Guild Wars 2

As we all know the last wvw lead, Devon Carter, left anet. This left a void in wvw leadership within anet. Instead of hiring someone else, they simply added the wvw leadership role on John Corpening. John Corpening is very much a pvp focused leader at the moment. Going through the last 3 months of his twitter shows 0 posts about wvw and tons about pvp.

I looked at anet’s glassdoor reviews and everyone is complaining that they are understaffed also. So at the end of the day, they simply don’t have enough people working at the company to really fix any of the issues. They didn’t even hire a wvw replacement for the one that left. Pvp and wvw are two huge completely different gamemodes, it seems pretty crazy to give one guy the keys to both.

From a company perspective they are simply cutting costs to the extreme by not even replacing people that leave.

Argh, I didn’t even think to look at glassdoor etc… ty

Gotta love how they go on about (but wont tell us anything) this great big overhaul for wvw that they have been working so hard on for over a year (but keep delaying) and are devoting all the dev’s time (actually just a couple) to it. High Hopes people, high hopes…

If such a central person leaves, it will leave a gap which can’t be filled by a newcomer. That someone experienced from the team steps in and freshly hired people are slowly built up is an understandable move. In any case, a developer change of this impact throws back a project by months. Not sure if current WvW has that long, but I don’t think they have much of a choice.

THE root of the current problem is, as others have mentioned previously, population imbalance. No amount of suggested tweaks, fixes, rollbacks or WvW staff levels are going to help unless that particular Elephant in the room is addressed first. Don’t ask me how – I have no idea and no wish to make a suggestion.

Doo Lally.8594:

THE root of the current problem is, as others have mentioned previously, population imbalance. No amount of suggested tweaks, fixes, rollbacks or WvW staff levels are going to help unless that particular Elephant in the room is addressed first. Don’t ask me how – I have no idea and no wish to make a suggestion.

wvw is dying

why?

because of poor design decisions / neglect to properly address flaws in a timely manner (population imbalance for example)

why?

because the development staff has unrealistic production schedules and/or limited staffing and/or has a design lead that has too much on his/her plate

why?

because of budget cuts

why?

because profitability is low

why?

can go on forever tbh.. Now you tell me what the root cause is.

Fix population imbalance and 80% of the work is done.

Then fix a few more small things and increase rewards, 100% of the work done.

It is so simple that is pathetic the time ANet is taking to fix WvW.

@TheBravery:

Yup – it’s complicated in nature but fairly simple in the light of players expectations and experience – population imbalance delivers a poor experience therefore players leave. The factors behind that imbalance……well……they could go on forever and we will never know for sure eh?

Doo Lally.8594:

@TheBravery:

Yup – it’s complicated in nature but fairly simple in the light of players expectations and experience – population imbalance delivers a poor experience therefore players leave. The factors behind that imbalance……well……they could go on forever and we will never know for sure eh?

Pretty much. We’re just speculating here though, unless someone here works at ArenaNet, we’ll never know what the situation is.

Maybe they need to cut back on production schedule

or

cut wages and hire more people

etc.

Rocketmist.5436:

As we all know the last wvw lead, Devon Carter, left anet. This left a void in wvw leadership within anet. Instead of hiring someone else, they simply added the wvw leadership role on John Corpening. John Corpening is very much a pvp focused leader at the moment. Going through the last 3 months of his twitter shows 0 posts about wvw and tons about pvp.

John Corpening took over before Devon Carter left I think and Carter never had a grip on WvW anyway. I think at some point a couple of years ago the WvW and PvP teams merged so Carter was working on both anyway.

RedBaron.6058:

Fix population imbalance and 80% of the work is done.

Then fix a few more small things and increase rewards, 100% of the work done.

It is so simple that is pathetic the time ANet is taking to fix WvW.

^^^
This. So much this.

After that address all the other stuff, class imbalances, better maps, small guilds etc. All problems will solve themselves, but population comes 1st and foremost. Having most balanced classes possible, with less or more siege, less or more PVE etc. is all completely and utterly pointless when there are just not enough people playing.

And I also agree 100% with rewards. To sustain a playerbase, players need a positive incentive on per time spent basis vs. the other game modes, which goes to sustaining healthier populations and having the existing ones spend more time in WVW vs other game modes.

Rocketmist.5436:

As we all know the last wvw lead, Devon Carter, left anet. This left a void in wvw leadership within anet. Instead of hiring someone else, they simply added the wvw leadership role on John Corpening. John Corpening is very much a pvp focused leader at the moment. Going through the last 3 months of his twitter shows 0 posts about wvw and tons about pvp.

