Guild Wars 2

Arrgh! Getting this several times a day is beyond ridiculous.

Bugged events or quests is one thing, and you can continue playing elsewhere. To have the game physically assault your auditory nerves is something entirely different and it makes the game unplayable until you log out entirely.

If Anet can’t figure out what is wrong after all this time, they need to hire outside help that can.

I didn’t have the sound bug until a couple weeks ago, so something on the Anet side has to have changed. I have gotten it in big battles as well as fights with just a couple mobs. The frequency of it happening has increased over time as well. It started out happening maybe every few days, and now it occurs 2 to 3 times per day.

I have deleted the local.dat file and the problem has repeated itself within hours of resuming the game, so for me anyway, that isn’t a real solution to the problem. Just logging out of the game is as effective since the bug doesn’t show up right away even with a large local.dat file.

I even reinstalled the whole game to see if something else might have been corrupted and it didn’t matter in the least.

So as far as I can see, the problem is entirely on the Anet end of things. I really hope that they can figure it out the problem and a solution to it soon. It’s a real pain getting the sound bug while in WvW. There it’s not like you can log out and come back right where you left off. You’re kicked out of the loop entirely, and turning the sound off isn’t a great option either because many times you can hear attacks happening even when you can’t see them directly.

Realistic additions?

Hmm, there goes bug fixes out the window. Still having bugs that existed in beta kind of shows that bug fixing isn’t really high on the priority list.

My guess is more “special events” which by definition must have tie-ins to the cash shop, and must have some kind of item for sale which has a ridiculously low chance of giving buyers a wanted item on the end of the carrot stick. (ie pixelated scratch-off lottery tickets only with much, much lower paybacks) It’s a little less subtle than coming out and saying “Give us your real money for some in-game gold that you can gamble away”

More items released in these “special events” that have obviously not been tested in the least prior to going live. (ie recipes that don’t teach you the proper pattern, and when said recipe is fixed days later, the items created from the recipe don’t function properly.)

More mass bannings for people doing things Anet released intentionally, but since they did no testing beforehand, the things are considered exploits retroactively.

Like others have stated, more things will be broken when new patches are applied to fix things, which will also be broken again shortly thereafter.

More changes to FotM, including subliminal messaging telling players that “they must run this dungeon over and over endlessly and ignore any other problems the game has” This will make things much simpler and maybe they can even throw in another random fractal now and then if players comply.

Note:
No sarcasm was harmed in the creation of this post. All sarcasm is treated with the utmost respect and dignity, and all applicable laws and regulations with the regard to it’s treatment are followed, almost always.

The whole getting specific looks or type of gear from doing some specific dungeon, etc. is frankly illogical to start out with, so I don’t see anything changing in the future, and I would be surprised if Anet actually does make Ascended gear available through other means outside of FotM no matter what they said previously. It’s not like making recipes, and even new mats, for the crafting of Ascended gear is that difficult.

There have been new recipes, along with new mats, released monthly with special events, and Anet said they had already been working on other ways to get Ascended gear before it was released, so what is the hold-up on it, other than that they really don’t want to do it. Recipes for infusions have changed and FotM is scheduled for another update in January, but still no mention of these “other ways” to acquire Ascended gear.

When you get a piece of specific gear to drop in a dungeon, etc. who made it? Did it just materialize out of thin air in a specific location? Someone made, or crafted it, right? So, in a game that specifically lets crafters come up with new recipes through experimentation, why wouldn’t a mastercrafter be able to learn how to craft any type of gear available? It might take time and a lot of experimentation, but it could be done.

Frankly, cosmetic differences in armor would be trivial to copy for anyone who was a true master of the craft. Even special effects like glows, etc. could be achieved, albeit that it might take a combination of several crafting disciplines to do it.

There may be some gear which has been created through a divine providence that might be impossible to recreate, but since even Legendary items in the game can be crafted through means available, I’m not sure what those “divine” items would be. Legendary is pretty much a misnomer anyway. It’s not exactly legendary when you see handfuls of the items around.

I know some would say that the crafting I propose is far too powerful, and that is probably true for the ease it is to become a mastercrafter in this game. True mastercrafting would need to be tougher to obtain. Maybe more like it is in Aion, where getting to the very top of the crafting discipline requires you to do some difficult quests.

