Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

So you want me to parrot your correction? Don’t be silly. What would that achieve? Nothing.

Buddy, putting things into perspective isn’t a contradiction.

Its like when two cars in in a row, illegally parked and a cop gives one a ticket and leaves the first one. You could have easily said, yep, the guy was wrong but… you chose not to. It’s okay though. I’m used to it.

No, it’s like two cops seeing the same car. Why would I ticket the same car when I see you doing it?
You’re a big boy now. You don’t need my acknowledgement.

So you want me to parrot your correction? Don’t be silly. What would that achieve? Nothing.

Buddy, putting things into perspective isn’t a contradiction.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Just so people know what “short” means, Q1 2013 which is where 8.3 million comes from.
Q2 2014 is where 6.3 million was stated (EDIT: We’re in the Q3 2014 right now, silly me).

The drop isn’t sharp, it’s following the expected trend of how all games behave in its lifetime (the shape, not the time frame), and is expected tail off slowly or until Blizzard pulls the plug.

I guess the stock holders know more than you, because they’re selling. It’s funny that when GW 2 does 25% less in profit, it’s okay for people to say it’s dying because you don’t like where the game is going,. but when it happens to another game, you’re happy to defend it.

How is stating facts defending them?
Here’s the “attack” on WoW. That game’s dying because it has peaked and still following the expected life trend of a game.
Jesus, so much bias against me.

It’s not bias. I made a statement that in a relatively short amount of time the game has lost a lot of people. If I’d bothered to look it up, I could have used 800,000 in one quarter, which is a big percentage, even for WoW. The main point of my post is that WoW is bleeding subscribers.

Here’s a link to an article from Time Magazine ( http://time.com/3086189/world-warcraft-subscribers/ )

In the article you’ll find this quote from a WoW executive.

But when Blizzard president Mike Morhaime took his turn on the call, he admitted the company’s juggernaut MMO, World of Warcraft, has continued to hemorrhage subscribers.

If the company’s president can admit WoW is “hemorrhaging” subscribers, why is what I said so unreasonable? Blizzard knows it.

People are moving away from WoW because the game is aging. Because they don’t do frequent content updates. Because the nature of the player base is changing. Because new games are coming out. The bottom line is, my conversation is in response to a poster who thinks WoW is doing great and Guild Wars 2 isn’t.

It’s a perfect legit response, no matter how you try to edit it.

Do you know how to distinguish between subjective words and facts? I was putting “short” into perspective. Funny how you don’t like when others puts your subjective words into perspective. A litte too funny.

I love how you imagine me saying WoW isn’t bleeding, or how I supposedly edited something to mean…I have no idea what, you’ll need to make up more things to tell your fanbase what I did.
Do I really need to quote my UNEDITED posts within this thread to prove you wrong about my so called defense?

FYI, the only edit I made was correcting myself from saying we’re in Q2 2014 to Q3 2014. But you needed to make me look bad in front of your fanbase, so I completely understand.

Did you bother to contradict the person I was responding to. Because if you did, I didn’t see it. His comments were way off kilter, but you felt you could just let those go. My comments were a bit off kilter and you couldn’t let that go. That’s almost the very definition of bias.

I thought we weren’t into repeating what other people have mentioned? Or was that a lie?

Have you ever rolled an Assassin and played PvP? You seem good at character assassination.

Whatever you think I’m good at or not, your responses to my posts follow a very specific pattern. You’re perfectly willing to correct something I said that was correct in principle, but you completely ignore the post I’m responding to, which is demonstrably untrue.

I don’t see any character assassination here. I’m stating exactly what happened.

Yes, putting out subjective words like “short” into perspective and not parroting someone’s correction is a bad habit of mine. Shame on me, huh?
Funny how when you do it, it’s ok, but when I do it, you’re all up in arms. Double standards much?

Also:
What you tell your fanbase: I made an edit to imply I’m trying to spin something.
What I really did: Corrected the time period I stated we are currently in.

What you tell your fanbase: I’m ignoring a post with some misinformation attacking GW2 because I’m defending WoW.
What I really did: Ignored a post that you already corrected, but posted a clarification/put things into perspective on the state of WoW’s sub numbers.

Pretty shocking attitude, I must say.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

You guys are wrong. Destiny is the next MMO golden child (and it’s only semi-MMO and on consoles), with 853k concurrent players during its beta.
That’s compared to GW2’s beta which only had 400k concurrent players at its peak.

Well that’s the thing. The console thing is always going to drive numbers up. But in the end it might all come to nothing.

Console gamers are greater in number than computer gamers at this point. Before Skyrim launched, they said they expected to get 90% of their sales from consoles. Just the idea that there are so few console MMOs out there means that there’ll be less competition and more interest.

I would almost find it inconceivable that a game available on console wouldn’t have higher concurrency early on compared to a game on computers.

According to this there are number PC gamers than console games now. Note it’s based on some analyst report, though.
And to be fair, it’s targeting the FPS crowd.

Galen Grey.4709:

BlueZone.4236:

You guys are wrong. Destiny is the next MMO golden child (and it’s only semi-MMO and on consoles), with 853k concurrent players during its beta.
That’s compared to GW2’s beta which only had 400k concurrent players at its peak.

ehhh mmm okey… Sit down before I tell you this… The golden mmo child (if you want to measure by concurrency) is already here. League of legends managed 7.5m concurrent players.

I was continuing the trend of the next killer MMO. The key words are ‘next’ and ‘child’. LoL isn’t a child anymore. :P

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Just so people know what “short” means, Q1 2013 which is where 8.3 million comes from.
Q2 2014 is where 6.3 million was stated (EDIT: We’re in the Q3 2014 right now, silly me).

The drop isn’t sharp, it’s following the expected trend of how all games behave in its lifetime (the shape, not the time frame), and is expected tail off slowly or until Blizzard pulls the plug.

I guess the stock holders know more than you, because they’re selling. It’s funny that when GW 2 does 25% less in profit, it’s okay for people to say it’s dying because you don’t like where the game is going,. but when it happens to another game, you’re happy to defend it.

How is stating facts defending them?
Here’s the “attack” on WoW. That game’s dying because it has peaked and still following the expected life trend of a game.
Jesus, so much bias against me.

It’s not bias. I made a statement that in a relatively short amount of time the game has lost a lot of people. If I’d bothered to look it up, I could have used 800,000 in one quarter, which is a big percentage, even for WoW. The main point of my post is that WoW is bleeding subscribers.

Here’s a link to an article from Time Magazine ( http://time.com/3086189/world-warcraft-subscribers/ )

In the article you’ll find this quote from a WoW executive.

But when Blizzard president Mike Morhaime took his turn on the call, he admitted the company’s juggernaut MMO, World of Warcraft, has continued to hemorrhage subscribers.

If the company’s president can admit WoW is “hemorrhaging” subscribers, why is what I said so unreasonable? Blizzard knows it.

