Wow, what a long thread, and yet no-one has really discussed the core point… M O N E Y.
Think about last Xmas. We had the events and, oddly enough, you couldn’t get enough mats to build all the Xmas mini’s – it was impossible to do. Then, suddenly, you could buy those other mini’s with real world money…
Do all the philosophising you like about GW1, GW2, WoW, EVE, etc but at the end of the day it comes down to PROFIT. Whether that’s crass gouging like the Xmas mini’s or more subtle distinctions around gameplay, cult versus puberty, grind versus whatever.
GW1 started with two USP principles – no grind, and community play. GW2 tries to retain aspects of these but at the same time tries to be pop rather than cult, to gather the masses. Jack of all, master of none… Such is life, get over it. IMHO GW2 will last for a while but its philosophy of money gouging plus confused cult and/or mass appeal mean it will stall and fall by the wayside.
ANET needs to decide what their core principles are (what revenue streams are they really going to chase?) and focus on those.
Oh, and while I’m at it, ANET needs better designers. The orrian god statues? People don’t do the temples because they’re hard, take loads of people, and don’t provide any real reward. ANET threw their collective dummies in the corner and installed god statues which mean you have to do the temples to get the whole map (e.g. not being able to get skill points because you’re getting beaten on every 3 seconds). Wrong answer. Make the temples more attractive to do.