And others will say that applying logic and realism to a fantasy game is pointless, at best. Maybe so. I guess if I really want the game that can combine these concepts, I’ll have to wait until I win Powerball and have a couple hundred million to spare to make one myself. Dare to dream. lol

I have several reasons why I don’t WvW more than I do.

1. Horrible mechanics involving towers/keeps. Attackers can cast spells that wrap over castle walls to affect siege and defenders, while defenders are obstructed by the wall using abilities to attack unless they climb on top of the wall exposing themselves to be pulled from the wall, or easily hit by spells, arrows, etc. It’s totally inconsistent with the point of a wall walk around a tower or keep. The current method just allows quick flipping of those objectives which is contrary to the point of having the structures. You might as well have a big open area with flags all over the place to capture.

2. Lack of any real strategy in WvW which is exasperated by the above. Zergs are the rule and it’s more like swarms of locusts running around rather than any battlefield strategy.

3. Big culling and lag problems. Some of the worst I have seen in the games I have played. This is almost entirely due to inefficiencies with Anet hardware and software neither of which I expect to be corrected soon, or at all.

4. It has gotten to the point where it has become the same 3 servers playing each other week after week. It gets boring, and the order of finish at the end of a week starts to be the same. The server in 3rd place week after week ends up losing guilds and drops like a rock in the standings.

5. The badge drop rate seems horrible to me, although it seems to be significantly better for some classes than others. I got over 100 kills with my necromancer and got 6 whole badges. My warrior got that many badges with less than a 1/4 as many kills. It could just be a case of Anet’s fluky rng, but it seems that some classes have a much easier time getting badges for an equal amount of kills.

6. Not necessarily why I don’t play, but a problem with WvW nonetheless. Map completion in the game requires you to collect all the pois in the bgs, but if a person is on the third place, or even second place in some instances, server in the WvW tier, they will find it impossible to do so. So you need to do WvW to get map completion, but it’s necessary to do it on a different server?

Frankly, I think hoping for any big changes to WvW is a pipe dream. The fact of the matter is that WvW makes Anet no money whatsoever, unless commanders are buying their icons with gold purchased at the GW2 cash shop. A business isn’t going to devote a lot of resources to something that gives them no return on investment. If they did, said business wouldn’t be in business very long.

Getting to the crux of the matter, WvW doesn’t make Anet any money. Unless all the commanders are buying their icons with gold bought from Anet’s cash shop, what financial incentive do they have to really fix anything in WvW?

At this point in the game it’s all about making money in the cash shop to keep the game running and turn a profit. Therefore things in the game that make money will be top priority, i.e. special events, with cash shop tie-ins. Fixing things isn’t exactly a high priority if you haven’t noticed. Some events, etc. that have been broken since beta still haven’t been fixed.

Culling isn’t just a problem in WvW either. As people have noted it occurs in LA and also in various parts of the PvE world. Whether it’s a hardware or software problem, or probably both, on Anet’s end, it doesn’t seem like something that is going to be dealt with any time soon, if at all.

I’ve played FFA games before and a lot of it degenerates into mobs of max level characters ganking individual characters, mostly ones far below their levels. Rarely, if ever, was there any kind of fair, or even, fighting. It’s not a game about being better, it’s a game of preying on the weaker.

If you want an adrenaline rush, how about bringing back the old-time concept of permanent death. Really FFA is nothing without it. Now how many of the players will be willing to play where not only can their character’s body be looted, but terminated?

That single player, that is being attacked by a handful, can then have the satisfaction of knowing that although he was killed and his body looted, one or more of the gang attacking him is in the same boat if he is good enough. Those dead gang members can then find out if the people they were running with are true friends, or not, by whether they give their looted gear back to them on a newly created character.

If you are not willing to accept the ultimate consequence of character death, then FFA is just a pretty wrapped up version of PvE with the strong preying on the weak.

I’m not quite sure what justifying the cash shop means. In this business model, the purpose of the cash shop is quite simple, to make money to run the game along with a profit.

I’ve seen notions all over the forums saying that people don’t have to buy from the cash shop, which is true, to an extent. An individual doesn’t have to buy anything, but when the gaming populace as a whole doesn’t buy from the cash shop, this game ceases to exist.

I don’t understand some people’s idea that gaming companies are some charitable organizations that provide a game and additional content out of the sheer goodness of their hearts. It’s all intended to get people to spend more money, in this case in the cash shop, to keep the game up and running and to make a profit. The more people spend, the more the company can invest in the game while still retaining a certain profit margin.

