Guild Wars 2

Daddar.5971:

These dyes were purchased with REAL MONEY and used up only BECAUSE THEY WERE SOUL-BOUND. Now, I’m out all of that investment… and extremely frustrated and angry about the whole thing.

What now?!

Why? How did you lose anything? You purchased those dyes so that several of your characters get this dyes. That was your investment and that’s exactly what you got and what you will still have. You won’t lose anything by the update, in fact you will even get something extra: unidentified dyes. So you get more than you previously paid for.

That getting those dyes for all of your characters ist easier under the new system than under the old one, is no reason for complaint. If you buy a vacuum cleaner and two months later it is sold for half the price, do you get angry too?

Twyll, your dismissal of Curtis’ whole reasoning was really funny to read and spot on.

Curtis, thanks for answering in this thread. It is good to know that the devs read our concerns. But honestly your explanation seems to demostrate that you – and I mean ArenaNet with that – are confused about why you had town clothes in the first place and what you wanted to achieve with them.
You say town clothes don’t help people to form the light, medium or heavy look. Yeah, of course, because that’s the purpose of town clothes. They ought to help form people’s town clothes look.
The main reason I bought town clothes was so that my warrior could wear something else than heavy armor while visiting a city or so that my necro could wear trousers.

Look, other games which have much, much, much better costume systems than GW2, allow players to wear alternative armor or costumes for visual effect only, therefore increasing the incentive to get a variety of skins. The only thing GW2, a game that supposedly centers on skins, had as a comparable feature was town clothes. And now you’re scrapping that feature for confused reasons, while other games expand and improve such features to the enjoyment of their players.
This is just… not reasonable.

I could live with a refund of the retired skins if these skins come back in an improved form without clipping issues(or whatever the problem is).
But this tonic-nonsense is just absurd – sorry for these harsh words. The same for the costumes. You are making these and similar future gem store items less valuable by making them less flexible. I can’t understand why you would devalue costumes without need.

There is no Commander Shepard in GW. GW is a MMO with a continuing Lore and in that Lore, you’re not the hero. Just like Abaddon wasn’t defeated by <Insert Player Name>, but by Kormir and the other heroes around her.
The PS portrays it AS IF you were the hero, but obviously, you can’t be in Lore.

Some basic clothing items that are no longer available for purchase will be converted into endless tonics.

I would like to have some clarification on this line. Are we gonna lose skins we paid for with real money? Is there any compensation? (apart from a useless endless tonic)

Some basic clothing items that are no longer available for purchase will be converted into endless tonics.

No idea what that means either, but I paid money to get some town clothes and I mean to keep them.

I agree with the OP. It’s just silly not to say that the biconics killed Scarlet. It’s as if the main charakter of LotR wasn’t Frodo Baggins but [insert player name].

I think everyone who helped make his world win its WvsW liga should get the finisher.
First, in the season description of season 1, the finisher was separated from the meta-achievement reward, therefore the conditions for getting it, should require the other.
Second, the finisher should be the reward for winning the WvsW liga, not doing some achievements that may not even help your world.
So the finisher should not come as part of the Season-Meta-achievement, but should be a reward for everyone who participated in WvsW during the season on the winning world.

MikaHR.1978:

GEAR MATTERS. STATS MATTER. Having 13% more damage atm MATTERS. And it will ONLY GROW EVERY FEW MONTHS FROM NOW ON.

May I know how you get to 13% more damage? Because the increase in stats is way lower than that.

You are mistaken, when you wrote that, it was already the 1st of september. The server time is GMT and it always has been.

Namica.2951:

If a-net is going to add all these various new ascended armors (eventually) and weapons that we’ll need, then they need to take transmutation crystals off the gem store. It’s unfair that after being told our armor and weapons will be something that we never replace, we were then given new ones to replace the old with. End game is supposed to be about cosmetics, and now even that is being done away with due to harsh use of crystals coupled with ascended gear making the old exotic skins a moot point.

Make the gems something you buy in game for a sane price.