People are moving away from WoW because the game is aging. Because they don’t do frequent content updates. Because the nature of the player base is changing. Because new games are coming out. The bottom line is, my conversation is in response to a poster who thinks WoW is doing great and Guild Wars 2 isn’t.

It’s a perfect legit response, no matter how you try to edit it.

Ok, I just read your link, and clearly you have not and I’ve found the transcript of his words.
Mike Morhaime did not use the word “hemorrhaging” or “bleeding”.
His exact words were (and here’s how you quote properly)

http://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog/comments/activision-blizzard-q2-2014-financial-results-conference-call-transcript

As we mentioned on the previous call, we anticipated fluctuation in subscribership due to seasonality and the fact that the current game content is at the end of its life cycle. And as expected, we did see a decline in subscribers, which mostly came out of the East. This pattern is right in line, percentage-wise, with the drops that we saw at Cataclysm’s cycle in Q2 2012.

Facts!

You guys are wrong. Destiny is the next MMO golden child (and it’s only semi-MMO and on consoles), with 853k concurrent players during its beta.
That’s compared to GW2’s beta which only had 400k concurrent players at its peak.

tolunart.2095:

BlueZone.4236:

Just so people know what “short” means, Q1 2013 which is where 8.3 million comes from.
Q2 2014 is where 6.3 million was stated (EDIT: We’re in the Q3 2014 right now, silly me).

The drop isn’t sharp, it’s following the expected trend of how all games behave in its lifetime (the shape, not the time frame), and is expected tail off slowly or until Blizzard pulls the plug.

Actually, reported sub numbers for WoW is about half what it was a few years ago, and that’s even if you don’t believe the claims they use accounting tricks to inflate the numbers.

It’s not unexpected, but with the ever-increasing competition from other MMOs and similar online games, especially the games that dropped their sub requirements or launched without subs. It’s assumed that there will be a percentage of players who move on from these games, and others who unsub and come back for expansions, but there’s writing on the wall – clearly, WoW is losing more players than they can bring in.

Yeah, I’m aware of that. Q3 & Q4 2010 is where WoW peaked and is now well into its falling phase. Only time will tell how the next expansion affects it and how it’ll tail off.
But it won’t go into a free fall and hit zero (not that you’re saying that or anything).

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Just so people know what “short” means, Q1 2013 which is where 8.3 million comes from.
Q2 2014 is where 6.3 million was stated (EDIT: We’re in the Q3 2014 right now, silly me).

The drop isn’t sharp, it’s following the expected trend of how all games behave in its lifetime (the shape, not the time frame), and is expected tail off slowly or until Blizzard pulls the plug.

I guess the stock holders know more than you, because they’re selling. It’s funny that when GW 2 does 25% less in profit, it’s okay for people to say it’s dying because you don’t like where the game is going,. but when it happens to another game, you’re happy to defend it.

How is stating facts defending them?
Here’s the “attack” on WoW. That game’s dying because it has peaked and still following the expected life trend of a game.
Jesus, so much bias against me.

It’s not bias. I made a statement that in a relatively short amount of time the game has lost a lot of people. If I’d bothered to look it up, I could have used 800,000 in one quarter, which is a big percentage, even for WoW. The main point of my post is that WoW is bleeding subscribers.

Here’s a link to an article from Time Magazine ( http://time.com/3086189/world-warcraft-subscribers/ )

In the article you’ll find this quote from a WoW executive.

But when Blizzard president Mike Morhaime took his turn on the call, he admitted the company’s juggernaut MMO, World of Warcraft, has continued to hemorrhage subscribers.

If the company’s president can admit WoW is “hemorrhaging” subscribers, why is what I said so unreasonable? Blizzard knows it.

People are moving away from WoW because the game is aging. Because they don’t do frequent content updates. Because the nature of the player base is changing. Because new games are coming out. The bottom line is, my conversation is in response to a poster who thinks WoW is doing great and Guild Wars 2 isn’t.

It’s a perfect legit response, no matter how you try to edit it.

Do you know how to distinguish between subjective words and facts? I was putting “short” into perspective. Funny how you don’t like when others puts your subjective words into perspective. A litte too funny.

I love how you imagine me saying WoW isn’t bleeding, or how I supposedly edited something to mean…I have no idea what, you’ll need to make up more things to tell your fanbase what I did.
Do I really need to quote my UNEDITED posts within this thread to prove you wrong about my so called defense?

FYI, the only edit I made was correcting myself from saying we’re in Q2 2014 to Q3 2014. But you needed to make me look bad in front of your fanbase, so I completely understand.

Did you bother to contradict the person I was responding to. Because if you did, I didn’t see it. His comments were way off kilter, but you felt you could just let those go. My comments were a bit off kilter and you couldn’t let that go. That’s almost the very definition of bias.

I thought we weren’t into repeating what other people have mentioned? Or was that a lie?

Have you ever rolled an Assassin and played PvP? You seem good at character assassination.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Just so people know what “short” means, Q1 2013 which is where 8.3 million comes from.
Q2 2014 is where 6.3 million was stated (EDIT: We’re in the Q3 2014 right now, silly me).

The drop isn’t sharp, it’s following the expected trend of how all games behave in its lifetime (the shape, not the time frame), and is expected tail off slowly or until Blizzard pulls the plug.

I guess the stock holders know more than you, because they’re selling. It’s funny that when GW 2 does 25% less in profit, it’s okay for people to say it’s dying because you don’t like where the game is going,. but when it happens to another game, you’re happy to defend it.

How is stating facts defending them?
Here’s the “attack” on WoW. That game’s dying because it has peaked and still following the expected life trend of a game.
Jesus, so much bias against me.

It’s not bias. I made a statement that in a relatively short amount of time the game has lost a lot of people. If I’d bothered to look it up, I could have used 800,000 in one quarter, which is a big percentage, even for WoW. The main point of my post is that WoW is bleeding subscribers.

Here’s a link to an article from Time Magazine ( http://time.com/3086189/world-warcraft-subscribers/ )

In the article you’ll find this quote from a WoW executive.

But when Blizzard president Mike Morhaime took his turn on the call, he admitted the company’s juggernaut MMO, World of Warcraft, has continued to hemorrhage subscribers.

If the company’s president can admit WoW is “hemorrhaging” subscribers, why is what I said so unreasonable? Blizzard knows it.

People are moving away from WoW because the game is aging. Because they don’t do frequent content updates. Because the nature of the player base is changing. Because new games are coming out. The bottom line is, my conversation is in response to a poster who thinks WoW is doing great and Guild Wars 2 isn’t.

It’s a perfect legit response, no matter how you try to edit it.

Do you know how to distinguish between subjective words and facts? I was putting “short” into perspective. Funny how you don’t like when others puts your subjective words into perspective. A litte too funny.

I love how you imagine me saying WoW isn’t bleeding, or how I supposedly edited something to mean…I have no idea what, you’ll need to make up more things to tell your fanbase what I did.
Do I really need to quote my UNEDITED posts within this thread to prove you wrong about my so called defense?