RNG makes them CASH in the online store. The boxes are basically pixelated scratch-off lottery tickets. People get into the mindset that one more try will get them that item and they buy more. The same concept behind casinos and lottery tickets, etc. Offer a small chance for a “big win” and it entices people to spend more cash.

How many people have you seen playing games at a carnival to win some item and end up spending more on the game than they could’ve bought the item for? A lot. Since the game has no sub fees and no advertising, it runs off profits from the online store and RNG stuff is a lot of that profit which is why you see it tied to every event they have.

I don’t mind fighting the mobs even if they are challenging, but they aren’t really reasonable for a player of the mob level to tackle. If they are intended as a group events, they have neither been listed as such, or said to be such anywhere. And in most areas, good luck finding even a few people around to help with boxes when there are handfuls of boxes in the zone at the same time and population in the zones is minimal to start out with. It’s mostly people getting map completion or a few leveling alts, and now you have a few farming presents.

After not having a present even spawn in 3 out of the last 4 princess doll boxes, I don’t even bother with them. You can get more gift boxes from random mob drops and they aren’t a pain in the backside to deal with, so frankly I don’t see the point in opening them. The drops from the box mobs haven’t been any better than random mobs anywhere for me either.

So if you want a challenging fight against multiple mobs, open the boxes, although they may spawn with no present or the present may despawn before you are able to kill them all. You’ve got the grab and run method, if a present spawns as well. If you just want to get presents, I’d recommend just killing normal mobs. You don’t have to worry about the above problems, or about possibly getting caught in a bad situation against a group of tough mobs that leads to repair bills, and frankly per given time period you get more from normal mobs.

To me the event is so-so. It’s about what I expected it would be.

I’m not a big fan of jumping events. They aren’t puzzles at all, but more like the timing of jumps in a game of Donkey Kong. The Bells Choir is ok if you like Guitar Hero. The first time I saw the “game” board it reminded me of a See ’n Say for little kids.

The dungeon/instance, whatever you want to call it, is just a string of Renown Heart quests followed by a boss tougher than a veteran, but not quite a champion. A lot of artwork and design for not much content. The tying of the quests together into a theme was a stretch at best.

One last thought is about some people saying this was some kind of bonus from Anet. These events are nothing of the sort. They are all tied into the cash shop for a reason, and that is to get people to spend real-life cash in the game. That is the major reason for these events. Without any subscription fees Anet has no financial incentive whatsoever to spend money on making content without some expectation of a return on their investment. There is another reason for these events and that is to distract people from the bugs, programming errors and other things in the game which aren’t functioning entirely correctly. They aren’t spending bunches of cash fixing errors, because frankly they don’t have to. If enough people accept the game the way it is, and they spend money in the cash shop, they have no incentive at all to correct things, let alone institute things they may have alluded to, or “promised” if you want to use that term, although in business you can write that term on an ice cube.

They’re definitely much harder than the skritt, but just think you only need to kill 100 of them to finish off the monthly.

I’m not quite sure what the breakout event is supposed to accomplish. So the team that controls the map gives up the tower being attacked by the commander NPC and if he leaves after taking the tower, they just zerg the tower and take it right back. Did anything really change? Does the event then start all over again?

Unless the NPC Commander drops pretty good loot, what’s the point in wasting resources defending the tower he attacks? Wait until he leaves and then take the tower back. If he does drop decent loot, why let him get to a tower? The controlling force can still camp the spawning area, they’ll just do it with larger numbers, arrow carts, and ballista.

Either way, did that really solve anything? If a force doesn’t have numbers, they won’t be able to keep what they take anyway, NPC Commander or not.

So according to the official responses posted above, Anet had no clue whatsoever who dc’d during the final event and were using some kind of pasted together criteria, that frankly even they knew wasn’t gong to solve the problem. And when the initial script did fail, they quickly ran another one which also failed. Also, from official responses, we aren’t supposed to care what other people got. That seems entirely contradictory to the statement that they were trying to make distribution fair.

