Guild Wars 2

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Vayne.8563:

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Vayne.8563:

It’s a different market because when Guild Wars 1 came out, IE when it made most of its sales and money, there were NO free to play MMOs. How can you say that’s not a different Market. Do you know how old Guild Wars 1 was when Rift released? SWToR? It was already pretty much dead by then, certainly by comparison. Far fewer people playing it. It’s heyday had nothing but MMOs with monthly fees.

But today you have DDO, AoC, TSW, SWToR, Lotro, Star Trek, Champions Online, Allods, Perfect World, hell so many free to play MMOs that didn’t exist when Guild Wars 1 made a name for itself.

How can you possibly compare a market that had no competition at all to a market that has tons of competition. At the time, Guild Wars 2 was the only fantasy multiplayer game without a monthly fee.

Meanwhile, Aeria Games.

Furthermore, that’s assuming everyone playing Gw2 right now is playing from Gw1. The lack of “Traveler” titles in the ranks of my friends screams otherwise. For someone who joined the game with no intrest or knowledge of Gw1 (obviously its become a given fact that there’s Gw1 once you hear GW2) they don’t know what reputation you’re necessarily talking about, and they certainly haven’t experienced it – either at all, or the way those who felt it brilliant did. Still, your argument doesn’t add up even then because if you offer something that your competition doesn’t, something the people wan and will grab them, then you can already form up your niches for each of those respective features. Even if Guildwars2 came out today. If Anet made Guildwars today, just aswell, you’re right, it may sink. But on the other hand it may still float aswell. Ultimately. It’s upto ArenaNet’s choices in their circumstances.

We can already see Guildwars 1 and 2 are vastly different in their format on many, many, many fronts. Noone can contest this, weather you want to debate aesthetics or direct effect design principles. Good or Bad? That’s naturally opinionated between the players. But it’s still no less different, and it’s fairly obvious they’re not focused on the same niches, or to that end, at least not all of them.

We might be having two different arguments. I’m saying this genre has changed and stuff that worked eight years ago might not work today. That’s pretty much ALL I’m saying.

If you can’t accept that, there’s not much else to discuss.

You’re free to your opinion. I don’t believe you’re outright wrong. I just think that’s the one hand, whilst what you’re saying is true, that’s not the only potential outcome, and that the opposite of what you’re saying is equally observable in reality.

Sure, no one can know the outcome, but one can assume that the more competition that exists, the harder it is to get a foothold. That’s just basic logic.

There are X number of players that have to be divided among Y number of games.

MikaHR.1978:

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.

There arent 7 million players playing WoW and there arent <insert number of players> playing GW2. Its SAME for every MMO. Just brought memory of guy doing 40 man raid…..by himself and all HIS accounts.

And it does not matter at ALL that EvE is a sandbox in this context. Of course, EvE being the champ doesnt suit you PR crap rofl

If you want to believe Eve is the champ, go right ahead. You can believe anything you want. It doesn’t make it true, and it’s certainly not provable, but go ahead and believe it. I’m sure all the millions of Eve players will back you up.

Erick Alastor.3917:

It’s not that we don’t believe you, but you know, to be credible sometimes it’s better to show evidence of what you say.
So

Vayne.8563:

If you were around then, you’d have seen thread after thread after thread about people with nothing to do at max level. It was almost a pandemic. Not just here but on other forums, like the one I moderated.

Can we have the links of those complaints on the forum that you moderated?

Vayne.8563:

Funny my friends list is full of people who said 100% they’re not coming back. Most of them came back.
Odd thing that.

Can you show us a screenshot of your friendlist?

This is mine (and no, I’ve not stopped to play in November)
Clearly not all of the guys in this list quitted at the time of the screenshot, something like 5% of them are still actively playing.

Nope, the forum went belly up, so there’s nothing there anymore. It was gw2forum.com though, if you’re interested. And I don’t really care if you believe me or not. Your belief is not required to make something true or not true. There were enough people on these forums to remember how many threads there were about nothing to do at 80. I’m not making it up and if you don’t want to believe me, that’s perfectly fine. I’m happy with that.

No, I won’t show a friends list screenshot, because there are people in these forums immature enough to harass my friends. I’ve already been annoyed in game by people on these forums (which is fine because they’re annoying me, not anyone else). I wouldn’t subject anyone else on my friends list to some of the people who post here.

Again, if you don’t believe me, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change the truth one iota.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Oxe.6142:

The game released with nothing resembling the manifesto in place. A year later it’s as if the manifesto never existed. It was a publicity stunt. Anet uses them a lot along with their descriptions of content (dynamic events, living story) misnaming and misrepresenting things in order to sell them. It’s what they do. The game they said they were building doesn’t exist and it never will. Either you have to accept what you have, or you don’t. But those are the facts.

This is true. Remember the abomination that was the “new dungeon” (Canach’s Lair).

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether it was a lie, or broken promise, or purposefully misleading — the final result is that your customers no longer trust your words. That’s not good for business.

The final result is SOME customers no longer trust your words. I ran a business. I can tell you that no matter how well intentioned I was, someone was always dissatisfied and they no longer trusted my business. I retired from that business over a decade ago, but the business is still going strong.

Millions of people bought the game. If 100,000 people don’t trust Anet anymore…it won’t stop the game from succeeding and it won’t necessarily be bad for business.

There are a good dozen voices more or less on these forums that are massively negative. There are almost as many positive voices, as well. I don’t think the trust issue is as wide-spread as you think.

I saw the manifesto, I saw some change in what the company was doing, I saw why they did it. I don’t distrust the company for acting in the best interest of the game, which is what I believe they did.

xephire.8324:

They will repeat the trend i believe.Next few months new gear, i apologize.Sorry the game is going so bad right now we have to use these cheap tricks to keep the game going because the game is changing to a new direction.

I love how you put a smiley face at the end of saying something like this…indicating you take joy in what you’re saying.

As usual, you have nothing at all to back up your opinion, just an opinion. You don’t know the game is doing badly, you can’t prove the game is doing badly and from the observations of many people the game isn’t doing badly.

Where do you get your information from?

Evans.6347:

Of course it’s a fancy commercial. And when you are going to throw around concepts like ‘fun’ and ‘grind’, which are highly subjective, of course a bunch of people are going to be bumhurt.

I wish people would just let it be and focus on the here and now. What does this accomplish anyway? It’s been over a whole year and those who are still here, are still here regardless of the ‘lies’. So why keep on going on and on and on about this same old poor dead horse that has been beaten down to nothing more than decrepit horse pulp…

Eww gross.

It’s over a year since the game was released and the manifesto was released 2 years before that, so it’s three years old.