FYI, the only edit I made was correcting myself from saying we’re in Q2 2014 to Q3 2014. But you needed to make me look bad in front of your fanbase, so I completely understand.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Just so people know what “short” means, Q1 2013 which is where 8.3 million comes from.
Q2 2014 is where 6.3 million was stated (EDIT: We’re in the Q3 2014 right now, silly me).

The drop isn’t sharp, it’s following the expected trend of how all games behave in its lifetime (the shape, not the time frame), and is expected tail off slowly or until Blizzard pulls the plug.

I guess the stock holders know more than you, because they’re selling. It’s funny that when GW 2 does 25% less in profit, it’s okay for people to say it’s dying because you don’t like where the game is going,. but when it happens to another game, you’re happy to defend it.

How is stating facts defending them?
Here’s the “attack” on WoW. That game’s dying because it has peaked and still following the expected life trend of a game.
Jesus, so much bias against me.

laokoko.7403:

Wow is having their 5th expansion soon right?

I think their subscriber always fall off before expansion time.

That being said, I’m not sure how much GW2 is taking Wow’s player in China. Being buy 2 play should be pretty big for country’s with lower income.

Cataclysm (expansion 3) is when the subscriptions peaked and started falling.
Subscription was always on the increase prior to that (except maybe during WotLK where there’s a bunch of missing data).
However, it is expected the next expansion will jump them up a bit.

I, too, would be interested to know how China’s fairing. Only thing we’ve heard from them is that number of characters estimate…
I think I remember reading somewhere exploits in WvW is much worst over there, though. I remember seeing an image of a stairway of golems or something like that.

Just so people know what “short” means, Q1 2013 which is where 8.3 million comes from.
Q2 2014 is where 6.3 million was stated (EDIT: We’re in the Q3 2014 right now, silly me).

The drop isn’t sharp, it’s following the expected trend of how all games behave in its lifetime (the shape, not the time frame), and is expected tail off slowly or until Blizzard pulls the plug.

Galen Grey.4709:

Well thats pretty natural I’d say. it cannot be they did a lot of work and very little work at the same time.

It depends. As you say, comparing content per year on released content vs what we got, something feels missing.
However, I believe in terms of their teams, they can be accounted for in the Living World development structure (as I said before, I believe the non-Living World stuff are folded into the Living World release). There can be a million reasons why they aren’t producing as much. I also think what’s stopping them from releasing content as much as release is the lack of real direction and redoing things.

The other problem is the fact they spent so much resource/focus on temporary content, hence they don’t have as much to show for returning players. However, they took an awfully long time to realize this. The fact they will have to allocate resources to redevelop season 1 stuff to get it into the replayable/journal format, that’s more time spent looking like they aren’t doing new content to players who already played through that content.

Is the content getting better? Yes, and that’s because taking breaks, ie. status quo remains in place on the quality vs quantity spectrum.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

BlueZone.4236:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Lol. If they didn’t hold back on things they developed, what would they release in an expansion? Are you saying they would just spend two days working on an expansion, and then release it? Or were you wanting them to announce they would begin work on an expansion, and then spend a year or two working on it, and not release anything else?

I mean, it would have to be one or the other, would it not? I’m sooo confused.

Hey there, late response here.
Your confusion lies in your assumption in an expansion.
My assumption is that’s not true and that they’ve been folding their “big” projects (long term projects) in the existing living world content, like they said they might do.

Ha ha. I never said they were making an expansion. I have no idea, nor do I care one way or the other. What I was responding to was the notion that if they were working on an expansion, they would not be holding that content back. If they released expansion content every few days, weeks, months, what would there be left to release on ‘Expansion Day’? So funny.

Oh, my bad for misunderstanding. That’s pretty much my thoughts, as well.

This just proves people can coordinate with one another, so it at least means the event can teach people stuff and be rewarded handsomely for it, too.

BrotherBelial.3094:

BlueZone.4236:

I know people say to take datamined stuff with a grain of salt, but the higher level experience scrolls and skill point scrolls that was recently datamined could imply either a level cap increase or the infinite level scheme they once mentioned a long, long time ago.

My bet is on increase on level cap. And BIS will be much, much slower to obtain (and grindier).

Or could be second year birthday gifts? My too. Turns 2 in 5 days.

That’s possible. I was basing this more on the higher level scrolls, as I don’t think they want to new characters hit the cap that quickly with a level scroll.
I could be wrong, of course.

Fyrebrand.4859:

BlueZone.4236:

“Nothing’s off the table”.

“Nothing’s off the table” is evasive PR fluff that does not mean anything. SAB has been removed from the game for a long time now. ANet has indicated it is not in active development, nor do they have plans to work on it in the foreseeable future. Is this what on the table looks like? If ANet is not willing to do it, SAB’s not going to program itself.

It is evasive PR fluff, but it does say something. As you ask, ‘is this what on the table looks like?’, and this is exactly why people understandably got up in arms about it.

I know people say to take datamined stuff with a grain of salt, but the higher level experience scrolls and skill point scrolls that was recently datamined could imply either a level cap increase or the infinite level scheme they once mentioned a long, long time ago.

My bet is on increase on level cap. And BIS will be much, much slower to obtain (and grindier).

I’m gonna catch flak for saying this, and I do appreciate the developers working over time, but they wouldn’t have needed to fix this if they understood the problem in the first place.

Galen Grey.4709:

BlueZone.4236:

Yes, they’re doing financially well. No doubt about that.
Where all the money’s coming from, I don’t know. Star Citizen looks like a niche game, yet it has pulled in $50 million in crowd funding.

my point isnt that the game is doing financially well its that by doing LS and expansions side by side they can easily boost income by at the very least 33% then if they had to do one or the other.

BlueZone.4236:

My thoughts are:
a) Yes, I think player retention is stable.
b) They are definitely retaining those with heavy wallets (or gambling addicts, who knows), however I think the population is small (whatever “small” means to people is irrelevant).

It cant be small because the quarter income is still in line with the 3rd quarter after release where they said they had 450k concurrent players online. You need a substantial population to achieve 450k concurrent players. Now either people are spending considerably more or the player base is still pretty large.

BlueZone.4236:

Anyway, here’s my real gripe with people uttering ‘expansion’, however this is a bit of a lose-lose situation.
My opinion is the rage that happened currently is partly caused by this parroting of false hope of some “big” content that’s supposedly cooking for god knows how long (and yes the ragers themselves are to blame, obviously).
People keep saying it and it’ll be a disappointment when it comes.
Don’t say anything and people wonder what’s going on.
Parroting the false hope whilst content is being drip fed…you get to where we are now. People snap. It was inevitable, in my opinion.

Well I dont think anyone ever brings up the big content cooking / potentially expansion in development out of the blues, its always in reply to statements arguing how little content Gw2 releases now that it launched. Ergo we’re not building false hope per-se we’re trying to salvage disrepair so to speak.