I looked at anet’s glassdoor reviews and everyone is complaining that they are understaffed also. So at the end of the day, they simply don’t have enough people working at the company to really fix any of the issues. They didn’t even hire a wvw replacement for the one that left. Pvp and wvw are two huge completely different gamemodes, it seems pretty crazy to give one guy the keys to both.

From a company perspective they are simply cutting costs to the extreme by not even replacing people that leave.

Hows it goin man ? I do still enjoy runing with you guys once in a while, though I just don’t play as often as I used to for same reasons as most of us on these forums.

I gotta tell you though, you are incorrect in this case, or at least largely partially incorrect.

This guy was largely responsible for a lot of what is happening now. Remember, prior to his “departure” from WVW he spent his time exclusively on T1 and saw everything through rosy glasses, I have no doubt he even pushed for EOTM as it is now to placate the T1 who at that time was screaming and complaining about queue times. His statements on these and reddit forums seemed to me very detached from reality.

Screwed the rest of us by further dividing the playerbase which was already thining out at the bottom tiers and instead of jumping on the population issues when they were in their respective infancy.

I have also read through his various reddit statements etc., and I have no doubt (especially taking into account the snail pace of a-nets work), that he was largely partially responsible for many of the bad ideas which are currently implimented and in the game as the work on them has begun when he was still there, he even said so somewhere on reddit.

The glassdoor statements are vastly outdated and more applicable to production and release of HOT expansion when you look at the dates, not the current situation.

My assumption is that they have even less people now then they did before, I base this on the official NCSoft released statement about A-Net going full “upkeep” and “sustain / maintenance” mode rather then producing large new content. Not sure where the confirmed 2nd expansion fits into all this. But at this rate, I would not be surprised if the final stages of this WVW overhaul will be included in that 2nd expansion requiring another $50 to use a year or so from now.

Thus to me, his prescence and history seem rather detrimental, and something to want to be rid of rather then have.

Isn’t this the business model of a f2p game? They spend the big bucks on development to make a dynamite game. In the next year or 3, they roll out regular new content in prepare for an expansion pack. After expac sales drop off, they fire everyone to minimize expenses and keep pushing shiny gem store items to maximize cash flow. I mean, how long can you rationally expect an mmo not named WoW to survive?

the root of the problem is planning isn’t done in a timely manner or maybe there wasn’t any planning done.

a employee leaving will slow down the development, but to halt the development will be a real serious issue. we dont know if the development did halt or not but sure, the patch is coming too late.

So basically you’re saying Arenanet is the root of the current WvW problems?

What a shockerrr..

Osu.6307:

Isn’t this the business model of a f2p game? They spend the big bucks on development to make a dynamite game. In the next year or 3, they roll out regular new content in prepare for an expansion pack. After expac sales drop off, they fire everyone to minimize expenses and keep pushing shiny gem store items to maximize cash flow. I mean, how long can you rationally expect an mmo not named WoW to survive?

Actually, really really long and with good pace content updates to boot.

Rift, is a perfect example, it has its issues, many of them, but the core is a PVE raiding game with gear treadmil, and it excels at that. It has fraction of the crew that this game has and pound for pound that crew delivers exponentially more content on per time basis then this game does. In addition, Trion does it all at around 1/2 to 2/3 of the costs of A-Nets expansions and content. And even the pay content is available to grinders for purchase without using $$ if they choose to do and if it is their playstyle.

I would have stuck with it if I was a PVE raid / gear treadmill progression based type player, unfortunately I am not, and their PVP blows very hard. But they do not advertise their game as “PVP based” from the ground up, but as a PVE progression game, unlike A-Net who advertises heavy PVP both small and large scale up to and including the e-sports.

In addition, many, many people playing this game have spent far more money on it then they would have playing a traditional $15 / month sub MMO and if you do some reading and search around you will find out this isn’t the only game like this. Myself included during the times when I played religiously. Now I do not since I don’t feel this company deserves payment as I am a WVW player and I paid for HOT to get specs.

So given that this product generates equivalent or superior revenue to sub (check up financial reports) MMOs you can bring in the sub based MMOs for a very fair comparison.

I think what it comes down to is tools, organization and upper management decisions that allow a company to crank out content at a phenomenal pace.

Anet ruined their own game .

If they only listened to the people who play the game , nothing of this would be happening

That August 5th, 2015 statement from Corpening seems like a distant memory now…

Edit: and those Glassdoor reviews were eye-opening and depressing.. BTW, where is ArenaNet now? Are they in Seattle or Austin or California or where???

upon doing some research ,it seems this guy will be taking over wvw.