Some people just want to live in the past.

You’re right. You shouldn’t have to keep at at all…and you don’t have to keep up. There’s no reason to keep up. All the content can be done in rares, never mind exotics. The only exception is high level fractals which aren’t really casual content anyway.

MMOs need content for everyone. Saying a game is casual friendly doesn’t mean a casual should be able to do everything in the game.

As it is, a casual can still do most things in the game. There’s plenty of stuff to keep casual players busy.

What casual players shouldn’t be doing is stopping Anet from coming out with more challenging content for everyone else.

After all 90% plus of this game is casual.

There weren’t any time gates in Morrowind, but being me and two guildies did this in under two hours, I’m not sure what difference that makes. These zones are relatively small. You can hold down your control key to see objects and if you still can’t, after a couple of hours, find the last tooth you need, you can look it up in Dulfy if you want.

I’m not really seeing a problem here. They put the tooth hunt in for people who like to farm achievement points…nothing more.

I wouldn’t expect a random casual who can play the game for two weeks to fight Tequatl.

The game offers a range of stuff to do. There’s stuff to do for people who are casual, like work toward exotics (which are good enough to do anything in this game that a casual is likely to do).

But the game also needs more challenging content for other people.

Not having an ascended weapon doesn’t cut off the content of the game from a casual player.

If it helps you can put the manual up on the marketplace for sale and get some of your money back.

xephire.8324:

Nothing much has changed, the whining in these forums have increased to show displeasure over Anet’s dirty way of doing things.

I’m glad you agree it’s whining.

Tom Gore.4035:

champ.7021:

Vayne.8563:

Funny my friends list is full of people who said 100% they’re not coming back. Most of them came back.

Odd thing that.

Yes it is odd that when Anet focuses on only one kind of player they lose part of the population and keep the other. Very odd indeed.

The problem is if they try to focus on every kind of player they aren’t actually focusing on any kind of player.

I agree with you. They’re not trying to focus at all. They’re trying to provide a variety of experiences for a variety of different types of players.

So the more styles of play you enjoy, the more you’re likely to enjoy the game. I do some of everything, thus I enjoy the game.

Those who focus just on dungeons, are probably not going to stay around forever. But they might come try new dungeons when they come out.

I think there are enough people in the middle for this to work.

Lie, of course, implies the intent to deceive. Since no one here can prove the intent to deceive, you’re all lying (unless you didn’t intend to deceive). lol

Nuka Cola.8520:

Perfectly said. Its 2013 and they have no plans to upgrade to DX11 rofl. Milking gem store is more important than offering a smooth and fun experience for your fanbase. I wish the current team working on FF14 came for gw2, they’re doing absolutely everything possible to please their players and are already building a DX11 patch while anet doesn’t even dream about it.

Hmmm…FF14…remind me…isn’t that the game that released so bad that they had to go completely back to the drawing bored, stop being a subscription game for a year, and pretty much disappointed every person who played it?

Oh, you mean they launched, charged people monthly fees, then took a break with all that money to fix the game?

Some games don’t have that luxury.

I got a rare aqua breather from beating Tquatl today and I already had all the achievements. It’s a fun fight for me though, when I can get in on my main server.

Pariah.8506:

Vayne.8563:

Scott Hartsman, who was the lead developer of Rift said, and I’m paraphrasing here, anyone making an MMO who ignores solo players does so at his own risk.

Yes, risk. That’s exactly what we need in the genre, this video explains it perfectly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64

Vayne.8563:

The fact is, you don’t get to tell people how to play the game or whether they should or not. So many people solo in these games, that saying they should go back to a single player game means taking a huge chunk out of the play base. Is that what you think would be best for the game?

You misunderstand my point. I’m not arguing that soloing shouldn’t exist, I’m arguing that it should be properly prioritised. Unlike in GW2, where the monsters dwell apart and far from one another with no group aggro and where you solo no matter what. When 5 people go into a dungeon they go in kitten ‘soloers’ that each try and individually squeeze out as much DPS as they can.

A good example of co operation in GW2 would be the part of the Uncategorised Fractal where 2 players have to supply the batteries and 1 player activates the fan. Likewise in the Dredge Fractal. But the problem is that this co operation comes from a minigame of sort and does not stem from the combat system itself, which does not and cannot, due to its flaws, contain such interaction.

Oh, I agree, there should be more content that requires teamwork…but I don’t think it should be in the open world, that’s all.

Nikaido.3457:

Daywolf.2630:

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.

My friendlist is filled with players who told me straight they weren’t coming back. I have a huge pool of “followers” who haven’t logged on for like 6+ months. For a game that doesn’t have a sub they sure can’t keep a lot of long time players.
And I haven’t logged on since I made my first ascended weapon after the last patch. I just realized I had absolutely no desire whatsoever in doing temple and world bosses events to build more ascended weapons, and if I can’t get BiS gear for future content/dungeons I might as well just quit. It’s not needed now but there will come a time where having full ascended including armor (which I expect to have the same, or even worse amount of crap content grind like temple/world boss all over again) might make a difference and I don’t see myself grinding the dumb content (sorry but there is NOTHING more mindless than temple and world boss zergs.) to be prepared for that future. Not to mention the difference it’ll make in WvWvW roaming. And the fact that you’re really stuck with one build. Let’s not even talk about alts.

Good riddance to gw2, it had potential but it’s just turning into a much worse mmo because the true grind mmo actually have fun dungeons/raid/content to grind, gw2’s grind is the most boring thing you could build in a mmo. If you’re going to make me grind, make me grind fun dungeons and raids, not playskool-my-first-mmo type stuff like temple events.

Funny my friends list is full of people who said 100% they’re not coming back. Most of them came back.

Odd thing that.

Paraphrasing the clarification….

Colin is talking about dynamic events. Ree is talking about personal story. Which means that where she says the boss you killed spawns ten minutes later…she wasn’t talking about open world content. She was talking about an individual story that you experience that someone else of your race/profession might have a completely different story.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

Three years later, a statement of intent. I think if you’re going to be 100% accurate, you’d also have to include the clarification that was posted 3 days after this though….because word for word without the clarification seems a bit misleading to me…particularly since they corrected at least one potential misintepretation publicly and right away.

If the clarification is so important in your mind, post it yourself.

If I could find it, I would. It’s in another thread, where it was posted. The search engine doesn’t work. I’m commenting that a clarification exists. I’m not willing to do the work to find it.

Holland.9351:

Vayne.8563:

Be glad you guys didn’t play RPGs back in the day. You’d have run screaming off into the night.

