Guild Wars 2

290 – Deathbringer Rathon

I don’t normally post on the forums, but the recent changes to the game (i.e. the new player experience) made me want to say something, even if it feels like a drop in the bucket right now.

I’ve played GW2 since beta. I played GW1 for years before that, and since the first information on GW2 started coming out, I was more excited than I’d ever been (and have been since then) about an upcoming game. Once I actually got to try it out in the first beta event, it was basically love at first sight (or more like at first weekend of compulsive gaming). And ever since we were given the first solid idea of gameplay in GW2, I’ve been recommending it to just about all of my friends. That’s not to say I thought GW2 was the perfect game, as there have been plenty of both existing flaws, as well as changes over the last couple years I wasn’t too happy with. But I was generally able to look past them, groan a little at the people saying how the game was so terrible in every way, and keep encouraging my friends to join in the fun (which did indeed bring in some people with whom I’ve had some great times in GW2).

I can’t do it anymore. I can’t bring myself to keep encouraging all of my gamer friends to try out this game I’ve invested so much time in. With previous patches, even though they generally had some flaws, I was still able to tell anyone who asked about updates things like “the new wardrobe gives players more customization options” or “now you can AoE loot so that collecting drops is a little easier.” But earlier today, someone who hadn’t been on in a while asked me, “What changed?” and the best thing I could think of was something along the lines of, “Well, a lot of stuff is now gated by level, and low level zones have been drastically simplified…but I guess the new trading post UI is cool?”

If this were just about any other game, I would quit at this point. I wouldn’t write a long forum post complaining about it. But both GW games have been such big parts of my life that I still have some hope, naive as it may be, that the game won’t keep going down this path. I don’t want to unfairly bash GW2, or ArenaNet. I still think the game has a lot to offer, and I still think that it can become even better, but not like this. Instead of hearing about an update and getting excited about whatever is being added, I now find myself worrying over what might be removed. And that sort of mentality is just awful. I don’t want people to see the game like this. If I brought in a new player today and they complained to me, “This game is boring as hell,” what more could I say? “Yeah. It kind of is.”

Now, I’ve seen the post about how extensive testing found far too many players confused by early gameplay before the feature pack. I can’t do the same sort of testing, so I won’t dispute that result, and I can see why it’s a valid concern for ArenaNet if confusion over mechanics is driving players away from the game. Potential fans won’t get the awesome GW2 experience so many of us know and love. However, gating the content that players have access to is not the solution. Leaving the game like this will simply deter both new and veteran players. Creating a new system might be ideal, but honestly, right now it seems to me that the game would benefit from simply reverting the changes to leveling.

If the game has to cut content to attract new players, they’ll still be missing out on the full experience anyway.

TL;DR: I’ve encouraged friends to play GW2 from the start, but now I can’t bring myself to drag them into boring, oversimplified content. I believe the “new player experience” is only going to make it harder to convince new players to try the game, while also frustrating veterans. I can’t recommend the “new player experience” to potential new players.

Thank you if you bothered to read all of the post.

GoM just won for the first time.
Too bad I crashed and couldn’t reconnect in time…

Hello, Guild Wars 2 forum!

Ancients of Elona [AoE] is a casual guild made up of friendly players. We were founded by a few veterans from Guild Wars 1. Over there, our guild of the same name is tiny at the moment, as most of our active players either became inactive or moved on to Guild Wars 2. We want to change this in GW2.

We are not a hardcore PvP or dungeon-focused guild, and there aren’t any real entrance requirements to join like payment, voice chat, a certain numbers of hours played per week, etc. The only thing I ask of all of those who consider joining is that they are friendly people who want to cooperate with the rest of us in growing our guild and enjoying the game together.

If you are interested, feel free to message me (Rathon.5840/Deathbringer Rathon, guild leader) or mountainlord.2634 (Mountainlord Norick, guild officer).

If you’re interested in it, a bit of history about our guild: In the summer of 2008, I joined a Guild Wars 1 guild called Lost Souls from the Depths. I quickly became an officer and, along with the rest of the guild, grew the guild into a large, thriving community. However, we started to die out due to some mistakes such as our leader inviting and promoting people just because they asked for it, followed by some of those people acting irresponsibly and kicking members. Eventually, our leader became inactive and the system automatically promoted me to guild leader.

The guild carried on for a while afterwards, but eventually the previous leader came back and asked for the position back. There was a conflict over leadership here, as he thought he deserved the position because he had it before while I thought I deserved it because I was more active and helpful to the guild. We eventually decided to split, and most of the guild, myself included, branched off to form Ancients of Elona in 2009.

Since then, we’ve never been very large. It’s mostly just been a few friends who liked to play together. Now, as we enter a new game together, Ancients of Elona seeks to grow our community of people who love the game.

Home World: Gate of Madness
Guild Name: Ancients of Elona [AoE]
Guild Website: None at the moment.
In-Game Contact: Deathbringer Rathon (Rathon.5840) or Mountainlord Norick (mountainlord.2634)
Focus: Mostly PvE, but we do play some PvP as well.
Quick Notes: We’re a small, casual guild formed by some GW1 veterans. We accept any friendly people who want to enjoy the game with us.