Guild Wars 2

It’s hard to track whether boxes or digitals sell more in WoW, I suspect digitals do in this day and age, but they haven’t released physical vs digital sales for a long time.

Has this game launched in korea yet? If not I suspect I know why… korean consumer laws are pretty interesting… false advertising doesn’t go well there and the sellers are obligated to allow refunds of products that are falsely advertised.

Athaulf.1530:

The last official sub numbers published by blizzard themselfes where 9 million subs.
Even at the hight of 12 million subs only abot 4 million of them paid monthly fees as there is no such thing in China etc.
Blizzard has not announced any official numbers for the sales of this last expansion when usually at this point they boasted with new records.. I wonder why

No… blizzard often takes up to a week to announce their sales numbers… (It has not been a week since mop launched)

Why people are so content with just assuming such grossly inaccurate things is beyond me.

ravinhood.3981:

Sheen.8196:

Blizzard has more active players paying 15 a month, than total copies gw2 has sold… perhaps even double that…

Yeppers and with the new expansion I’m sure those numbers just increased again.

Yep… though wow isn’t as strong as it once was… basically after vanilla and tbc the cycle becomes:

1. Expansion launches, huge surge in play
2. Expansion consumed in 1month to 6months depending on player
3. Player unsubs til next expansion, population goes down.

Rinse and repeat.

Blizzard has more active players paying 15 a month, than total copies gw2 has sold… perhaps even double that…

To the guy claiming MoP has yet to break 1million, goggles much? You are going by BOX sales from what a company ESTIMATES. ROFL

Colonel Kernel.7506:

Strifer.3507:

@Colonel Kernel.7506
tl;dr
But let me give you my perspective.
The words “hardcore” and “gamer” should never be used together. It’s a freakin’ game. It’s not a second job, it’s not like you get bragging rights of any sort of accomplishment. You play games to relax after you have accomplished something in real life.
Seriously, do you want to be lying on your deathbed and have your major life accomplishment be “I was top DPS in X game”?

The words “too long” and “didnt read” should never be used together. It makes all your subsequent comments and views lack substance and irrelevant.
Serious, do you want to be lying on your deathbed and have your major life accomplishment be “tl;dr”?

I tried to give the OP some perspective and got a blast of sarcasm in return. On the Internet! I’m shocked! Shocked I tell you! :P

Your perspective is obtuse… why is being passionate about a game any different than being passionate about anything else in life? Different strokes for different folks. To you dancing might be a light social activity, to others it might be their life.

If someone plays another mmo for years and years, and the game had over 10million subscribers, the game can still be awful and a waste of money (in a certain type of posters eyes) but if you play gw2 for 3 days you got your money’s worth.

Oh i’m sorry were people done with EQ/UO/AC1 within 3 days having done all of the major things there were to do in the game?

Oh they weren’t? Oh ok thanks….

I enjoy the fact that you tried to throw your weight around like you were some experienced MMO player, but you are talking to someone who is your senior….

The content in games like EQ = giving you places and zones to go to in a persistent world tied in to every other player on the server (no overflows here boys) with monsters of varying levels and difficulties that might allow you to solo them, or bring a huge raid to take them down.

I am sorry that WoW has brainwashed you into thinking in a way where you try to downplay how much content EQ had… but as someone who was in a top progression guild in EQ, as well as playing on Rallos Zek… I can safely say your revisionist history crap is skewed in a way to downplay the old mmos and glorify gw2.

Stevoli.8795:

robot.9134:

What is annoying is when people blind themselves to the larger issues and try to tell people they are either overreacting or wrong. Anet did just like most other failed mmo’s have done in the past 4-5 years… They put to much in pre release and release and not enough planning for post release.

What’s really annoying is listening to kids complain about a game like it’s the end of the world because it wasn’t perfect at launch. It’s been out ONE month. Bugs always pop up, regardless of how thorough they may have been during beta.

This happens with every single MMO launch, doom and gloom is spread throughout the forums, WoW comparisons start popping up all over, and eventually all the annoying brats leave to go back to WoW and let the niche audience enjoy their game. I can’t wait.

What’s really annoying is when a game has tons of issues, and the fans just magically assume it will all be fixed.

I remember playing the demo of this game at PAX way back in the day… I pointed out the massive performance issues on their demo computers, when players were clumped and all doing something (massive in mmo) and said that wouldn’t bode well for WvW…

I said that like every other MMO anet seems like it will struggle with having many players on the same screen at once… and boy was I right… performance issues left and right, major fps drops for people, and gluck playing wvw on the 7600gt or whatever they claimed initially that they were testing the game on.