I get your point, but games like Everquest had a ton of websites which people used regularly, like Allakhazam, EQmaps and many others. The game would have been borderline unplayable without them. Try figuring out an epic quest on your own, for example.

Having the maps in-game is a great improvement compared to early Everquest 1. It would be a great improvement if GW2 didn’t need Dulfy and sites like gw2stuff.com (to keep track of world events). They were greatly dependant on gw2lfg.com for a long time, but having it in-game has been such a great improvement.

This latest scavenger hunt reminded me of the hidden packages in the old GTA games. Good luck being able to do that without a guide. Of course it was a whole lot worse in GTA, but it has the same feel to it. No hints at all and some are really hidden and easy to miss.

I’m not talking about Everquest. I’m talking about RPGs back in the day. Ultima 4. Some guy would say, go talk to the guy in the mountions. The mountains were huge. You’d have to talk to hundreds of NPCs to get some idea of where the guy might be and then go look. All so that the guy could tell you to find an herb that was somewhere in a jungle to the south.

No arrows. No stars. No exclamation marks over people’s heads. No web pages to look up what to do…if you wanted hints you’d have to buy the hard copy hint book. That was before they offered 900 numbers that you could dialup to get a hint, paying per minute. lol

Pariah.8506:

Vayne.8563:

No, it wouldn’t force people to play together. The people who want to play together would play together and everyone else would simply leave the game. In case you haven’t noticed, people don’t like to be forced to do stuff. That’s what a lot of the complaining on these forums comes down to. I don’t want to be forced to do dailies.

If people don’t want to play alongside others then maybe, just maybe they should play a single player game. The point of an MMO is player interaction, GW2 has none of it. You simply zerg down stuff in a horde in which every single person is doing his own thing, there is 0 atruism. There is no necromancer casting Order of Pain solely for the benefit of the melee classes, there is no elementalist that let’s his colleague know he just cast Searing Flames so that it can be combined with Ash Blast. All the other members of the horde may as well have been replaced by mute robots and you wouldn’t even notice it.

Vayne.8563:

Many MMO devs have said straight out that you can no longer ignore the number of people who solo in MMOs. There are more of them than you think. More to the point, there are also people who play at off hours or in different countries who don’t have a zillion people playing when they play.

And many MMO devs adhere to the f2p p2w business plan, does that mean it is the best course of action? It’s up to the devs to balance, to think out every situation and to do it well. And yes, I am aware of people playing at off hours, we call it WvW.

Vayne.8563:

And then you have the fact that the world is huge and people are off doing whatever they’re doing which takes them out of the open world.

The world is not huge, the world is many times smaller than it is because a player can get anywhere at any time because the world is littered with Asura Waypoints meaning the time spent getting somewhere becomes negligible. Meaning anything worth doing immediately gets overwhelmed by a surplus of players anyway.

Scott Hartsman, who was the lead developer of Rift said, and I’m paraphrasing here, anyone making an MMO who ignores solo players does so at his own risk. I think maybe the devs have a better idea of who plays the game than you do.

The fact is, you don’t get to tell people how to play the game or whether they should or not. So many people solo in these games, that saying they should go back to a single player game means taking a huge chunk out of the play base. Is that what you think would be best for the game?

I almost never solo, and I don’t like soloing, but I acknowledge that many people do and that the game would be weaker without them.

That’s why dungeons and WvW and PvP tournaments exist. To force you to team up.

Three years later, a statement of intent. I think if you’re going to be 100% accurate, you’d also have to include the clarification that was posted 3 days after this though….because word for word without the clarification seems a bit misleading to me…particularly since they corrected at least one potential misintepretation publicly and right away.

Interesting take on it. I think you get four dragon boxes for defeating him…and each one gives a varying amount of coin, along with mats, along with greens/blues and a chance for yellows.

After the Tequatl fight I was up 1 gold. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it’s also the same as a dungeon reward.

People are doing Tequatl for achievements and for the chance for a teq mini and an ascended weapon.

There are and will always be faster ways to gather loot.

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Vayne.8563:

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Vayne.8563:

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Vayne.8563:

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Vayne.8563:

Snip

You don’t need to know 8D it’s not of your business in the slightest!
snip

snip

No big business and MMOs have become big business, can function that way. It’s not realistic.

But that depends on the other comapny’s excecution of their concept, aswell as the concept aswell, and finally, the polish of the concept (Lore, class names, blah blah blah).

snip

It’s still a different market. You say do something well. Today don’t something well for how many people…and what are the odds some other company with more money won’t come along in a year and do it better, the same thing, and take away your player base.

Diversity can equal security. That’s why most big companies end up diversifying. It’s why supermarkets end up developing film. They don’t develop film better, faster or cheaper than anyone else, but they do get a percentage of that market share.

How is it a different market? WoW, Tera, SWTOR, GW2, TSW – they’re all MMOs. Unless they’ve got a different label for GW2 provide me the proof and Ill gladly accept my misunderstanding.

You’re right in saying diversity can be secure, but you’re looking at it from the direct opposite from myself. If you have lots of avenues to work, around, great, but the more avenues you have, the higher the maintainence. ANet is hardly a poor company. They have the funds, and resources, and are catering to several branches already, but the further thin you spread your resources, the harder it is to manage them, and the more taxing the effort is. If you have 5 niches you’re targeting with $50,000,000, you can divide those funds more effectively into those nix he’s demands than 50 Niches with the same funds. And lets face it – sloppiness is toxic for a game. If ANet is not actually Implementing things properly, people are going to leave. People are going to leave with a bad taste, and their opinion of Anet isn’t going to be 100% good if the game hasn’t been done correctly.

More importantly than that, Anet should stick to its own convictions, but that’s anothe topic all together.

It’s a different market because when Guild Wars 1 came out, IE when it made most of its sales and money, there were NO free to play MMOs. How can you say that’s not a different Market. Do you know how old Guild Wars 1 was when Rift released? SWToR? It was already pretty much dead by then, certainly by comparison. Far fewer people playing it. It’s heyday had nothing but MMOs with monthly fees.

But today you have DDO, AoC, TSW, SWToR, Lotro, Star Trek, Champions Online, Allods, Perfect World, hell so many free to play MMOs that didn’t exist when Guild Wars 1 made a name for itself.

How can you possibly compare a market that had no competition at all to a market that has tons of competition. At the time, Guild Wars 2 was the only fantasy multiplayer game without a monthly fee.

Meanwhile, Aeria Games.

