Fantasy MMO developers can go two different routes. They can invent their own stuff (which is usually based on the previous stuff anyway, just with a twist) and gain respect from all the critics and nerds for being “original”. Or they can stick with the popular stuff that the masses already know and love, and maybe have a huge mass audience hit like WoW. GW2 already made its choice in this regard and has to live with it. It will never be a HUGE game like WoW.
Yep, Anet definitely made the right choice. Simply because I found WoW to be boring and relatively annoying, though it is addictive. Still, I moved from WoW to Guild Wars 1 and never looked back.
It’s really nice that there are blockbuster games like WoW, to keep the status quo busy with genre standard tropes. It makes Guild Wars 2 a far far better place to spend time. Much better player base.
It’s funny because my teenaged boys moved from Guild Wars to WoW before I moved from WoW to Guild Wars. WoW definitely appealed to them more.
They’ve both stopped playing WoW and one of them is playing Guild Wars 2 now. He likes it much better. Of course, he’s older and his tastes are more refined but what you can do. <grins>
Wait a minute, how would you know farmers in Orr ruined the game? You’ve stated in posts above that you are not playing for rewards. The rewards are simply incidental to your gameplay. You are playing the game correctly, for the game itself; remember, the way Anet intends it to be played? For someone playing this way, how would you even become aware of a game ruined by farmers?
Right, I’m playing for gameplay. And Orr is part of the game. So if I want to explore Orr, look around, get the feel of the place, and what I run into a simply a huge zerg that makes expeirencing the events as they were meant to be experienced completely hopeless, then that affects my game.
See you can be in Orr to farm, like the guys who ran the events back and forth over and over ad nauseum, or you can pass through Orr and be completely screwed over by the fact that it’s completely meaningless…which is what happened to me.
Though some people don’t like it, there’s a story in Guild Wars 2 that, get this, ends in Orr. The entire game points you to Orr. You set up a beachfront on Orr. Fort Trinity is on the border of Orr and you make your foray into Orr. The entire game leads you to this great, fantastic moment.
So you finally get to the Cursed Shore, the final zone of the game. Something you’ve been fighting your way towards, and there are already so many people there fighting that Orr is just a joke. You run through event chains without even seeing anything, because farmers are repeating the same quests over and over.
I don’t farm Orr. I went there to experience it. I didn’t end up spending time because the sheer number of farmers made the zone absolutely impossible to play.
Edit: I"m really glad they fixed Orr now, but I’ll never again be able to experience Orr for the first time the way Anet meant it to be experienced.
@Bloodstealer
I used to work in the industry..as a game buyer for a computer store. I’ve been watching this industry for a long time. Sure it’s not really being an insider, but you can’t just lump all businesses in together.
In fact, I was more involved later in publishing, which isn’t all that different, in many ways for software publishing. One of the things about book publishing is that a book will sell more copies in the first 30-60 days of existence than it will for the entire rest of its life. Most books. And the same is also true of most games. The MMO can be the exception.
But if an MMO came out strong and suddenly died off, the thing you do to create sales is to rush out an expansion. This is the typical market reaction. It’s the only thing you can do in increase revenue. You can also try to cut expenses, which means, most often, laying off staff.
I like to deal in facts too. But since the naysayers don’t (and they have a whole lot less to go on), I’ll continue to post threads like this.
I’m not sure you can blanket say business do, when software industry business are far more specific. And again, we see what other MMOs have done that don’t meet expectations.
There are different kinds of speculation and even different kinds of guesses. My guess is an educated guess based on most of a lifetime of watching an industry. It could still be wrong.
But it’s not just a position pulled out of thin air.
Hmm I don’t know. For a lot of people how well the game is doing does matter. I’m probably personally not one of them, unless it’s doing so badly that I can’t find a guild or people to play with. That would be pretty annoying.
But when you consider that at this point in it’s growth, the well-selling SWToR was already laying off a decent chunk of staff, it certain gives me reason to believe the game isn’t doing badly.
Yes you are using nothing but speculative numbers in your argument.. and what you fail to understand is even if there are a million players left the concurrent numbers of logins based on the 1million is going to be significantly lower… but you and I or anyone know nothing of the games overheads, the breakpoints or there cashflow dynamics… you are simply trying to play the doomsayer and white angel all at the same time.. whilst armed with nothing but baseless facts and sheer guess work.
One thing we do know about overhead and breakpoints is that the whole GW-GW2 server design was about minimal costs and scale ability. As far as server costs go, it is pretty much a one player costs X times amount of online players. This was the core reason why a.net devs quit WoW and started their own thing, because they figured out how to make a free MMO.
Leaves employee costs, which is still low considering a.net is a mid-size firm.