Yet when this point was brought up on forums, fans would just magically say “oh they will fix it before launch, anet would never launch a game with those kinda issues, those are the kinda negligent mistakes that blizzard might make but not anet”

Um yea, reality is a bit different.

Skorpio.3571:

Sheen.8196:

Lance Coolee.9480:

Sheen.8196:

Lance Coolee.9480:

Sheen.8196:

Skorpio.3571:

Sheen.8196:

I’ve noticed with gw2 that it is a battle of proficient gamers vs casual gamers… the proficient gamers went through everything easily, they don’t think any of the dungeons are challenging, and they feel like the game has very little content… yet a bunch of casuals who will hit that point in a few months are sitting here telling them they play incorrectly? Since when is being the most efficient in your rotations and completing tasks, playing incorrectly?

It’s not proficient vs. casual, it’s time played. The “proficient” just have 10 times the amount of hours put in.

Why do people always confuse casual with bad? Casual just as much means players that only log in for 1-2 hours a day or possibly even gasp skip a day!

PS- I agree with most of your other points in this thread.

Wrong… proficient gamers don’t necessarily have to be hardcore, whether they play a ton or a little, they still do everything more quickly and more efficiently.

It might take a proficient gamer an hour to do something a casual would do in 3 hours. I don’t mean casual as in play time, I mean casual as in attitude… the whole “I am going tokittenaround, not really know what i’m doing, and just hit my spells in a way that seems to make sense to me”.

These people consume content more slowly, and because of their careless attitude they often don’t play as much. (People that aren’t passionate about a hobby often would invest less time in such a hobby)

Sheen, your making statements that have some validity to them, but your offering them in a very derogatory way. I wouldn’t associate “casual” gameplay as “careless” gameplay.

Sorry I’m not the type to sugarcoat reality. I think the sugarcoating and coddling of certain playstyles are the reason mmorpgs in this day and age lack so much challenge and content in the first place.

Well, again you associate “casual” with “careless”.

I consider myself a “casual” player, since I can’t really devote more than a few hours of gameplay on weekdays, but I also tend to blow through challenges because I don’t have as high a learning curve.

And i’ve already clarified I mean casual in attitude, not in time investment. So I don’t know why your mithril armor is in a bunch.

From the first post on it: "…yet a bunch of casuals who will hit that point in a few months are sitting here telling them they play incorrectly? "

No one is taking months to get to 80 because they are inept. A child or mentally challenged person could hit 80 in a month given the time to do it. Leveling isnt hard even if you die every 10 minutes, you’ll still hit 80 almost as fast as a normal player if that is your intent.

You will rarely find the “casual in attitude” players on the forums. Anyone who cares enough about a game to read about it online is putting in some effort. It is well known that forum goers for MMOs make up a small percentage of the total.

Clearly you’ve never seen the wow forums. Or pretty much 90% of the big budget mmo forums post wow.

Craven.5468:

Blasting through the levels using every shortcut possible is not playing the game. You are experiencing as little as possible while trying to race to what you perceive as “the end”. I don’t call that proficient, I call it skipping all the content.

Nothing wrong with playing that way, but there is something wrong with playing it that way and then complaining on the forums of the lack of content when you had to skip most of it using that method.

Anyone can buy their way to level 80 via crafting or blast through hearts as fast as possible. What is the point? So you can come on the forums and complain that you reached your arbitrary goal too soon?

That’s odd because there are people with 100% map completion, story completely finished, nice looking gears, who are completely bored with the game. Which is harsh, because the old mmorpgs used to give you months of content at launch.

By all means, share your opinion, but when people are bored they are bored, and it isn’t their fault they are bored when an MMORPG that promised everything but the kitchen sink, can’t keep them engaged for more than a few days or a week.

Have you considered that GW2 may just not have as much content as you think it does? Have you considered that for some proficient players, it just may offer no challenge whatsoever? How are you going to magically convince someone that breezes through all of the “challenges” that the game is challenging, when the only way they could challenge themselves is to willfully play the game inefficiently.

Lance Coolee.9480:

Sheen.8196:

Lance Coolee.9480:

Sheen.8196:

Skorpio.3571:

Sheen.8196:

I’ve noticed with gw2 that it is a battle of proficient gamers vs casual gamers… the proficient gamers went through everything easily, they don’t think any of the dungeons are challenging, and they feel like the game has very little content… yet a bunch of casuals who will hit that point in a few months are sitting here telling them they play incorrectly? Since when is being the most efficient in your rotations and completing tasks, playing incorrectly?

It’s not proficient vs. casual, it’s time played. The “proficient” just have 10 times the amount of hours put in.