Furthermore, that’s assuming everyone playing Gw2 right now is playing from Gw1. The lack of “Traveler” titles in the ranks of my friends screams otherwise. For someone who joined the game with no intrest or knowledge of Gw1 (obviously its become a given fact that there’s Gw1 once you hear GW2) they don’t know what reputation you’re necessarily talking about, and they certainly haven’t experienced it – either at all, or the way those who felt it brilliant did. Still, your argument doesn’t add up even then because if you offer something that your competition doesn’t, something the people wan and will grab them, then you can already form up your niches for each of those respective features. Even if Guildwars2 came out today. If Anet made Guildwars today, just aswell, you’re right, it may sink. But on the other hand it may still float aswell. Ultimately. It’s upto ArenaNet’s choices in their circumstances.

We can already see Guildwars 1 and 2 are vastly different in their format on many, many, many fronts. Noone can contest this, weather you want to debate aesthetics or direct effect design principles. Good or Bad? That’s naturally opinionated between the players. But it’s still no less different, and it’s fairly obvious they’re not focused on the same niches, or to that end, at least not all of them.

We might be having two different arguments. I’m saying this genre has changed and stuff that worked eight years ago might not work today. That’s pretty much ALL I’m saying.

If you can’t accept that, there’s not much else to discuss.

Benkei.6293:

ecto savage rate didnt decreased at teq patch, it decreased since level 500 weapon/huntsman/artificer patch

People don´t know statistics yet they use them on as an argument for their posts.

There was a time where ectos worth 30+ silver and rares where 28+ silver each. this lasted for months. If the rate haven´t change on savaging then why would ectos worth 32+ silver and rares went down to 25. (OMG this sample is as big as 10000+ rares) I guess people who know nothing about how the actual statistic studies are made would say i need to buy the rare and savage it myself.

The decrease on ecto savage rate is a FACT even if people don´t want to accept it, but for those who already did, start thinking on the reason behind this change. Rares are more common since magic find increase was allowed.

If you allow people to reach their maximum gold potential they will be able to buy anything they wanted on the game. This is the reason why i have quited most of my previous game. You must have a goal if you want to keep playing this game, and since there is no actual ingame goal as Being top tier PvPer, Best WvW server, Complete all the Pve content, (noone of this feel rewarding )

The only thing left is to hoard large amount of currency I would say more than 2/3 of people who play GW2 daily only care about this. So Anet just want to make it harder.

Having nothing at all to do with how many ectos people need to level their crafting from 400 to 500 in three different disciplines. You didn’t think that would increase ecto prices?

I think maybe you’re drawing a hard to defend confusion here.

You’re saying the crafting patch spiked the price of ectos and you’ve randomly decided to blame it on salvages.

Three professions, countless ectos needed by a bunch of people are going to drive the price of ectos up.

Pariah.8506:

Vayne.8563:

Do you know the moaning and complaining there would be in an open world if creatures had the same AI as they did in Guild Wars 1 but you didn’t have a party of heroes and henchmen to keep you alive.

Yes, it would actually force people to play together and make Anet create a combat system based around players needing more than more meat for the grinder to overcome obstacles.

No, it wouldn’t force people to play together. The people who want to play together would play together and everyone else would simply leave the game. In case you haven’t noticed, people don’t like to be forced to do stuff. That’s what a lot of the complaining on these forums comes down to. I don’t want to be forced to do dailies.

Many MMO devs have said straight out that you can no longer ignore the number of people who solo in MMOs. There are more of them than you think. More to the point, there are also people who play at off hours or in different countries who don’t have a zillion people playing when they play.

And then you have the fact that the world is huge and people are off doing whatever they’re doing which takes them out of the open world.

In fact, even as it is now, there are threads that pop up here and there that the open world is too hard to solo. Just imagine if they made it truly hard.

If you liked the game, don’t listen to the naysayers…for the most part it’s improved…but you will have to do some crafting. It’s easy enough to do, but if you haven’t done any of it, you’d have a long haul before you can get an ascended weapon.

RoRo.8270:

Vayne.8563:

Draco.2806:

“Our data suggests that very few players play as mobs, therefore improving them is low on our priority list.”

I would say the offender here would be the fact that good AI costs server power, but isn’t AI server-side in GW1 as well?..

(I haven’t played much of GW1, but why does it sound so much better than the sequel in many ways?)

Guild Wars 1 was a superior game in some ways, this is true..but not quite as superior as many of those who are commenting would have you believe…and yes, I was a huge fan of Guild Wars 1, and still find it enjoyable on the rare occasions I log back in. But there are many deficiencies in the game as well, that some people seem to ignore.

Well gw1 was released around 8 yrs ago you would think they would improve upon stuff

Are you suggesting games didn’t have auction houses eight years ago? Or that they didn’t have persistent worlds.

The changes in this game, including many of the changes that people are complaining about here, exist because the game moved from a lobby game to a true MMO with a persistent world. Do you know the moaning and complaining there would be in an open world if creatures had the same AI as they did in Guild Wars 1 but you didn’t have a party of heroes and henchmen to keep you alive.

Anyway I was responding to someone who said everything…EVERYTHING…was better in Guild Wars 1. Since that’s completely not true, it’s not even conceivably true, I’m not sure of the relevance of your post. It was made to respond specifically to that statement.

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.

morrolan.9608:

Daywolf.2630:

IMO Anet is taking a huge gamble, and I can’t say they will be the better off for it in the long run.

They won’t be, they’ve completely lost the goodwill of the majority of the GW1 community and others that bought into the initial GW2 vision.

For any future games nothing they say will be trusted any more.

Well if what you say is true, the ship is already sailed and by ignoring those people they’re doing the right thing for their business.

Gibson.4036:

Vayne.8563:

With Guild Wars 2, a portion of players, possibly a good portion weren’t staying. If you can’t keep your player base for three months after launch, what’s the game going to be like in a year. That’s the problem Anet developers were faced with.

I wonder about this.

They keep telling us that sales were far greater than their economic models suggested. They got more players than they planned. How much more, we have no idea, but it’s a curious idea in conjunction with the idea that they were losing a lot of players shortly after launch, and therefore completely rethought some of their vision for the game in order to retain them.

The idea that they were losing a lot of people shortly after launch is something the people have put together based on anecdotal evidence and the need to find a reason for some of the “180s” that ANet has pulled. Not sure how true it actually is.

But assuming both are true, I sure wish we had some inkling of the numbers. What was ANet’s expectation? How far did sales really exceed that? How big of a player drop off was there?

Imagine ANet expects to sell 750k units, and instead gets 2m. Then, shortly after launch, 500k disappear, and whatever crystal ball they look into tells them it’s because of a lack of gear progression.