I’m not making their balance, but I’d wager they can be a very healthy company with far less active players than any other MMO on the market. Don’t forget GW1 was thriving as a relatively obscure cult MMO.
I can only agree with this post… though no company large or small, is immune to market forces… but unless the OP has all the actual facts, rhymes and reasons to his/her disposal.. making such threads is really nothing more than heresay… then again every MMO forum has them being reeled out over and over I guess.
That’s my point. I’d have never made this post, if I hadn’t seen two or three posts asking if it’s dying. Well, no one really knows…but we have “some” indication. If it was really dying, you wouldn’t see them hiring. There’s NO percentage in hiring a staff for a dying game. The situations where that would be acceptable are pretty kitten rare, particularly in gaming.
No one knows but conclusions can be drawn from things we do know, and things we see. But I’m kitten tired of people making stuff up. If you’re going to say the game is dying (and plenty of people on these forums have), then at least show some evidence, other than all my friends left the game.
We don’t know everything, but there is at least circumstantial evidence that the game isn’t dying. How well its’ doing, no one can say, but dying?
That’s why I made this post in the first place. As an answer to those people.
It is funny how people assume that ‘farming’ harms the game. Let me give you an example of farming in another game. I farmed for years in WoW. I farmed leather and the other mats necessary to keep several sets of armor on the AH (TP) that allowed fresh max level characters to quickly get to heroic dungeons. Just as farming behavior does in real life, it helped the game. Players were able to get gear that helped them achieve their goals in the game and it helped me ‘pay the bills’. Some perhaps haven’t noticed but everything you want to do in an MMO costs something. There are always a number of currencies, but everything costs something. In order to travel, repair, acquire gear, in other words, in order to expand and develop your character it requires currency. ‘Making money’ is no more a bad thing in an MMO than it is in life. And, it is just as necessary. Arguably, the Legendary is pinnacle of achievement in GW2 and it was designed as such. Can you say it does not require the concerted effort of ‘farming’ to achieve it. And, yet, Anet designed it. Does Anet oppose ‘farming’? Or, is it just a certain type of farming? Or, is opposition to farming simply absurd in itself?
Farming works the same way in games that it does IRL. Farming, by players playing the game, never hurts a game, rather it helps it. Imagine a government IRL that imposed an anti-farming policy. It’s just as absurd in a game economy. The idea that it’s to manage playstyles is just as offensive. It’s common enough IRL, i.e., well-meaning people who are tunneled on managing other people’s lives for the good of the other people. But it’s wrong.
Games do not create worlds ex nihilo; we create after ourselves. Games are a human enterprise. By and large, things that work well IRL, the general underlying concepts like risk and reward, effort and reward, will also work well in games. Allowing players to play a game their way also works well, though there will never be a shortage of Glady Kravitz’s intent upon leading others lives for them.
Actually some governments have imposed policies that were very anti-farming, so that’s a pretty bad analogy. There’s no telling with how bad governments are though.
The point is you give one example in one game. I gave another example in this game. The people who ran the paths in Orr over and over and over actually ruined the game for all non-farmers. You don’t see it if you farmed it, you do see it if you don’t.
You had a zillion guys there taking down stuff so far you couldn’t get a hit on it as a melee character. You had to try to tag as many mobs as possible, because it was the only way to do stuff. And then, you had to hope people even stayed, and didn’t just tag and run, as many farmers tend to do (I know some of them which is how I know).
Overpopulated events because they happen to be profitable is agaisnt the best interest of the game. I think so and apparently Anet does too. Because if I were a newbie, just getting to Orr and I saw what used to be there, I’d turn around and go home.
Look at what happened when everyone ran to do dragon events. Overcrowed, unfun lagfests, because this is where the “good loot” is, so this is where the farmers go. Are those events really fun for ANYONE? Were the more fun when you just happened to run into them and there were only a few people there, before Anet “fixed” the drops?
Farmers will never get it, and that’s not really surprising to me. But other people ARE affected by that type of thing, even if you think they’re not.
It needs one, yes they say they are working on it, but they also said any new mmo should launch with one….
So a bit of prodding to push it up the priority list is not out of line.
The prodding won’t push it up the list, though. At least, I don’t think so.
People have been asking/posting about an LFG tool since day 1, seven months ago. The including tool obviously doesn’t work. Half the people don’t even know there’s an LFG tool in the game.
The game obviously launched early, probably to get out ahead of MoP. It should have launched now, instead of then. It would be a better game.
But if you really think Anet’s list of priorities will change from yet another thread…especially when they’re now already talking about, meaning it’s imminent, isn’t very realistic.
Obviously if it was ready, it would be released already. It’s not. But I would expect it soonish.
Shame too, cause I love my engie. lol
Yeah, I forgot to mention that. That site is great…though obviously an in game tool would be better. At least, for the time being, there’s something to use though.
