Trying to provide a hard core link between the following facts, however, does mean something.
1. Anet’s quarterly report (which shows the game is still profitable).
2. The Google search trend.
3. The Overwolf best games chart
4. The Xfire top games chart.
5. The Raptr top games chart.
6. The fact that there haven’t been any major layoffs at Anet, in spite of NcSoft reorganizing and laying off people from Wildstar. Hell, Anet is still hiring.
7. The game is getting updates. You may not like them, but they’re putting an awful lot of work into a game people say is dying.It’s not one fact that paints a picture. It’s a combination of facts. One source saying the game is strong relative to other games means nothing. Three sources means only a bit more. The search trend adds to it. The lack of layoffs adds to that. The quarterly report. The hiring.
I’m not really sure what’s so hard to understand.
It’s people’s subjective my guild, my friend’s list, I don’t play the game anymore, and the fact that the game is obviously being played by someone.
Who’s playing it hardly makes a difference.
1, You can’t determine wether GW2 is profitable or not without knowing the expenses on the game during the five year development & after that. I’m not saying it is not , but stating it as a fact is simply not true.
2-5. Xfire and google trends shows a 90%(Xfire more than 95%) decrease in popularity and I didn’t check but most likely the other two too.
I have an opinion on 6-7 too, but that’s a different topic.
Don’t know Raptr,
don’t know xfire,
but game’s going down,
that much, I know.But you have no evidence at all for it. Anyone can say things and provide no evidence. It’s quite easy.
I have evidence.I’m not playing from a week,my RL friends are not playing from even longer,my in game friends are not playing from months.I’m not considering to return at all if the gme keeps going in the direction that Anet currently wants.I can bet that a lot of people are in the same situation as me.
I only look at the forums forumsto see has something been changed.Noone that i know of is not even logging anymore to get the free LS updates.Okay so it’s your word against Google Trends. I guess we can all decide who we believe.
Yeah, I have no more questions
http://goo.gl/ge2wea
Edited linkYou shouldn’t have any questions. The first people interested in a game, buy the game when it comes out. After that, the searches slow considerably as with all games.
But relative to other MMOs, which is what we’re talking about, the only MMORPG that gets more searches than Guild Wars 2 consistently is WoW. And I don’t know that anyone ever claimed Guild Wars 2 was as successful as WoW. WoW was there at the right place and time.
And out of all the other MMOs, only a couple of them really get hits. SWToR, which is of course Star Wars and it’s backed by EA. FFXIV, which is of course Final Fantasy which is not only a popular Franchise, but it’s also on console…and Guild Wars 2.
It’s pretty good company. Relatively speaking, for a two year old game, this game is a success.
It’s too bad people don’t really get the whole business plan of games.
I used to work in the publishing industry and books are the same way. It doesn’t mean a book that doesn’t do as well as a new book, or the second most popular book isn’t doing well, just because interest is less two years after its been published.
Your comment shows a lack of understanding of the entertainment industry.
And your comment has nothing to do with the link I provided.
Don’t know Raptr,
don’t know xfire,
but game’s going down,
that much, I know.But you have no evidence at all for it. Anyone can say things and provide no evidence. It’s quite easy.
I have evidence.I’m not playing from a week,my RL friends are not playing from even longer,my in game friends are not playing from months.I’m not considering to return at all if the gme keeps going in the direction that Anet currently wants.I can bet that a lot of people are in the same situation as me.
I only look at the forums forumsto see has something been changed.Noone that i know of is not even logging anymore to get the free LS updates.Okay so it’s your word against Google Trends. I guess we can all decide who we believe.
Yeah, I have no more questions
http://goo.gl/ge2wea
Edited link
(edited by Scipio.3204)
So, a new article has been released on massively
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/10/23/arenanet-teases-guild-wars-2s-road-to-war/
In this article you can read:
“ArenaNet also feels that there is value in tradition, which is one reason that holiday content for Halloween and Wintersday won’t be seeing any changes this year apart from fresh rewards.”
My opinion on this: simply they are wrong. I very much looked forward to how the story of halloween progresses this year only to be disappointed. (Yes, I know they said only Blood and Madness will return, but thats not the point) From now on I can’t really say festivals are anet’s strong suit. From now on I can’t look forward to halloween as much as I used to.
In GW1 I loved anet for their traditions. New halloween masks every year, new minipets when your character ages, every month monthly GvG championship. No festivals were cancelled like this year’s dragon bash. Weekend bonuses… traditions are one of the reasons that made GW1 succesful IMO and thinking traditions are not important are just wrong.
Edit: Just to make myself clear , I have no problem with recurring events, but using tradition as an exuse to stop continuing of the story is just not right. Anet should find a way to keep the previous story in a sensible way as well as add new ones.
I’ve felt the continuing story of halloween every year was a tradition, well looks like I was wrong.
(edited by Scipio.3204)
I’m sure in 1 year from today Guild Wars 1 will be about where it is now. For every person who leaves, another person joins. For many of those people it’s their first MMO and they won’t move on.
It’s likely there are as many new players as long time vets right now. So I don’t know why anyone would think it’s not going to be fine. It’ll just be fine without some of us.
If you mean GW2, I find that statement highly unlikely. For every person leaves another joins is simply not true. Proof is on Xfire, in the first months GW2 had 17k unique logins, ~ 1 year ago the number of unique logins was 4k, now on the first day of halloween its 440. Even if we count with the data we have from 1 year ago means the active playerbase ~90% stopped playing
No one is talking about the first months. Do you realize 90% of everyone who’s ever played WOW doesn’t play WoW anymore?
We’re talking about sustained figures, not peak figures. That happens with all games.
The game is making millions of dollars a month. That’s a lot of money. It’s enough money to keep the game going for a long time. It’s just launched in China so the figures will go up, not down.
No one, and I mean no one, not Anet, not NcSoft and not me thought a 2 year old MMO will have the same playerbase as launch month. That’s not even close to reasonable.
