Guild Wars 2

Anyone have any interesting theories on why wvw is always the least priority or often ignored? so far nothing new has come for wvw since November(bloodlust) and nothing for the near future, (april-june EOTM, wxp acc bound). so I ask you whats your theory on why things are this way?
here are some of mine

The WvW devs are simply “stewards” here to maintain and babysit wvw with occasional changes, improvement and updates are secondary due to it not falling under their job as they are simple there to watch and maintain wvw, not spearhead its growth.

WvW makes the Least money out of the big 3, (pve, spvp, wvw) or at the very least, Pve, no gemstore items for WvW have appeard and many (costumes, toys) do not work in wvw at all, anet being a business places with priority and resources into that which makes them the money.

WvW team, for whatever reason, is too small and lacks resources and man power needed to make WvW better than it is, with basics like a community dev completely lacking, especially when compared to the LS development which is said to have multiple teams of devs, with new maps,bosses, instances, story, etc, out in every patch.

It is not part of anets plan, WvW was always meant to be a additional mode as a bonus for having the game, it was never meant to be extremely popular with its own community and customer base, Anets long term goals still do not contain much if anything on WvW and the Long term plan was always the LS strategy with almost nothing for WvW.

A lack of the Right Talent, Anet has created a game mode even they did not expect would be so popular and does not have the right “talent” (experience in the RvR/ large scale PvP subset of mmos) to push it and improve it into the future, most of its current devs, whether working on wvw or not, are specialists and believers in other aspects of the game with no strong personality or confident team behind something like WvW,
most either being from Gw1 or non mass pvp related aspects.

Misguided belief, finally, it may be because anet believes that dedicating resources and priorities to WvW will eventually make their player base either split (which is kinda happend already) between WvW and pve or move to wvw altogether when their plan was to have the game focused on its primary aspect Pve.

Perhaps Im right with one of them, perhaps its a combination of several theories, What are your theories on the situation? why doesnt WvW get the focus and resources even one LS patch has gotten?

I think ANET hugely underestimated the draw of WvW in their game and how many people would come to play just that with no interest at all in sPvP/esports and PvE.

They created WvW like it was reality TV. Low budget entertainment that keeps people busy while they release content for the other parts of the game they view as important.

They have simply never adjusted that viewpoint. WvW is in my opinion the only salvageable part of this game, but ANET probably does not have the right people in place to make that happen and they are running out of time.

It’s like asking why Hollywood keeps spending 100s of millions on making crappy Transformers films over and over. The answer is that there are alot of people out there who lap that stuff up, so if they can make 10x more money pandering to the lowest common denominator, then that’s what they’ll do.

If you only play WvW, it’s easy to forget just how many people there are getting absurdly excited about the LS plot. Anyone remember the PAX Dev Stream in the summer? There was like an hour of discussion about “character development” BS, then Devon had about 30 seconds to announce WvW Leagues, and the entire audience looked uninterested, they were like “Yeah, thats great, thanks Devon. Now back for another hour of talking about the lore behind the different Charr legions”.

People are stupid, and that’s not ANets fault.

As you state:

WvW makes the Least money out of the big 3, (pve, spvp, wvw) or at the very least, Pve, no gemstore items for WvW have appeard and many (costumes, toys) do not work in wvw at all, anet being a business places with priority and resources into that which makes them the money.

I believe this to be the answer.

ionix.9054:

As you state:

WvW makes the Least money out of the big 3, (pve, spvp, wvw) or at the very least, Pve, no gemstore items for WvW have appeard and many (costumes, toys) do not work in wvw at all, anet being a business places with priority and resources into that which makes them the money.

I believe this to be the answer.

That would only be an answer if the gem store was full of WvW targeted items that no one was buying. The fact that the gem store is empty of those types of things makes it just another symptom of neglect, not a cause for neglect.

I am not sure it is even true either. A lot of the folks I game with buy every finisher, skins, etc and because WvW makes so much less gold than you do playing PvE they are often using RL money with the gem store, not gold.

ionix.9054:

As you state:

WvW makes the Least money out of the big 3, (pve, spvp, wvw) or at the very least, Pve, no gemstore items for WvW have appeard and many (costumes, toys) do not work in wvw at all, anet being a business places with priority and resources into that which makes them the money.

I believe this to be the answer.

ofcourse it makes the least money out of the 3, theres hardly wvw specific items in gemstore! Throw in some siege skins / gearskins for wvw only etc etc and voila, market created, lots of people will invest money playing wvw

Jaxs.5830:

ionix.9054:

As you state:

WvW makes the Least money out of the big 3, (pve, spvp, wvw) or at the very least, Pve, no gemstore items for WvW have appeard and many (costumes, toys) do not work in wvw at all, anet being a business places with priority and resources into that which makes them the money.