Never had an abyss dye…and I’m rather sad about that. My wife got black and white dye in the same fractal run, but I don’t think she’d ever had abyss either.
Because there has never been another thread about this topic. Anet is working on an LFG tool, it’s in progress now, when it’s done it will be in the game.
Another thread about it won’t make it come any faster.
@Vayne
So people being happy to see other players = cooperation?
Lmao… Ok.
As opposed to competition, yes. That’s the whole point. If you can rez each other and you’re rewarded for it, the game is encouraging you to rez others. It’s encouraging you to combo. People who come from games like WoW and that ilk can immediately see the difference.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that you can’t.
The people who run the same stuff in Orr over and over again, DID ruin the game for anyone who just wanted to play. You have to either play the tag mob game (not something that the devs intended, I can assure you) or you have people tagging a few mobs, scaling the event up and moving on. Do you really think that kind of selfish behavior is what the devs had in mind.
It was supposed to be a cooperative game, not a selfish one. But farmers are inherently selfish. I know one of them. He’s my son. He’ll tag a mob, tag a bunch of them, enough to get his reward and move into the next event. He doesn’t care if the event fails or succeeds. He’s not interested in playing the game created by Anet. He’s interested in getting loot. And if he gets loot at the expense of another, so what?
You asked for an anti-farming policy and someone linked a page from the Guild Wars wiki about it, but you still haven’t commented on it. Could it be that you’re actually wrong about Anet and their policy on farming?
Yes farmers ruin the game for people who just want to play it “normally”. If you don’t think so…well that’s your opinion. Good thing Anet seems to share mine.
I have yet to see an official statement where the company actually states what you claim as truth. Anything other than that is pure speculation. A wiki entry for GW1 won’t cut it, sorry.
If the tagging mechanism wasn’t intended it would not have been in game to begin with or it would have been changed/removed a long time ago because of this ‘farming’ exploit. But, instead it was fixed in a previous update to actually give loot if you get experience for a kill. So now even casuals can get loot during events.
Also… if Anet never intended for anyone to ‘farm’ for anything, why are the requirements for legendary weapons so outrageous? Do you honestly think they expected gamers to just kitten around in LA and eventually get the required mats, as if by magic?
Farming, ruining the economy, lol.
That post in the wiki, had a reference. That reference told where the quote came from. It was well-known among Guild Wars 1 players that Anet was anti-farming. I can’t imagine anyone who played the game that didn’t know it, even down the creation of Skeletons of Dhuum which Anet said straight out was to prevent speed clears and solo farming.
The fact is, Anet wants people to play their game, rather than “farm” their game. The DR isn’t all that tough. If you farm one area for an hour or so, you’re going to run into DR. So move areas?
The whole DR thing isn’t such a big deal except for a fairly small percentage of the player base, who can’t let it go. But it’s been around a long time.
If you don’t want to believe it, don’t. Because obviously you know better.
It’s true. I met my wife in a virtual world. I moved 10,000 miles to be with her in real life. It seemed to make some kind of sense at the time. lol
It’s unfortunate.
I wanted to take Guild Wars 2 seriously and be immersed in a world where things mattered. Teddy bear back packs, ginger bread swords and 8bit super Mario worlds feel so out of place and disjointed that it looks like they have developers making content for Guild Wars 2 who have never seen Guild Wars 2.
GW2 is horrible for immersion players, but wasn’t that clear at launch already?
I’m an immersion player and Guild Wars 2 isn’t horrible for me. That said, it’s never going to be as immersive as a single player game. But as MMOs go, I’ve yet to find what that is more immersive.
It may, but it may not. Your point? Casual = limited interest. How can you argue that leads to more money? Oh, that’s right, you can’t.
You are having a tantrum aren’t you? Sorry. We should end the conversation before you get more upset.
By the way, the real money in gaming is now in casual games and cash shops. Its not for nothing failed mmos go free to play. But hey, if you want to believe otherwise its your right.
Proof? Links?
EVE seems to be doing quite well…
Eve is doing well, but last I checked, they didn’t have half a million subscribers. I’m guessing at least that number of people are playing Guild Wars 2 right, not daily but over all. And yes, it’s just a guess.
But if a couple of months ago they hit the 3 million market, and 2/3s of those people have stopped playing, you have a million people left. And more people do come to the game all the time, because we’re constantly getting new players in the guild.
A game can exist quite happily on half a million players or even less, and still make a profit. If Guild Wars 2 keeps getting better (and to many of us it is), then it’ll be here for a long time to come.
Yes you are using nothing but speculative numbers in your argument.. and what you fail to understand is even if there are a million players left the concurrent numbers of logins based on the 1million is going to be significantly lower… but you and I or anyone know nothing of the games overheads, the breakpoints or there cashflow dynamics… you are simply trying to play the doomsayer and white angel all at the same time.. whilst armed with nothing but baseless facts and sheer guess work.