Why not just summarize it like it really went. We messed up the event. We then waited 3 weeks to come up with a script that failed miserably. We delivered rewards to a lot of people who weren’t supposed to get them and didn’t deliver rewards to a lot of the people who were supposed to get them. We correct this error, by running another script which does exactly what the first one did compounding the error yet again. Tell people not to care what other people get because we don’t want everyone to be aware of how instead of making things fair, we have added to the initial unfairness caused by the myriad of problems during the initial event. People suggest you just mail everyone the reward and that is met with replies that it wouldn’t be fair, yet there was nothing resembling fairness in the erroneous scripts that were run either. Now people who sent in tickets initially because they dc’d must do so yet again for additional consideration of eligibility of reward based on your failed scripts.

For future reference, if you had just mailed everyone a reward days after the event admitting things failed and there were numerous errors, your company would have come off looking better than good and you would be steeped with praise. Things would have ended up much fairer that they are now.

Instead people waited an inordinate amount of time for failed attempts to correct something your company couldn’t even verify with data. It left people who had legitimately earned rewards and were not able to collect them, because of errors and problems on your end, to justify themselves because your scripts didn’t work. This way doesn’t leave your company steeped in praise, but clouded with doubt that you will actually do what you promise and if you are even capable of doing so.

If GW2 has 1 billion people playing that doesn’t necessarily mean the game isn’t dying. Under this model, the game needs to make money via the cash shop in order to remain viable. If people aren’t spending money there, the game has no income and will become stagnant. Sure, some of the initial sales money will keep the game going for awhile, but I’m guessing that expenditure on the game is getting close to an end, if it hasn’t already stopped. The company isn’t going to put all the money back into GW2. There are profit margins to be maintained and other games currently in the works by NCSoft to be funded. That said GW2 is to the point of sinking or swimming based on cash shop purchases and has little to do with the number of people playing the game.

Attended (dc’d)/ No loot/ Received

If the event itself didn’t leave a horrible impression on people (especially those who were playing the free trial) the debacle they end up using to try and correct things should. Both involve a total lack of foresight and some very bad programming.

Now they may have to end up doing what they should have done days after the event and just mail everyone in the game a chest. It would have solved the issue quickly and would have been a show of goodwill basically saying we know the event was messed up and we apologize. Instead they wait weeks to run a program that is an utter failure compounding the initial errors in the event itself. They can’t wait weeks, or even days, this time. They either make sure they get it 100% right this time, or just give everyone the reward.

The drop rates of the flowers and karka shells as well is ridiculously low considering how many are needed to craft things. I have gotten well over 1k passion fruit and I have gotten 6 flowers and during that time killing lots of karka I’ve gotten just over 30 shells, or enough to make 1 piece of apothecary exotic gear.

With higher level mat drop rates the way they are, Anet is making crafting high level stuff prohibitively expensive, in both time and currency, to do. And since crafting seems to be only really viable at high levels, it’s like they are taking it out of the game altogether.

There’s even less incentive to take the champ down when it doesn’t drop any loot at all. They said they improved rewards for champions and veterans, but that doesn’t seem the case in actuality. I was in groups that killed the champion karka on two of my toons yesterday and no one got any loot from it either time.

And the respawn timer is ridiculously fast. People who were rezzing downed players didn’t have time to mine the node and get out of there before it respawned. Someone said it was supposed to be 3 minutes. Less than 1 minutes is what it is now.

The monthly events are about making money. This game has no subscription fee so they need to make money some how and events seem to be the mode they are using to generate cash by tying them to items in the Black Lion Trading Post. They sell items for each of the events to draw in cash.

It doesn’t seem to matter if you dc’d during the final fight, already got the chest, participated in the event but not during the final fight, or even didn’t do any of the event at all. All of those cases have gotten chests on the Tarnished Coast server. All I’ll say is that if Anet’s solution was to just mail everyone a chest, then why has it taken weeks to do. It could’ve been done in days. Were they waiting to see if issue went away so they wouldn’t have to do anything. There really is no excuse for it to have taken so long if everyone was going to get the chest anyway.

From the looks of it, everyone is getting a chest. It doesn’t seem to matter if you dc’d during the final fight, already got the chest, participated in the event but not during the final fight, or even didn’t do any of the event at all. All of those cases have gotten chests on the Tarnished Coast server.

From the looks of it, everyone is getting a chest. It doesn’t seem to matter if you dc’d during the final fight, already got the chest, participated in the event but not during the final fight, or even didn’t do any of the event at all. All of those cases have gotten chests on the Tarnished Coast server.

