Guild Wars 2

Honestly, there are some other ways they could have made some additional money via the cash shop though one of the ways would have voided their promise of pay to win

1. Mounts. Make them unusable in WvWvW. Profit
2. cool clothing skins like they have in Aion
3. They could add in items via the cash shop which allow you to enhance gear more effectively. This last one is a major source of conflict though. Many FTP games out there have those items, like Runes of Magic or Aion. The problem is those items become pay to win since you can only enhance an item so far without one. I recall Anet mentioning they didn’t want any pay to win items in the cash shop. I also recall they didn’t want item progression

I should have left the nerf thieves and mesmers comments out. I couldn’t help myself though, lol. It’s one of those forums posting requirements, though usually only in the PvP section.

At the end of the day, Anet is a business and a business needs to make money. If that business is making money, then said business needs to find out how to maximize it’s earning potential. That’s what Anet is doing now though in a very heavy handed way. I would not be surprised to find out that Anet had considered the possibility of having gear progression and planned accordingly. As Rhyse said, developing MMO content takes time. I just hope that the power creep stats are limited to the “resist” needed for the current dungeon. It would still create a gating effect but it’s effect would be minimized for the “resists” specific content thus mitigating people’s need to acquire it.

1. Open world PvP complete with conquerable guild keeps.

2. Housing in general. I love Aion’s housing and Rift’s housing sounds very compelling as well

3. more non-combat activities. These add immersion and overall fun. Also an activity that a guild can do as a whole since, at the moment, those are few and far between

I haven’t seen anyone mention the 800 lb gorilla in the room in regards to Anet’s switch on gear philosophy. Could it be that they are doing this because they have noticed a very noticeable drop in server activity that has progressed over time? Could the data metrics they possess suggest something is wrong? One of the major financial concerns for this game long term was how would it be able to generate a long term, consistent stream of revenue. For some strange reason, a number of people believed that Anet was fine with droves of people leaving this game or keeping it as an on again, off again game. The problem with this belief, from a financial point of view, is the people behaving this way are far less likely to spend any additional money. This was always a cause for concern for Anet. After all, the likelihood of gobs of new game purchases extending past the new year is highly unlikely and always was with or without this upcoming change. So player retention is definitely a focus for Anet and with it, a focus on ways to keep these retained players spending money. This brings us to this upcoming change. I personally find it rather shocking they would have had such a fundamental change in philosophy though we haven’t seen all the details as of yet. I do agree that something needed to be done since the “endgame” is pretty sparse at the moment.

As for endgame, some of the things I love to see them implement:

1. open world PvP complete with conquerable guild keeps. For a game called “Guild Wars” there is nothing that promotes any activity that reflects the title.

2. If they insist on going with this new item system, make it so that agony mitigation is the only additional stat thus making the power creep on agony alone. This way it makes Ascended and exotic gear basically the same for all intents and purposes

3. Somehow tie in sPvP with the rest of the world…and nerf thieves and mesmers. Lol, I couldn’t help but throw that last bit in there