You might have a point for exotic equipment you transmuted before November 13, 2012. Since that day, it is known that ascended gear would be coming so you transmuted on your own risk.
But even without that, your argument is weak. As you say yourself, end game is about cosmetics and it was known since before release that new skins would be introduced over time. You could never be sure that the skins you have now are the ones you would want to keep forever, so the problem of “wasted” crystals is independent of ascended gear.

Gehenna.3625:

Except that it’s not a free market and Anet can set their own thresholds regardless of the basic economics you refer to. From the start they’ve said this, so I don’t know why people would think it’s just basic economics going on here.

On the contrary, ArenaNet always said that it’s the players who determine the price of gems.

Yoh.8469:

As both a raging fanboy, and a Guild Wars veteran, what ultimately kills it for me is how unbelievably casual the game is. Everything is handed to you on a silver platter, you hardly have to work for anything; just show up and your rewarded no matter how badly you do, and often times it is impossible to lose, and if you cannot lose, victory is meaningless.

So, you’re already fractal level 80? Then there’s a tournament coming up. One that rewards you with real money. Still meaningless for you?

WvW is Open PvP. PvP-servers wouldn’t make sense because every server already has zones in which open-pvp is active.

Well, healing draws aggro and reviving is the strongest form of healing in the game. Also, from the point of view of the enemy, it’s not a friendly act
Note that, if you want to revive someone without drawing aggro, there are ways to do that. A thief or a mesmer can cloak downed players and a guardian can shield them.

Generelly, it would be quite simplistic if mobs would attack those with the best armor. Why should they do that?
As I said, it’s not intended that one guy has the aggro all the time, because that would mean that for 4 people, defence would be irrelevant. Though if all team members know what they do, it’s possible to get close to that.

It’s certainly not pure randomness and it’s also not pure damage. Although the zerker horde will shortly tell you that your traditional character archetype is pointless, I’ve seen defensive players do a really fine job in dungeons. You just can’t hold the aggro all the time, that’s not possible and not intended.

Viralseed.9362:

It would take a lot of time, effort, and above all, gold to document what armor sets statistically offer the highest potential for aggression. I hope a developer can enlighten the community on how it works.

The devs made tanking impossible in GW2. There are no tools that help to decide how much aggro someone has and no skills directly affect aggro. The devs went even as far as giving different mobs different aggro behavior. And now you think they’ll simply TELL you how it works? Sure you thought that through?

From my experience, damage and proximity are the most important factors. Quite possible that there’s also randomness into it.

TooBz.3065:

Now that ascended gear is out they feel “incomplete.” They don’t have BIS gear anymore. When ascended weapons and armor comes out they will feel even more incomplete.

Although I have alts for different reasons than you (or so it seems), I can understand that. It’s a nice feeling to have a character ‘complete’. But I also played other MMOs before. Actually I still play Rift and I know that my chars in Rift will never have BiS gear, they will never be complete because I’m not in a progress raid guild and content is added faster than I can complete it. So I know how it is not to be able to ‘complete’ a character and still be satisfied. However, in GW2 I know that eventually my chars will be complete.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Catering to the content-gobblers is a losing proposition. They will continue to gobble as fast as they are allowed to, and demand more. If you put in gobble blocks like time gates, they will demand they be removed. Catering to the insatiable is a no-win situation.

ArenaNet isn’t catering to content-gobblers, but to those that are harmed by them, aka the economy. The content-gobblers make money fast and spend it fast, making it harder for others to get things that cost money.
As for the time-gating, it’s interesting that this topic is coming up now. Time-gating has been in the game since release and since the new dailies. When the new dailies came, I read few people complain about time gating.
The only thing that changed now is that people with many alts can’t circumvent the time-gating of dungeon rewards any longer.
Time-gating is bad for those with too much time on their hands or too little. For everyone else, it’s good.