Why do people always confuse casual with bad? Casual just as much means players that only log in for 1-2 hours a day or possibly even gasp skip a day!

PS- I agree with most of your other points in this thread.

Wrong… proficient gamers don’t necessarily have to be hardcore, whether they play a ton or a little, they still do everything more quickly and more efficiently.

It might take a proficient gamer an hour to do something a casual would do in 3 hours. I don’t mean casual as in play time, I mean casual as in attitude… the whole “I am going tokittenaround, not really know what i’m doing, and just hit my spells in a way that seems to make sense to me”.

These people consume content more slowly, and because of their careless attitude they often don’t play as much. (People that aren’t passionate about a hobby often would invest less time in such a hobby)

Sheen, your making statements that have some validity to them, but your offering them in a very derogatory way. I wouldn’t associate “casual” gameplay as “careless” gameplay.

Sorry I’m not the type to sugarcoat reality. I think the sugarcoating and coddling of certain playstyles are the reason mmorpgs in this day and age lack so much challenge and content in the first place.

Well, again you associate “casual” with “careless”.

I consider myself a “casual” player, since I can’t really devote more than a few hours of gameplay on weekdays, but I also tend to blow through challenges because I don’t have as high a learning curve.

And i’ve already clarified I mean casual in attitude, not in time investment. So I don’t know why your mithril armor is in a bunch.

Craven.5468:

Sheen.8196:

Craven.5468:

Sheen.8196:

All I know is, the old MMORPGs gave you months of content at launch, even if you were playing 24-7… gw2 is innovative with the whole “done in 3 days” design.

Stop your ridiculous exaggeration.

Oh it isn’t an exaggeration… i think if anyone here is exaggerating it may be you…

But given the nature of your first post in this thread… I think we sorta understand where your loyalties lie…

What? Show me a screenshot of an 80 toon with three days of play (or less) and at least some form of proof of actually playing the game (high world completion percentage, token count, decent gear, etc).

You can’t. It isn’t possible. That is precisely what exaggeration means. You exaggerated and are now denying it? Wow…

Kungen streamed it to 5000+ people… game set and match… But this is pointless, you are one of those people that wouldn’t accept the reality of it anyway, you would just change your tune and accuse them of playing too proficiently.

Lance Coolee.9480:

Sheen.8196:

Skorpio.3571:

Sheen.8196:

I’ve noticed with gw2 that it is a battle of proficient gamers vs casual gamers… the proficient gamers went through everything easily, they don’t think any of the dungeons are challenging, and they feel like the game has very little content… yet a bunch of casuals who will hit that point in a few months are sitting here telling them they play incorrectly? Since when is being the most efficient in your rotations and completing tasks, playing incorrectly?

It’s not proficient vs. casual, it’s time played. The “proficient” just have 10 times the amount of hours put in.

Why do people always confuse casual with bad? Casual just as much means players that only log in for 1-2 hours a day or possibly even gasp skip a day!

PS- I agree with most of your other points in this thread.

Wrong… proficient gamers don’t necessarily have to be hardcore, whether they play a ton or a little, they still do everything more quickly and more efficiently.

It might take a proficient gamer an hour to do something a casual would do in 3 hours. I don’t mean casual as in play time, I mean casual as in attitude… the whole “I am going tokittenaround, not really know what i’m doing, and just hit my spells in a way that seems to make sense to me”.

These people consume content more slowly, and because of their careless attitude they often don’t play as much. (People that aren’t passionate about a hobby often would invest less time in such a hobby)

Sheen, your making statements that have some validity to them, but your offering them in a very derogatory way. I wouldn’t associate “casual” gameplay as “careless” gameplay.

Sorry I’m not the type to sugarcoat reality. I think the sugarcoating and coddling of certain playstyles are the reason mmorpgs in this day and age lack so much challenge and content in the first place.

Skorpio.3571:

Sheen.8196:

I’ve noticed with gw2 that it is a battle of proficient gamers vs casual gamers… the proficient gamers went through everything easily, they don’t think any of the dungeons are challenging, and they feel like the game has very little content… yet a bunch of casuals who will hit that point in a few months are sitting here telling them they play incorrectly? Since when is being the most efficient in your rotations and completing tasks, playing incorrectly?

It’s not proficient vs. casual, it’s time played. The “proficient” just have 10 times the amount of hours put in.

Why do people always confuse casual with bad? Casual just as much means players that only log in for 1-2 hours a day or possibly even gasp skip a day!

PS- I agree with most of your other points in this thread.