The game has enough players and enough money to continue indefinitely…and it will. It’s not going to be a mega huge blockbuster and I never claimed it was. I claimed enough people like this sort of thing and have no real alternative to keep this game going for a long long time. And if you don’t believe it, have the bottle to come back in a year and then talk to me.
I’m sorry, but I didn’t talk about the first months I was talking about ~ year ago, otherwise your argument would be relevant.
On the GW2 is still making money thing , we saw decrease in revenue in Q2 from Q1 even with the launch of china. Also you saw this week’s gem conversion change, looks pretty desperate to me, and I’m pretty sure they knew what’s going to be the players reaction. Also you might know how much does GW2 make every month, but do you also know the expenses? Without that it’s hard to tell “GW2 is financially a succes”.
Also noone is doubting wether GW2 will be here 1 year from now , but some people got tired they get as much content in GW2 as they got in GW1 while they were working on GW2. The question here is wether GW2 is making enough money to take the development forward, not backwards.
You didn’t see a decrease with the launch in China. China sales aren’t listed under the Guild Wars 2 figures they’re listed under royalties.
My bad. Still, Q2 had the biggest update of the year so far and we saw a decrease without china, and all my other point stands.
I’m sure in 1 year from today Guild Wars 1 will be about where it is now. For every person who leaves, another person joins. For many of those people it’s their first MMO and they won’t move on.
It’s likely there are as many new players as long time vets right now. So I don’t know why anyone would think it’s not going to be fine. It’ll just be fine without some of us.
If you mean GW2, I find that statement highly unlikely. For every person leaves another joins is simply not true. Proof is on Xfire, in the first months GW2 had 17k unique logins, ~ 1 year ago the number of unique logins was 4k, now on the first day of halloween its 440. Even if we count with the data we have from 1 year ago means the active playerbase ~90% stopped playing
No one is talking about the first months. Do you realize 90% of everyone who’s ever played WOW doesn’t play WoW anymore?
We’re talking about sustained figures, not peak figures. That happens with all games.
The game is making millions of dollars a month. That’s a lot of money. It’s enough money to keep the game going for a long time. It’s just launched in China so the figures will go up, not down.
No one, and I mean no one, not Anet, not NcSoft and not me thought a 2 year old MMO will have the same playerbase as launch month. That’s not even close to reasonable.
The game has enough players and enough money to continue indefinitely…and it will. It’s not going to be a mega huge blockbuster and I never claimed it was. I claimed enough people like this sort of thing and have no real alternative to keep this game going for a long long time. And if you don’t believe it, have the bottle to come back in a year and then talk to me.
I’m sorry, but I didn’t talk about the first months I was talking about ~ year ago, otherwise your argument would be relevant.
On the GW2 is still making money thing , we saw decrease in revenue in Q2 from Q1 even with the launch of china. Also you saw this week’s gem conversion change, looks pretty desperate to me, and I’m pretty sure they knew what’s going to be the players reaction. Also you might know how much does GW2 make every month, but do you also know the expenses? Without that it’s hard to tell “GW2 is financially a succes”.
Also noone is doubting wether GW2 will be here 1 year from now , but some people got tired they get as much content in GW2 as they got in GW1 while they were working on GW2. The question here is wether GW2 is making enough money to take the development forward, not backwards.
I’m sure in 1 year from today Guild Wars 1 will be about where it is now. For every person who leaves, another person joins. For many of those people it’s their first MMO and they won’t move on.
It’s likely there are as many new players as long time vets right now. So I don’t know why anyone would think it’s not going to be fine. It’ll just be fine without some of us.
If you mean GW2, I find that statement highly unlikely. For every person leaves another joins is simply not true. Proof is on Xfire, in the first months GW2 had 17k unique logins, ~ 1 year ago the number of unique logins was 4k, now on the first day of halloween its 440. Even if we count with the data we have from 1 year ago means the active playerbase ~90% stopped playing
In 1 year I predict:
- 0 new armor pieces not from Gem Store
- 0 new weapon types
- 0 new weapon combinations
- 0 new weapon skills
- 0 new races
- 0 new professions
- 0 new dungeons
- 0 new Guild Missions
- 0 new legendaries
- 0 craftable precursors
- 0 lore to precursors or legendaries
- 0 dyeable weapons
- 0 attainable Tribal armor pieces
- 0 attainable Halloween back pieces
- 0 guild housings
- 0 players in Cantha/Elona
- 0 cape skins
- 0 outfits converted to armor
- 0 new usages for dungeon tokens
- 0 new usages for fractal tokens
- 0 characters who changed race
- 0 ascended rings salvaged
- 0 fixes for merge-kicking
- 0 reappearances of SAB
- 0 development to Orr story
Signed,
- Ghastly Grinning Korossive
Haha don’t be ridiculous, anet must be working on something!
Signed by 2013 me.
Lunatic Inquisition is my favorite activity, here’s my feedback so far:
First of all, still after more than two years my main complaint about activities is the same. You can’t play them in groups, only with random folks.
Second, like you guys said this year lunatic inquisition is full with bugs:
-Guardians with aegis
- Courtiers not in ghost form, using normal skills.
- Food buffs
- I started once with more than 10 courtiers on my side
Also, there seems to be another big issue with this activity: one round is too long. Loads of people don’t even bother on the survivor’s side, they go straight to ghosts to get slaughtered only to get the rewards faster. It kills the fun in it.
I hope these things will be fixed someday, and someone who actually can make a change will read the feedback….
fits perfectly with gamergate. It’s time for people to see the man behind the curtain. GW2 is not GW1. GW1 was generous and wanted the players to have a good time. GW2 is Donald Trump.
Yeah.. except for the blatant buying actual real unobtainable in-game advantages for real money part I suppose?
You still mean the mercenary thing? You know you couldn’t add more than 3 hero until 2011, 1 year before the release of GW2 right? What we are talking about is when anet’s primary focus was GW1.
