“Communicate unto the other person that which you would want him to communicate unto you if your positions were reversed.”
— Aaron Goldman
This is a strong quote that rings sound within the Guild Wars 2 player base. Not the forums, not the PvPers, not the PvEers, not the hard-cores, not the casuals, but all. Communication between developers and players is needed in any game that takes dedication, time, and effort; in other words we need to know what is going on so we do not feel like we are in the dark whilst spending hundreds of hours in game. The secrecy and SURPRISE! feel that patches give are not examples of good communication.
- I feel most of us would prefer to know the specifics before the patch goes live.
- I feel most of us would probably like stats and technical information on patches.
- I defiantly feel most of us wouldn’t mind spoiling a bit of content by having test servers to ensure content is not buggy.
- I know ArenaNet wants to develop the best mmorpg of all time. I’m sure all of us wouldn’t mind if that happened.
- I feel the ascended gear update is an example of miscommunication, combined with fear of retracting on their promises of no gear treadmills.
- I feel most of us would like content to be enriched rather than expanded.
- I feel that we’d all like fun dungeons with great loot.
- I feel we’d like PvP to become an esport so we could talk about tournaments and how cool they are.
- I feel like most PvE’rs would like challenging yet fair content to combat against for epic drops.
- I feel like I’ve talked too much.
Communication, Clarity, Transparency. We need these in order to stop guessing. Humans have a nasty habit of worrying too much when they guess about things. Humans also have a nasty habit of complaining vocally when they have little information. Humans tend to flock together around a problem that they don’t understand yet, so that they can worry together; misery loves company. Test servers available to players would really help with this problem. Clarity instead of secrecy in the minor details in terms of stats and numbers would help in esports and in player morale. ArenaNet, I know you have a ton on your plate, and the plate is getting bigger, but here is a small list of how test servers would help you.
Test Server Benefits
- Test server footage is very popular on YouTube, raising hype and drawing new players into the game.
- Test servers find bugs, exploits, glitches, and so on that number crunching cannot.
- Test servers ensure the patch has gone through “quality control” by the players, and that usually makes all of us happier.
- Test servers address balancing issues and fix them before they can go live.
- Test servers are just plain cool.
I don’t know if any developers read this, but if you do read this; I have this to say:
I love your company, I love your team, I love your game and I love the franchise. It is an amazing feat of art, programming, and creativity packed into one. It is everything I loved about Guild Wars. I grew up with your games, in a sense, they made me who I am today, and I thank you for that. If any of you would like to just talk or discuss anything it would be amazing if you’d private message me, but that’s just me being silly asking that. In any case. Communication is key, but the way you communicate is even more important.