A couple things bother me about it. One, if you didn’t even try to do the event and still get rewarded, what’s the point of doing the events in the first place. It sets kind of a lousy precedent for future special events. Why struggle through bugs and errors since you get the rewards anyway. And secondly, if Anet was going to give chests to everyone (presuming that they couldn’t figure out who dc’d or not) then why did it take them this long to send them out. If they were going to be mailed to everyone, it should’ve taken days, not weeks to do.

Hmm, like I’ve said before on the subject, I’ll consider it to be another “checks in the mail” People got e-mails from support saying the rewards would be given out Monday or Tuesday of last week, and more e-mails said this Monday or Tuesday.

I wonder if they’ve ever heard the story about the boy who cried wolf. I hope for Anet’s sake there’s no wolves in their vicinity because I doubt anybody would believe their cries anymore either.

I frankly was kind of astounded that they included Fractals again in the monthly achievements with all the controversy it has generated. I think it’s a slap in the face for all the people who had concerns about FotM and Ascended gear. I think it’s rather callous and doesn’t exactly try to patch things up with a divided community. Getting people to do dungeons and different parts of the game is one thing, but having the monthly require a specific dungeon goes against their play the game the way you want mantra. I guess that really shouldn’t surprise me as FotM also goes against their no grinding dungeons for gear (only place to get mats for Ascended gear) and no grinding dungeons for random loot drops (ascended rings) mantras as well.

People have brought up very good ideas about requiring say doing x things out of y choices. Maybe ArenaNet “will be looking into that” or “will be doing that sometime in the future” to use a few of their favorite responses.

You can probably already guess that I’m not a big dungeon fan, and especially not a fan of what we used to call in the days of pencil and paper gaming, a quick throw together dungeon, like FotM is. A dungeon with no overall congruity or meaning with pieces just thrown together at random to use up some time. I remember the notebook of random hallways with different mobs that were randomly pasted onto a simple dungeon form. We used it to just use up some time left in a gaming session before we started something of some meaning. Now it has become some “new” staple dungeon. Times have certainly changed and not always for the better.

Anyway, I’m sure there will be people saying that if you don’t like “such and such” then don’t do it and don’t complete the monthly. Sadly, that’s the way it is with something that was supposed to be for everyone to do no matter what their particular likes in the game.

Hmm, interesting e-mail. I saw that some people got the same one last week promising that the rewards would be out early this week. That said, until I actually see it happen, I’ll file it under “checks in the mail,” and another one of those things “we’re looking into” or will implement “sometime in the future”

As for a chance at a precursor, if rewards do come out, I’m guessing it will be zero based on the forum storm when they has them in the initial chest. Is that fair considering the screw-ups were on their end, probably not, but life isn’t fair, and it’s doubly not fair in the MMO world where you have no real control over outcomes whatsoever.

They could’ve just done with Agony what they did with Spectral Agony in GW1. You got your current armor infused by seeing specific people in the world to add the protection to your current gear without changing the stats in any way. Instead they decided to add another tier of gear available only one way and some of it through random drops. Both of which they stated they didn’t want to have in the game. Sure, devs have said they are going to change that, but if you haven’t noticed already, they are not in charge of what direction the game goes. It is the cost/benefit analysts in the management that are crunching numbers to see what will make the most money. Why are there still problems with events and such that have existed since beta? There is no monetary incentive to fix them.

Everyone always brings Ascended gear as vertical progression which some say goes against the game manifesto. What about the fact that that they said that they didn’t want gear to be random drops in dungeons?

http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

In either case, their answer of saying that Ascended gear will be available other ways in the future is pretty meaningless when “future” has no time period attached to it. When the next set of Ascended items are released for FotM? When hell freezes over? Who knows?

Frankly, the most telling thing that has come out of this AMA is that Anet “knew” before releasing the ascended gear that it wasn’t the right thing to do and that it was going to cause problems but did it anyway. What kind of company knows that something will alienate, divide, anger, and whatever other term you want, it’s customers and knows it’s not what they really want to do, and yet does it anyway? That’s just callous disregard for your consumer no matter how you look at it. A company that does such has no credibility whatsoever in my book as actions speak much louder that words. They did this on purpose full well knowing what was going to happen. They can try to PR this into an “innocent mistake” all they want, but it seems the only mistake that was made was by me in trusting the words of a company and in believing that there are still companies that have integrity and do business honorably.