Gaile, if the main reason for this change was because new players found it confusing why not add an option to have both system ingame? This way for those who don’t understand the gem/gold graph and don’t want to do the math how much gold/gem do they have to spend to get the amount they need have an option to buy gem/gold in bundles ,but for those who prefer the old system can use that.
I am thinking this might actually be a bug. It feels a bit random to have 400 gems as minimum when there are gem-store items that costs much less. 100 gems seems more likely. So I would wait with all the raging (meh who am I kidding?) until we actually know if this is working as intended.
For the record I don’t like the current version of the change either.
It’s working as intended. There’s no way it’s a bug.
Yeah but after a big ol’ ragestorm they can always say “Oops this isn’t supposed to work like this, it’s just a bug, we would never do something like this”. And I’m definitely not pointing fingers at NPE.
Signed.
/15char
Most of us haven’t been disillusioned some time ago. I guess that must be your opinion because this is a pretty kitten ed popular MMORPG.
If you use Xfire’s 400 active player as a proof to prove GW2 is still popular, I woudln’t call it a fact, unless I’m missing something. If you want Xfire to prove anything, there is a post created ~year ago, which indicates there was a huge player decrease and during that low peak the amount of active players was ~4200 .At that time GW2 was on the 5. spot. Does that mean 90% of the playerbase stopped playing?
Unfair. You don’t have to buy anything with gems to be in pair with anyone else, GemStore is just about facilities and skins. Of course there has been too much content item-wise being released in GemStore, and if one likes itemization it’s a HUGE letdown, but it’s definitely not pay-to-win.
Did he say pay to win?
What are you getting at then?
All items in the gem store are available with gold, mind you.
Works vica-versa. All legendaries & other gold based items can be bought with gems too. The point is if you look at last year they clearly added more skins of any kind through their ingame store than to the actual game itself. Except back items .
Unfair. You don’t have to buy anything with gems to be in pair with anyone else, GemStore is just about facilities and skins. Of course there has been too much content item-wise being released in GemStore, and if one likes itemization it’s a HUGE letdown, but it’s definitely not pay-to-win.
Did he say pay to win?
What’s your evidence? The game hasn’t gone down in any significant way in any of the sites that track it. It has essentially the same number of unique log ins and the same number of hours played.
People keep saying that the game is dying or becoming a ghost town but nothing, and I do mean nothing, supports this with the exception of their personal observations.
I think we should all just keep an eye on Xfire for the Halloween content and the new living story content and see just how that affects the traffic. Since I’ve been following those sites, the people who report the game isn’t doing well make me wonder on what they base their information.
I can’t say I understand fully how Xfire works nor it’s purpose , only looked up to it now, but taking a first glance at it, GW2 has 400 unique logins , I don’t see how that proves anything. Taking a second glance, a first person shooter has more than 20x more unique logins than GW2, and that game was released at 2007. To cut it short, I don’t see how 400 active player proves GW2 is in a healthy state.
Sigh. It’s really much simpler than that. WoW is the best example. They pretty much have content releases with major expansions. Before those expansions, the cash income is the lowest. They require those expansions to reinvigorate the game.
Releasing that content when the population is high servers no purpose, because it’s not going to get MORE players. That’s their formula and it works for them.
Guild Wars 2 releases smaller patches more often. Why? Because that keeps players coming back to the game more often. You can see it in the tracking programs. That’s the Guild Wars 2 formula.
No company can release constant content no matter how much money they make. It’s just not reasonable. So logically you hold back the big release for when you need it. That’s business.
Yet anet is capable to provide ten times more content than they did in the last two year. It’s almost like the majority of anet’s resources aren’t spent on GW2…. combining that with their strict company policy on what they are working on we get a pretty intresting result.
You should probably watch the business more, rather than formulating opinions without watching the business. Because MMOs do add content when the population drops, not when it’s at a high.
That’s pretty much every MMO everywhere…with very very few exceptions.
Cause and effect. MMO’s active population increases when they release major content patch or such meaning the population’s the highest when the content hits release, but anet doesn’t seem to intend to do that. With living story at best they can achieve a stable, somewhat bigger active population compared to other MMOs between expansions ,but it’s more likely they just slowed the population decrease.
But by saying MMOs don’t release content when their population is high is like saying MMOs don’t release content when they release content.
I’d say wether GW2 is dying or not can be decided by using the logic of supply & demand. If something has high demand it is logical to deliver high supply or in other words if GW2 does have a stable or increasing playerbase that would mean anet has a stable or increasing income through gemstore and could deliver content in a nice & steady pace.
But that’s not the case. Content delivery is slower than ever and they show no sign of long term projects even after two year.
As for why I’m still playing, I’m not . I usually log in daily to see who is still online but I just stand around in a city.This is backwards logic. Most games, when they go into a lull, produce more content to get people back. They come out with expansions to increase the playerbase. They make expansions to renew interest.
Games that are doing well don’t have to do that. That’s the logic of business.
The exception is when a game is in it’s last throws and you abandon it. Since the 9/9 patch was pretty robust, there’s no sign the game is being abandoned. Since we get new stuff on November 4th there’s no sign.
But if people weren’t playing and paying, the logical move would be an expansion.
Less money → more content sounds like backwards logic to me. They try to get back players that’s obvious, that’s why they decided to release features in packs instead of launch them when they are ready. This way they can produce the same amount of content but also they also release patches big enough to send email about to players who left long ago.
Also I just think GW2 didn’t live up to Anet’s expectations. We still haven’t heard new sold copy milestone since when? 3.5 million sold was the last we heard without china. No wonder they pushed china release & 54 gemstore update a year.
I’d say wether GW2 is dying or not can be decided by using the logic of supply & demand. If something has high demand it is logical to deliver high supply or in other words if GW2 does have a stable or increasing playerbase that would mean anet has a stable or increasing income through gemstore and could deliver content in a nice & steady pace.
But that’s not the case. Content delivery is slower than ever and they show no sign of long term projects even after two year.