BlueZone.4236:

What we do know is the teams have been restructured/changed at least 3 times. Sorry, I don’t have links since a lot of it is old info and it’ll take too long to fish them again.
First was shifting from GW2 release to the idea of doing Living Story (monthly content at the time, I think).
2nd was after the whole fence repairing living story backlash (ramped up to 2 week cadence).
3rd was transition from living story season 1 to season 2.

I think the biggest show stoppers occurred around the first two restructure.

Whether it’s big enough to explain the discrepancy, maybe, maybe not.
In a big company, people can fall into the cracks avoiding detection that they’re doing nothing, as well. :P
The only projects that really matter are the ones closest to crunch time and the rest don’t need to be held accountable.

Well as far as we know its just the living story team that restructured 3 times, dont think they ever said anything about anyone else and the living story team is pretty small just 20 people. The restructuring where not negative either I think we’ll both agree that living story kept getting progressively better and its currently pretty good especially when compared to the first few episodes of season 1.

Can some procrastinate and avoid detection. Sure no doubt. But we’re talking about over 75% less productivity here.

5 per year vs 2 zone which have the size of 1 regular zone
about 5 dungeon paths per year vs. 2 or 3
8 jumping puzzles per year vs 2 or 3
300 dynamic events per year vs … well less

I dont know obviously but this cant all be the result of inefficiencies and procrastination, its just way too much.

The affectionately named MMO locusts came and left. That’s my explanation for the initial high concurrency yet same gem store revenue. They weren’t going to pay anyway, but the nonlocust do. As much as I hate the gemstore, it works.

Here’s what you missed regarding the maps.
Eotm, kessex + tower, queen’s pav, lions arch redo, zephyr cliff (can’t remember the name).
I think fractals is there somewhere…
and I think the holiday stuff was counted as a separate team (I remember that was named as a team outside of the living story initially).
FYI, I suspect the maps themselves were developed by the separate team (because it takes longer to develop) then the living story team dumps their story content onto those maps.

Sorry, but I feel they are all accounted for or close enough to not have an expansion working in the background.
I’m sure someone’s gonna say ‘hey that sounds like an expansion worth of content’, but they’re missing other stuff and that’s a different argument anyway (too tired to write anymore).

Galen Grey.4709:

Cant speak for Vayne but pretty sure he meant it as one of the reason not the only reason. Vayne has been saying that Anet are probably working on an Expansion far longer then I have after all. An expansion will obviously slow the output of the living story as naturally it will eat up most of the resources.

No they dont imply expansion, they just fit the pattern nothing else. As for the 4m copies in the west, its hard to say. Their quarterly income has been quite consistent and that means either player retention is great. New players are coming at the same rate as players leaving. Existent players are increasing money spend exponentially.

Thats one possibility you’re right but its not the only one. Another is it takes a lot of resources to have living story and expansions worked on in parallel. They could simply be bolstering their resources so that they relieve pressure from one or the other.
After all if they do manage to give us living story and expansions it will be a great thing for both us and Arenanet. For US living story would mean no need to endure months of repetitive content to keep us busy while an expansion is in development and for Arenanet its great cause it gives them a good stead income of about $25m per quarter which in itself is pretty good + $120M+ per expansion releases and that not counting china.

Yes, they’re doing financially well. No doubt about that.
Where all the money’s coming from, I don’t know. Star Citizen looks like a niche game, yet it has pulled in $50 million in crowd funding.
My thoughts are:
a) Yes, I think player retention is stable.
b) They are definitely retaining those with heavy wallets (or gambling addicts, who knows), however I think the population is small (whatever “small” means to people is irrelevant).

Anyway, here’s my real gripe with people uttering ‘expansion’, however this is a bit of a lose-lose situation.
My opinion is the rage that happened currently is partly caused by this parroting of false hope of some “big” content that’s supposedly cooking for god knows how long (and yes the ragers themselves are to blame, obviously).
People keep saying it and it’ll be a disappointment when it comes.
Don’t say anything and people wonder what’s going on.
Parroting the false hope whilst content is being drip fed…you get to where we are now. People snap. It was inevitable, in my opinion.

Galen Grey.4709:

BlueZone.4236:

Was going answer your previous response, but I’ll answer this first.
Good question. However, be aware they have lost employees leading up to the release of the game (I’m not talking like in droves or something like that). Losing members who have knowledge of their tools (and the quirks to work around the bugs) can be a huge blow to production.
Other possibilities include burn out, “iterative” style process (ie. scrap projects hundreds of times), poor management leading to projects going no where.

Valid answers all of them not disagreeing there, my only issue is would it account for this much?

Some employees did leave its true but the majority of them didnt and overall we know the team grew. New employees need time to learn and adjust so there will be an impact I just dont see it large enough to account for the discrepancy.

Poor management and scrapped projects is also another possibility. Management as far as I am aware didnt change since development started or well not much. So if this is indeed an issue wouldnt it have existed while the game was developed as well and if thats the case wouldnt the base line of content development speed include that factor as well? now it may have gotten worst after release as some priorities shift around sure but again is it large enough to account for all of it?

Cause even taking both of these factors together I just dont see how productivity could have fallen to like 25% of what it was during development it just doesnt make sense. There has to be something we dont know about thats at the very least twice as big of what we saw so far.

What we do know is the teams have been restructured/changed at least 3 times. Sorry, I don’t have links since a lot of it is old info and it’ll take too long to fish them again.
First was shifting from GW2 release to the idea of doing Living Story (monthly content at the time, I think).
2nd was after the whole fence repairing living story backlash (ramped up to 2 week cadence).
3rd was transition from living story season 1 to season 2.

I think the biggest show stoppers occurred around the first two restructure.

Whether it’s big enough to explain the discrepancy, maybe, maybe not.
In a big company, people can fall into the cracks avoiding detection that they’re doing nothing, as well. :P
The only projects that really matter are the ones closest to crunch time and the rest don’t need to be held accountable.

Galen Grey.4709:

BlueZone.4236:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Lol. If they didn’t hold back on things they developed, what would they release in an expansion? Are you saying they would just spend two days working on an expansion, and then release it? Or were you wanting them to announce they would begin work on an expansion, and then spend a year or two working on it, and not release anything else?

I mean, it would have to be one or the other, would it not? I’m sooo confused.

Hey there, late response here.
Your confusion lies in your assumption in an expansion.
My assumption is that’s not true and that they’ve been folding their “big” projects (long term projects) in the existing living world content, like they said they might do.