Lambros Augustus.6594:

We have dailies as a baseline of doing something daily. We have alts to enjoy more loot and we should get more loot. I have 8 toons in 8 professions I would like to use them with full rewards on tokens, gold and anything else that is rewarding.

As I said before, I have 15 alts and I don’t feel that it entitles me to get more loot.

Deamhan.9538:

Wow! Twice the play time got you twice the reward. I bet 10 times the play time would result in 10 times the reward.

(rolleyes) Obviously, I meant per day. A casual can, just like a hardcore player log in every day of the week and do his dailies. But the casual can’t play two hours or more per day. That’s why we have dailies. Think about it.

Deamhan.9538:

Can you identify the mistake?

Yes, I can. But what is the point of this? Did you want to demonstrate what the word fallacy means or are you claiming that my example is wrong because I divided by zero? In the case of the former, you would have to show where the fallacy lies and in the case of the latter… that’s just absurd.

But I know now where you’re mistake lies. You think that if you play twice as long as I do, you should get twice the reward and if you play ten times as long as I do, you should get ten times the reward. If this is your premise, your conclusion is sound.
But this is not the premise under which GW2 works or under which any MMO works. In any MMO, with increasing time invested, you get less reward per time. You may not like that (probably because you have more time on your hands than the average player), but that’s the way it is. And the reason this is there is not to make people play longer (obviously it makes people play less), but to give casuals a chance to catch up. Yes, you’re right that there’s no gear threadmill which you can lack behind, but there’s the economy and the price of things and it wouldn’t be wise of ArenaNet to let casual player behind financially.
Nothing of this has directly to do with alts, but restrictions for the rewards alts get are a consequence of this. Maybe you just want to outfit all of your alts, but you’ll get there eventually anyway. Other people who posted in this thread have already bemoaned that they can’t use their 8 alts to get a legendary faster anymore. Thus, people clearly used alts to get rewards quicker. It’s only logical that ArenaNet restricted that.

TooBz.3065:

However, Alts are much less useful than they were, and the game is less alt-friendly than it was.

Ok, granted. It’s still much alt-friendlier than any other MMO I know.

Deamhan.9538:

Was it your intent to be deceitful? After all you completely ignored the remaining half of that scenario.

Path 1 = 5g in 10 min
Path 2 = 5g in 20 min

Player one does both paths gaining 10g in 30min
Player two does both paths gaining 10g in 30min
Player two then does both paths again with their alt gaining another 10g in 30min

Twice the reward but taking twice the time so it still works out to be the same amount of gold/time. In addition to that, since player two is using two characters then that 20g is basically being divided between gearing both characters.

This isn’t the “second half”, it’s an addendum. And we could go on with this example ad infinitum. What if player two has more than two alts. If he has ten alts, he can do one path ten times and get 50 g in 100 minutes. While player one has no chance whatsoever to get 50 g in 100 minutes.
You turn the example to your favor by assuming that the player with the alts invests as much time into each alt as the player with only one. Which is with increasing number of alts very unrealistic. Which makes you deceitful, if any. The example still shows that if reward boni are character-bound, the player with alts will hit diminishing returns later than the one with only one char. And that is an advantage.
And btw, the 20g are not divided, they all go in the same wallet.

As for my previous example, it would relate if dailies were per character.

If it took 20min to do a daily and you got one laurel per daily while being able to do them once per character, then that is one laurel per character per day. What this would do is after 30days (just throwing the number out there) both players would be able to by an ascended trinket for their character. The difference is, player two would have enough to buy one for each of their alts too.

Player two would also get twice the money and twice the achievement points. He could also buy 120 dyes with his laurels, while player one could only buy 60. Laurels are not only for ascended stuff, after all.

What you don’t seem to understand is that diminished returns are not there to punish alts, but to help casuals. Without DR, the gap between hardcore players and casuals would widen, hardcore players can invest x times the playing time of a casual into the game, but they don’t get x times the rewards. This system punishes alts only then if you see alts as a means to circumvent DR.

Deamhan.9538:

Let’s break it down since I’m sure even then it will go completely over peoples heads.

