Guild Wars 2

Faowri.4159:

Hopelessalchemist.4816:

(Why didn’t he do that at Claw Island if he’s got enough power for it? I will forever hate the devs for that having the story play out like that.)

I think that’s a general problem with Anet’s writing though. I call it “there’s a spell/device for that”. Their core systems of magic and technology are so ambiguously interwoven into the plot that for many problems in the story, especially in the later chapters, some NPC will come along with a gimmicky spell or device they conveniently know about/found/invented that will solve it. It makes consistency a bit hard to achieve because there wasn’t one that didn’t feel like it hadn’t been made up on the spot instead of tied into some solid, underlying system of magic or tech.

The Living World suffers the same problem. That whole thing during the Dragon Bash investigation where Marjory pulled some magic-detector thing out of a hat. It all feels incredibly random to serve the moment-to-moment needs of the plot, and it’s nothing to do with Trahearne.

The hallmark of bad fiction writing is events happening because it is convenient. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t really ever establish rules in regard to how magic works and by doing so allows the writers to pretty much make it all up as they go. The plot also struggles with a sense of scale and believable villains. After blowing up the single corpse ship with ghostfire you’re told that the armies of Orr will have no more recruits. What? Did they only have one ship? Were there other ships that were attacked by other Pact squads? This is never mentioned or explained. Zhaitan is poorly delivered as well. Every time you strike a blow at him by killing the Eye or the Mouth or whatever someone always remarks, “Oh did you hear him roar? The dragon must be afraid.” Really? I wouldn’t expect Zhaitan to be that upset over the eye. Or a boat. He’s a giant dragon. Why wouldn’t he attack Divinity’s Reach or anywhere else right away? Are their defenses strong enough to be a threat to him? If so why is his coming viewed as a threat to the entire world. The armies of Orr are held at bay as well. I’ve never completely finished the main plot for this reason. Every time I play a mission I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing and am completely unnecessary to the plot. Trahearne is the least of anyone’s worries when it comes to the writing.

MrIllusion.5304:

Mathias.9657:

It’s not that there are few voices of reason to counter the trash talk, but few reasons.

If ANet paid attention to the constant gripes and change the game accordingly we wouldn’t see the same threads pop up 24/7 saying the same exact things.

If Anet paid attention to the constant gripes we would have a mess of a game.

“Why is Zhaitan in an instance? It should have been an epic world boss where we have hundred of players taking him on at once!”

“Why is Tequatl an open world boss? He should have been put in an instance!”

“There is no endgame progression. Aesthetics are not compelling enough for players to continue playing past endgame.”

“There is too much gear grind. Anet should not have introduced Ascended gear.”

“The bosses are too easy. I just stand there and press #1.”

“Why is Tequatl so hard? Now everyone is going to just ignore that content.”

There is a fine line between getting player feedback and pandering to everyone. I say Anet should just develop whatever the hell they want. If they fail, at least the responsibility is theirs to shoulder.

This. This. This.

Galtrix.7369:

Randulf.7614:

Galtrix.7369:

Randulf.7614:

Galtrix.7369:

So, in summary, you could say that Guild Wars 2 does fine on those patch days, but lacks enough players to be a successful mmo on other days.

The game sold 3 million in the West – the smallest market for an MMO. It hasn;t released in Asia fully yet. Even though a large chunk wont be playing anymore (people try and leave, its the way of all mmos), I don’t understand why people don;t think this is successful just because it isn;t living up to their own expectations. I’m fully aware of GW2 failings and the poorness of Living Story so far, but I can also easily see how successfull this game has been so far and with so much more potential yet to come.

LOTRO is dying and is putting everything into Helms Deep. Whena company sends out surveys and questionnaires to email addresses asking “what’s wrong”,..thats when you know a company is worried.

Anarchy Online. Maybe 10,000 players? Maybe half that? Still Funcoms most successful game and biggest cash cow. 12 years on, virtually no content updates, no sign of dying on the horizon

Eve. As stated – critically acclaimed. Probably the most well known MMO after Wow currently active. Playerbase small in comparison to many

GW2 is not dying. It needs improvements in a lot of places, but still successful. As for Facebook? I don’t use it, so wont give it a thumbs up. 1 million was quite a stretch target I feel..

I never said it was dying. I said that the game probably didn’t have the amount of players Anet would like to have, so they implemented the 2 week content system.

And again, I didn’t say it wasn’t successful in general. Please, read what I post. I said it was successful only on patch days and the rest of the days were not. That’s why Anet brought in the achievement point rewards system. To get more people playing every day instead of just patch days. But, guess what happened? Nobody cared enough about the rewards to play every single day, and they’re still playing only on patch days.

I did read what you wrote and saw nothing that justifies it failing outisde of patch days. I’m seeing (anecdotal evidence granted) more people playing than 6 months back outside of patch days. I agree Living STory/2 week patches haven’t been fantastic, but it could be argued we are a minority given the large number of players playing and not posting here.

I said it lacks enough players to be successful on other days. I did not say it fails. I did not say it’s dying. I did not say it will die.

When I say “lacks enough players to be successful”, I mean that, outside of patch days, there aren’t enough players you see running around. They’re all in Spvp and in WvW because that’s pretty much the only end game there is. When it’s not a patch day, I see maybe one person in my 10 hours of playing and running around in random maps. They’re all idling in LA or doing Spvp/WvW.

What server are you on? With the exception of some mid-level zones that are out of the way I nearly always see people running around all over the place on Tarnished Coast at all hours of the day.