That would still put them at twice their projection. At that point, ANet could say, “Hey, we got way more in sales than projected, but it was partly due to our refreshing vision we sold before launch. We lost some players because they ultimately don’t like the vision, but we’re still sitting pretty at twice projected sales. Lets move forward and secure the players we still have by continuing to build the MMO for people who dislike MMOs.”

Then again, looking at the same numbers, someone could read, “Hey, we had great sales, but a full quarter of our players abandoned the game in the first three months. Clearly we need to do something better, and the crystal ball says those people left because of a lack of item progression. Get to work on Ascended, quick! Oh, and someone memo the players that we were planning on adding it all along.”

I know that’s all hypothetical, but hopefully it demonstrates why things aren’t so easily dismissed by “ANet clearly looked and saw that they would be in better shape with gear progression, so just accept it and move on.”

It’s more complex than that.

I don’t think so. They exceeded most of their sales figures pre-launch. People bought the game. They have the metrics. If you were around then, you’d have seen thread after thread after thread about people with nothing to do at max level. It was almost a pandemic. Not just here but on other forums, like the one I moderated.

It wasn’t just people rushing through the game and getting to level cap. It was the idea that people weren’t grinding for the cosmetic legendary weapons. Anet definitely has metrics to know who stops logging in and who doesn’t, and the game population was definitely, back then, on the way down.

Three months after launch there were entire guilds that went back to other games. When the Fractals came out, a boatload of people left as well, but even before that happened, the game was losing players. How many? Only Anet knows.

But they were in full panic mode, that much I can say with some certainty. Because they absolutely knew there’d be backlash (they said as much), and what other reason could they have had for changing direction if they didn’t see it as a way to avert catastrophe.

Now it might not have happened, but I’m saying their projections spooked them and that was their response.

Smith.1826:

Vayne.8563:

Smith.1826:

Vayne.8563:

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

Chuo.4238:

With all this arguing about MMO X vs MMO Y I think we’re losing sight of the point that ArenaNet kittened off a whole bunch of people with this Ascended gear – both in principle (prefer skill-based vs gear-based) and in practice (don’t like grinding mats/crafting/whatever in order to prepare to have fun).

I can say that many players who get kittened off at one game go find another.

Yep. Many players. And many players have stayed. This has been my point all along.

No one knows how many people would have left if Anet stayed the course. It’s not possible to know.

In your mind you believe Anet is losing more players than they’re keeping. I don’t believe that’s true…and I’m pretty sure Anet doesn’t either. A dev has told me concurrency numbers are on the rise and have been for some time.

I agree you were screwed over by the changes…but that doesn’t make them bad changes. They’re just changes that don’t work for people who share your sentiments.

I don’t know if they’re losing more than they’re gaining or not. I do know they lost me. So if anyone’s keeping track of numbers, they can add +1 to the tally.

I was getting away from that losing vs gaining argument, not adding to it. How ’bout we get back on topic?

Edit: And Vayne, stop putting words in my mouth. You do that virtually every time you quote someone. It’s no wonder people get on your case so much.

You said “many players get kittened off”..and while that’s no doubt true, if those players are a minority, then your point is moot.

What’s his point? I thought the extent of what he was saying was just that he and some other players were upset with the direction of the game.

It’s not just that some players are kittened off and it’s not about one post. The faction that is kittened off are saying (including Chuo) that this was a huge portion of the player base. It wasn’t just like her and a couple of friends. It was a lot of people.

Alright. But is that what he said right there? I could only gather from that post that he and other people are upset with the game.

What he said right there is no different than what he said in countless other threads. People are mad. We’ve known those people were mad since last November. They’ve been made since then…at a game they’re disappointed in.

The direction of the game changed…no one denies it. Ten months on and they’re still mad. They come to the forums of this game to complain about ascended gear..that was announced last November. You’d think by now they’d have figured out that the game has changed, it’s not for them, and they’d find a game that was.

Because saying OMFG there’s vertical progression in the game for ten months solves what? Is Anet going to stop and take it all out tomorrow?

I don’t like the vertical progression either. I’m not in complete disagreement with what’s being said. The only difference is, I’m not taking the inclusion of vertical progression as a personal attack. Anet saw a problem, Anet moved to fix the problem. I don’t agree it was the best solution by ten months on? I think people would have moved on by now, instead of hanging around to complain on a forum over a change that was announced so long ago.

Even I think the game is too grindy. So?

Im Mudbone.1437:

Vayne.8563:

Dailies don’t hurt casuals. Dailies give casuals more time before the pros get everything. I know people that even with time gating, got an ascended weapon in like five days. That’s without buying stuff from the market place. Without that time gating they’d have gotten it on day one.

Time gating makes it fairer for casuals, not less fair.

Otherwise some people would have thousands of laurels by now, and casuals would have far less.

The part underlined in your response is impossible to do in 5 days, because, it takes 9 days to acquire the time gated mats to even begin constructing your ascended weapon.

I’d have to double check, but I’m pretty sure one of my guildies made what he needed in five days. It’s also possible the first day he was able to do two, because of the time of the reset, and the time of the update.

Knote.2904:

Vayne.8563:

Knote.2904:

Vayne.8563:

Dailies don’t hurt casuals. Dailies give casuals more time before the pros get everything. I know people that even with time gating, got an ascended weapon in like five days. That’s without buying stuff from the market place. Without that time gating they’d have gotten it on day one.

Time gating makes it fairer for casuals, not less fair.

Otherwise some people would have thousands of laurels by now, and casuals would have far less.

And then you can’t play for w/e reason for a couple days? Then what? You’re behind and there’s no way to make up for that lost progress.

Right by not playing for a couple of days, you miss two laurels. But in those two days other players that had time could be ahead dozens of laurels. Being only two laurels behind isn’t worse than the alternative, is it?

Um, I’m starting to think you haven’t read my post. I never said to remove dailies, that was not the “alternative” I posted.

You said let daily credits stack up so you don’t have to log in every day. It’s never going to happen, because the purpose of dailies it to get people to log in every day. My implementing this, the whole purpose they exist ceases to exist. That’s why I said what I said.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Not much to say but “Yep”. I mean, that’s all spot-on. I remember before I was casual – back in WoW – I had no idea why people couldn’t always do all their dailies.

Now I actually have to use most of my time constructively, well, suddenly it becomes very clear.

And yes the solution you propose is absolutely perfect.

Vayne.8563:

Otherwise some people would have thousands of laurels by now, and casuals would have far less.

Nope, Vayne, read his post, don’t give a generic response. What he’s suggesting is much friendlier to casuals than the current system.

Right now hardcores have up to 358 Laurels. Casuals are unlikely to have more then a few dozen. This is only going to get WORSE, not better.