One person has just one character while another has two.

There is a daily event and the person with one character has to do this event twice to finish gearing their character. The other person has to do the same but per character. With the event being once a day per account, the person with one character will take two days and the other person will take 4 days.

This seems like it should be that way so far. After all, it should take twice as long to outfit twice the characters right?

But twice as long is only as simple as time played. If the event takes 20 minutes then the first person will take 40 minutes while the second will take 80. Doing it twice vs 4 times. Again, with the above situation, it works out. Twice the time to outfit twice the number of characters.

But what if it was per character per day?

The first person would spend 20min per day over two days for a total of 40min. The other person would spend 40min per day over two days for a total of 80min.

This example doesn’t fit the situation in GW2 very well.
Is there any event that you can only do once per day and account that you need to outfit your character? I wouldn’t know what that would be, despite having 6 alts on 80.
Here’s an example that fits GW2 much better:
There’s a dungeon path that gives you 5 gold in 10 minutes. The next best path gives 5 gold in 20 minutes.
Now the first person you mentioned does the fast path. After that, since he can’t get the same reward twice per day, he does the other path. So he gets 10 gold in 30 minutes.
The other person from your example does the same, since alts don’t get the reward either. Now, if the reward was character based, the second person could simply switch to his alt and do the fast path again. So he will get 10 gold in 20 minutes. A clear advantage.

I maintain that what you’re asking for is an advantage for alts, not fair treatment.

In Final Fantasy, one character can do all classes, so that muddies the waters.

Yeah, and it will take longer for every class to level after your first. There’s little doubt that FF XIV will be less alt-friendly than GW2. In fact, I don’t know any MMO that is more alt-friendly than GW2.

I have 15 alts, 6 on level 80, working on Nr. 7. They are mostly exotic geared and I have ~7 ascended pieces. And I don’t see the problem.
1. Ok, I can understand that you want to use your fractal level with your alts. The thing is, fractals are for progression, so it makes sense to make them character bound, just like progression works in other games. Sometimes I wish it was different, but I think it is ok the way it is.
2. Everyone can get 1 laurel per day. That’s completely fair, why should you get more laurels just because you have alts?
3. This was a necessary change. People would farm the claw of Jormag the whole day if it wasn’t account based, crowding the servers that currently have the event. We know how it has been. Now you can do the claw once per day, no matter how many alts you have.
4. Another point where I can feel your pain. Yes, it’s annoying that you don’t have your rank on your alt. But it makes sense too, because not every alt would use the same distribution of points. But this is the one thing where I would welcome a change.
5. It’s time gated for a reason. If people could transform crystals with each of their alts, it wouldn’t be time gated anymore. You wouldn’t even need existing alts, just create one, transform crystals and delete the alt. You could transform hundreds of crystals per day.
6. Again, this system exists so that you don’t farm one dungeon path excessively. YOU, not your character, therefore it’s account based. Makes sense.

Penalizing players for having alts would mean that you don’t get what players with single chars would get. This applies for fractals and wvw. In both cases there are reason why it is so. But the most things you say are benefits for people with alts.
Of course it takes longer to equip 8 chars than it takes to equip 1 char. That’s just fair. It would still be fair if it would take 8 times as long, but we all know that equipping is faster with each new character.

I have alts because I want to have a choice between different play styles in every part of the game. I see that compromised in WvW, although I can accept it. I don’t have alts because I want to get things faster than people with one character.

Tengu! Tengu! Tengu!

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The actual shrine to Balthazar is near the Balthazar waypoint. Yes his statue used to be down there but I’m fairly certain the human god of warfare doesn’t mind having a secondary shrine replaced by an arena.

It wasn’t an oversight. There wasn’t any need for the second, smaller shrine down there.

Then why do all other shrines have smaller secondary shrines left or right of the main streets? If nothing else, this destroys the pattern.