Sorry for repeating myself but you didnt answer me before either so I guess its a valid question. In 5 years they did 25 full fledge zones, 1500 dynamic events, 8 dungeons all of WvW, etc… how would you explain that with the same team and an extra 20% resources they make much less content? It just doesnt add up, maybe its not an expansion but there has to be something bigger going on that would explain this discrepancy. Its not like its faster to develop content during active development than after release, in fact the opposite is true . It may not be an expansion sure but it has to be something. I am sure they dont pay people to play the game and do nothing else all day at Arenanet (if thats the case please let me know I’d love ajob there )

Was going answer your previous response, but I’ll answer this first.
Good question. However, be aware they have lost employees leading up to the release of the game (I’m not talking like in droves or something like that). Losing members who have knowledge of their tools (and the quirks to work around the bugs) can be a huge blow to production.
Other possibilities include burn out, “iterative” style process (ie. scrap projects hundreds of times), poor management leading to projects going no where.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Lol. If they didn’t hold back on things they developed, what would they release in an expansion? Are you saying they would just spend two days working on an expansion, and then release it? Or were you wanting them to announce they would begin work on an expansion, and then spend a year or two working on it, and not release anything else?

I mean, it would have to be one or the other, would it not? I’m sooo confused.

Hey there, late response here.
Your confusion lies in your assumption in an expansion.
My assumption is that’s not true and that they’ve been folding their “big” projects (long term projects) in the existing living world content, like they said they might do.

Galen Grey.4709:

BlueZone.4236:

Galen Grey.4709:

BlueZone.4236:

Well yeah, that’s obvious.
Now people can stop trying to falsely raise other people’s hopes about “big” projects cooking in the background being expansions or something equivalent.
Dry Top & EotM is as big as you could possibly expect from ANet.

Well lets put it this way. Work on Gw2 started in 2007. They had a ton of work to do at that point 5 years They created and populated 25 big zones with dynamic events and all that good stuff yet you think 2 smaller maps is all they can produce in 2 years with a much bigger team?

Its not like Arenanet made redundant most of the positions after release, they kept everyone + hired more people since release. Their content output didnt shrink so at the very least they’re capable of creating 5 big zones per year (thats assuming they started creating zones from day 1 of development and finished them on the last day prior to release which of course is absurd)

That the living story team is made up of 20 people out of over 350 and they alone did so much stuff is amazing. but they’re still like 1/15 of the whole employees and I dont think the living story team are the only ones doing any work at all.

The more I think about it, expansion is the only thing that makes sense.

Well, the point of the link Vayne provides shows how many non technical roles exist in a company. In that case, an expansion doesn’t make sense.

And thanks for the above open jobs list. In fact, it proves they are lacking in the technical department, and funnily enough the marketing roles were snapped up.

The link Vayne provided is for a company unrelated to Arenanet, not all companies are structure the same way. I also work for an IT company and by far the bulk of the employees work in the technical department.

No it doesnt, not even close.

1. Their technical department was good enough to develop the game itself. That technical department is still there.

2. These are roles sought in addition to the ones already working there. (again Arenanet was 270 people at launch and now its over 350 as of last year) so if anything this says they’re boosting their technical department not that its lacking

3. you’re assuming they just want 1 of each role. Different job applications might be have different requirements for example while they may have needed just 1 marketing guy they may need 10 developers and thus it would be easier to fill marketing then development jobs.

4. I think you may have read my post backworks. The bottom list is the jobs they sought in July. The top list is the jobs they’re seeking right now. Ergo that list shows that they filled the following positions (or decided they dont need one anymore, also a possibility):
German Localization Editor
IT Helpdesk Engineer
QA Manager
Recruiting Coordinator
Systems Engineer

and are now also seeking
Marketing Designer
Marketing Production Manager
Production Internship – Release Management
QA – Software Development Engineer in Test
Spanish Linguistic QA
Technical Art Internship

It may be interesting to note the new positions.. Wouldnt those be positions needed if you’re doing an expansion? Additional marketing, more resources on release management, stronger QA. etc.. but thats just entirely speculation on my part, they could very well need them for the existent core game.

Yes, I’m aware of Vayne posted. He posted it as a way to invoke sympathy to explain away people’s outrage on the slow timing of the content. However, then he backpedals to imply they’re just holding back content. Huh…

My bad on reading the listing order. However, the additional marketing roles doesn’t have to imply expansion. They’ve been trying to get more sales, as I still don’t believe they’ve hit that 4 million mark in the west.

As for the technical roles, I wasn’t implying lacking in the sense that the old technical roles have left in droves or something like that.
What I was trying to say is the lack of technical roles in order to push content out faster and/or better quality than what they’ve been pushing out currently.
People have been complaining about the poor QA and the lack of expansion worth of content, so they need that regardless of expansion or not. Since they’re still adamant in the Living World structure, I am going to assume they’re just pushing on their core game.

But honestly, I would gladly eat humble pie if they have been working on an expansion in the past two years, however, I truly doubt it.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Galen Grey.4709:

BlueZone.4236:

Well yeah, that’s obvious.
Now people can stop trying to falsely raise other people’s hopes about “big” projects cooking in the background being expansions or something equivalent.
Dry Top & EotM is as big as you could possibly expect from ANet.

Well lets put it this way. Work on Gw2 started in 2007. They had a ton of work to do at that point 5 years They created and populated 25 big zones with dynamic events and all that good stuff yet you think 2 smaller maps is all they can produce in 2 years with a much bigger team?

Its not like Arenanet made redundant most of the positions after release, they kept everyone + hired more people since release. Their content output didnt shrink so at the very least they’re capable of creating 5 big zones per year (thats assuming they started creating zones from day 1 of development and finished them on the last day prior to release which of course is absurd)

That the living story team is made up of 20 people out of over 350 and they alone did so much stuff is amazing. but they’re still like 1/15 of the whole employees and I dont think the living story team are the only ones doing any work at all.

The more I think about it, expansion is the only thing that makes sense.

Well, the point of the link Vayne provides shows how many non technical roles exist in a company. In that case, an expansion doesn’t make sense.

And thanks for the above open jobs list. In fact, it proves they are lacking in the technical department, and funnily enough the marketing roles were snapped up.

An expansion makes perfect sense, if you’re working on stuff in the background and if you’re NOT releasing most or all of it. You do that to make an expansion.

Again just because you personally filter everything through a negative filter, doesn’t make everything negative.

What? Regardless of your biased view on me, the idea of them holding back most of the stuff is silly. I don’t get why you bother to provide such a link only to do a heel turn on said perspective.

Galen Grey.4709:

BlueZone.4236:

Well yeah, that’s obvious.
Now people can stop trying to falsely raise other people’s hopes about “big” projects cooking in the background being expansions or something equivalent.
Dry Top & EotM is as big as you could possibly expect from ANet.

Well lets put it this way. Work on Gw2 started in 2007. They had a ton of work to do at that point 5 years They created and populated 25 big zones with dynamic events and all that good stuff yet you think 2 smaller maps is all they can produce in 2 years with a much bigger team?

Its not like Arenanet made redundant most of the positions after release, they kept everyone + hired more people since release. Their content output didnt shrink so at the very least they’re capable of creating 5 big zones per year (thats assuming they started creating zones from day 1 of development and finished them on the last day prior to release which of course is absurd)

That the living story team is made up of 20 people out of over 350 and they alone did so much stuff is amazing. but they’re still like 1/15 of the whole employees and I dont think the living story team are the only ones doing any work at all.