I didn’t take into account his suggestion because it’s not going to happen. The reason a daily is called a daily it to get people to log in…well…daily. It’s the whole point of the exercise. Games do it, because they want more people in world.

Taking away a reason to log in daily would diminish the purpose they were instituted in the first place. And taking that logic into account, time gating works in favor of casuals.

Knote.2904:

Vayne.8563:

Dailies don’t hurt casuals. Dailies give casuals more time before the pros get everything. I know people that even with time gating, got an ascended weapon in like five days. That’s without buying stuff from the market place. Without that time gating they’d have gotten it on day one.

Time gating makes it fairer for casuals, not less fair.

Otherwise some people would have thousands of laurels by now, and casuals would have far less.

And then you can’t play for w/e reason for a couple days? Then what? You’re behind and there’s no way to make up for that lost progress.

Right by not playing for a couple of days, you miss two laurels. But in those two days other players that had time could be ahead dozens of laurels. Being only two laurels behind isn’t worse than the alternative, is it?

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

Chuo.4238:

With all this arguing about MMO X vs MMO Y I think we’re losing sight of the point that ArenaNet kittened off a whole bunch of people with this Ascended gear – both in principle (prefer skill-based vs gear-based) and in practice (don’t like grinding mats/crafting/whatever in order to prepare to have fun).

I can say that many players who get kittened off at one game go find another.

Yep. Many players. And many players have stayed. This has been my point all along.

No one knows how many people would have left if Anet stayed the course. It’s not possible to know.

In your mind you believe Anet is losing more players than they’re keeping. I don’t believe that’s true…and I’m pretty sure Anet doesn’t either. A dev has told me concurrency numbers are on the rise and have been for some time.

I agree you were screwed over by the changes…but that doesn’t make them bad changes. They’re just changes that don’t work for people who share your sentiments.

I don’t know if they’re losing more than they’re gaining or not. I do know they lost me. So if anyone’s keeping track of numbers, they can add +1 to the tally.

I was getting away from that losing vs gaining argument, not adding to it. How ’bout we get back on topic?

Edit: And Vayne, stop putting words in my mouth. You do that virtually every time you quote someone. It’s no wonder people get on your case so much.

You said “many players get kittened off”..and while that’s no doubt true, if those players are a minority, then your point is moot. Your legitimate grievance is that the game has changed direction. But saying many people…how many becomes a very important question.

You completely missed the point again, because you assumed I said something I didn’t, and put words in my mouth….again. How about you just quit trying?

You misunderstand me as often I misunderstand you. It would be better if we didn’t respond to each other’s posts.

Dailies don’t hurt casuals. Dailies give casuals more time before the pros get everything. I know people that even with time gating, got an ascended weapon in like five days. That’s without buying stuff from the market place. Without that time gating they’d have gotten it on day one.

Time gating makes it fairer for casuals, not less fair.

Otherwise some people would have thousands of laurels by now, and casuals would have far less.

Smith.1826:

Vayne.8563:

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

Chuo.4238:

With all this arguing about MMO X vs MMO Y I think we’re losing sight of the point that ArenaNet kittened off a whole bunch of people with this Ascended gear – both in principle (prefer skill-based vs gear-based) and in practice (don’t like grinding mats/crafting/whatever in order to prepare to have fun).

I can say that many players who get kittened off at one game go find another.

Yep. Many players. And many players have stayed. This has been my point all along.

No one knows how many people would have left if Anet stayed the course. It’s not possible to know.

In your mind you believe Anet is losing more players than they’re keeping. I don’t believe that’s true…and I’m pretty sure Anet doesn’t either. A dev has told me concurrency numbers are on the rise and have been for some time.

I agree you were screwed over by the changes…but that doesn’t make them bad changes. They’re just changes that don’t work for people who share your sentiments.

I don’t know if they’re losing more than they’re gaining or not. I do know they lost me. So if anyone’s keeping track of numbers, they can add +1 to the tally.

I was getting away from that losing vs gaining argument, not adding to it. How ’bout we get back on topic?

Edit: And Vayne, stop putting words in my mouth. You do that virtually every time you quote someone. It’s no wonder people get on your case so much.

You said “many players get kittened off”..and while that’s no doubt true, if those players are a minority, then your point is moot.

What’s his point? I thought the extent of what he was saying was just that he and some other players were upset with the direction of the game.

It’s not just that some players are kittened off and it’s not about one post. The faction that is kittened off are saying (including Chuo) that this was a huge portion of the player base. It wasn’t just like her and a couple of friends. It was a lot of people.

I don’t just answer one post on one thread I’m I’m talking. Some of the conversations we’ve had about this go back months. The implication is always that Anet lost so many players. But no one knows how much and without knowing how much…it’s the power behind the statement is completely lost.

Tachenon.5270:

If ascended gear was (metaphorically speaking) triage, what happens when the (hypothetical) 45% of the player base (that stuck around for ascended gear) has gotten ascended gear, done what they’ve been given, and stopped?

It bought the company time to come out with something that was more sticky. Because that’s what all this is about …buying time.

Most MMOs have failed by this point in time (or they’re close to failing) because there’s never enough content at launch….ever. Not one MMO had enough content at launch. A year later, players all want more content, new content, constant content.

With Guild Wars 2, a portion of players, possibly a good portion weren’t staying. If you can’t keep your player base for three months after launch, what’s the game going to be like in a year. That’s the problem Anet developers were faced with.

What they needed was time. They launched too early, they had too many bugs, and they needed a stopgap measure. The other solutions would have taken too long to implement. At least that’s my personal theory and I have circumstantial evidence to back it up.

Gibson.4036:

Vayne.8563:

You said “many players get kittened off”..and while that’s no doubt true, if those players are a minority, then your point is moot.

Not entirely. There is such a thing as a “significant minority”. I’m sure ANet would be reluctant to lose 30%, or even 15% of their player base.

There’s also the damage that a “vocal minority” can cause in spreading information. Discontent can build on forums and cause people who are on the fence to decide not to try the game after all.

Not saying either of these is the case here in this situation. Just that it is too easy to dismiss minorities as meaningless.

I’m not dismissing minorities as meaningless…you’re missing my point.

Let’s pretend that you’re Anet, and you see that 45% of your player base has gotten exotic gear, done what you’ve given then and stopped. 45% in a very short period of time. (and yes, I’m making these numbers up).

Now, you guestimate that you might lose 30% of the playerbase, but keep the rest and get some of that 45% back.

Anet estimated that more people were interested in gear progression than were hurt by it.

Most importantly, the biggest percentage of the playerbase would probably play anyway.