As for why I’m still playing, I’m not . I usually log in daily to see who is still online but I just stand around in a city.
Nope it’s not any different. At one point they had 3D cards, but you wouldn’t necessarily get one in every pack. You only had a chance to get the 3D card.
And getting the cards everyone had was pretty much worthless. I mean it’s not like you can sell Skip Jutze to anyone. It was a card no one cared about.
There’s really nothing in the BLTC that’s actually worthless. Transmuation charges aren’t worthless. Leveling scrolls aren’t worthless. Even when essences of luck where in teh chest, they weren’t worthless unless you happened to have 300 luck already (which very very few people do).
I disagree. Baseball card packs contained cards no matter what they worth. When you bought a pack, there was no chance that you got chewing gums ,candy(These aren’t worthless either) or other small things instead of a card you didn’t intend to buy, and there was no case you didn’t get any card at all.
Baseball cards are more like minipacks, not like BL chests. You know there will be 3 of them inside, and you might get a rare but most likely a common that everyone has. I wasn’t talking about these kind of things. BL chests on the other hand might contain something that has zero value or one of the most expensive things in the game.
Hmm that is odd.
Each Black Lion Chest contains 3 randomly selected items.
The first lot is always either a booster or, rarely, a booster multi-pack.( crafting booster worth 150gems) note that is worth more than one blc key(125) on double checking all but 2 boosts are worth more than the key.
The other two lots of items are selected at random from the other categories of drops.
Do the math. One should ALWAYS atleast recoup 3/4th gem value of the BL key. I would put 100% but i dont like 100% so I dropped it down to 75%.
Sounds like a a minipack to me atleast by your definition
Expect not all booster has gemstore value, Speed booster for example or Rejuvenation Booster. On the random things, you get for example two Mystery tonics, which are account bound and there you go, zero value. It’s not likely to happen but it can.
When I was young, I used to buy baseball cards. You always wanted a full set, but you never knew what you were going to get in the pack. Baseball cards have a cash value. The items in this game don’t because you can’t sell them for cash.
Gambling laws only exist in games were you can cash out like Second Life. This is more along the lines of baseball cards. First of all you’re not even paying cash for black lion keys, you’re paying cash for gems which can buy many things. Costumes, toys, minis.
You’re spending gems, which are not cash, and have no cash value (because they can’t be sold) for black lion keys.
So yeah, until they change gambling laws, this isn’t gambling, even if it does fall under the dictionary definition…it doesn’t fall under the legal definition.
Gambling is a word in an English language. You can gamble on a person’s honesty too, but it’s not illegal. lol
Baseball cards are more like minipacks, not like BL chests. You know there will be 3 of them inside, and you might get a rare but most likely a common that everyone has. I wasn’t talking about these kind of things. BL chests on the other hand might contain something that has zero value or one of the most expensive things in the game.
Also, it’s true you are spending gem ,which you buy, but I don’t really see the point here. In poker you don’t use your money directly in game either. And it’s true you can’t change back your winning to money ,this is why I made this thread, otherwise it would be clear it’s gambling, but the value between winnings could be drastically big (From zero to ~1500g) and you can put a price on the value of these items in real money too.
Gambling is serious business , it could cause addiction, you could lose a fortune etc. It is illegal in many country for anyone who isn’t 18 year old yet. Now, the law’s definiton of gambling in my country is: Every game counts as gambling, where the player in exchange of money or any valuable possessions, under certain circumstances he has a chance to win money, or other valuable prizes. Winning or losing depends solely or predominantly on luck.
Now we all know in the black lion chests you could win items of different value, and with the gem/gold conversion we can even tell how much does an item worth in real money, also it depends purely on luck what you win. Also black lion keys main source is the gem store, you can buy them with gold , but you also can buy them with real money .
I’m not in law school, therefore I don’t really know what fall under the category of gambling and I hope someone here knows. But for me the keys feels like they are gambling and at least should be restricted to 18+.
They should do something like this to make us happier, even though they wont deliver half of what is promised.
Remember what happened when some of those things were changed or delayed?
I do remember, a decent amount of players started acting unreasonably and anet’s response was silence and not to talk about anything until it’s ready to ship, meaning because of a part of the vocal playerbase they decided to not inform the 100% of the playerbase about the game’s development.
The funny thing is, even back then the communication on anet’s part was lacking. They did say the precursor crafting is going to be delayed, but I don’t really remember they saying anything about the new legendaries or fractal leaderboards for example. It feels like if they have to talk about something negative, they just ignore it and hope it will go away.
We’re not talking about a couple of bugs. If you got to Orr relatively fast, you’d know more than half the events in Orr were bugged. This wasn’t just some casual statement. The game wasn’t ready to be launched, and if you think it was…you’re entitled to that opinion.
In my opinion they launched early because they were pressured to launch by other considerations. It’s okay if you don’t believe it…plenty of people however do.
If they even considered to launch while they still had to work two years, I doubt they considered the missing things as a priority.
Also I’m as much entitled to my opinion , as much as you to think the last two years was lacking because early launch. It’s just an opinion. If I ask the same thing two years later your answer still going to be the same?
You’ve got to be kidding me. Do you even realize how many events were simply broken at launch. Do you really think they wanted to launch without a trading post preview, or the ability to sort by light armor type? Do you think that stuff like the fractals weren’t already in progress before launch? Do you think they really had enough time even to make Arah story mode the dungeon it might have been.
According to a dev that I knew in game, the technology of the moving platforms that allowed them to build Arah only arrived 2 weeks before the game came out.
There’s plenty of stuff that isn’t more content or awards adjustment that could have been done before launch, including a looking for group tool, that wouldn’t have required feedback from players at all.
Bugs happen at launch no matter how much they work on an MMO. The question is how much time it’s going to take to fix them. On TP thing, no I don’t think that they had in mind “Let’s launch TP without armor filters” ,but maybe they didn’t think about it. On fractal, If I remember correctly, the Consortium launched expedition to the mists, which means they wanted to release it with southsun cove & the first “Living story” experience. On the arah thing, I guess you can say the last batte is rushed, but it is still rushed after 2 years.
