Guild Wars 2

Justdeifyme.9387:

SAB is probably the most popular living story update

Hmmm… I wouldn’t say that, but then there are less people online compared to Oct. and Dec. of last year during those. The return of SAB didn’t even disrupt temple assaults as everything else seems to do.

Mathias.9657:

Tamaki Revolution.3548:

Mathias.9657:

I’m 24. SAB sucks, if I wanted to play Mario, I’d play Mario. I still have my working SNES and 64. Oh and my 3DO.

24? So old.

Not a kid was my point, someone said people who don’t like SAB are kids.

Well, yes, young goats have no thump to play such a game, so I’m assuming that the statement was technically correct. heh

But, as a gen-x’er, I find the SAB intriguing, but not so compelling. I sort of expected it to be in 2D the first time I zoned in. Ah well.

Onshidesigns.1069:

I don’t know who these (kids) are you speak of. It’s more for OLDER retro gamers.

Yep, just like I like playing retro-style games on my Nexus7 <3
Though when they are using phrases like “back to school”, well… makes it as intended for the younglings. Heck, such games were even meant for adults back then.

Vayne.8563:

People use to say Anet ruled and many people said they would pay for this game before it launched. Many people also said they’d pay for SWToR before it launched and Bioware was as highly regarded as Bethesda…except Bethesda isn’t actually making the game. Maybe I’m not as misinformed as you think.

erm just for sake of clarification, Bethesda is a subsidiary. ZeniMax Media inc. is the parent company of Bethesda. And even of that structure, there are two Bethesda’s, one Bethesda Softworks and the other Bethesda Game Studios. Christopher Weaver founded each of them.

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

Do you think this game will ever support dx11?

Well, apart from the re-coding involved, it depends how Winders 9 goes. All that work just to require Win 8 (DX11.1x)? This isn’t a tablet or console game, after all.

Mathias.9657:

I find that incredibly hard to believe, but even so GW2 has a much larger population so it would make sense. Pvp still sucks regardless.

I thought that the aspect arena was good, though temporary content. Not epic, but good. But still, yes the short-fall of pvp in this game is that it’s more multi-player centric and not “mmo”. When can we build bases in the living world and defend them? capture zones and deny the opposing factions to city access etc? No, I guess I’m thinking “mmo”, my bad. hehe

Vayne.8563:

But the deliberate combination of factors to make leveling a cooperative instead of a competitive feeling creates a completely different dynamic than any game I’ve ever played.

EQ1? Yes, quite there in many respects. Not just referring to the open-world raiding system, but even in multi-group dungeons, where groups relied on other groups to keep everything in check. Sure, they weren’t zerging the same MOB, but it was very difficult to say survive Karnor’s Castle (KC) without other groups helping to keep control of the castle, and often using communication to do so.

Such competitiveness still exists in this game, no all encompassing system can truly provide complete hand-holding to make everything “fair”. Doing the FE boss event shows such an example, where players will intentionally one-hit pre-event mobs denying others of a share in the event success XP. Some classes even using huge knock-backs seemingly to deny melee types of a hit on a mob, beyond just the FE example.

But I’m not trying to point out everything wrong with the game, I could easily mention some well known hot button issues, but all games have such issues. I do think that JP’s and level adjustments are a credit to this games development, something that down the road can remain a lasting impression as something done right in this game.

Vayne.8563:

Things don’t right don’t necessarily equate to things done first. Just saying.

Well, quite true, but part of GW2’s selling point or marketing hype seemed to be the originality factor. After some 2k hours in the game, having leveled all the classes, mastering all the crafts, I’ve just come to the conclusion that originality was a weak point for the game design, not so original. The esthetics of the game are fairly original, but the underlining systems are not so much “things that are done right” but more "things re-done " etc. And in that, some of the things listed here were added to first-generation mmo’s and contributed to their decline.

Doesn’t spell doom for the game, but for many it means the expectation has fallen short from it’s original intent. But I listed two points that I see as meeting any such expectations, two points that contribute to an opinion thread. Unfortunately though, for some, throwing everything into a recipe including the kitchen sink, doesn’t necessarily result in a palatable dish.

Um… JP’s. Otherwise, most everything else I can contribute to having been done well/badly in other games already. I mean as far as core systems or content design in the game. I think JP’s are fairly original though, I think. It’s a good concept.