What is the point in getting end game gear? What is the point in doing anything in a virtual world? What is the point in other MMOs to run through raids and dungeons to get items you need to run through other raids and dungeons?
To me an (subjective) improvement in style is much more real and meaningful than an improvement in some arbitrary numbers.

Fungalfoot.7213:

As a flipper the only contribution to the market space you make is getting between buyers and sellers and raising prices so you can benefit from the work of others.

No, a flipper benefits from the lazyness of others. If everyone would look for the best price, flippers could not exist.

Mike.7236:

Others are more skilled with (s)words, and manage to play the game to their advantage. A good example is ASaturnus a few posts up. He speaks in an empathic, sensible voice, and climbs the social ladder with his veiled attack – he invalidates my thread by telling me it is pointless to express my opinion, hinting subliminally that it is immature to do so, while covering up the attack with a fatherly concern for my well-being.

snickers Touché. You are a more intelligent opponent than I thought (not that I thought you dumb). While I actually wanted to make a valid point with my post, we both know that it would be dishonest for me to say that no attack on you at all was intended.
But to my defence, I felt challenged to attack by your opening post. The way you phrased your opinion makes it sound as though a core feature of the game, a feature the developers wanted for their game, that I wanted and that many others wanted, was just a mistake, a sillyness in fact. You berate those that thought having no healers in a game like GW2 was a good idea for being silly. At least, that is the impression I had. Thus, your claim that you’re only counterattack, isn’t entirely true either.

But then, as I said, apart from my more-transparent-than-I-thought attack, I did want to make a valid point and it still stands. Whether or not making your suggestion was immature, someone as intelligent as you knows that your chances of getting what you suggested are very slim. I have no desire to attack you any further. I know that you read and understood my post, that’s anything anyone can hope for on the internet.

Let’s summerize: this change is bad for rangers that attack with longbow from >1200 range exclusively. Rangers with more versatile play style profit from the change. So, we can assume that ArenaNet made this change to encourage more versatile play style. Makes sense to me.

Ehm, you know that technically GW2 falls in the RPG genre, right? And that level progression ist a defining characteristic of this genre? You are basically suggesting a completely different game. Do you really think it makes any sense to make such a suggestion?
I don’t know any MMORPG that has faster leveling than GW2 and besides, your guild could easily go to low level areas and play there with your new members.

Mike.7236, from the way you write I’d assume that you are an intelligent and educated person and I’m just going to assume that you’re an informed player. If this is true than you have, before buying and investing time into GW2, read announcements, reviews etc. Undoubtly, while informing yourself about the game you were planning to buy and play, you read that this game wouldn’t have traditional roles such as tank and healer. Possibly you even read the statements that explained that it wouldn’t be possible to play any class as healer or tank however you bent it, because you can’t actively heal other players and aggro doesn’t work that way.
Now, you say you always liked to be a healer in games, so it can’t be otherwise than that you felt a little bit of uncertainty when you heared that there wouldn’t be healers in GW2. You tried it anyway and now found out that you miss being a healer. That’s perfectly ok. It’s also ok that you like GW2 for other reasons and you would very much like to have the option of playing your preferable role in a game you actually like.
But what you need to realize is that the way it is, GW2 is a failed experiment FOR YOU. You tried to play a MMO without healers and found out that that isn’t what you want to have. Accept that, but don’t argue that GW2 should become something it was never intended to be.

I don’t want to tell you that you should leave and play something else. That’s something that you have to decide for yourself. But I can tell you that months before the release, during the height of the hype, I told people that around 50% of all people who’ll buy GW2 will be disappointed of the game and the two main reasons would be the lack of item progression and the lack of the classic roles of tank and healer.
Now, the way servers are still middle to high, I guess I overestimated the percentage, but it still explains the complains you found on metacritic. Of cource, few of the overwhelmingly positive reviews you can find on metacritic explicitely mention the lack of the holy trinity, but it still stands to reason that way over 3 million people bought GW2 and despite its advertised lack of tanks and healers, give it the highest meta-critic score of any recent MMO releases.
So, what I’m trying to say is, that although you and a significant number of others, would like to have tanks and/or healers in GW2, it is not a general flaw of the game, it’s a feature than many many others like or accept and that’s not going to change.
Suggesting to change a core feature of the game is a waste of time.