I’m not saying everything was added due to player feedback, but a loads of things, yes. I’m not so sure anet wanted to launch with an ingame LFG tool. Wardrobe was asked many times, long before it’s launch. WvWers wanted progression. Dungeon people wanted reward buff. PvPers wanted new mode (I guess I can say it now it’s coming) NPE great example too, it was created due new player staying ratio wasn’t that good.
GvGers wanted arena. Guild folks wanted activities. List goes on and on ….
you were able to get something that actually effected actual game-play that were not naturally available by paying. We have nothing of that sort of thing in GW2.
I wouldn’t entirely agree on that. All kind of booster, makes leveling faster or maybe (I doubt it ever happened) you’ll get a precursor drop because you activated a MF booster you just bought.Stat boosters. If you want to fully enjoy costume brawl buy costumes. Mistfire elite skill, banker golem for starter chars with a starter ring (Also large amount of PvP glory til they removed that). And what I regret most I bought : the infinity coin. These effect gameplay too.
(edited by Scipio.3204)
Are you trying to say that the store that was added years after it launched was the primary focus and that it made them more money then all the boxes sold? I remember when the store launched and all you could get was more character slots and the expansions. Then when they made it so you could have a pvp character with everything unlocked for balanced arena pvp they started selling skills in the store. I will agree that is an advantage for PVE but everything was on an even playing field for PVP. Are you saying there is not more in-game advantages in the current gemstore? Day one in Guild Wars I could not pull out my credit card and buy what ever I wanted including the best weapons in the game like I can in GW2. Trying to make Guild Wars sound pay to win when GW2 is 10x more pay to win is silly.
Years after? The in-game store in GW1 was released July 28, 2006 which was only a few months after Factions and only about 1,5 year after release of Prophecies, and before the release of the last campaign and the expansion.
And no, PvP in GW1 was not an even playing field. You still had to manually unlock the vast majority of skills, or you could take out your credit card and buy them all, thus bypassing the grind for either faction or in PvE-playing. A new account that just started playing had only a very basic skill-bar unlocked in PvP, not everything as you seem to imply.
How is being able to buy the best weapon in GW2 by trading gems for gold any more of an advantage than to be able to pay money to unlock the skills in GW1? You are also ignoring the fact that you could buy mercenary heroes in GW1, which basically made it possible to create AI-parties that were 100% impossible without paying.
On the skill unlock thing you may have a point, but since it was released together with the PvP access kit I suspect it was implemented for those who didn’t have PvE to unlock skills as an alternative.
But I really don’t understand why the mercenaries would be an advantage. There were at least 2 but mainly 3 from every profession in heroes not counting Razah.
It’s just a different product. It can’t be compared.
You may be right, then let’s compare GW2 to GW2. It took ~ 5 year development. Looking at the world at release, they made:
~ 5 zone / year.
~ 6,6 dungeon path /year
~ 0,2 PvP mode /year
~ 3,8 usable weapons / year
~ 43,2 skills /year ( weapon skills not included)
~ 46 personal story instance/year
~ 22,8 armor sets/year
~ 1 race /year
etc. on average.Probably I miscalculated some stuff, but I guess you see my point. I know this is not how it works, but I focused purely on numbers.
The reason it doesn’t work is because the game launched in a terrible state…one so bad it took two years to get to where it is now. It needed more than five years. It’s been catch up/patch up since day one.
I’m not so sure that two more development year would have helped. Magic find stat, world servers, PvP crafting, not acc bound dye/legendary, temporary content, one time only events, 3 round PvP tournaments & lack of meaningful rewards and a lot more was bad design decision and these were changed (mostly) because of player feedback. Without player feedback they would still need to change these things even if they had 2 more years to complete what they wanted. (Got a little confused english wise, not sure I made sense)
You can always improve the game , especially on a MMO. There are still a loads of things missing that people expected at launch , even some things anet advertised. Also I don’t see any sign the next two year will be different.
It’s just a different product. It can’t be compared.
You may be right, then let’s compare GW2 to GW2. It took ~ 5 year development. Looking at the world at release, they made:
~ 5 zone / year.
~ 6,6 dungeon path /year
~ 0,2 PvP mode /year
~ 3,8 usable weapons / year
~ 43,2 skills /year ( weapon skills not included)
~ 46 personal story instance/year
~ 22,8 armor sets/year
~ 1 race /year
etc. on average.
Probably I miscalculated some stuff, but I guess you see my point. I know this is not how it works, but I focused purely on numbers.
its not a question of they need to make money, that’s a given, its a question of what path do they follow to make that money, and its appeared for a long time as tho its all about the easiest way to turn a buck off its player base. GW1 also had to make money, they went about it a different way and that’s what made Anet the initial success it was, the anet of today is a somewhat soulless version of its former self, and I know what your gonna say – that they have 5 times the employees of the initial Anet so they need to make more money to pay ppl…well in that case they should’ve of released 5 times the content, but theyre not doing that are they? not when there’s an easier way to make money through the cash shop.
Indeed. GW1 went with the whole buy actual power for real money instead.
Comparing a lobby-based game with an open-world game is also quite silly, since the costs are completely different.
It is also quite likely that it takes way more time to create and release content for a game like this compared to a game like GW1.
You also have to keep in mind that their original plan was new campaigns every six months, a plan that only ever worked on time. And quite soon after the original release they saw that it would not work and thus abandoned it.
If it had worked so well as people here love to claim, why didn’t they use the same model for GW2?
Because it’s much easier to earn their income through gemstore with average 2 new zone / year rather than releasing 20 every 1,5-2 year? (Zones are just an example, works with PvP maps/modes, skins, dungeons ,skills etc too)
Also, yes it’s not fair to compare a lobby game to an MMO, but we are comparing a company’s two released product, and that company released more content in one year to the lobby game with a much smaller team than to their MMO in two years with at least twice as big team.