That’s the problem with fundamentalists of all types. They’re almost always the minority, because most people just don’t care. It’s how people are wired. What percentage of people who play MMOs are REALLY vested in those MMOs. I’d guess that’s a much smaller percentage than most people think.

Most people bang around a bit, kill some stuff and get what they get. They don’t think about vertical progression. I’d wager most don’t even have it on their radar.

Anet obviously felt that they were going to lose a lot more than just a big percentage of players if they didn’t make a change…or they wouldn’t have made it.

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

Chuo.4238:

With all this arguing about MMO X vs MMO Y I think we’re losing sight of the point that ArenaNet kittened off a whole bunch of people with this Ascended gear – both in principle (prefer skill-based vs gear-based) and in practice (don’t like grinding mats/crafting/whatever in order to prepare to have fun).

I can say that many players who get kittened off at one game go find another.

Yep. Many players. And many players have stayed. This has been my point all along.

No one knows how many people would have left if Anet stayed the course. It’s not possible to know.

In your mind you believe Anet is losing more players than they’re keeping. I don’t believe that’s true…and I’m pretty sure Anet doesn’t either. A dev has told me concurrency numbers are on the rise and have been for some time.

I agree you were screwed over by the changes…but that doesn’t make them bad changes. They’re just changes that don’t work for people who share your sentiments.

I don’t know if they’re losing more than they’re gaining or not. I do know they lost me. So if anyone’s keeping track of numbers, they can add +1 to the tally.

I was getting away from that losing vs gaining argument, not adding to it. How ’bout we get back on topic?

Edit: And Vayne, stop putting words in my mouth. You do that virtually every time you quote someone. It’s no wonder people get on your case so much.

You said “many players get kittened off”..and while that’s no doubt true, if those players are a minority, then your point is moot. Your legitimate grievance is that the game has changed direction. But saying many people…how many becomes a very important question.

Chuo.4238:

With all this arguing about MMO X vs MMO Y I think we’re losing sight of the point that ArenaNet kittened off a whole bunch of people with this Ascended gear – both in principle (prefer skill-based vs gear-based) and in practice (don’t like grinding mats/crafting/whatever in order to prepare to have fun).

I can say that many players who get kittened off at one game go find another.

Yep. Many players. And many players have stayed. This has been my point all along.

No one knows how many people would have left if Anet stayed the course. It’s not possible to know.

In your mind you believe Anet is losing more players than they’re keeping. I don’t believe that’s true…and I’m pretty sure Anet doesn’t either. A dev has told me concurrency numbers are on the rise and have been for some time.

I agree you were screwed over by the changes…but that doesn’t make them bad changes. They’re just changes that don’t work for people who share your sentiments.

MikaHR.1978:

Vayne.8563:

MikaHR.1978:

Vayne.8563:

MikaHR.1978:

Vayne.8563:

xephire.8324:

Anyway don’t show your support for ANET if you don’t like the direction they are going so they won’t make another WOW like game….

Yes this game is very much like WoW. I mean they both have swords and staffs. It must be a WoW clone.

Saying a game is like WoW doesn’t make a game like WoW. Just sayin’.

Ultimate defense….of EVERY WoW clone*….and they all failed.

Just sayin.

Oh, and losing 5 MILLION players is NOT successful.

The ONLY MMO that still gains players is EvE.

*except Rift, they pretty much advertised as WoW clone. Didnt help much either way.

First of all, comparing a themepark MMO to a sandbox MMO isn’t really convincing me of anything.

Oh look, niche Eve sandbox MMO has a growing population. They’re reached half a million players. Okay. Not really all that much for a theme park MMO, but certainly respectable for a sand box.

More to the point, how many of Eve’s players are casual? How easy is it to play Eve casually? You can just sort of log in, come back a couple of weeks later and log in again?

I don’t see how anyone can compare these two games…maybe individual aspects, but that’s not what you’re doing. You’re talking about success.

Secondly, the conclusions you’re extrapolating from information you have is flawed. Why did the games that mimic WoW fail? You’ve drawn a specific conclusion as if they’ve all failed for the same reason.

Many games failed because they were so buggy they were virtually unplayable (Vanguard/Warhammer). Others failed for other reasons. Some in fact, haven’t failed at all, they’ve just had limited success.

There’s a certain way of thinking that puts all your eggs in one basket. This game failed because of X, that game failed because of Y. There are very few games that fail for a single reason. Trying to show that you know the reason any of the games failed makes me question your entire premise.

Ahahahhahhahahaahah

Yes, obviously, its not “fooling” you. MMO is MMO. You can compare MMOs as much as you wish and its a FACT EvE is champion in that field.

Limited success? You call WoW that now? To me WoW was a success, sorry. But its long time now.

Saying you can compare an MMO that’s a sandbox to an MMO that’s at themepark is saying you can compare golf to basketball because they’re both sports. Sure it can be done, but the validity of doing so must be questioned.

No one ever said WoW wasn’t successful. However, WoW came out ages ago, over 8 years, in a completely different market. Even Blizzard was forced to scrap Titan because it wasn’t going to work. So where’s their next “big” MMO?

Every other MMO has met with limited success in comparison. You bring up a game with half a million subs, from a playerbase where most people have multiple accounts. How many people are actually playing Eve? Do you know?

Again. Limited success….rofl. Buzzword for unsuccessful. Im sure your “target audience” dig that.

Of course, basketball is more successful than golf. EASY rofl Not that it matters, but just for fun.

People in Blizzard are not fools, theyve taken Titan back to drawing board to TRY to make something that will work, yet another WoW clone wouldnt really cut it.

And how many active players WoW has? You are probably unaware how Blizzard counts “subs”, otherwise you wouldnt talk nonsense, at least SUBS in EvE are SUBS by definition.

Why must you insult? I don’t say what you’re saying is nonsense, even though you deliberately misrepresent what I say, ignore my points and don’t furnish any detail to back up what you say? Is it really necessary to laugh and sneer at people you don’t agree with?

You don’t have a valid point in this argument, and you try to cover it up with disrespect. I don’t think you’re fooling anyone.

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

So where’s their next “big” MMO?

I don’t know but someday – someday! – someone will create the MMO to rule all MMOs and it will be Days of Our Lives Online, based on the classic TV soap which features a setting that offers everything any MMO player anywhere could ever want.

I don’t know if it will be Blizzard. I have played a few WoW-clones here and there but never WoW itself, so I don’t know anything about Blizzard. Could they pull it off? Beats me. But just take a moment and ponder what anet might do with a Sami Brady dungeon/event…

I feel really horrible that I know who Sami Brady is. lol

MikaHR.1978:

Vayne.8563:

Do you really think a niche game today can survive the same way a niche game did 8 years ago?