Wrong… proficient gamers don’t necessarily have to be hardcore, whether they play a ton or a little, they still do everything more quickly and more efficiently.

It might take a proficient gamer an hour to do something a casual would do in 3 hours. I don’t mean casual as in play time, I mean casual as in attitude… the whole “I am going tokittenaround, not really know what i’m doing, and just hit my spells in a way that seems to make sense to me”.

These people consume content more slowly, and because of their careless attitude they often don’t play as much. (People that aren’t passionate about a hobby often would invest less time in such a hobby)

I’ve noticed with gw2 that it is a battle of proficient gamers vs casual gamers… the proficient gamers went through everything easily, they don’t think any of the dungeons are challenging, and they feel like the game has very little content… yet a bunch of casuals who will hit that point in a few months are sitting here telling them they play incorrectly? Since when is being the most efficient in your rotations and completing tasks, playing incorrectly?

Swagman.9013:

Gauradan.8361:

Alright, fine, you win. The game is not a grind, everything about the game is perfect, as if God himself designed it. ArenaNet didn’t change their philosophy, I’m just misinterpreting it. I want everything for free and I’m a self-entitled prick. Now that we’ve settled that, I’m off to play Skyrim. Have fun.

Well that mindset doesn’t surprise me, the flip the chessboard and walk away.

I never said that there is no grind. There’s plenty of grind, but it’s all by choice. The entire game world is open to you. You can do Arah in level 80 rares. In wow you can’t do black temple in level 70 blues. That’s an example of a forced grind. You cannot progress to point c without doing point b.

Gw2 you can go from a to c or to d or to whatever.

No one forced you to go do black temple though. You can sit in ironforge spinning all day. Can you do all content in gw2 at level 1? If not there is a level requirement grind, which is forced, to do certain content.

Rush.8239:

I’m pretty sure if this game was a subscription based game then half of the player base would have un-subbed by now. and the forums would be full of much more whine threads lucky for arena net its not a sub game , but how do we tell if a game like this fails? less people loggin in? less customers buying the game. All i know is that this game has failed my expectations.
Being mostly a pve player the dungeons in this game are the worst ive come across in any mmo i have ever played and ive played many ! There isnt much choice for pvp except world vs world ad spvp has only got 1 mode , so that gets boring really fast
so far alot of people i know have already stopped logging in , i only log in for about 20 mins every few days before i decide there is nothing worth while to do.
once the hype dies out for this game i think the game will become very empty.. only time will tell.
This isnt a whine thread its more of a disappointed thread , i expected so much more from this game and the long wait for the next aaa mmo is a long time away..

i hope you arena net make your game worth investing time into because as it stands now its a complete bor

It’s hard to say, the game still hasn’t launched in certain regions, and it is really hard to predict whether it will be embraced or not by those regions… I have a feeling it will sell decently in china, but that the players will get bored fast and quit, since they consume content faster than the west, and the west consumed it in 3 days.

Swagman.9013:

@Sheen

Blizzard had such good retention because they were the first to administer the drug. They hit that sweetspot of the start of a gamer generation and the beginning of Internet popularity. They also had the blizzard north crew at the helm which helped greatly.

Now mmo companies have to give us a synthesized version of the drug like swotor, or have to try to hook us on a new type like gw2 or TSW.

Or because they have some of the best players from one of the most groundbreaking mmorpgs (eq1) at the helm. They know how to cater to many different playstyles in a way that obviously still works for millions upon millions.

GW2 isn’t a new drug… it’s the same drug in a smaller pill sprinkled with a little sugar.

GW2 had a good chance to be something great, the game had tons of hype, what they advertised the game as generated a lot of interest, obviously what they delivered was not satisfactory for many people.

I don’t know why Anet pushed out a game that feels so shallow and unfinished, maybe ncsoft was tired of waiting, maybe they felt they had already delayed so long that they would start losing players from the hype just because the years were adding up.

Anyway, with enough resources and all the opportunity in the world to shake the ground, they instead delivered mmo-lite. Instead of some innovative masterpiece of a game that would be loved for a decade.

They didn’t live up to their potential, they obviously didn’t fail as hard as most big budget mmorpgs… but actually who knows, maybe they did, it’s only been less than a month.

The type of people that actually seem to be enjoying gw2, are quite “interesting” when it comes to logic.

Swagman.9013:

Fozzik.1742:

Swagman.9013:

Ok but you still aren’t answering the question. Dungeons are super interesting mechanics work fine you have to run dungeons a moderate amount of times to get a full set. Please respond to this type of player.