@Vayne – care to reply to my suggestion of a token system?
That means the casuals can get it – one day – if they really want it. So why wouldn’t it work?
So you’re saying doing a bunch of stuff I don’t want to do becomes more fun or easier if I can look forward to months or years of it? Is that what you’re saying?
Not fun is not fun. The solution is to make the stuff sellable. People who like the content can make gold by running the content, people who don’t get can the rewards. The only people that lose are the people who want to the difficult content just to show off how uber they are.
I don’t know how big a percentage that is, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’s not a huge percentage.
Anyway, it’s a compromise. One that’s already worked in Guild Wars 1.
The sellable thing – I don’t see it working.
I’ll agree with vayne with the sellable rewards. It has a lot more adventage: Already earned this content’s specific skin? No problem, sell it to those who don’t like this kind of content, making you money and making it earnable to those who don’t want to do what it require. It also creates a lot more replayability. Also, what if you don’t like that specific thing? *Sold *
Anet tried this with TA aether ,but it failed ,but not because the concept ,but the ridiculous RNG. I’ll also take a risk and say: Fractal would be more popular with sellable fractal weapons. Some people already played hundreds of daily fractals ,yet they still not got what they wanted, but by making them sellable they could sell the unwanted ones and buy the ones they want.
Also if you’re familiar with GW1 reward system, it’s one of the things I really miss. Almost everything was sellable and the RNG & non RNG rewards were a lot more balanced than here in GW2.
I do enjoy solving mindgames here and there ,but it’s much harder to create any mindgame to have any replay value, and I think that’s what missing from GW2 right now: replayability. You mentioned the mad king scavanger hunt, it was great at first, but the second time you knew all the answers , it was no challange anymore.
Finding things in the open world same thing, if you find a diving google by yourself, from now on you’ll know it’s there,but if we talk about liadri for example , it will be challangeing the first time, the second time , the third time etc.
For me the greatest mind challange in GW2 wasn’t even in the game in the traditional sense. When guild missions were released our guild was relatively small , and we couldn’t find the guild bounty targets very often,or we didn’t have time to kill them. I had to work out a method to find the target fast, with few people & high efficiency. It was a mindgame I’m proud I solved, so yeah, I kinda know what you mean , but what I’m saying is you can have mind games in the game without actually add one. Figuring out how to counter a boss is a type of mindgame, and it has replay value in the same time, and this is the type of mindgames I expect from an MMO.
The gemstore is a good idea, and since you can also pay with IG money, I’m not against it at all. The only thing I’m against is that every but one armors released during these two years came in the gemstore. Some skins have their place their, while other don’t. They should go half way in between, but not put everything in the gemstore…
Actually they release more armor than 1 set through ingame. I’ve counted the weapons & armors released through gemstore/ingame not long ago
here are the numbers
On weapons:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-GW2-just-isn-t-working/page/10#post4447295
On armors:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-GW2-just-isn-t-working/page/9#post4442387
You don’t think you can pick apart Guild Wars 1 the same way? How about the stupid Black Tide Den mission, where your character, for no reason whatsoever, is suddenly looking for Rinkhail monitors for the bonus, running away from the guy you’re supposed to be follow (which is an important plot point) to do something that you’re never given any reason at all to do.
I never go into any MMO expecting “great writing”. Therefore I’m never disappointed.
Guild Wars 1 could have been a lot better. Guild Wars 2 could be a lot better. But there are some pretty cool things in Guild Wars 2, as there were in Guild Wars 1. If you want to ignore those things, go right ahead.
They’re still in the game.
How is that any better with living story achievements? Why would you let Duke Barradin’s ghost to get stronger normally? I don’t see any difference.
Also GW1 had his fair share of cool things as well, if not more than GW2.
Have you ever even looked at another MMORPG forum. They all look just like this one, unless the company deletes all negative posts.
Well, look at GW1 facebook page for example.
Facebook page ain’t a forum. lol Guild Wars 1 had no official forum and many of the types of people who post on forums never look at facebook.
Guild Wars 1 isn’t an MMO and even if it was, at this point, I’m sure most of the population isn’t posting about negative stuff, because the game is in stasis. Nothing happens there TO post about.
It’s like saying look at the forums for any older game that hasn’t been updated in a couple of years. What is there to post about?
I said Facebook page because if you look at the GW2 facebook page you often see the general attitude towards GW2.
And sure, it didn’t have an official forum, but there were plenty of non-official, and even devs posted there. Look at this for example:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/domain-anguish-t10083002.html
This thread was created when anet announced the release of DoA,meaning it’s a valid comparison to GW2 forums since it was created during active development.
Total number of weapons released through gemstore: 216
I do believe I forgot some stuff, feel free to correct me.
I’m a little confused about which Halloween skins are which. I was told during “Shadow of the Mad King” the gemstore skins were dropping very-very-very rarely out of the dungeon instance.
There were two types of halloween items during first halloween, the ones that could drop from black lion chest, like Ghastly shield or Chainsaw, and the ones you could acquire via other means, the Mad Moon , The Crossing and Arachnophobia. These were random drops during the first halloween dungeon but you also could get them via PvP, and you can even craft them today.
Have you ever even looked at another MMORPG forum. They all look just like this one, unless the company deletes all negative posts.
Well, look at GW1 facebook page for example.
Guild Wars 2 has minimal gear progression. Saying it has gear progression doesn’t make it like WoW, as if there’s only one sort of gear progression. It does have gathering but so do a million other MMOs. Guild Wars 1 didn’t but I don’t see gathering as a big deal…and I think a whole lot of people, even Guild Wars 1 players like it. In fact Guild Wars 1 did have crafting after a fashion, you just didn’t craft it yourself. But you still had to gather mats…or buy mats. You don’t have to play with people to get Dragonite Orr, you have to play beside them. Plenty of Dragonite to be had in drytop but you never have to group for it. You can also get it from world bosses (which no one could honestly call raids), WvW, SPvP (which most people wouldn’t call raids either).