So OP, you’re argument is that with the gold you earned yet, you could only buy an armor that is INTENTIONALLY made very expencive to be a prestige armor twice?

Sad Swordfish.9743:

whats the point in being the savior of everything in a MMO? I dont understand this mindset. the more overpowered my character am, the less I identify with it.

Exactly. In an MMO you can either be the ultimate hero OR get immersed into a living world with thousands of other players. Both are mutual exclusive. Those who prefer option 1 should really play single-player games.

Free travel to home city would decrease server load and it would make cities other than LA more lively.
@SuLor, I don’t know about your server, but on my server, borderlands are full quite often.

ABADDON!
Vote for Evon

15 characters, currently. 5 of them are 80, warrior, guardian und engineer are underway. I got 2 thieves, 2 eles, 3 rangers, 2 necros and 2 guardians.

Sylvari don’t do photosynthesis. And cannibalism is eating members of your own kind. For sylvari, that would be sylvari, and not plants.

Kreslin.6832:

Role-playing game suppose to be for one person. Player must be the one, only one. Because RP it’s a story telling. And if it’s a story telling, player’s character must be the one who this story is telling about. And when player is not along, when he/she shares the world with other players, the world doesn’t belong to him/her anymore, and story-telling are loosing it’s strength.

The exact opposite is the case. You don’t roleplay in a vacuum, you need other players. In a singleplayer game, you can play the role the game gives you, as much as the game allows, but that’s hardly roleplay. In a MMO, you can play any role you like, but there’s a difference in how much the game engine supports you in this. The engine of GW2 doesn’t even let you sit on a chair.

Thomanson.4765:

How about….

1: Chat box control please? /emote is DARK GREY for frak’s sake. Let us change colors.
2: Make /block actually block emotes, so we can control spam.
3: Make /say and /emote ranges actually make sense.
4: Give us real user-controlled culling sliders, so we don’t have people vanishing in the middle of big rp gatherings
5: Chat-logging functionality would be nice (also useful for combat logging, i guess)
6: User Channels for communities
7: Housing and/or more interactive spaces in towns.
8: Sitting poses that actually work on….you know, chairs.

The things the OP mentioned are of little importance for RP, however this is. GW2 isn’t RP-friendly, that is just a given. ArenaNet doesn’t care for RP and probably doesn’t even understand it and I think we have a right to complain about that just as any subgroup of players. Not that I expect that that would ever change.

Your thread title is a misnomer, because you’re not talking about design philosophy, you’re talking about the manifesto which is a piece of marketing.

a) “Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1, and puts it into a persistent world.”
A marketing phase obviously untrue since the devs can’t possibly know what you love about GW1. What if you love about GW1 that’s not a sequel? You knew this phrase isn’t true the moment you heard it.
Despite that, GW2 is a lot like GW1. You make a small selection of skills out of a larger variety, unlike other MMOs where you often have 30+ skills at the same time. You reach max level rather quickly. You reach max gear rather quickly. In PvP all have the same equip. The story is told in instanced missions. You can do much of the content alone. Everyone gets his own loot. Many of the classes are quite similar. You inflict conditions on the enemy that are shared for all players. You do not have mounts but instead can port to whereever you want. Etc. I could go on for a while. And by the way, there was a lot of trash loot in GW1 and no crafting.

b) “In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks – occasionally – that you need to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. I swung a sword, I swung a sword again, hey, I swung it again, that’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in GW2.”
Could you even IMAGINE a MMO without grind? Without grind, you would just play the limited content and then stop. People don’t want a MMO without grind, they just want the grind to taste good. Whether you like the taste in GW2 is up to you.

c) “As a structure, the MMO has lost its ability to make the player feel like a hero. Everybody around you is doing the same thing you’re doing, the boss you just killed respawns 10 minutes later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”
Just think about what a game you would have if this weren’t the case. A game in which it actually matters whether player X is there. Now, player X is sick to day so everybody else is screwed. How could 3 million players actually ALL be special? It’s a ridiculous thought. It’s not even possibly to tell a consistent game story in a MMO in which the player is actually the hero. It would be good if MMO developers would drop that silly notion.