Hey I’m pretty bored now, I ran the dungeon for the set I wanted enough times in about a week, I ran all 3 paths daily, that’s 21 times this week I have my full set now.
The next week I spent doing all the other explorables one time each, I don’t want the gear from them so I don’t see a point in rerunning them. I’m not a big fan of pvp either.

So in about 2 weeks after hitting 80 I literally have nothing more to do that isn’t ridiculous grind content like get a legendary cause I have consumed all the non grind content already. What do I do now?

How do you fix the above situation

So you’re talking about the tiny minority of players who not only consume many hundreds of hours of content in a single month, but also refuse to repeat anything or play the game just for fun? I’m guessing the solution to that situation is to ignore those few people’s whining, because there’s no way in the world to satisfy them. They are being completely unreasonable.

There are any number of options available to the player you mentioned. All of which have been outlined and explained in detail repeatedly by ArenaNet. There’s other professions and races to play with different personal stories. There’s long-term goals like achievements and cosmetic gear. There’s crafting, sPvP, and WvW. There’s a massive PvE world, all of which is open to exploring and enjoying the fun game play.

If you don’t like any of the many available options and huge amount of content…then stop playing. There is literally nothing else a company could possibly do for you, except waste a huge amount of dev time trying to provide some kind of artificial treadmill to keep you playing. ArenaNet has clearly said they aren’t interested in doing that. They want to spend their dev time creating content for everyone to enjoy, not just this tiny minority you describe.

Again, you are creating an impossible situation. You are discounting all of the many things there are to do, and then complaining there’s nothing to do. If a person doesn’t like the play the game… why are they playing? It’s like a little child stamping his foot and refusing to eat anything but pizza when his parents take him to a seafood restaurant.

This is exactly what I’m trying to illustrate by forcing the OP to say it himself, but you said it for him.

You cannot cater to everyone at once so Anet picked a middle ground they thought would be tough enough for more dedicated players to have to chew through, and allow the more casual players to take moderate bites of and have them both feel satisfied.

Whether or not they nailed that mark is up for debate but it’s ridiculous for anyone to call down fire and brimstone because Anet didn’t cater to your specific playstyle when they are judging things on a hundreds of thousands scale, not player to player basis.

Think about the other thousands of players and how they might be affected before you unfurl your war banner and spearhead some change that you see fit.

What’s crazy is that it gets exponentially harder to keep large numbers of people satisfied the more people you deal with… and yet blizzard has somehow had a pretty godly retention rate.

Most companies can’t even handle 1-2million players sticking to their game.

I don’t think GW2 took the things that were most loved about GW1 and put them into GW2 at all…

I also don’t think it is innovative or different than other mmos by any noticeable amount. Sure you can say “oh but it put these features together”, but by that logic every mmo is different because they don’t all use the exact same features to the same degree in the same way.

GW2 is basically just a huge marketing gimmick, on the surface they claim things are so different, but any objective person can see the gather and kill quests hidden very poorly beneath the veil of “dynamic”.

Apparently it is innovative to make a game with so little content that people are forced to play it for only short periods of time.

Also on a side note, I dislike people who try to say some people were playing it too much and no wonder they got burned out. 8hours a day is a lot, but when it comes to mmorpgs there are games that kept people playing 8+ a day for months if not years. So even if you want to belittle these people or judge them for playing so much, there is obviously a lack of content when someone can play 1 game for 8hours a day for years, and can only play another 1 for 8hours a day for a week.

I’d also like to say the personal story is weak, they tried to hype it up like they were bringing a fusion of single player rpg story depth to an mmo, they didn’t even come close.

Compare gw2 personal story to any good single player roleplaying game, it maybe has about 1/1000th the depth.

I can’t say I expected any less, so many people have come into this thread with a combative mentality and have completely missed the point.

I never said I wanted the game to be more like WoW, I don’t play WoW, if I wanted a WoW, I would play WoW…

What I did want the game to be, was innovative, and fun. The game is not content-rich, and no, I am sorry, just because you run out of things to do in gw2 in 3 days, does not mean every mmo is like that. Most of the mmos I used to play had at least 3 months of hardcore content at launch.

You can argue that those were because of long level grinds and raids and all that jazz, but if GW2 is going to do away with those grinds, they should add new and more creative content then.

The last thing I wanted gw2 to be was another WoW, what we got was an MMO-lite that tried to polish some of the rough edges WoW still has, yet delivered very shallow content, and said “don’t worry shallow content is fun, you just gotta play it in a very casual and fluffy way”.

People who are enjoying the game, let me ask you this:

Does the personal story really give you that great rpg feel, like FF7 or other good rpgs? Did they put the rpg back in mmorpg? Do you feel a stronger connection to your character, and more immersed, than other mmorpgs? I personally do not, because my characters take very little effort so they aren’t very special to me.