You’re trying to fit a round peg in a square hole to make an argument. The closest thing in this game to an actual raid would be Triple Threat. Beyond that, there’s nothing all that close to raiding in this game, and you certainly don’t need to do anything like a raid to get dragonite ore.
Doesn’t change the fact to have the best quality armor/weapon you have to complete specific type of content (Like in WoW) even if you dont like it. Also raiding doesn’t necessarily happen in premade groups or in instances, open world raiding is a form of raiding too ,and nowadays you dont see world bosses without a big ol’ zerg. Also, WvW with heavily organized TS & zergs counts as raiding in my book too. And why would I PvP to get PvE things I can’t sell?
- Well the original statement was Anet did add a lot of skins to the game not just the cash shop but somehow that ended up a discussion limited to armor skins.
Want me to do the numbers on ingame-released weapons vs Gemstore released weapons?
Let’s start with Non gemstore weapons.
First, the most recent,
Ambrite (16)
Scarlet weapons (2)
SAB weapons (16)
Sovereign (16)
Toy weapons (8)
Zenith (19)
Ascended (19)
Guild Weapons (19)
Halloween weapons (3)
Champ bag weapons (34)
WvW weapons (38)
Fractal weapons (19)
Altogether: 164
*Note: I didn’t count differently coloured weapons as different ones.
Gemstore weapons:
First Halloween ( 6 )
The lost shores (4)
Sclerite weapons (16)
Wintersday weapons (10)
Fused (16)
Jade (16)
Aetherized (19)
Zodiac(16)
Second Halloween (4)
Dreamthistle(16)
Lovestruck (16)
Tormented (19)
Phoenix (16)
Ley Line (16)
Chaos (19 )
Standalone weapons ( Braham’s stuff etc) 7
Total number of weapons released through gemstore: 216
I do believe I forgot some stuff, feel free to correct me.
More similar to WoW does not equal similar to WoW. That’s a logical fallacy.
If Guild Wars 2 was that similar to WoW, I wouldn’t enjoy it, while disliking WoW…and I do dislike WoW. The differences are myriad.
WoW has tons of skills and many skill bars. Guild Wars 2 has a more limited skill selection like Guild Wars 1. WoW has open world PvP servers, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t. It separates them.
The best gear in WOW comes from raiding. In Guild Wars 2, the best gear comes from crafting.
The most likely people to claim Guild Wars 2 is like WoW are people who didn’t play WoW.
That’s why I said “more similar”. GW2 has gear progression, crafting, gathering and a loads of other things that has presence in WoW ,yet GW was fine without it.
Also to craft Ascended gear , even if not the traditional way, but you have to play with 10-20+ of random people to get dragonite ore, so in a twisted way you can say to craft ascended (the best gear in the game) you have to raid.
I think you have a pretty selective view of what was going on. No, it didn’t take them 2 years to realize we want Guild Halls. Getting rid of culling, account wallets, changes to the trading post and changes to graphic backend took priority. That’s all companies really can do. Make a list of priorities. Guild Halls might be a very strong priority to you, but remember, unlike Guild Wars 1, where you had GvG, there isn’t much going on in Guild Halls. We had complete Guild Halls in Guild Wars 1 and no one really used them anyway. It isn’t a hot topic item for everyone. Large event culling is probably more important and was tackled first.
You say Anet should have known that taking things out of the game would be bad? How? It’s not like they took stuff out of Guild Wars 1 and had fans protesting. I saw what they were trying for. It was an experiment… a gamble. One of the things I like about Anet is that they DO take risks. And they learn and move on. I’m happy to support a company that takes those risks BECAUSE they take those risks.
Not everyone can be Rift…sorry WoW 2.0.
The point is, Anet has made another game, but they’ve never made an MMO before, just a lobby game with a multiplayer option. A lot of this stuff is new territory for them.
Take Archeage. All you heard about for the first week was queues. Why? because they don’t have the kind of technology Anet uses to allowed people to play while their servers were full. Anet led with that technology. Why? Because they take risks.
When you take risks, some things will work and some things won’t. I’d rather support a company that takes risks, even if it means waiting, that play yet another WoW clone.
They making risks describes one of my previous point pretty well. Innovation >> being successful.
Anet already made a game with 6-7 million sold copies, yet they made a sequel that’s entirely different , it’s even more similar to WoW , a game GW1 players tried to escape from.
The problem is Anet is making mistakes that a company that’s made games before shouldn’t be making.
Of course removing content from the game is going to detract from the overall experience. It’s not rocket science.
If you have less things in the game – the players have less things to do.
Also – one of the things you’re missing is that GW1 was a great game and people expected better from a company that made that game.
They need 2+ years to realize we want Guild Halls?
They need 1+ years to realize we want to switch traits on the go?
Or that if the dungeon owner gets kicked / dcd people would like for the dungeon progress to not be lost?
They needed 2 years to improve Guild QOL with the “last online” feature?
They needed 1 year to realize you can’t launch a MMO of this scale without a LFG tool?Are you seriously saying a video game company needs this much time to figure out the abcs of making a game?
Also – you say they’ve been playing catch-up – great – but how have they managed to put out so little content in two years? What are they even doing?
Even without taking out most of the LS season 1 content it still adds up to very little.How is it that in the time of GW1 ( with less people and less funds) they could produce more content in shorter or similar time frame but now with GW2 they can’t.
Even a lot of “new updates” are just taking content away or giving us reasons to do old content – but not adding anything.
See KQ; see the new collections and let’s not forget the fractal reset – when they forced us all to lose our progress so they could bring “leaderboards” which was blatantly a lie.
You do make a lot of good points, but it’s awkward for me to even think about these kind of questions. I do believe the last two year wasn’t about addig in missed out stuff since early launch, but about fixing everything they made wrong about development.
And if they want to fix everything we gonna be here for while.
Also I don’t really see them playing catch up due the temporary nature of Living Story season 1. There have been twice as much season break since end of LS1 , than actual living story, and the counter still ticking.