Oh and there is the level adjustment, makes a themepark a little more interesting. Though conceptually, it seems a derivative to a skill based sanbox system. But credit where credit is due.

Nothing is off the table?
Well, I was walking down Hollywood Blvd one day, and this woman approached me and asked if I were lookin fur ah good tiiime.
Well, that’s sort of like that, I think. See?? when they say things to be left open for interpretation, you get this! heh

edit: btw I think her name was WoW, maybe the night elf mohawk tipped me off.

Xcom.1926:

Why are you changing the subject? I was talking about their mega server tech and that is it. That is their solution to not seeing people in the world. The game could have 100k players playing it and the world will feel full because it is basically one merged server.

I know such a game that does that. Normal to see 1000+ players in one zone… depending on what’s going on. But, that game was designed to run that way. It’s a little different here, zone design really never had huge numbers of players in mind. GW2 is actually a pretty small game for a launch state. Then there really is so little level 80 content present. But I’m definitely a long-time ES fan though …looong time. Too bad it’s about “appealing to general mmo players” (e.g. wow players) and not ES fans that like mmo’s (which are many). Was excited, then they said that foot-in-the-mouth comment and pffffff ever since… like four flats.

Xcom.1926:

People quit MMOs all the time, but if you don’t bring in new players you will decline. WoW recently said in the past they were able to bring more new players in than they were losing players. But that isn’t the case anymore which is why they lost so many of their players.

Well yes, that has been true since early mmo’s. One of the UO developers mentioned after some years that the avg account subscription ran three months. Though I was there some six years on the uh …live server – from near launch (maybe past then too, someplace… still, all these years), as well as a couple other sub games for that long excluding WoW which I hated. But UO was pretty open about development early on, some good info. Very few are like that today, with some openness about their development, structure and statistics.

Odd thing here though, there is no sub, but I see a huge amount of inactive names in guilds and friends lists, and those were not trial accounts for sure. So, it’s something more than just paying a sub. But, plenty of those threads already

Oh, was going to say someplace in there, there are always enough that stay to keep the game running. I doubt any mmo has shut down because they were flat out loosing money, well… outside of the f2p models which imo is a short-term cash-grab suicide model. Just that some developers/publishers/investors expect more money out of it than they may be getting, but they just rather drop it from their books, no matter how a small community may feel about that. Look at all that went on with CoH’s closure… hm? oh! yup. But yeah, at least the avg is a short visit to a game, I guess no matter the business model. Fun factor was a good idea early on? …but then all the psychologists got in the way, telling developers what we want :P …or how to get faster money, whatever.

Daywolf.2630:

Right now, in NA servers, it’s before peak, so less people on, especially in starting zones.

And speaking from the T2 server that I’ve been on since launch. North America, there just aren’t many people on in the morning. That’s why I’ve been kinda fumed about the changes to world bosses, now there are not always enough people to do them early in the morning or late at night. I don’t even bother with temples until the afternoon and no later than a bit before midnight. Been spending more time on JP’s in the off hours now, ya know? So, guesting won’t help, just need to be in peak time on weekdays. Weekends are respectable. You missed launch though, that was cray cray with kittens on top.

Dee Jay.2460:

Requiem.8769:

Because they are exotic?

Well that’s my point, they aren’t really.

Crafting one is a matter of minutes and a little gold.

Grinding Exotics via WvW or Dungeons takes more time, sure, but it’s still a safe way to get there.

Karma is also a way to get exotic gear.

I’d wager 95% of level 80 players are wearing “exotic” gear and it’s not that much effort.

It’s just the drop-rates don’t seem to correlate with how common exotics are from other sources.

Sure, but a lot of the loot drop exotics are more expensive and on avg look better than the crafted exotics. Such if you craft, then you need to account for a skin or transmute stone into that as well, and often times from another costly item. I think karma gear is mostly nullified now, apart from maybe hard to get back pcs.

Oh and yeah dungeon exo’s, probably will pick up more now that there is an lfg tool.

Dee Jay.2460:

So maybe 1 a month.