The more I think about it, expansion is the only thing that makes sense.

Well, the point of the link Vayne provides shows how many non technical roles exist in a company. In that case, an expansion doesn’t make sense.

And thanks for the above open jobs list. In fact, it proves they are lacking in the technical department, and funnily enough the marketing roles were snapped up.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

I can’t find any interviews saying seven teams working on big projects, so you’ll need to link that for me to read.
I know they said they collapsed their story team to a single team and only a couple of big projects at the beginning of the year, which I’m sure we’ve technically seen now.
Are they working on more projects (big and small)? Yes, obviously.
However, the point is that when someone points out “big” project, I say refer to EotM or Dry Top in terms of size and development time.

Please get a reality check. This is ANet working full bore.

The Colin interview, before the most recent one, when there were four Living World teams. In that interview, its’ a video not text, he says there are four teams rotating on the living story and other teams working on other content. Now there were a couple of interviews, so I’m not sure which ones are which. I’m pretty sure it was a Pax interview, but you know, I have zero intention of trolling videos for you to find the link. Someone will probably have it.

How considerate of you.
Anyway, it’s unlikely it was seven big projects, unless you consider living world stuff big, as well.
But based on their history, we’ve got an idea on what they consider big and how we should shape our expectations on those words, so it’s all good.

I can’t find any interviews saying seven teams working on big projects, so you’ll need to link that for me to read.
I know they said they collapsed their story team to a single team and only a couple of big projects at the beginning of the year, which I’m sure we’ve technically seen now.
Are they working on more projects (big and small)? Yes, obviously.
However, the point is that when someone points out “big” project, I say refer to EotM or Dry Top in terms of size and development time.

Please get a reality check. This is ANet working full bore.

Well yeah, that’s obvious.
Now people can stop trying to falsely raise other people’s hopes about “big” projects cooking in the background being expansions or something equivalent.
Dry Top & EotM is as big as you could possibly expect from ANet.

Levian.7683:

I’m tired of:
-Soon™,
– We can’t talk until is ready,
-That’s an interesting idea…

14 January 2014
“We have a couple of really big Guild Wars projects cooking in the background,”

What happen after that? NOTHING!!!
I’m still waiting for some great news at least expansion info or something…
I’m really tired of all gemstore items. Give us real things worth of paying!

GW1 was great “every” 6 months we get stand alone game with a lo of new staff to do!

What we get now?
Two week updates (whic you finish in 2/3 hours), a lot of grind for BK items, achivments…

Cmon ANet do something HUGE with this game!!!

I think Dry Top was one of their big projects. I wish I was joking, but I base this on the fact an ANet dev said it took nearly a year to make Edge of the Mist map.
There are pots boiling over, and it ain’t in ANet’s offices, I tell ya!

Lheimroo.2947:

BlueZone.4236:

Lheimroo.2947:

Backlash or no, there hasn’t been a significant non-tech support related quote from a dev in literal months on the dev tracker.. aside of the economy guy, and that in one thread.

And when we see an interview.. it’s hemming and hawing, start to finish.

Continue communicating? They oughta start. Who wants to bet there’s unrevealed road mines in the september feature patch? Stuff they won’t say before it’s unleashed on us?

I think we’ve already got the idea on the next two feature reveal: colored commander tags and the battle log changes.

Beyond that, I’m betting one internet cookie on ‘increase level cap and things that cost a lot of skill points’.

I’ll take yer bet!

Will they have a gear reset with the level cap rise? That would be so awesome. Just what the community has been secretly hoping for, I swear.

No, like.. seriously, though. I like the way Anet communicates. It’s a kinda soap opera, you know? A game of ‘spot the thing they’re being cagey about, cuz they know players are going to hate it’. Or is it ‘Spot the thing the devs don’t realize we’re going to hate’?

Absolutely with the gear reset! New levels means higher level gear! Out with the old, in with the new!!
They’ll finally fix the gear progression from Exotic -> Ascended -> Precursor -> Legendary (or reorganize it to whatever makes more sense to them)
And let me tell you, it will be…grindy.
How grindy? No-new-content-to-swallow-this-grind type grindy and time gated, and each time gate will have it’s own time gates!
And we will thank them for it because the metrics said so.

Lheimroo.2947:

Backlash or no, there hasn’t been a significant non-tech support related quote from a dev in literal months on the dev tracker.. aside of the economy guy, and that in one thread.

And when we see an interview.. it’s hemming and hawing, start to finish.

Continue communicating? They oughta start. Who wants to bet there’s unrevealed road mines in the september feature patch? Stuff they won’t say before it’s unleashed on us?

I think we’ve already got the idea on the next two feature reveal: colored commander tags and the battle log changes.

Beyond that, I’m betting one internet cookie on ‘increase level cap and things that cost a lot of skill points’.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Considering Josh said he made it on his spare time, I’m not sure how much he was paid….

I’m also not sure that saying it won’t be released again during Living Story Season Two makes it long-term or permanently abandoned. I thought players were up in arms over how short Season Two was supposed to be, seeing it’s on ‘mid-season break’.

But, if people want to ‘riot’ about it…..not much can be said to people in that state of mind. /shrug

SAB 2 wasn’t completely done in his own time (however he did do a lot of overtime on it) and had “dismal” numbers according to their metrics, so why would any company want to work on something they think isn’t worth looking at anymore?
Look how long it takes for ANet to create a lot of their content takes based on their track record, and look at the ones they have stalled.
“Nothing’s off the table”.
It’s not hard to put the pieces together.

munkiman.3068:

Guild mag interview with Devon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyWxsJU4InM

While it’s WvW oriented, almost all the questions were answered pretty much as “nothing new to report”. Glad Destiny is coming out soon.

Yeah, but that’s not his area of expertise!
Jokes aside, I feel bad for them because they know they have not much to report but need to pad words out to make it seem like they have a lot to say.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

BlueZone.4236:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

BlueZone.4236:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Vayne.8563:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Labjax.2465:

Vayne.8563:

Okay reality check. The people answering this interview are the end game guy and a WvW guy. They probably expected the interview to be about that.

These are the wrong guys for these specific questions. They might not even HAVE the answers and they tried to answer as best they could.

Well right. That’s my point. The whole interview screams, “We are way out of our comfort zone here. Halp.”

Now I feel bad for them, because the whole thing could have easily been them just plopped/ pseudo-strongarmed into an interview and then squirming through it without leaking data that they shouldn’t be.

My viewpoint depends on if they willingly decided to take a genuine shot at that interview and that was the result of careful preparation, or if it was more along the lines of them just doing it because the players say they don’t talk enough.

if the former, lol.

If the latter, aw… poor guys.

Well, if you were going to answer those questions, would you be sending your WvW lead and your end game specialist? Because those questions weren’t really focused on that.

Fish not only out of water, but buried in sand; to be sure.

Nah, it doesn’t matter who gives the answers, the response would largely be the same.

Mind presenting evidence of this ever happening for Guild Wars 2?