EvE says hi and tells you its 10 years and still going strong and growing.

Opposed to every EQ/WoW clone and….WoW itself.

You mean Eve came out today? Who knew?

Because that was the premise.

The premise wasn’t a game that came out ten years ago and built a niche following. The premise is if those games came out today and didn’t have years in a competition free environment to build their reputation.

Thus you didn’t answer my question.

MikaHR.1978:

Vayne.8563:

MikaHR.1978:

Vayne.8563:

xephire.8324:

Anyway don’t show your support for ANET if you don’t like the direction they are going so they won’t make another WOW like game….

Yes this game is very much like WoW. I mean they both have swords and staffs. It must be a WoW clone.

Saying a game is like WoW doesn’t make a game like WoW. Just sayin’.

Ultimate defense….of EVERY WoW clone*….and they all failed.

Just sayin.

Oh, and losing 5 MILLION players is NOT successful.

The ONLY MMO that still gains players is EvE.

*except Rift, they pretty much advertised as WoW clone. Didnt help much either way.

First of all, comparing a themepark MMO to a sandbox MMO isn’t really convincing me of anything.

Oh look, niche Eve sandbox MMO has a growing population. They’re reached half a million players. Okay. Not really all that much for a theme park MMO, but certainly respectable for a sand box.

More to the point, how many of Eve’s players are casual? How easy is it to play Eve casually? You can just sort of log in, come back a couple of weeks later and log in again?

I don’t see how anyone can compare these two games…maybe individual aspects, but that’s not what you’re doing. You’re talking about success.

Secondly, the conclusions you’re extrapolating from information you have is flawed. Why did the games that mimic WoW fail? You’ve drawn a specific conclusion as if they’ve all failed for the same reason.

Many games failed because they were so buggy they were virtually unplayable (Vanguard/Warhammer). Others failed for other reasons. Some in fact, haven’t failed at all, they’ve just had limited success.

There’s a certain way of thinking that puts all your eggs in one basket. This game failed because of X, that game failed because of Y. There are very few games that fail for a single reason. Trying to show that you know the reason any of the games failed makes me question your entire premise.

Ahahahhahhahahaahah

Yes, obviously, its not “fooling” you. MMO is MMO. You can compare MMOs as much as you wish and its a FACT EvE is champion in that field.

Limited success? You call WoW that now? To me WoW was a success, sorry. But its long time now.

Saying you can compare an MMO that’s a sandbox to an MMO that’s at themepark is saying you can compare golf to basketball because they’re both sports. Sure it can be done, but the validity of doing so must be questioned.

No one ever said WoW wasn’t successful. However, WoW came out ages ago, over 8 years, in a completely different market. Even Blizzard was forced to scrap Titan because it wasn’t going to work. So where’s their next “big” MMO?

Every other MMO has met with limited success in comparison. You bring up a game with half a million subs, from a playerbase where most people have multiple accounts. How many people are actually playing Eve? Do you know?

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Vayne.8563:

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Vayne.8563:

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Vayne.8563:

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You don’t need to know 8D it’s not of your business in the slightest!
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No big business and MMOs have become big business, can function that way. It’s not realistic.

But that depends on the other comapny’s excecution of their concept, aswell as the concept aswell, and finally, the polish of the concept (Lore, class names, blah blah blah).

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So I mean, your argument, whilst right by principal, like mine actually is conditional. Alot of people say FF14 is great, but visiting game stores, I find alot of staff who played the game after GW2 and other games, say it’ll go f2p soon. Now how soon? No idea. Are they infallible? Obviously not. But given you have someone who sells the games, plays the game, speaks to people who play the game, sells the game cards of the game – they’re at very least observing something. Then you have to factor in things like Sales for extra objects, like Gem cards or RP (Im using LoL based example because I’m most familiar with it). Some companies succeed on whatever they’re selling outright, but micro transactions are ignored.

And just as well, GW1 largely did exactly that, it didn’t really change from Prophecies to EotN. You did have major changes like for example, they introduced the Luxon-Kurzick system for PvP, giving it a new dimension. But if you look at Armor, for almost a decade there was NO vertical progression, whilst every other kind of MMO-esque game aspired for exactly that. Can you contest that GW1 is successful independant of comparison to any other game of its time?

It’s still a different market. You say do something well. Today don’t something well for how many people…and what are the odds some other company with more money won’t come along in a year and do it better, the same thing, and take away your player base.

Diversity can equal security. That’s why most big companies end up diversifying. It’s why supermarkets end up developing film. They don’t develop film better, faster or cheaper than anyone else, but they do get a percentage of that market share.

How is it a different market? WoW, Tera, SWTOR, GW2, TSW – they’re all MMOs. Unless they’ve got a different label for GW2 provide me the proof and Ill gladly accept my misunderstanding.

You’re right in saying diversity can be secure, but you’re looking at it from the direct opposite from myself. If you have lots of avenues to work, around, great, but the more avenues you have, the higher the maintainence. ANet is hardly a poor company. They have the funds, and resources, and are catering to several branches already, but the further thin you spread your resources, the harder it is to manage them, and the more taxing the effort is. If you have 5 niches you’re targeting with $50,000,000, you can divide those funds more effectively into those nix he’s demands than 50 Niches with the same funds. And lets face it – sloppiness is toxic for a game. If ANet is not actually Implementing things properly, people are going to leave. People are going to leave with a bad taste, and their opinion of Anet isn’t going to be 100% good if the game hasn’t been done correctly.

More importantly than that, Anet should stick to its own convictions, but that’s anothe topic all together.

It’s a different market because when Guild Wars 1 came out, IE when it made most of its sales and money, there were NO free to play MMOs. How can you say that’s not a different Market. Do you know how old Guild Wars 1 was when Rift released? SWToR? It was already pretty much dead by then, certainly by comparison. Far fewer people playing it. It’s heyday had nothing but MMOs with monthly fees.

But today you have DDO, AoC, TSW, SWToR, Lotro, Star Trek, Champions Online, Allods, Perfect World, hell so many free to play MMOs that didn’t exist when Guild Wars 1 made a name for itself.

How can you possibly compare a market that had no competition at all to a market that has tons of competition. At the time, Guild Wars 2 was the only fantasy multiplayer game without a monthly fee.

As others have said, Tequatl is here to stay..and the Queen’s Gauntlet will return.

Tom Gore.4035:

EVE has 500k accounts. I would be surprised if it has even half as many players…

Oh yes…several of my friends of multiple accounts.