Do you find the world to be a robust and flourishing environment with a great social aspect, putting the MMO back in mmorpgs? Does the persistent world feel ever-changing and full of wonder? The world looks pretty, but I don’t see any magical reason not to just go from objective to objective for exploration…

Do the dynamic events change the landscape of the world? Do you feel like it is important for you to contribute to them, or is it just another shallow faceroll experience? To me, rift at launch, had a very simplistic approach to their dynamic rifts… but even so, the rifts could actually be a huge pain in the butt and need addressing, in GW2 they are very repetitive and don’t seem to have a very long impact on the world.

Is the combat so innovative and fresh or is it repetitive and even more simplistic than other mmorpgs? I thought in the manifesto I wasn’t going to feel like “hey i swung a sword, i swung it again, oh look i swung it again.”

GW2 already started losing a ton of players… telling yourself it is awesome and trying to insult people who see things differently isn’t going to help the game at all… especially when one day you are going to login and start feeling the way many people already did after 3 days.

souldonkey.9534:

So you rushed to 80 and ran out of stuff to do and that’s somehow the dev’s fault? Dude, all MMOs run out of content eventually. Even in WoW, if you level a toon to 85 and run dungeons enough to get the best gear (a joke now with the way they throw epics at you) eventually you will find yourself with nothing to do but PvP or sit in a capital city and troll trade chat.

What’s the difference here? You got to max level. Presumably you got the gear you want, and now you have nothing to do. Guess what, that would happen in any MMO. All MMOs have a finite amount of content and all MMOs have “filler” content for people that rush to the end.

In most MMOs that filler is gear treadmills, PvP, and achievement farming. In GW2 the filler is vanity gear (which requires dungeon farming for tokens), PvP, and achievement farming. Seriously, the only difference is the type of gear you’re going for. In WoW you have to farm the best of the best gear if you want to stay competitive and “good” (if that’s your definition of good). In GW2 the gear your after is purely cosmetic and optional. The gear with the best stats is relatively easy to get, you just need to work for the look you want.

You really just have to gauge it on what kind of content you want. If you don’t like farming for achievements or PvPing then you likely wouldn’t do that in another MMO either. That leaves gear, and if you like having gear determine your skill level, this isn’t the MMO for you. If you like to have the same gear as everyone else stat wise and have skill determine your skill level and only concern yourself with looking cool, that’s what your endgame should be.

And as far as the dungeon farming gear runs go, I would take GW2’s system over traditional MMOs any day. In WoW I ran 1 dungeon 37 times before a piece of gear I needed dropped. 37 times. At least in GW2 I know that every single run is getting me the required tokens I need (and will be even better when they roll out the new changes), and that I’ll be able to use those tokens to pick the exact piece of gear I need. I don’t have to rely on some crappy random number generator and hope the gear I need drops.

When the most proficient min/maxers run out of things to do in 3 days, that is not a good sign, it will take less hardcore players a bit longer to reach that point, but 3days for an mmorpg is very short.

Apparently gw2 is a game that is supposed to be played inefficiently, you gotta take your time killing mobs and doing cool combos to enjoy it more and stuff like that?

Stevoli.8795:

Sheen.8196:

They may like it for what it is, and that is great, but that doesn’t mean only they should be catered to.

A lot of people in history have liked things that were ultimately changed, and a lot of those changes were probably for the better.

If someone designs a very shallow game, and a lot of players liked that design… would it still be in the best interest of the company? Do shallow mmorpgs have longevity? I am not specifically speaking about gw2 here, even though I personally feel the shoe fits (just my opinion) but in general, should anet look to improve the game in ways that will give it lasting power? If people are getting bored of your game quickly, that is never a good thing.

I believe it is in the best interest of the company to keep it the way it is. At least then they will have a loyal fan-base, even if it becomes a niche game. The players that want this game changed to be more like other games in the genre are the players who hop from MMO to MMO burning through content, you can NEVER make that type of player happy, unless you can magically produce unlimited content out of your kitten.

If the game was changed, it would not only alienate its fan-base, but it would lose those players who it was catered to because they’d get bored just as quickly after they burn through everything. That’s just a lose-lose situation.

I don’t specifically want it to be like other mmorpgs, aside from having more content to keep players playing… content is a very vague and subjective word…

I think that they could take a lot of intuitive steps to make their game better, for everyone.

Stevoli.8795:

Sheen.8196:

This is the kinda logic i really do not agree with. If something isn’t satisfactory by someone’s standards they should at least be able to voice what they think… If people didn’t try to foster change when they encountered something they felt was subpar, nothing would ever be improved upon.

