Guild Wars 2

It just irks me that people complained constantly about a lack of endgame content and then when extra endgame items appear along with a new, complex endgame dungeon and another endgame area then all they do is howl that the game is pandering to traditional MMO concepts.

We should be respecting that they’ve even fought traditional MMO concepts for this long, their changes to the genre have been well executed and we should cut them a bit of slack I think.

I wasn’t sure how to get this to you (ArenaNet) but I felt something public would be nice, so here goes.

When a player doesn’t like something about a game, or where they have noticed something they believe to be a problem for many players, then inevitably a forum like this will be used by those players to discuss and express their opinions on what’s bad with a game and how it should be fixed. Just like real world politics, pressure groups are an important part of making things change, though not all pressure groups have a point agreed on by a lot of people or convey it in an appropriate way.

Of course, the percentage of posters on here compared to the entire population of GW2 is likely small and while there will obviously be some people that dislike something but choose not to express it on here it IS logical to assume that the majority of posts here will be either neutral or negative in tone and I hope you (ArenaNet) know that the majority of players are enjoying the game and understandably won’t take 5-10 minutes to write a “I like this game!” post on here – why should they? They have a great game to play!

Well I’d like to write that post because I know that when I’ve run hobby groups (big and small) in the past then I learned it was very difficult to make everyone happy and that taking complaints on how I ran things from even just a few people was really painful and upsetting in one instance. Sure, I had to compromise in places because I wasn’t always right, but it was easy for me to get reassurance from other members and my committee that I was doing the right thing overall. Being a company then obviously it can be much harder to adequately keep in touch with your entire fan base and even harder still to get reassurance when forums like this are usually used for criticism (some constructive, some not). So here’s my message:

I personally love your game, I was a dedicated GW1 player (though I wouldn’t term myself a fanboy) and went into GW2 with high expectations given all the hype. Even if GW2 had been a disaster then I would still have played because in a games market where triple A titles are churned out using the same old mechanics then I was so impressed that you chose to not just remake the old game and try something different instead. There’re greedy companies out there that haven’t budged an inch to make a difference to the genre they make games for and it makes me pretty angry that their talent and money is going to waste – this only makes me all the more impressed with what you’ve made.

Having played almost all aspects of your game (WvW, PvE, sPvP though not tPvP) then I’ve had, and will continue to have, a fantastic time. I’ve never felt like I’m constantly being Mesmer portal ninja-ed in WvW, I’ve only been burst assassin-ed once or twice in sPvP, the builds that have thrashed me in sPvP I have understood and respected what they did and tried to find a way round it, the PvE has been wonderful and I eagerly await all your content updates, even if they take time to develop.

I understand the game isn’t perfect, there’re a few things I have thought of that I would like, but I’m having such a great time already then obviously none of those things are desperate enough in my mind to significantly impact my enjoyment. I believe I represent your “average Joe, normal gamer” and I’m having a great time.

My only regret (though not your fault at all) is that unfortunately my PC died of age and I can’t afford to replace it and the borrowed laptop on which I type this can’t run GW2 (I tried on min everything, it almost blew up :-O). So I play GW2 on my boyfriend’s super PC whenever I get the opportunity and I love every second of it. Sadly it means I’ll probably have to miss out on the event this weekend, but I’m ok with that because I’m sure it won’t be the last or the best of things to come :-)

I’m sure you know all this already, but what I want to say is, please keep going. Through all the complaints of stuff you haven’t done yet or stuff players want to see done because X, Y or Z is broken without it, I know you guys have the experience and dedication to continue making this an even better game in all aspects of it’s game play.

Please, please keep going.

Owen

Hey all, there’s a tl;dr at the end if you wish to skip my tale of anguish.

I’ve been absolutely SALIVATING to get my chops into the game and I held back from getting involved in the initial release as I know MMO launches can be a bit hectic.

Anyway I finally got my copy the other day and (because my own computer’s a bit underpowered for it) gleefully brought it to my boyfriend’s house to play on his super-duper computer.

I set up my account in advance (though IP verification has been giving me a lot of hassle, I think I’ve finally nailed it) so all that I had to do was install and patch up to date at my boyfriend’s.

However, I’ve hit what I now know to be a common problem. The download speed was going fine then suddenly slowed down and hit 0.00kbs – I knew my boyfriend’s internet connection is a bit ropey but figured we could work round it so I restarted the router – the download happily resumed and chundered along for another few %. Then it stopped again, I reset the router again, download resumes but almost immediately plummets to 0.00kbs again.

Almost 5 hours of resetting and occasionally finding a moment where it’ll download fine for like 20 mins then I finally reached the last 10 files – HALLELUJAH!

I’m beginning to jiggle excitedly in my seat as I re-read parts of the wiki to be sure I’m fully certain of the basics before I start.

1 File remaining, download slows to 0.00kbs. I howl in anguish and reset the router no less than 14 times to get back to a super burst of download speed – no avail.

I grudgingly decide to give it some time and play another game for a bit. Three torturous hours later I start the download again praying and praying that the internet will have sorted itself out… 1 file remaining, almost immediately the rate slows to 0.00kbs after having downloaded just 1kb of the final file. I reset the router knowing I am already beaten, same result.

I AM SPITTING DISTANCE FROM PLAYING AND YET I AM DENIED! AAARGGGGGGHHHHH!

My frustration is unbelievable. I have since returned home and installed the game on my laptop (which I know can’t play it) – but here comes my question.

Having installed the game and (completely successfully) downloaded the patches in their entirety, can I simply cope the entire GW2 folder from my laptop hard drive over to an external hard drive and then just dump them into my boyfriend’s computer in order to play? I’m hoping this will circumnavigate the update issues so it will see that it’s up-to-date and hopefully just let me play. Future updates can also be resolved this way I hope.

So is this a tenable idea?

tl;dr – can I just copy the GW2 folder from my computer to my boyfriend’s in order to circumnavigate having to update the game files through his internet, which is proving really troublesome? If yes, which files/folders do I need to move? (All of them may seem obvious but are there some hidden outside of the install directory that I would need to take too?)