Frankly, this is what I expected, but didn’t want, to happen. It’s basically a PR trick to quell the masses while saying nothing that you haven’t already said before. Cherry pick questions you already have token answers to and give answers with lots of ambiguous phrases like “in the future” or “down the line” that have no specifics and no real meaning. They could mean weeks, months, years, or never in your life-time.

More telling will be the questions that get avoided and what isn’t said, than what is.

Very well put by OP.

The fact is that the brand is already being hurt Anet’s lack of response to their gaming community. The issue has become big enough that outside bloggers, mmo websites, etc. are talking about it, and Anet does not come off in a positive light. The “hopefully if we wait long enough it will all go away” attitude definitely doesn’t say strong and well run business either.

Whatever I feel about the ascended gear is a moot point. The fact of the matter is that ArenaNet has not issued any response to the issue other than some deflections and evasions of the issue. I’m not sure they know what to say. They have managed in a short period of time to split their gaming community to the core.

If they were just adding something people didn’t like to the game, the reaction would not be this strong. People feel betrayed and that emotion is not an easy one to overcome. Compound this fact, with the fact that those who feel betrayed are commonly being attacked by the other part of the community, and this isn’t some easy fix problem. I don’t see the possibility of mending the broken community any more. It has gone too long without Anet stepping in and doing something.

It is for this reason that I think this internal game matter has gone outside the game to bloggers, mmo websites, etc. They call into question Anet’s actions and in some cases, lack thereof. They’re 100% correct in doing so. This wasn’t a player created problem, it was a company one. How a company deals with such is extremely telling on numerous levels. Anet has chosen not to deal with it at all.

Frankly, that’s the cowards way out. Anet created the mess and now they need to deal with the consequences of their actions. At this point, I don’t think there is any other choice than for Anet to suck it up and pick a side. They need to leave the talking out of both sides of their mouth to the politicians, and put this matter to rest one way or the other. It’s not going to go away if they do nothing, which seems to be their hope and plan.

I agree that Lost Shores is hollow and lifeless. There doesn’t really seem to be any point to being there, and on numerous chat posts I’ve seen, most people wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the orichalcum nodes.

The events seem contrived and there is no reasoning behind them. Let’s go kill another big shark because, why? It’s swimming in the water? There’s basically no one on the island so what’s it going to do, eat a few sea turtles? Oh no, not the sea turtles!

And why exactly are the karka still around? Big event to clear out karka and the hive and they’re still there anyway. Was there a point to the event? And you’ve still got NPCs by guns and weapons and they don’t use them even if you’re fighting karka right next to them. Mortars are still there and are unuseable.

I agree the island is great looking and is a great change to the blah of Orr and the incessant blithering of the risen. The whole thing seems like it was throw an island out there so we can make an event on it and we’ll put some mobs, pointless events, a couple jumping puzzles and some gathering nodes so people bother to even go there afterwards. Yes, Lost Shores fills up part of the map, but as for really adding content to the game, not so much. The only things keeping it from being lost again are some puzzles and gathering nodes.

First of all, I find it amusing that people even think a company sees all the money a product sells for. Does anybody honestly think NCSoft made $60 per copy of the game sold?

Not even if it was purchased and downloaded directly from them. And the box copies bought from retailers yield the smallest amount back to them of all. Let’s see you have the cost of materials, printers, fabrication costs, etc. and then the cost of distributing the game to the retailers. And do you think retailers selling a $60 game pay $60 for it? Sure, they just sell stuff as a public service. They don’t need to make any money.

And to think the amount they actually receive is going to keep the game running forever. Excuse me while I stop laughing. What about the costs of the game development and the hardware to allow gamers to access it (servers, etc)? Those must be free too, huh? And to think all the money left stays with the game is just silly. The parent company is going to take a portion to pay it’s employees, fund future games, etc.

So after all is said and done, the game better make some money on it’s own pretty fast or it’s going down in a ball of fire, unless of course the parent company is making so much money elsewhere that it needs a tax write-off. NCSoft doesn’t have that problem, in fact they are largely counting on GW2 to pull them out of monetary slide.

That said, it is totally mind-boggling to me that a game which NEEDS to make money via the cash shop, has a pitiful one at best, and the game is also starting to cater to the group of people who spend the least amount in the cash shop. Both are entirely counterintuitive and lead me to believe that somebody in charge either needs to go back to business school, is a few crayons short of a full box, or both.

