Right, my point is it was one line, in one interview. I think there was a second line somewhere. Dozens of things have been changed in this game since then. People keep saying Anet went against their manifesto. They didn’t. They said one thing in an interview, with one guy, and that in essence is the problem.
So what would you do. Anet had a game with exotics being easy to get. They saw people not going after lengendaries, the grind was too long. And you have a TON of people who came to this game who wouldn’t go for cosmetic gear unless there was SOME stat increase. You’d do what they did. You’d compromise.
You give people a single dungeon to grind. You’d keep the main damage to that dungeon, and you’d make the stat upgrade really really minor, which it is. It’s a compromise. It wasn’t their original idea. Big deal. But so many things have changed since this game was annouced.
They announced energy potions and then changed it so the game had no energy. They talked about energy potions endlessly, trying to sell us on the idea. Until they did away with energy. And no one said word one because they liked it.
This was a change they didn’t like and suddenly everyone is saying that they went against their manifesto. No. They didn’t. They changed a single aspect of the game to appeal to a certain type of player, while trying to affect everyone else as minimally as possible.
One line in an interview in an MMO, a game type that changes constantly isn’t a betrayal, or even going back on your word…because I’m sure when that was said that the dev who said it believed it could work. And then they found it wouldn’t.
The only thing going on here is that fans are seeing this as a precusor (pun intended) to a full blow gear grind, and it’s not. It’s Anet making a compromise to try to keep the larger number of players. It’s a sound business decision.
Well the problem is that one guy is the president of ANet, not just some dev. What he says carries weight. Reading that interview and others like it, plus the manifesto is what convinced me and I’m sure others to pre-purchase the game and support their original ideas they were touting, which attracted certain types of players ie. the ones looking for something different.
Changing such core features around once the game was released is deceiving and really if they didn’t know they could keep such promises, then they shouldn’t of over hyped the game with such claims. Revolutionary MMO? Not anymore now that they caved and compromised to imitate other MMOs that are already out there.
I honestly thought ANet would stick to their philosophy they kept preaching pre-release, I now know they just like most mainstream devs out there, willing to flip flop for an extra buck. That’s fine, their a business, but not the kind I’m willing to support. It also throws out another question, what will they flip flop on next to increase profits?