Lots of people love the game for what it is. People coming from other games wanting Anet to change it to be more like that game is what puts people off.

I’m sure if I came from a FPS game, and complained that GW2 doesn’t have enough FPS targeting, people would think it was a stupid suggestion too.

They may like it for what it is, and that is great, but that doesn’t mean only they should be catered to.

A lot of people in history have liked things that were ultimately changed, and a lot of those changes were probably for the better.

If someone designs a very shallow game, and a lot of players liked that design… would it still be in the best interest of the company? Do shallow mmorpgs have longevity? I am not specifically speaking about gw2 here, even though I personally feel the shoe fits (just my opinion) but in general, should anet look to improve the game in ways that will give it lasting power? If people are getting bored of your game quickly, that is never a good thing. Just look what happened with d3.

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

To each their own I suppose. If you aren’t having fun playing the game, why play? It leaves the game with more people online who are enjoying the game instead of complaining within the game. I certainly enjoy all of the aspects that are newer to me than other MMOs that I’ve played, and the world is definitely more interesting to me than some of the other MMOs where there is no difference in an area ever at any time. But that’s just me. To others it appears stale and boring with the lack of a true repetitive event (as that’s why other MMOs are addicting) other than crafting.

Honestly, if you don’t think they actually achieved all they said they would, then do something else. Telling everyone else how they failed is like those other people telling you how to play: it’s pure opinion. I personally haven’t found any difficulty finding a way to have fun every time I play, but I can understand that those who don’t find the same things interesting that I do won’t have the same experience.

Definitely one of the better games I’ve played. And as Vorch said, this is where the real work begins. There is so much more in the future. (“But that’s not now!” Your point? That it needs everything it will ever contain right now? That would certainly be nice but it was never going to happen.)

And WoW? I understand the constant comparisons, and I honestly never liked WoW, but I think we should compare the game to itself and nothing else. I’m sure WoW has improved over the years it’s been in existence. So has every other long lasting MMO. GW2 will likely be very different in a number of years, and I’m looking forward to the ride.

This is the kinda logic i really do not agree with. If something isn’t satisfactory by someone’s standards they should at least be able to voice what they think… If people didn’t try to foster change when they encountered something they felt was subpar, nothing would ever be improved upon.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Smaller plaerbase = less money
And still provide more updates ?
Dont u think its remarkable ?

And Rift playerbase are casuals ?
Do u have some proofs ?

A smaller playerbase means you have a smaller spectrum of players. The more players a game has playing, the more variety of players you are going to encounter, your hardcore players will be more hardcore, because they are competing with a larger number of hardcore players…

WoW has to balance content based on millions of different players and what they want from the game. Some want hardcore raids frequently, at a pace that no developer could ever keep up with, because of how many players there are trying to hardcore raid and down the content. Then they have other players who might want more pvp content, and others that may want solo pve content, and others that might want exploration content and want to see cool new landscapes and other races and monsters.

When you have 9million mouths to feed it is harder to keep them all satisfied.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

I dont think they try to compete with WoW
But instead , compete with all the mmo-games out there (not just 1 game)
For example Rift is te best PvE game out there . It provides more content per month , where no1 have ever seen .
Just because it doesnt have 9 million subs(not ppl) , it means it failed , or its the under dog ?

Rift can provide content at a steady pace, because they have a much smaller playerbase… they don’t have to worry about releasing content at a rate that keeps hardcores from getting bored, while overwhelming casuals with too much stuff to ever complete.

Vorch.2985:

I understand your frustration. However, I can assure you that ANet is not sitting on their thumbs.

The game has a good foundation, but from here on out is where the real work begins.

I do also think the game has potential if they steadily improve upon it… It just sorta bugged me how unfinished it actually felt on release and how little it felt like there was to do.

Many of us have played other mmorpgs, and I don’t understand why some of the fans of GW2 run around telling players who aren’t enjoying the game, that they are playing incorrectly.

Aren’t good games supposed to stand on their own merits? Aren’t they supposed to be designed in a way that keeps people engaged?

Every single experienced MMORPG player I know, ran out of stuff to do in GW2 in a matter of days… and while the majority of players aren’t that hardcore or experienced with all of the big mmorpgs, they will eventually reach that point as well, it just takes them a little more playtime.

I get really tired of seeing players tell others they are supposed to be having fun a certain way… if I am not satisfied with the game, but someone else is, I don’t tell them they are playing wrong and that they need to be bored… I am happy for them that they have found a way to enjoy something with their spare time.