Myriads of high selling items have been posted above, and some of those were even listed on websites as planned for the cash shop long before Halloween, but they never materialized. With a puzzled look, I ask why? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that if you need to sell things, you sell things people want to buy, and you cater everything you possibly can to those people who are buying from you.

I guess they just never heard the phrase “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you”

Frankly, they should be named “cyclical events” because that’s all they. Wait a few minutes and the same thing will happen all over again whether you did anything or not.

What a character does in the game has no effect on it at all, just like other games. People have mentioned personal story quests as having a cause and effect. Not really. I’ve gone through the entire series of quests for the Vigil, Order of Whispers, and Durmand Priory. Do any of your choices make a difference in the world? No. Everything in the quests is instanced so the world itself is totally uneffected.

Your choices don’t really matter. Some “other group” is sent to do the things you don’t pick in the story and the outcomes are the same whether you are there or not. Eventually you don’t really have any choices and are just basically along for the ride. Does the final outcome differ based on choices you make? Absolutely not. It’s a series of quests to lead you to a dungeon. Is that different than any other game? I don’t think so.

I read that official post and all I could think of was the old saying “the checks in the mail.”

With the number of server side issues during the event, and the fact that some people ended up doing the event on multiple servers because of disconnects and relogs, I doubt there is any way for them to truly gauge who participated and to what extent. Even if it was possible, do they have someone skilled enough to pull all that data out? I have serious doubts after the ridiculous number of programming errors during this short time event.

I’ll just write that promise on an ice cube and leave it at that.

Frankly, it’s too bad. NCSoft has had some games show real promise, but they, like most gaming companies, don’t want to invest a lot in games due to a fickle gaming community which is fickle largely due to companies not really investing in their games. The big catch-22.

I’d call it a comedy of errors, if it wasn’t such a nightmare.

I’m sure you, and every other online gaming company, are relishing in the fact that most gamers misuse the terms “bug” and “glitch” for what should be termed poor programming. The programming in the event was horrendous, and obviously untested in part, or altogether. And the time to fix problems was far too excessive for a short-term event.

To have the event run so poorly on a weekend when you have invited people to try your game, is completely mind-boggling. Frankly, that shows a total lack of care about the game.

Now, I’m not sure if you’ve had resources pulled from this game to work on start-up of the next NCSoft MMO, or if you have lost people through other means, but I have noticed a lot of open job positions for the game. If that is part of the reason things went awry, I have empathy, but not sympathy, for your situation. There are no valid excuses for any business putting out a faulty product.

As for NCSoft, maybe it would be wise to concentrate your efforts on making fewer, really good MMOs, than making another one every year, diluting your best resources. I think the gaming community as a whole would appreciate a few “shining stars” as opposed to handsfulls of more so-so games.

In this model, after launch (profits from which are largely used to pay for game development and required hardware) money is basically made in the cash stop.

If ArenaNet doesn’t have someone who is looking at what the players who spend the most money in the cash shop are doing in the game, GW2 is destined for financial ruin. They should be concentrating efforts on keeping those who spend the most in the cash shop happy in the game. Whether that is people who favor vertical or horizontal progression, we are not privy to that information. From experience in quite a few games with cash shops, I would guess one is more represented than the other in the amount they spend on cash purchases. My guess is moot. ArenaNet should know and if they fail to cater to the appropriate group, to put it bluntly, they’re just plain idiots.

Well, the Necromancer skill says teleport
“Sacrifice your flesh wurm, teleport to it, and poison foes.”

Both it and the Mesmer Portal are 6 point skills where as Blink is a 1 point skill.

I’m not saying it should be able to go through barriers. It can’t as it’s a line of sight spell in GW2 where as Portal obviously is not. In GW1 things were different, but then again so were a lot of things (like things actually working, but that’s another story).

Should it be able to be cast across a divide in terrain or at a change in elevation? I would argue without a doubt, yes. The last time I checked minions don’t care where you summon them at. The point is clearly moot anyway. The ability actually allowed such things to start out with in the game and they were taken away. Much like the well spells had their range reduced to 900 from the 1200 that most classes have for utility attacks. Necromancers don’t like the changes, but we nod our heads and walk away. We satisfy ourselves with the knowledge that when all things come to an end we’ll be Lich Lords and the rest of you will just be our undead puppets.