I believe this to be the answer.

That would only be an answer if the gem store was full of WvW targeted items that no one was buying. The fact that the gem store is empty of those types of things makes it just another symptom of neglect, not a cause for neglect.

I am not sure it is even true either. A lot of the folks I game with buy every finisher, skins, etc and because WvW makes so much less gold than you do playing PvE they are often using RL money with the gem store, not gold.

In contrast to your play experience, a lot of the folks I game with do not purchase anything out of the gem store. As a matter of fact I have purchased a xfer out of t8 (but I don’t think they gain from this as this is a symptom of a larger problem). No way would I spend real money on a digital weapon skin lol.

We tend to hold the view that wvwvw is niche and the majority of players logging into GW2 could care less about what this small minority of forum goers complains about on a daily basis. They care more about acquiring gear, collecting minis and /dancing at the mystic forge.

I think ANET has weighed where people spend most their time and they realize that in order to keep the majority happy and spending money they have to dedicate resources to non-WvWvW content.

Of course I have no statistics to back anything I just said up. Just my experience and my opinion given the people that I play with. You offered this as one of your opinions. I am stating that I agree with you!

EDIT: And now that I read some more of your post I agree with your following 2 points and think the problems are all those bundled together

Ragnar.4257:

If you only play WvW, it’s easy to forget just how many people there are getting absurdly excited about the LS plot. Anyone remember the PAXA Dev Stream in the summer? There was like an hour of discussion about “character development” BS, then Devon had about 30 seconds to announce WvW Leagues, and the entire audience looked uninterested, they were like “Yeah, thats great, thanks Devon. Now back for another hour of talking about the lore behind the different Charr legions”.

TIL there are different Charr legions.

This game has a ton of updates compared to other games I’ve played. Its common to see hype about some game then the company will put it on shelves and start development on another. Although not this one I guess.

what kind of items could anet put that WvWers would buy? Skins for sieges is a good idea, perhaps banners? logos? hand carried flags with your guild emblems? I dont know

I think anet knows that to fix WvW, and make it a format that is competitive, has diverse meta builds, and relative class balance, they would just about have to reinvent the whole format, while making radical departures from game mechanics present in PvE and PvP. All for players that seem to be increasingly at their end of game, end of giving them money experience. Why do that when they can keep stringing out the players that do actually spend a lot of money on fluff content, and are genuinely excited by the latest machinations of the bad lady who creates exotic loot bags and APs.

1)finishers – WvW item, because in PvE you dont have where to show them
2)transfers – purely for WvW, as You can host in PvE

Jaxs.5830:

ionix.9054:

As you state:

WvW makes the Least money out of the big 3, (pve, spvp, wvw) or at the very least, Pve, no gemstore items for WvW have appeard and many (costumes, toys) do not work in wvw at all, anet being a business places with priority and resources into that which makes them the money.

I believe this to be the answer.

That would only be an answer if the gem store was full of WvW targeted items that no one was buying. The fact that the gem store is empty of those types of things makes it just another symptom of neglect, not a cause for neglect.

I am not sure it is even true either. A lot of the folks I game with buy every finisher, skins, etc and because WvW makes so much less gold than you do playing PvE they are often using RL money with the gem store, not gold.

This. Look how long it took before Anet even thought to create finishers for the gemstore.

Anet just doesn’t like the game mode much — witness the dev griefing GvG incident.. I personally think that wasn’t just one rogue dev, but rather was a reflection of how Anet talks about WvW in the office every day.

The funny thing is that WvW is the preferred PvP mode of GW2. It really fits the “play how you want” mantra of GW2 very well. Anet really needs to admit they failed with sPvP and shift their attention towards WvW. (Of course PvE will always be top priority.)

They have loads of new content coming out for WvW, PvE and PvP. You can expect these to hit a few days before the release of new big mmos, like TESO and Wildstar. All that to keep us playing this game. Have patience, for us it’s a game, for them it’s a job.

As far as I remember from reading around WvW was never a major feature for then… they thought sPvP would be the main stuff just after PvE of course.

WvW popularity surprised then a lot, I remember to have read somthing from one of the devs saying it… but it is something you can accept, a part of the game they thought would no be such a success so on the release they gave not so much importance to it… what amuses me is that it is still to slow to stuff to happen to WvW, at least it looks to me that WvW has more playes than sPvP focus should have changed… idk… I am not good with marketing and sales plan stuff.

has anyone seen devon carver in the last 3 months?

SpehssMehreen.5897:

has anyone seen devon carver in the last 3 months?

Devon, was actually an early macro system that randomly posted on the forums a canned set of phrases that all basically said ‘soon’.