Really? Most I’ve gotten is 3 in one day, about 4hrs of gaming. But that was back when I ran with around 200 MF. Usually a few every week, from a few hours a day. It’s starting to pick up again as I moved past 100 MF. But I do temples a lot (full events), and some world bosses, so it could depend on the content you focus on. Any temples or world bosses with lots of minions are really good using MF. 1 a month? about as many as I seem to get form casual JP running while waiting for temples and world bosses. MF has nothing to do with chests, but some chests, even certain JP’s, seem to give more Exo’s than others. One guildy was complaining about exotic drops (never saw one etc) a few days ago, so I took him with me for a session, he wound up with two exo’s, and with only 25% MF. I got one that day, from gates of arah, though countless rares

I’ve used programmable (+key emulations) controllers on mmo’s, why do I need a “steam” controller? Why should Anet even become tied to steam?

Myself, I’d rather see GW2 support a tablet controller app over LAN. A tablet (or large smartphone) would be the perfect game controller, many layers of programmable control.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I think we simply disagree on what a ‘plan’ or ‘roadmap’ is precisely.

ISO/IEC 12207
Embrace it and become enlightened.
You guys can argue all day over PR usage in terminology. I prefer saying “mile-stones” when dealing with the public, but really it’s just a matter of interpretation.

TooBz.3065:

he doesn’t want to jump into lion’s arch.

I don’t see why not. LA has the portals to all the other cities and starting areas. Just because you start as a Norn doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the Asura starting area and complete even more hearts and exploration XP. Sounds more like he want’s to be around more players rather than doing the solo personal story. The portals at LA provide all that right away.

You probably need to keep going until you salvage enough mats to get sets of ascended weapons for all your characters. And I don’t mean just the ascended mats, but the ones to also make exotics to salvage for ascended mats. With MF + Mats + Ascended weapons, it seems to just be and endless treadmill …unless you buy gems to sell for gold. Otherwise just brace for a very slow progression I suppose.

lvl10? So a couple days? If you are playing at peak times, and there is no population, you may have joined a less populated server. Right now, in NA servers, it’s before peak, so less people on, especially in starting zones. It’s really easy to level in this game, not even counting instant lvl 20 scrolls, so you will find more in higher level zones as you progress. Then some starting zones are more populated than others, such as people doing world bosses there or zerging champs waiting for world bosses to spawn. If you just want to see more people, find the local portal to Lions Arch from your starting city.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t think they have long term plans. I think they have ideas. I’ve seen some very successful businesses run by the seat of their pants. Hell, MY business was run without much of a plan. That is to say, we sold stuff that we could make a profit on…and that was the plan. But I didn’t have any deep cache of lore to go to to run the business I ran, because computers changed too fast to figure out that stuff anyway. Your plan was to look at what everyone else was doing and adapt on the fly. Some plan.

Yes, I ran a business. Until I saw what the competition did, particularly the big guys, I couldn’t devise a survival strategy. You know, pharmacies started selling printers. Why would someone buy a printer from me, when they could get it cheaper next door. I had no business plan for that, because I didn’t realize that would happen till it did, and I had to react.

This is a genre that changes very quickly. Companies have to think and adapt on their feet. Whatever plan they have unquote is a guideline because they’re guessing.

That’s why things seem to change all the time. Because they’re changing all the time.

Well like we say, an idea is just an idea until it’s written down, then it becomes a plan. Everyone has ideas, and there are so many ideas out there they are worth about 2¢ ea. But when you write it down, then it starts to have some worth. This is very true in indie circles as well, the ones you just know will vapor are always the ones with nothing but an idea, no matter how much they code or animate. So it becomes standard practice, and even more so for a AAA with investors. Probably would have never even started w/o a 5k page document, projecting years in advance at least generally. Successful indie projects (ones that don’t vapor), often run 1k pages to start (for RPG’s/MMO’s etc), sometimes less depending on how small the team is or the depth of the project.

Yeah the business side can be odd, but what it comes down to is a business that produces a product or products. The GDD covers the game, it’s the product, but the company has it’s own business model/structural plan. And then when you have multiple partnerships (e.g. publishers, development studios, investors, third-party vendors such as speedtree etc.), contracts and profit splits, it gets all the more complicated.

Lighter.5631:

Let’s face it, this is a no monthly fee MMO, thats what they do

every free MMO i play, its the same, every month they have a calender for events, some are “big” events like the LS with a few newly made stuff and a few are “achievements” like events alone with cash shop events and new cash shop items and then the events are gone and give others for the next month calender just like LS.

Well this isn’t exactly a free game. Short-term they have the initial box fee to run on. They are also using the gem store to gain further revenue. What we don’t know is how they are going to sustain the project for the long-term. If it’s by the gem store, then yes it becomes as you suggest. If they go with paid expansions then it takes the game in another direction. It’s been a year and no mention of an expansion, so people are unsure what to expect with further development; which path it will take to self-sustain the project. The two outcomes can be very different.