However, a lot of people seem to magically think this game is supposed to be fun for everyone if they play the same way as those people having fun. As a hardcore mmorpg, I am not going to find it fun to walk around and spend 15 minutes looking at how beautiful an animal is in the river… I enjoy finding stuff to do, being challenged in some way, so on and so forth, and in that regard gw2 is not fun for me.

Anet promised in their manifesto that this game would be innovative… I don’t see it, none of their features are brand new, and most of them that were presented that way, aren’t even designed well enough to really be a selling point.

Are dynamic events very dynamic? Do I leave a lasting impression on the persistent world? If I loved MMORPGs am I REALLY going to want to check gw2 out? If that’s the case how come so many proficient MMORPG players can’t even will themselves to log in anymore.

GW2 to me is very loosely considered an mmorpg… it has a persistent world, which has very little depth, from a technical standpoint it does have that massive element, in that you can get a decent number of people together in 1 area, but the focus on instancing and districting, and the lack of depth in any aspect of the game… makes it feel like an mmo-lite to me.

I understand what anet was going for here, a casual game that doesn’t have to be the main game you play, that you can log into and just faceroll about for a little time here and there, and that’s fine… those types of games are nice…. but what was with all the false advertising?

I used to revere Anet as the company that was trying to be everything that blizzard and activision are not anymore. Now with all the artsy fartsy trailers, the self-importance, and the blatant deception for marketing purposes… I dunno anymore.

Are they sitting there in their office, happy that the game sold 2million copies? Was that more important to them than the integrity of making a good game?

Wasn’t their slogan before always that it will come out when it is finished, and not prematurely?

Is that just a necessary evil of game development, where no matter what you believe in initially, money is always the most motivating factor that will color all of your decisions more than anything else?

If this game was supposed to compete with WoW as a top mmorpg, why didn’t they stick to their guns and create a truly innovative experience. In the end I feel like they tried to just improve a little on what WoW offers, instead of make a completely different game. Whether they succeeded or failed in making a better version of WoW, i’ll leave that to you to decide.

As a long time MMORPG player I will give you the rundown.

GW2 is the most antisocial big name mmorpg ever released… everything is so easy in this game that people rarely ever want to put in any effort to socialize, and why should they, the game isn’t conducive of it.

It is what longtime mmorpg players would consider an mmo-lite, more akin to the level of depth a facebook game might have, than a traditional mmorpg.

One thing that could save gaming is if companies stopped trying to copy other games, and stopped falsely advertising what their game delivers.

With the degradation of society, people have become more like sheep and somewhere along the line, deceiving your consumers became common practice for marketing.

OP… you come off a little too jaded for most of the people you would find on this forum to take you too seriously. I am not saying you shouldn’t be taken seriously, but if they see that sort of hate towards the game they just often mindlessly tune out what you have to say.

Anet has really dropped the ball on this one. They were supposed to be the anti-blizzard, the west coast gaming company that succeeded but held on to the desire to make games for gamers by gamers. I don’t know if they were blinded by the fact that it was their own baby to nurture into a released mmo, but they’ve attempted to deliver the next WoW.

When WoW launched, blizzard basically dumbed down all of the popular MMORPGs, integrated the features from each that would mesh well together, but used their resources to make a very fluid game. Now while blizzard dumbed things down, things were so challenging before, that even the dumbed down wasn’t too newb friendly (yet).

Anet has tried to evaluate the current MMO market, and do the same… they’ve created the super easy MMO, which some fans will argue is challenging, because some boss 1 shotted them. Their marketing was quite deceptive, and while false advertising is common in this day and age, deception is still deception. Just because many companies embrace it doesn’t make it ok.

GW2 will entertain some people… unfortunately the type of people it entertains, will never grasp how things COULD be, because they just aren’t at that level of gaming. They like it easy… and they like the rose-tinted goggles.

If people play too much they were rushing and it is their own fault they burned out, if they played less and didn’t like the game, they are newb and didn’t give it an honest shot. This is the mentality we have to deal with… and while GW2 will sell well on hype, i do not believe it will have a healthy retention rate. I think it will be more like a d3 junior.

I remember posting on the gw2g forums back in the day, saying the loss of the trinity and making every class a hybrid would bore people, the appeal of mmos is to create virtual characters that you can tailor the way you want and give them their own identity. GW2 does very little of that with the limited traits, skills, races, professions.

Anyway I am all over the place in this post, I will close out by saying, anet was one of the companies I thought would stay the course, they are obviously just a hype machine now.

As for the infractions… just part of the change in philosophy. Can’t let there be too much criticism cause it is disrupting the peace.