“Nothing’s off the table”

Nice technique. Isn’t this from that same interview though?

There have been several interviews that were much more active than this one.

I’m hoping these newer ones are just due to people forced to talk about areas they do not work in.

Yeah, but the point is that no one is working in those areas so there really no one to get for those that would give a better answer. The answers read like a typical PR trained answers. I think people are sick of it already.

Edit: That line has been used in numerous interviews (possibly reworded sometimes). I’m sure you can google that line to see some examples.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

BlueZone.4236:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Vayne.8563:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Labjax.2465:

Vayne.8563:

Okay reality check. The people answering this interview are the end game guy and a WvW guy. They probably expected the interview to be about that.

These are the wrong guys for these specific questions. They might not even HAVE the answers and they tried to answer as best they could.

Well right. That’s my point. The whole interview screams, “We are way out of our comfort zone here. Halp.”

Now I feel bad for them, because the whole thing could have easily been them just plopped/ pseudo-strongarmed into an interview and then squirming through it without leaking data that they shouldn’t be.

My viewpoint depends on if they willingly decided to take a genuine shot at that interview and that was the result of careful preparation, or if it was more along the lines of them just doing it because the players say they don’t talk enough.

if the former, lol.

If the latter, aw… poor guys.

Well, if you were going to answer those questions, would you be sending your WvW lead and your end game specialist? Because those questions weren’t really focused on that.

Fish not only out of water, but buried in sand; to be sure.

Nah, it doesn’t matter who gives the answers, the response would largely be the same.

Mind presenting evidence of this ever happening for Guild Wars 2?

“Nothing’s off the table”

Taking one sentence out of an interview, doesn’t equate to a whole interview.

There’s a reason why you never saw it coming. I’m more surprised this didn’t happen sooner.
This rage isn’t isolated to this interview. It’s been building up for a long time now.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

BlueZone.4236:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Vayne.8563:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Labjax.2465:

Vayne.8563:

Okay reality check. The people answering this interview are the end game guy and a WvW guy. They probably expected the interview to be about that.

These are the wrong guys for these specific questions. They might not even HAVE the answers and they tried to answer as best they could.

Well right. That’s my point. The whole interview screams, “We are way out of our comfort zone here. Halp.”

Now I feel bad for them, because the whole thing could have easily been them just plopped/ pseudo-strongarmed into an interview and then squirming through it without leaking data that they shouldn’t be.

My viewpoint depends on if they willingly decided to take a genuine shot at that interview and that was the result of careful preparation, or if it was more along the lines of them just doing it because the players say they don’t talk enough.

if the former, lol.

If the latter, aw… poor guys.

Well, if you were going to answer those questions, would you be sending your WvW lead and your end game specialist? Because those questions weren’t really focused on that.

Fish not only out of water, but buried in sand; to be sure.

Nah, it doesn’t matter who gives the answers, the response would largely be the same.

Mind presenting evidence of this ever happening for Guild Wars 2?

“Nothing’s off the table”

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Vayne.8563:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Labjax.2465:

Vayne.8563:

Okay reality check. The people answering this interview are the end game guy and a WvW guy. They probably expected the interview to be about that.

These are the wrong guys for these specific questions. They might not even HAVE the answers and they tried to answer as best they could.

Well right. That’s my point. The whole interview screams, “We are way out of our comfort zone here. Halp.”

Now I feel bad for them, because the whole thing could have easily been them just plopped/ pseudo-strongarmed into an interview and then squirming through it without leaking data that they shouldn’t be.

My viewpoint depends on if they willingly decided to take a genuine shot at that interview and that was the result of careful preparation, or if it was more along the lines of them just doing it because the players say they don’t talk enough.

if the former, lol.

If the latter, aw… poor guys.

Well, if you were going to answer those questions, would you be sending your WvW lead and your end game specialist? Because those questions weren’t really focused on that.

Fish not only out of water, but buried in sand; to be sure.

Nah, it doesn’t matter who gives the answers, the response would largely be the same.

Dusty Moon.4382:

BlueZone.4236:

Dusty Moon.4382:

BlueZone.4236:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Also, in Dry Top, how are you going to deal with all the jumping with a mount?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUAsLSPIy2c

Aspect infused mounts!!!! Neeeeiiiiighhhhh!!!
Skill 1: [Assisted Leap]
Skill 2: [Light Dash]

As was stated, how do you propose to design a mount, make sure EACH profession and race does not clip with it?

How do you propose to balance the mobs, such that a mounted rider can be stopped. This is not done I most games is would be part of the balance here – that means EACH mob would have to have a new skill to deal with that. The AI would also have to be tweaked to deal with that. That is just not a simple (CLICK BOX, MOUNT ADDED) type of programming. That would be basically redesigning the game for mounts.

Sorry – I can’t see it being done. Besides, you would have the SAB people breaking down your doors as to why their precious SAB did not get put back in but mounts did.

Have you been to Dry Top yet? Have you light dashed passed a mob?
Have you ever had a ranger and use a pet to distract the mobs while you run your merry way? Ever played a guardian to use aegis, judge’s intervention, spirit weapons, greatsword leap?
Great balance there, mate.

Also, professions are irrelevant. Different races have clipping issues already with armor.

Yes – those skills replace yours. How would they replace a mounts skills, not you have mounts, that replaced yours, and those skills would replace mount skills? If you have ever tried to use 2 different potions , each with their own skill set – you lose both in game. I don’t think this type of complexity is setup in game.

Sorry – that is why I asked. Obfuscation is a way to debate.

I dunno. What happens when you run into an aspect crystal while in costume/potion now?
Could always automatically dismount when you run into a crystal anyway.

Dusty Moon.4382:

BlueZone.4236:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Also, in Dry Top, how are you going to deal with all the jumping with a mount?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUAsLSPIy2c

Aspect infused mounts!!!! Neeeeiiiiighhhhh!!!
Skill 1: [Assisted Leap]
Skill 2: [Light Dash]

As was stated, how do you propose to design a mount, make sure EACH profession and race does not clip with it?

How do you propose to balance the mobs, such that a mounted rider can be stopped. This is not done I most games is would be part of the balance here – that means EACH mob would have to have a new skill to deal with that. The AI would also have to be tweaked to deal with that. That is just not a simple (CLICK BOX, MOUNT ADDED) type of programming. That would be basically redesigning the game for mounts.

Sorry – I can’t see it being done. Besides, you would have the SAB people breaking down your doors as to why their precious SAB did not get put back in but mounts did.

Have you been to Dry Top yet? Have you light dashed passed a mob?
Have you ever had a ranger and use a pet to distract the mobs while you run your merry way? Ever played a guardian to use aegis, judge’s intervention, spirit weapons, greatsword leap?
Great balance there, mate.

Also, professions are irrelevant. Different races have clipping issues already with armor.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Also, in Dry Top, how are you going to deal with all the jumping with a mount?