As for no monthly fee, that doesn’t matter. If by expansion, it’s just being sustained by the expansion fee rather than subscription fees. It’s not so different than charging a subscription fee but releasing free included expansions as some other mmo’s do. It’s just an inverted business model but the outcome is the same more or less. But if it goes to rely on RMT, then yes it will more resemble your generic f2p game as time goes by, imo.

Vayne.8563:

Do you really think Anet has ANY long term plans? Cause I’ve seen no evidence of it. They seem to be flying by the seat of their pants. That’s why it looks like they’re lying sometimes. Because they just sort of see what happens and rolls with it.

Doesn’t work out a lot. lol

Yeah they do, I’m 100% sure they do, they have a game design document, every game starts with the document. Rather than trying to explain it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_design_document

They are rarely released to the public. I’ve collected some though, they can get quite huge. What they seem to be doing is revising it as they go, post-launch, my guess. So they probably have a lot of things in the early conceptual documents that they wanted to do, but didn’t do due to time/dev/research restraints. Then other things on a wait and see, such as how players react to the RMT shop (real money transaction), then adjust content development to that to some degree.

When they say “nothing is off the table” it just tells me they are willing to revise the GDD to fit whatever best fits their interests. I can’t tell you where their interests lay, but a long-term over reliance on RMT does concern me.

Justdeifyme.9387:

Peponewolfchant.6513:

We will be stuck at 80 forever,that sucks.. :/ But yeah i think they ill make good updates,but we want like wow does,more races,clases.

we? Who’s we?

Probably Dr. We. Travels through space an time inside a kitten litter box.

Dragons have been easy compared to temples. Temples are closer to old-school raiding. Downside is they really need to give commanders some group tracking – which would mean 30 man party… like a raid group. Good for W3 and pve. So raids are kind of here already, but w/o the tools it’s more of a half-kittened job.

A game that tries to be a game for everybody becomes a game for nobody.

Needs a general category. I want to post for like Temple groups etc, the living world category doesn’t seem to be there for that but for like SAB and such. No one seems to use the LW category, maybe just make it a general category for everything else.

Astral Projections.7320:

If they do it will be a good news/bad news sort of thing.

The good news is, they bring back the skins you loved.
The bad news is, they can’t resist “improving” them.

Don’t believe me? Profane armor

Yeah but that’s the male version, most of the male armor in this game is… who designs this stuff?!? lol :P
But the female version, well mostly why I made a female mesmer. Though in gw1 I have it on my nec/rng bow minion. Went with celestial and gold here rather than the black there.

This game has music?

AM talk radio, what else is there?!?
er well also SomaFM: space station soma; drone zone; deep space one; def con radio; sonic universe; underground. I have the official app on my N7 <3
Then some of my own original instrument recorded music, mostly kind of like above. Dark ambients, electronic, space music etc.

This game has sound?

It’s ok, better than what was. Could be better, using filters rather than categories. I expected it to function more like the TP, but maybe this will result in a less buggy implementation. After all, I’d hate to be required to log out and back in to use it

Galen Grey.4709:

If I had never played an MMO before today and I decided to try one its highly unlikely I will go with say UO instead of one thats more recent like say Gw2.

Well… you can’t play UO, at least not the spirit of it during it’s first five years or so. It didn’t decline because it was old, it declined because the successful development model was changed for something else. It’s not the same game one bit, and is more like other games – for years now. You would be better off starting with those other games I suppose.

Why? because EvE Online is kinda alone in its genre.

You mean different? Actually quite a lot of people don’t like high fantasy, some even detest it. But we get used to being around our usual communities, all birds of a feather. Yet, there are other games in that sub-genre, there are many futuristic sci-fi enthusiasts always craving for something other than the next high fantasy game.

MikaHR.1978:

ESPECIALLY type of WoW and its clones and those have VERY defined traiits.

You would probably be better off researching the points I presented. Maybe even try establishing a fictitious business model and research through the entire process from beginning to end. You will develop a different view of things, and the inner workings of how the process works.