Guild Wars 2 has two less professions now than Guild Wars 1 did it it’s whole life. That’s 20% less professions for those counting.
Guild Wars 2 has five times the races Guild Wars 1 has ever had. That’s 500% more races.
Guild Wars 2 has more variety in this manner than Guild Wars 1…and did so from launch.
I think the topic now is how much has beed added to each game during the first two years after launch.
Sure it is. Anet made a mistake in removing a lot of content from the first year. Obviously that content was still content. It’s not not content now. Had Anet left everything in, I seriously doubt we’ve be having the same conversation to the same degree.
Anet made a mistake, and now they have to recover from that mistake. Which is fair enough. People are impatient. I understand that.
But pretending escape from Lion’s Arch, the Marionette and the Nightmare Tower never happened is not being completely truthful either.
I think this still would be a reasonable argument even if they didn’t remove anything. Season 1 didn’t expand the world, didn’t bring new professions, didn’t bring new races. Number of new skills were also minimal . I’d say the two dungeons would be better off as separated dungeons, not fractals and the marionette was enjoyable , and the tower , I don’t really have an opinion about that… still all of these combined would make a smallish DLC in other games.
You’d have a point if this game weren’t bigger and more ambitious and launched early. People are comparing Guild Wars 2 to a much more modest proposition that wasn’t a true MMO.
They have been playing catch up and anyone who doesn’t see it just isn’t looking. Many MMOs wait two years before an expansion. It’s not unheard of.
But people want to compare this to a non-MMO. Okay. Compare away.
8 years ago, Anet provided more content to a lobby game. So noted.
I do agree GW2 launched early, but I fail to see they are adding things they originally wanted, but didn’t have time for. There are tons of signs they wanted to do things here and there since launch, few example guild weapons merchant with “Coming soon” tab, 4-5 activity / city , they talked about a few , they even said “you will see these things at launch”, yet they didn’t add these ever since. There are some NPCs if you talk to a tab opens up and disappears instantly.
There have been changes like the megaservers, removing MF as a stat, new pvp reward system . I do believe these are after-launch ideas.
Also during the creation of GW1 anet was a lot smaller , and now the company is a lot bigger. It’s not that they waited 2 years for an expansion like you said, it’s that they don’t even say they are working on one.
Guild Wars 2 has two less professions now than Guild Wars 1 did it it’s whole life. That’s 20% less professions for those counting.
Guild Wars 2 has five times the races Guild Wars 1 has ever had. That’s 500% more races.
Guild Wars 2 has more variety in this manner than Guild Wars 1…and did so from launch.
I think the topic now is how much has beed added to each game during the first two years after launch.
Sure it is. Anet made a mistake in removing a lot of content from the first year. Obviously that content was still content. It’s not not content now. Had Anet left everything in, I seriously doubt we’ve be having the same conversation to the same degree.
Anet made a mistake, and now they have to recover from that mistake. Which is fair enough. People are impatient. I understand that.
But pretending escape from Lion’s Arch, the Marionette and the Nightmare Tower never happened is not being completely truthful either.
I think this still would be a reasonable argument even if they didn’t remove anything. Season 1 didn’t expand the world, didn’t bring new professions, didn’t bring new races. Number of new skills were also minimal . I’d say the two dungeons would be better off as separated dungeons, not fractals and the marionette was enjoyable , and the tower , I don’t really have an opinion about that… still all of these combined would make a smallish DLC in other games.
Guild Wars 2 has two less professions now than Guild Wars 1 did it it’s whole life. That’s 20% less professions for those counting.
Guild Wars 2 has five times the races Guild Wars 1 has ever had. That’s 500% more races.
Guild Wars 2 has more variety in this manner than Guild Wars 1…and did so from launch.
I think the topic now is how much has beed added to each game during the first two years after launch.
And I would like to link, for you, this:
This is the Cinematic Trailer for Guild Wars Prophecies. If this game was truly as PvP-focused as you’re claiming, then the cinematic trailer wouldn’t be showing off only humans fighting down monsters. It would show humans fighting against other humans, to pump up the “Player versus Player” point of the game.
But, it doesn’t. It’s a PvE monster-slayer, just like it was always intended to be.
I understand what you are trying to say. And the video sure does not mention Guilds in any shape or form indeed.
The bottom line (and also the topic of this thread) is that Guild Wars 1 was a suitable name, while Guild Wars 2 is simply not anymore.
So GW2 is not a suitable name because it doesn’t have GvG? But it is a continuation of the story of Tyria. The events of GW1 have brought the world to the point that it is now.
And WoW is the continuation of the story of the warcraft series, yet it is not called Warcraft 4
No, because Warcraft moved from being an RTS to an MMO. And with an MMO you have a much more expansive, evolving and changing world. Thus WORLD of Warcraft.
And GW moved from being a coorpg to an MMO, my point is the continuation of the story shouldn’t be enough to put a “2” next to its name
I feel that it is entirely appropriate to add a “2” to it. One could also argue the naming conventions of Final Fantasy. None of these games are in any way sequals or prequals to any of the other. (With the exception of FFVII: Crisis Core, FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus, and XII-2). Also XI moved from being a turn based RPG to an MMO, yet kept the naming convention.
My point is, that Guild Wars 2, being a continuation, is enough to call it “2”. But I believe the name was partially due to keep the Guild Wars name, and the story, and to be more recognizable. As far as the original name, I don’t think that it was called such as a shout out to PvP/GvG, but to draw attention to the story as a whole.
I played Guild Wars 1 for a little bit, but couldn’t get too much into it. If the name of this game change to Tryia: The battle of the dragons, or something, I probably would have overlooked it. But the name Guild Wars, was already known, and recognizable. Calling it anything else, I feel would not have brought the success that it has.
Agreed, probably the name “Guild Wars 2” made the game to “Fastest selling MMO” , but also probably the name is the same reason for so much unstatisfied players, especially veterans.