Personally, I would have also said they are pulling a Star Wars Galaxies. There is a great link to the death of that game here…
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/714/gameID/6
Some great quotes from that article. Do they seem familiar to GW2?
“The problem is summed up nicely: Antagonizing your existing playerbase in the hopes of attracting a mythical “audience who doesn’t play, but will once we make these changes” almost never works. The “silent majority” never materializes, and your current base is alienated due to changes that they did not want.”
“While marketing campaigns no doubt contribute some assistance, true marketing comes from word of mouth. The veterans of a game are the ones who bring their friends and family to these games, and in turn they recruit more. You need to retain veterans in order to get them to bring in new customers. The veterans are also those who help out the new players to achieve veteran status themselves. We gamers all have our stories of starting an MMO, being completely lost and clueless, until a veteran came along and provided their insight and wisdom on how to progress in the game. A marketing campaign cannot achieve this, no matter how slick. With substantially fewer veterans to help out new players, their chances of sticking around are reduced, and fewer subscriptions are retained.”
I can easily picture a bunch of suits, who have never played a video game in their life, sitting around a large office table trying to come up with idea’s on how to boost sales. And if you’re not a Yes Man, you loose your job.
We’re already riding the death spiral.