MikaHR.1978:

Not really. WoW brought many people to MMOs. Its MMO developers that failed to further popularize and evolve/revolve games so pretty much all AAA tiles are different skin of the same game. Every AAA MMO since WoW sold more and more….and lost more and more people,. And now WoW lost almost half of their players and where are they? Surely not playing MMOs, 7-8 million (over various MMOs) players would be quite noticable if they actually went to other MMOs.

I don’t think you get my point. I don’t care about what is popular. When I started playing mmo’s, they were the opposite of popular, but we still developed them and played them. Ten years ago, years after I started playing them, I could count all the mmo’s available on my fingers w/o needing to count on my toes. Were they popular? oh kitten no! and people that played them were ridiculed. But one thing was for sure, they were not popular, and if anything – that helped to really drive the best of development that the genre has ever seen to this day.

Popular means nothing to me, and in fact I see it as a detriment to good development. What is popular becomes the standard, and becomes the template, because it drives investors to look for the most money, even if that direction actually leads to the lesser long-term money and to failure as the actual and intended end result. Success is a game that can self-sustain, continue to develop, and feed the families of the developers. Not gambles at a get rich scheme, maximized short-term revenue, investors padding their bank accounts by getting the quick money now while putting a game one a quick road to burnout and closure.

In the early years, the games were diverse, there was no clear-cut popular recipe. One game was very different from another. And that’s the point of my posts in this thread, I don’t want to see Anet change course to what has been popular, because that is not necessarily the sustaining course, nor the course towards good game development.

Vayne.8563:

You say MMOs are a service. I say they’re a form of entertainment. You think you’re more right than I am? People play MMOs to be served, or to be entertained.

Neither, really, but you are much closer. Technically, it’s considered under the category of printed matter such as books are. If you ever got into starting a software business, publishing software, aspects of development, to deal with governments and international protection laws, an MMORPG or any and all software is basically handled as a book.

You were closer to that early on, I wouldn’t use the term ‘entertainment’, I’ve seen mmo projects that were purely edgumicational (hehe). I mean like books are of all sorts, for entertainment and others for educational reasons etc. This is especially true in some small indie projects as well as to well known government agencies (e.g. NASA). But the uniting factor is code, which is printed matter, and thus falls into the category in which books dwell.

fellyn.5083:

No. It’s exactly how it worked in GW1 since the game came out and there was never any issues with that for the entire life of the game more than 7 years after release.

As far as I’m aware only the screen shot folder is outside of the gw2.dat file.

This isn’t gw1. Not even the same dev group. Whole different beast…

Vayne.8563:

You say the instances in Guild Wars 1 exist before you enter them, but I’m thinking those instances are created for you, when you enter them.

Yes that’s correct. If initiated by a script (as is the usual way) that script is attached to a trigger, the player interacts with that trigger (e.g. an NPC) which starts an instance and puts the player into that instance. The instance was not active before, not persistent, but was created and filled with mobs and whatnot when the player triggered the instance to begin. Usually such instances carry an ID, such a instance 0, or instance 1, or 2, or 88, sometimes numerical from 0 to how ever many are allowable to be running at the same time. Such as in some server side game codes I’ve seen limited to 256 instances of a single type of zone. Like zone ID A33 – instance #24 etc.

So yes, they don’t exist until the player creates it. Then when a player starts the instance, everything begins from it’s starting place. Like if a monster was pathed to circle the zone endlessly, in a persistent zone it would always be circling the zone and you would never know where it exactly was when you entered that persistent zone. But in an instanced zone, as soon as you enter the zone, that monster is in it’s spawn location, because the zone started when the player entered, and will end when they leave. I’m not a big fan of instances, but if used sparingly, they can add variety to an mmo.

MikaHR.1978:

Wrong, publishers/developers now start to run away for being named MMO, so you have MMOs that are called “online persistant shooters” and such

MMOs as a genre are losing players. WoW lost 5 million players in short time. Did you see other MMOs grow by 5 million? Nope. And why? Because genre is going downhill and ANet certanly joined the band by their 180 turnaround.

Um no, there have been quite a few games passed off as mmo’s in recent years when they clearly were not. Even before mmo’s became popular, there was a huge debate over some mmo’s that were clearly not mmo’s.

As for the genre failing or whatnot, I’ve been playing mmo’s and working on such indie projects since loong before WoW came around. Those were good times, and quite happy mmo’s were below the radar much like MUD gaming. If all WoW players, those that mostly started and ended with WoW, left the genre to never come back, and WoW closed it’s doors, the genre would be better off, though the damage already done. It’s not the genre failing, just WoW, though I’m sure it will drag down it’s remaining clones with it. Riddance. But Blizzard will do something, they have been around even before some of their loyal playerbase were even born.