And BTW, I like Trehearne and I know a lot of people who do too.

The manifesto is merchandize. More precisely, it is an example of the bloated merchandize language ArenaNet increasingly used when the release drew nearer. It’s not really the cornerstone of ArenaNet’s design philosophy.
ArenaNet wanted to create an MMO with artistic design without item threadmill, with a combat system that is different from the usual tank&spank-setup, without content blockers, where it is reasonable for high-level chars to hang out in all areas of the game and not just the high-level ones and with an action-gameplay in which other people are welcome and not competitors.
This is what the idea of GW2 was all about and I would argue that that is what it mostly has become.

Galtrix.7369:

Sure, mmorpgs die of course, as do all games eventually. You can count them successful when they’ve lived as long kitten years, which all of them have. WoW is still going strong, as well as Perfect World, Lotro, and Runes of Magic. I can pretty much guarantee GW2 will not last as long as even Runes of Magic.

You’re contradicting yourself. You said that SWTOR is a successful MMO but now you claim, success means living long. SWTOR isn’t there that much longer than GW2 and it sold fewer copies. It had to abandon it’s subscription model within a year after release. It’s pretty much an example of a MMO-disaster and probably would have been a total failure weren’t it for its franchise.
Guild Wars didn’t have gear progression and it sold over 7 million copies. More than any of your examples except WoW. Guild Wars 2 was advertised for years as not having gear progression and yet, over 3 million people bought it. As I write this, GW2 is in my country on place 4 in the retail charts. It increased NCSoft’s profit last year by 500%. There’s no question whether it will fail, it is already a massive success. Even if all players will stop playing tomorrow, it will have been a success. And I’m convinced that it will still be played in 5 years.

The costumes you can buy for GW2 are worth their money too, if you really like how they look. But that’s beside the point. It’s only costumes, they don’t help you play the game in any way, nothing you get in the gemstore has stats. Even the harvesting sickle is just for convenience since you can get sickles for karma, thus, for free.

There is no armor you can buy in the gemstore, only skins and that’s not different from GW1. The only difference is that those skins in GW1 were ONLY available through the gemstore, no way of getting them ingame.

stayBlind.7849:

ASaturnus.4980:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Third, there’s little else to do end-game, outside of grinding,

Sorry, but this complaint is just nonsensical. End-game is by definition grinding. It’s as if you complain that a bachelor isn’t married.

According to ANet “the game is the end game”.

According to you “end game is a grind”

So, basically, the game is a grind.

Well, “the game is the end game” is just a marketing phrase that actually doesn’t make much sense. It was used because traditionally the end-game in mmos, in other words grind, is ironically seen as more fun as the boring leveling.

It’s my style of playing, too. I do what I want to do. Ok, somethimes I do what my wife wants to do. I think I will have fun for years in GW2. Maybe I’ll have a legendary or two sometime in the future, if not then not. In other games, I do much more to get on instead to have fun.

DiogoSilva.7089:

End-game must rely on repeatable content, but you can have fun and exciting repeatable content, or mindless grinding. GW2’s devs have clearly, clearly expressed that they wanted to acchieve the former, but currently, GW2 has degenerated to the later situation.

This is much clearer proposition than what you said before and debatable. My counterargument is that this is subjective. I find the repeatable content in GW2 fun and I think I’ll have fun for a long time in GW2.
I guess this borders to the “elitism is ruining GW2” discussion in this forum. You may not see yourself as an “elitist”, but my impression is that your main problem is that you feel under-challenged. Understandable, but I do not think that the majority of GW2 feels this way (maybe the majority of forum contributors).