I think the Necromancer Flesh Worm skill was brought up because it IS a teleport skill just like the Mesmer portals. It is for the Necromancer only and has other differences as well. I think the point was that it doesn’t function even remotely as well as the Mesmer teleport, and in fact, the way it is implemented now, it is entirely useless. It can’t go up or down elevations, nor can it go across even a small gap in the terrain, let alone go through barriers. The only thing it’s really good for is if the game freezes you in place, which it does to me all too frequently (I think it’s a problem with Necromancer spell animations) I can use the Flesh Wurm to move again. I don’t have any problem with different classes having different abilities, but when different classes do have an ability of the same type, there shouldn’t be such a huge disparity in the way it is treated.

I do think the Mesmer portal ability needs to be restricted in WvW. The way it can be used now, basically eliminates any strategy where the game mechanics have already reduced strategy to a minimum.

Well, I for one don’t expect them to ever balance classes, or anything else for that matter. Do they honestly expect anyone to believe their mantra that they carefully considered classes and balance thereof prior to the game going live and based on that they will not make many changes unless, to paraphrase, hell freezes over? Sure, and they tested the classes in the game setting too. Just like they tested everything else that hasn’t worked right, never worked at all, or sometimes works if you hold your tongue just right.
Then another official release says they really listen to people playing the game. Is that what they mean when people get their tell-tale reply that things are functioning as intended? I guess even things that are broken are functioning as intended. Sounds like another way of saying that we really don’t plan on fixing things.
I fully understand that this game is free to play, so to speak, so there is absolutely no financial incentive to fix anything. Anet seems to be interested in just rolling out special events often enough to peak peoples’ curiosity and interest, and at the same time making sure that there are lots and lots of ties to the event in the cash store for them to pay the people making the next event. As doing other things, like fixing broken events, pois, quests, etc., those seem to be relegated to the team (read as 1 person) who comes in part-time every other Wednesday afternoon.
Sorry if my response is a little weak in sarcasm. I’m getting help to learn how to use it more often.

If Mesmers can port through walls, then why can’t the Necromancer?
Heck, the Necromancer port won’t even go across cracks in the ground or up in elevation a couple feet, let alone through anything, and it’s just for the Necromancer. And a 4000 range which people say isn’t that good. Try 1200 for a Necromancer.

And frankly, the Mesmer portals ruin what little there is to strategy in WvW the way it is. Why have siege weapons at all when they can be aoe’d from the ground or avoided entirely? Take down all the walls and just put flags everywhere and people can zerg control of them back and forth. Seems to be what it is mostly now anyway.

Of course, Infusion gear could be a content gate. Each time you run a dungeon (3 fractals) successfully, difficulty goes up. At a point in difficulty, you will need the Infusion gear to succeed. They didn’t say specifically how many runs before you will need Infusion, but with a strictly random pick of fractals, you may never see some of the 9 different ones before you get there. You’ll then need the Infusion gear to see the fractals you haven’t experienced. Isn’t that a gate to see all of the 9 fractal dungeon content?

If it is anything like gear infusion in GW1 versus mob Spectral Agony, it won’t be a point of being able to advance further the more skilled you are, it will be have the Infusion gear, or die. In GW1, you might be able to go further without infusion because there were dedicated healers with big heal abilities with little in the way of cooldowns to keep you alive. In GW2, there are no such things. Regeneration or HoTs will not do it. Cleansing conditions will not work.

And GW2 has not avoided the grind for gear, they have just moved it from one source to another. You’re not grinding dungeons for a random drop, you’re using the Mystic Forge for a random result. The upside to grinding dungeons is that it usually made you richer doing it. The Mystic Forge is designed as a big money/resource sink to reduce the amount of accumulated wealth in the economy.

Adding dungeons is no big surprise in MMOs. They’re easy in comparison to adding expanses of land with viable quests, etc. GW2 is no different from the rest. For people who aren’t really into PvP or dungeon grinding, they can expect snippets of new world maybe every few months, or expansion, that will give them a couple days to explore. If you’re in that group you just have to realize that an MMO is basically a watered-down console game where you can socially interact with other people and accept what the genre is. Don’t hold your breath waiting for an MMO to be anything different. You’ll just turn purple, fall down and hurt yourself.