Vayne.8563:

I’m trying to let you off the hook easy by saying it’s a good game,. but niche.

The entire number of people playin Eve right now at it’s maximum, after all these years, is under a sixth of the people who bought Guild Wars 2 accounts.

Niche? It’s one of the top 10 mmo’s on the market! It was “niche” 5+ years ago. What is this, a fishing competition with hooks and all? hehehe. Yes you are right at the most that have played EVE is the current peak. As it was true last year. And true the year before. Every year that statement has been true. Oh I get it, "EVE is dieing™ " k…. thanks for letting me know that… hehehe

Still, bottom line: CCP sets a good example of how to maintain good customer vs. developer relations. I think Anet could learn a thing or two by such an example, and wouldn’t have some of the current relation problems if so. Though I still give Anet some credit there, they are trying more than many other games that I’ve seen.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t see anything unreasonable about that.

Just about ‘convenience’ to make your argument set it’s own bar. lol now it doesn’t count because it is a sandbox mmo as opposed to a themepark mmo. uh-huh…
wiggle-wiggle-wiggle-wiggle-wiggle

I don’t think you actually know much about the game you are talking about, sorry, not convinced there, and what your friends have said to you was probably rather vague if they even hardly played the game. Even the understanding of how a sandbox operates in general. It’s certainly far from all being player created content. Maybe you are thinking Second Life? I don’t see how it negates anything, and it certainly does not.

Speaking for myself, I have just one account (I play more than one mmo), and I know that “many” do not have multi accounts. That is mostly among nullsec sovereignty alliances, and then it’s not even a requirement. More so among those that fly either capital ships or mining platforms – but when you are in such an alliance, you can always get escorts and not required to do it all yourself. Even those ships are not really meant to be privately owned, but owned on the corporate level, so operations are not usually solo players using mufti-accounts. Shoot, I had more accounts in UO than I ever did in EVE. Even in some cases the escorts are often more corporate owned, such as the Black Widow (scorpion based cov-ops) used for capital transport ship purposes. So no, it’s far from “most” having 2 accounts or three accounts or whatnot. It’s just a normal mmo like any other. Doesn’t nullify my points made.

edited: meant scorpion class Black Widow. Disclaimer: I’m not posting this example as some form of advert to get people to play it, internet space ships are not everyone’s idea of fun. Just striking similarities and differences on a business model level.

Vayne.8563:

Daywolf.2630:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve had people in my guild who played Eve completely and left over that debacle and didn’t return. Some of course did. But you insist I know nothing about something, because I don’t agree with you.

That’s like me saying you know nothing about Guild Wars 2 because you don’t agree with me. I didn’t say it, because I don’t think that way.

Some? Pretty much everyone returned, it was a protest quit, started out so. And really, many of those that “quit”, quit their alt accounts hehe. It was a message sent, and a message which in fact was received. Active accounts not only recovered, but surpassed the previous records.

But we are talking players that have been active for years, in a game that has increased it’s subscriber base consistently since launch ten years ago. GW2 is not old enough to be in that category, true loyalty has not been established yet. In fact I still have many players on my friends list that haven’t logged back into this game for over six months, and in a game that requires no subscription fee. I have new friends dropping out all the time, just unimpressed with the direction things have changed to. Oh and don’t get me started in on inactive guild lists.

IMO Anet is taking a huge gamble, and I can’t say they will be the better off for it in the long run. I have both games installed (I usually play 2 mmo’s), but I’m less certain how long GW2 will remain installed the way things have been going. I’ve never uninstalled the other, though I was part of that protest quit, respectively. Such a thing won’t work here, and I doubt I’d try if it could work, there in no built up loyalty either way, not to them and not to us, obviously. Went through the same thing with SWG, they wanted new/different players, reaching out to some other group of players they didn’t even have yet, invented the full-surprise NGE update and hemorrhaged accounts to never return. Many of use then found EVE, the obvious replacement, and CCP has been good to us.

Some people stopped and never went back and other people left because they felt the game later on had become a full time job. But more to the point, most players that start playing Eve don’t continue playing Eve. It really and truly is a niche game. It survives on subscriptions, not on numbers. If it didn’t have a monthly fee, it would be quite dead.