Aspect infused mounts!!!! Neeeeiiiiighhhhh!!!
Skill 1: [Assisted Leap]
Skill 2: [Light Dash]

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

It’s just a bad interview because the two guys answering those questions aren’t actually involved with anything asked about.

Bad interviews happen. Those guys shouldn’t have been the guys answering that interview.

I don’t see how it’s a bad interview, at all.
Having guys in the “right” department saying ‘no/nothing’s off the table’ will make it a better interview? Hint: It doesn’t.

No because the questions asked were fan questions about stuff they’re not really working on. They’re not working on FoV and they’re not working on First person stuff and they never pretended they were. They don’t plan on bringing SAB out during this season and fans want it. Well you know, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if Anet brought it out, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if they didn’t.

There’s really no good way to have an interview with rabid fans who expect THEIR concerns to be the major concerns.

Precusor crafting is the one thing I could see people getting really riled up about, because they’ve been waiting a long time.

I’d still rather see the rest of the stuff coming out in the patch before I start lighting torches and carrying pitchforks though.

Yeah, so basically it didn’t matter who gives the response, because they’d all give the same answer.

Sometimes it’s not what you’re saying it’s how you say it. When it’s your area of interest, you’d have spent more time thinking about how to present your answers. When you’re answering out of your comfort zone you’re going to stumble. Basic human psychology.

They weren’t stumbling. They were trying to sound like they had a lot to say about something even though they knew that ‘something’ is nothing.

They stumbled, not in the sense of talking in a stumbling manner. They were talking in circles, feeling their way. These weren’t polished answers. They were people thinking as they were talking as opposed to pre thinking. It seems that way to me.

Having a prepared and polished ’nothing’s off the table’ response is exactly how we got here in the first place. Doubt they’d come up with something better.
Look at Microsoft’s XBox One’s prepared PR on being superior to PS4’s specification as a fine example of how all the preparation in the world couldn’t stop them from saying silly things.

phys.7689:

In all honesty its a half.of an interview. The other half could have good stuff
In theory

The article writer hasn’t hinted that the second part would be any better, so I think it’s a bit doubtful.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

It’s just a bad interview because the two guys answering those questions aren’t actually involved with anything asked about.

Bad interviews happen. Those guys shouldn’t have been the guys answering that interview.

I don’t see how it’s a bad interview, at all.
Having guys in the “right” department saying ‘no/nothing’s off the table’ will make it a better interview? Hint: It doesn’t.

No because the questions asked were fan questions about stuff they’re not really working on. They’re not working on FoV and they’re not working on First person stuff and they never pretended they were. They don’t plan on bringing SAB out during this season and fans want it. Well you know, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if Anet brought it out, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if they didn’t.

There’s really no good way to have an interview with rabid fans who expect THEIR concerns to be the major concerns.

Precusor crafting is the one thing I could see people getting really riled up about, because they’ve been waiting a long time.

I’d still rather see the rest of the stuff coming out in the patch before I start lighting torches and carrying pitchforks though.

Yeah, so basically it didn’t matter who gives the response, because they’d all give the same answer.

Sometimes it’s not what you’re saying it’s how you say it. When it’s your area of interest, you’d have spent more time thinking about how to present your answers. When you’re answering out of your comfort zone you’re going to stumble. Basic human psychology.

They weren’t stumbling. They were trying to sound like they had a lot to say about something even though they knew that ‘something’ is nothing.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

It’s just a bad interview because the two guys answering those questions aren’t actually involved with anything asked about.

Bad interviews happen. Those guys shouldn’t have been the guys answering that interview.

I don’t see how it’s a bad interview, at all.
Having guys in the “right” department saying ‘no/nothing’s off the table’ will make it a better interview? Hint: It doesn’t.

No because the questions asked were fan questions about stuff they’re not really working on. They’re not working on FoV and they’re not working on First person stuff and they never pretended they were. They don’t plan on bringing SAB out during this season and fans want it. Well you know, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if Anet brought it out, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if they didn’t.

There’s really no good way to have an interview with rabid fans who expect THEIR concerns to be the major concerns.

Precusor crafting is the one thing I could see people getting really riled up about, because they’ve been waiting a long time.

I’d still rather see the rest of the stuff coming out in the patch before I start lighting torches and carrying pitchforks though.

Yeah, so basically it didn’t matter who gives the response, because they’d all give the same answer.

Vayne.8563:

It’s just a bad interview because the two guys answering those questions aren’t actually involved with anything asked about.

Bad interviews happen. Those guys shouldn’t have been the guys answering that interview.

I don’t see how it’s a bad interview, at all.
Having guys in the “right” department saying ‘no/nothing’s off the table’ will make it a better interview? Hint: It doesn’t.

rojak.1894:

I wonder what they’ll surprise us with in Week 2: A Fresh Start. I’m cautiously hopeful but sceptical lol. Cos so far the game (especially LS season 1) has been like an experiment for the next big thing they are working on, and LS season 2 is like a thinly drawned out and long preview.

I feel that we’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg the negative wave.
I’m actually looking forward to see if ANet intends to play corrupt-a-wish with more good ideas.

sMihaly.1492:

nearlight.3064:

Hello all,

I sent in a ticket and the support person said the issue would require a bit of additional investigation. The person escalated my ticket for further asisstance.

So they didn’t dismiss it immediately for sure, so I’ll report back here when I have a final answer.

Any update on this?

Calling it now:
I think an ANet employee is going to come in and say ‘oops, we didn’t realize so many people enjoyed it. Nothing’s off the table, hold on to your coin!’.
Then it goes the way of the fractal leaderboard.

You enjoying those wardrobe items that you’ll never obtain? :P

WvW forum broke first, and now the general forums have broken down.
I’m surprised their metrics didn’t detect this. :P

Imma so mad at ANet for not bringing Diretide.
I mean SAB.

ConfusedDave.4271:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Here’s a guess that fits with a lot of Anet’s behavior:

Someone at or near the top of Anet’s hierarchy has tunnel vision and judges success or failure using metrics from (only) the LS. Those who wish to keep their jobs have incentive to pump up LS metrics as high as possible, regardless of how it affects the game. One easy way to do this: do not work on or release content that are not LS related.

As I recall from an off-official-channels post by one of the devs involved, the metrics for SAB World 2 were terrible, which I imagine is why we’re never going to see it again. It’s just not worth their while to put development resources into something a very small percentage of the player base are likely to be interested in.

No idea why they don’t just turn it back on with a satirical Coming Soon™ no entry sign on worlds 3 and 4 mind you, but then I guess the all-controlling marketing department wouldn’t be able to spin that very well so they’d prefer to just abandon it.

Yep, he said the numbers was dismal according to stats they ran.
I think he also summarized (in the SAB subforum, I think) that world 2 needed to be reworked if it was ever released again due to numerous complaints (one was regarding the length of a single map was too long and would need to be broken down into smaller pieces).
Since they aren’t doing any further development, it’s unlikely they’ll rework the existing content, so it’s better to just assume the whole project is axed for a long time.