe, but Blizzard tends to like money so it’s probably not as likely.*

*I don’t actually know a lot of WoW history, this may have already happened.

I would love to see them listen to the community, but I won’t hold my breath.

Substance E.4852:

The game is no where near popular enough for it to remembered as any watershed though it is a blatant example of what not to do when running an online game.

Let’s just hope the WvW-like games that are in development learn something from this because it sure doesn’t look like Anet’s ever going to.

So much QQ, oh my!

Don’t worry, if you leave WvW, there will be replacements.

I for one welcome new WvW stuff since it’s been the bloody same since launch!

sparc.3649:

So much QQ, oh my!

Don’t worry, if you leave WvW, there will be replacements.

I for one welcome new WvW stuff since it’s been the bloody same since launch!

Oh.. you’re on anvil rock so your used to playing alone so it doesn’t make much difference to you if 90% of the WvW population leaves the game. I mean sure if your thing is running around PvD on empty maps and them having to make cutbacks to Anet staff since all those WvW players that used to buy a crap ton of gold every week to fund their WvW fix left and took their credit cards with them this works great for you, until they have to figure out how to fund keeping your server open of course. :p

To be honest I still don’t mind the map that much. There’s some areas that I dislike more than others (air keep) and some ideas that are more annoying than anything else (barricades and laser event) but overall I don’t think the map is too bad.

What I find far worse is the atrocious class balance and the power creep introduced with the June 2015 patch and later HoT. You could say that in order to enjoy combat you first have to find a fight (yes the situation is that desperate) but if the combat mechanic itself is not enjoyable anymore, the map won’t fix it.

I think the situation GW2 is in is a lot worse already. For me it feels like a self-enforcing spiral.

WvW hinges on one thing and one thing only: population. If people dislike new maps, guild upgrades etc, people leave the game. This in turn, influences the people who do stay: they have less people to fight with and against. Because there are less people to fight with and against, the ‘stayers’ are forced into playing less, for example, just on primetime. But the more people start disliking the new maps and features, the more leave etc etc etc.

The longer ArenaNet wait with a solution, the more people will have already left and the more they will need to do to get those people back. Right now, I don’t believe giving us alpine borderlands back will be enough to bring back all the ones who have left the game.

Edit:
@Elmo: I kind of agree that the class balance and power creep are bigger issues than the Desert Borderlands…
And I think my point is, there’s so many things that can be done wrong in terms of gameplay, and they all affect population, which in the end is the one determining factor in the success or failure of WvW.

DeWolfe.2174:

A bit off topic but, anyone else remember when the Coca-Cola company tried back in the 80’s to replace Coke with New Coke? Almost instantly the consumer base nation wide responded negatively to the new product. I really disliked the taste of it too. Though they rapidly responded the consumer backlash and in just over a couple of months switched back to the Original flavor.

No…I do remember when coca-cola plants put locks on the wells and sucked the water reserves of poor african villages high and dry and left them to die. I think my irl analogy is more appropriate than yours. I’m not really good at the whole redneck mentality, but I think this here will resonate a bit better with the more fluent members of the forums.

Cerby.1069:

DeWolfe.2174:

A bit off topic but, anyone else remember when the Coca-Cola company tried back in the 80’s to replace Coke with New Coke? Almost instantly the consumer base nation wide responded negatively to the new product. I really disliked the taste of it too. Though they rapidly responded the consumer backlash and in just over a couple of months switched back to the Original flavor.

No…I do remember when coca-cola plants put locks on the wells and sucked the water reserves of poor african villages high and dry and left them to die. I think my irl analogy is more appropriate than yours. I’m not really good at the whole redneck mentality, but I think this here will resonate a bit better with the more fluent members of the forums.

Umm…. no, that analogy is no where near equivalent or even appropriate. This is a video game in the end.