How many Eve players have more than one account, do you know? Do most players have two accounts? If not what percentage does.

There aren’t half a million people playing Eve, there are half a million subscribers, which is another matter entirely. And it’s still a game that’s a sandbox. Most of the content is made by the playerbase..rather than CCP.

So now you are saying it doesn’t count because it’s a “niche game”? One of the top 10 largest in the industry. And even though I was there and involved in the protest I don’t know what was really going on …despite the recovery and growth as soon as the issue was resolved? So what, is WoW the only game we can use as an example here since it is the ‘popular’ (well marketed) game and all mmo’s quiver in it’s shadow?

Meanwhile EVE continues to consistently grow (what other mmo’s have ever done that?) over the long-run, and continues to win major industry awards to this day. It’s probably one of the few games I would bet on still being around in another 10 years (then – it being 20 years old). More developers should follow CCP as an example of developer – community relations. Not “great” but good, as I used good as the descriptive word to rate their dev vs. player relationship. Still a better example than any other game I can think of.

Oh and the worst example: it wasn’t until after SWG was shut down did they actually admit that maybe… NGE wasn’t such a good idea… and the way they handled all that heh. Greatest example of what never to do. Best example of a fractured dev – community relationship, by far.

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 2 isn’t instanced though. It’s zoned, but the zones are open. That means anyone can freely enter them if there’s room.

In other words, if you enter an instance in Guild Wars 1 by yourself, no one else can EVER enter your instance. It’s done. It’s not open world.

In Guild Wars 2, if you leave divinities reach by yourself, other people can follow you out. That makes it, in the language that has evolved around MMOs anyway, NOT an instance.

(multi-quote conversation removed for5001 length requirement hehe)
Well it’s more than that, really. It’s really the functions of the server coding that defines it.

1. it provided persistent zones. This means that even though there may be no players in a given zone, it continues to run as a process on the server including the tracking of MOB’s and such. All mmo’s are zone based, just some handle how the zones are loaded by the client, differently; pre-loading and such to make it seem like huge areas.

2. A large amount of players in the same area/zone. Has been debatable, but really this is usually greater than 64 players at the very minimum, debatable though and I’m not sure I agree entirely. Traditionally, at least since EQ2, it has been around 100 players, then the system would instance an overflow. And not just as a lobby, but with full combat ability, otherwise it’s not a “game” but a social hub.

Add those two together and you have an mmo server. And doing so changes the way you handle your network protocols, such as the ability to use TCP/IP over UDP/IP or such variations. Very much performance issues. Such as in EQ1, to those vets that played it early on (no instanced/overflow zones at all), you would see characters run in circles in the distance, vs. another non-mmo game using a more performance grade protocol and settings for more accurate tracking beyond a distance limit.

Technically, some protocols can theoretically handle 64k+ players in a zone, but tracking becomes very …mushy, and odd results happen (e.g seeing other players running backwards, so fun). But with fine tuning, you can usually get 100-300 players stable in a given area and depending on how demanding such things as scripting and animations and mobs and projectile tracking and more – may be in such a game. GW2 is actually pretty hefty as I observe it, which is a big reason players need broadband to mostly play.

So yes, it makes a BIG difference, the way an mmo functions compared to your typical multi-player game. But now that mmo’s are more “popular” I see a lot of marketing teams refer to this game and that game as an mmo when technically they are far from it, just to sell more, ya know?

med armor: stealth thief
light armor: fire ele (fire/earth)
heavy armor: regen warrior (signet/mango pies)
pros: dps + survivability
cons: …

That explains it. MMOIG massively-multiplayer online immersion game. Yep.
If this were an mmorpg, or RPG, yes, definitely swords

Well in elder scrolls, assassin is by far my fav class. Yes it includes duel wield swords and a bow. Here it’s the same, with thief, but with daggers. Assassin is basically a ranger-rogue class, and the thief here more a ranger than ranger is as it’s a beast lord/tamer/pokemon thingy. This game has guns, so thief got guns and daggers rather than duel wield swords. Probably the balanced trade-off. Doubt they would change it in that case.

Neverine.4398:

Anywhoos, yer WOW!!! opened launcher im going to be downloading at 1.6mgs for 10 hours with updates.

um well unfortunately much of what you are patching is temporary content which is not active any longer. But the rest of the game is still here.

