Personally I think it come down to the type of community a game caters to. I have been playing MMOs since UO (I am showing my age) and different games attract different communities.
For example: UO started out with a bit more of a hard core community, required a monthly fee, and was originally open world pvp except for in town. This was later pulled back by creating Trammel and Felucia. The game went into more of what the vet gamers referred to as “car bearish” and it became more about economy and open world sandbox than pure PVP.
If you were around for the 1st guild wars, the community was a bit different as well. When it first launched it was driven more toward the diablo 2 community/phantasy star crowd. Most stuff could be soloed in story but end game required guilds or friends to assist. The game was originally developed for end game to be more PvP based hence the name “guild wars” and they based most income off of selling expansions and the periodical vanity outfit for the holidays. Later name/character change items were brought into the mix. As for game development the story lines got more in dept and they attempted to make 2 Raid dungeons. However most of the end game became working the same content but in hard mode, earning prestige gear and working through faction ranks to increase faction skills and earn elite skills. The game all around was geared toward people who would grind for things such as the Hall of Monument, gear, skills and titles. The game was never about lvl as the max lvl was 20 and about the gear/skill/faction progression.
Than you have Guild Wars 2. This game was originally developed for the Guild Wars 1 audience but making content more group interactive than single player and creating a more open world (less hub based). However Anet simply turned it’s back on them about a year before launch. Once Anet figured out they could steal a bit of the WoW community as well as other audiences interested in a more short term lucrative “eastern” market they started introducing there own cash shop (gem store) and started gearing toward an audience that wanted instant results without having to play with others or spend much time in the game to accomplish objectives. These as well as other changes in wrongful balancing of classes, not keeping promises with content and ignoring such problems as the still broken HoM ended up alienating a lot of the GW1 community. I myself left for about a year after the failed balance of thieves, gem store and the failed promise to release new content ever 2 months. The final stab was when they started making it easier to lvl to 80.
GW2 was missing a lot of stuff that held attention of the GW1 crowed such as a primary and secondary profession, endless amounts of skills. GW1 has roughly by the end 150 skills per profession. This was outside of the faction skills. An attempt at end game raids/dungeons, prestige faction armor and faction title/skill grinds. Long story short end game still had a lot to go back and do while grinding for better things/skills. GW2 only has legendary weapons which was a huge turn off being that when they first release they required a lot of PvP grind that alienated PvMers (half GW1’s crowd). Now they a totally obsolete due to ascended gear unless you want the skin/effect.
Fast forwarding to HoT expansion, Anet has a lot of distrust from there core GW1 audience. There audience of gamers who wanted instant gradification have since become fickle and moved on. The gem store cash cow has since left the barn and now Anet struggles to make amends with it’s GW1 community. At this point Anet is off making a lot of promises such as total class re-balances, more faction grinds in the expansion to create new legendary weapons and a new class to bring back some excitement. However in doing so a lot of the promises they are making have no teeth in there bite as we still have 1. no release or a hint at a release for the expansion even though they are taking pre-orders for a month now. 2. Re-balancing the classes so they are all playable which is just killing thieves again as well as introducing a butt load of bugs and glitches. In the mean time no acknowledgement or even a word on any fixes. 3. Promising there new class will not be OP, but making it so that it fulfills the spot for any other class in a party and slowly removing any limitations in order to make it elite and sell more copies. 4. Still missing 4 specializations (5 if you include reverent) with again no talk about this for months.
I can go on an on about Anet and what they need to do to earn the GW1 community back and how they are failing at it. However time will tell all.
Thank you. You said for us how many of us felt about Anet. Unfortunately, they think they can string us along without a living story or release date. Then again, every game has a shelf life, I think GW2 is getting there.
That will be a great day, not only for Anet, but for millions of players world wide.