People that bought it at launch, quit, returned, quit again. I’ve seen quite a bit of this lately. Generally, summer participation goes down in the northern hemisphere for mmo’s, have noticed that for many years. Early fall participation starts to rise again. So some people checking back in again. You may have also noticed the trials recently, happened when participation is often at it’s lowest point of the summer.

fellyn.5083:

GW1 was one of if not the first b2p mmo game in the NA market.

People can say mmo all they want, still doesn’t make gw1 ever an mmo. Instanced multi-player game with a 3D lobby. Disclaimer: No mmo server code was ever harmed in the making of this post.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Tight spaces making it impossible to see what your trying to attack because you can’t zoom into a first person shooter view.

Seriously, I’d take the trade off, first-person cam but stuck with crappy targeting = cool beans!

btw, there are dragons in this game? Ohhh maybe you mean those feet creatures.. sort of like the eye creatures back in eq1, but feet! I sometimes try to look up to get a better look at the foot creature, but all I see is butt. Then I get really confused… a feet creature that morphs into a butt. Very creative, Anet!

Someone asked me that last week when he finished leveling his first character. I quickly responded with “grind” …but then I said I was joking, there was plenty to do. I left it at that, because sadly what I really meant was… grind. I figured he’d figure it out himself, that my first answer was the correct one. He figured it out, hasn’t logged in for days now Well it wasn’t like we were just standing around, he got his level-up off of a temple assault, we did some JP’s just before that.

Used to be I’d suggest leveling another character, but with ascended gear here and more coming, I suggest against it. I’m really out of suggestions I guess. However, yes, WvW seems to still be an option, provided you focus on gearing one character. Personally though, I think they should set up a wvw locker system. Although it’s not easy to run with character detail levels at lowest settings and see anyone’s actual gear, but still it levels the gear stats.

Mattargul.9235:

Daywolf.2630:

Logitech trackman marble. This is an old issue. It’s been worse lately though. Even to the point where I click on a target, the selection ring is clearly locked, then my fire ele totally lobs a fire ball in the opposite direction at some other target, while the original target is still clearly locked. like lol?

I noticed that switching targets seems to “lag” behind what’s actually shown on screen, resulting in your behavior. For best effect, switch targets and immediately use a jump skill / gap closer. lulz! I’ve got into the habit of counting 1, 2, before I hit my next skill after switching targets.

yeah but it was the first and only target I had lol. Has happened many times. I’d say it’s definitely server side tracking of some sort, but not lag. Though maybe packet loss (they are using UDP?), then the server gets really confused. Unrelated to the mouse button problem, yet a part of the targeting issues. I’ve noticed that sometimes the server and client gets out of sync, as either a result of lag and/or packet loss. Then I need to re-log to fully recover. I thought I’ve seen everything, even dinking around with my own server code, but I’ve never seen random targeting like here hehe.

Vayne.8563:

I’ve had people in my guild who played Eve completely and left over that debacle and didn’t return. Some of course did. But you insist I know nothing about something, because I don’t agree with you.

That’s like me saying you know nothing about Guild Wars 2 because you don’t agree with me. I didn’t say it, because I don’t think that way.

Some? Pretty much everyone returned, it was a protest quit, started out so. And really, many of those that “quit”, quit their alt accounts hehe. It was a message sent, and a message which in fact was received. Active accounts not only recovered, but surpassed the previous records.

But we are talking players that have been active for years, in a game that has increased it’s subscriber base consistently since launch ten years ago. GW2 is not old enough to be in that category, true loyalty has not been established yet. In fact I still have many players on my friends list that haven’t logged back into this game for over six months, and in a game that requires no subscription fee. I have new friends dropping out all the time, just unimpressed with the direction things have changed to. Oh and don’t get me started in on inactive guild lists.

IMO Anet is taking a huge gamble, and I can’t say they will be the better off for it in the long run. I have both games installed (I usually play 2 mmo’s), but I’m less certain how long GW2 will remain installed the way things have been going. I’ve never uninstalled the other, though I was part of that protest quit, respectively. Such a thing won’t work here, and I doubt I’d try if it could work, there in no built up loyalty either way, not to them and not to us, obviously. Went through the same thing with SWG, they wanted new/different players, reaching out to some other group of players they didn’t even have yet, invented the full-surprise NGE update and hemorrhaged accounts to never return. Many of use then found EVE, the obvious replacement, and CCP has been good to us.