If the game is enjoyable for you then why do you need to seek clarification if the game is thriving or not currently and why even bother comparing it with other MMO’s with other business models behind them….. you lack any kind of informative facts from which to base this from.
Many MMO’s over the years have failed, not simply because they were sub based or “pay to play” but because the global economy has changed, the marketplace in which they are sat has expanded in all directions and us gamers have so much choice available to us…. every new launch sees a wave of players come and go. Yes there are also some that were just incredibly bad or poorly managed etc, etc but please…. P2P, B2P, F2P.. all of the different models have their pro’s but at the same time they are all able to be effected by the same cons…. in fact many MMO prefer to offer a choice now of how you wish to play.. sub or F2P…
Every game will also then have its collection of white nights and cash shop whiners and every MMO has a person or persons who seek feel compelled for some reason to write threads about the games rise/demise.If your really interested in ANETS or other MMO’s grounding then write a letter and enquire to them or look out for their quarterly reports etc (if they have them)… until then go enjoy the game and quit writing this nonsense.
You make fair enough points, but you’re entering a conversation somewhat in the middle. There have been a few threads on these forums that talk about the game dying (with absolutely no proof whatsoever), but there have been very few games pointing to the game’s health.
No one knows of course, which is the point. If people are free to post comments about how the game is dying with no evidence whatsoever, I should be free to post threads that the game is doing well. From what I can “see” in game it’s doing very well. But that’s just my point of view.
The hiring bit I find interesting because I have seen other MMOs that have let people go due to sales figures that haven’t been met. But we do KNOW how many sales were expected for Guild Wars 2, based on industry analysis, which is what defines a successful game, at least to some degree.
And we do know Anet has exceeded that expectation.
That’s not conjecture at all. That’s fact.
How it will do in the future, no one can say.
Yeah the PvP community is doing really good. Its going to be esports very soon. As for PvE, its not doing that great and neither is WvW. They tried to put some ranking in WvW but that’s not doing that great either.
As you can see right now the WvW players don’t have WvW titles but the PvP players do. PvP is doing very good right now, this game is probably one of the best PvP games of all time.
If anet gives the PvE and WvW community the same amount of love it gives the PvP community than I can see the PvE and WvW doing outstanding.
Sorry but this is the weirdest post in the thread. According to most people, PvE and WvW are both doing much better than SPvP. Whiles I understand some people like SPvP, it’s probably been the most complained about segment of the game…particularly with regard to balance issues.
Balance issues are a bit important in PvE and they’re a bit more important than WvW (but the whole zerg thing does a lot to mitigate that) but in 5v5, it becomes much more apparent.
I’d say PvP in Guild Wars 2 is probably the part of the game suffering the most, not the least. And the upgrades to the game tend to focus mostly on PVe.
You know, SAB reminds me of Minecraft, a very recent game, notably enjoyed by people the age of 13 and younger. You may need to be an old fart to get some of the homages, but I think much of SAB could be close to home to any child who’s played the blockbuster sandbox game.
I don’t know where you pulled that demographic from Minecraft from, but my guild, which is 18 and over (with one 17 year old) has a strong Mindcraft playerbase in it. One of the guys in his 20s has his own server and several of the group play Mindcraft together. Most of the people enjoying this are much older than in their 20s.
Read my post more closely. I didn’t say “demographic”. You’re arguing a strawman.
Right, you used the term “notably enjoyed by”, which could very well be the demographic of the game. I mean that’s sort of what a demographic is. It’s a record of the people who enjoy the game, particularly if that age group notably enjoys it.
It’s not really a strawman argument. It’s rephrasing what you’ve already said into words that mean the same thing.
Brillaint, OP, just brilliant. Couldn’t have implied it better myself. lol
I tell my wife to wait all the time when I’m playing…I guess I’m hard core. Of course, the same is true of her. She makes me wait while she’s playing. Then again, we’re often playing together, so it’s not as much of a problem. lol
Seriously I understand what you’re saying. Real life has to come first.
I’m still trying to figure out who to contact to cancel my real life account, though. lol
I don’t think the presence subs is a good basis for argument. There are too many problems with that premise. First of all, MMOs are in competition for people’s time. If people aren’t willing to give the game their time (much less their money), then it can’t rightfully factor them into their playerbase. And then there’s the issue with knowing the relative sizes of the ones willing to pay subs and the ones who aren’t, and more importantly how loyal the latter group will be.
Being willing to give time is completely different than being willing to give money. I paid for Guild Wars 2. If I am willing to wait for it to mature, then I can do so without throwing money at it every month. So many people play and leave and come back.
With a pay to play MMO there’s an extra barrier to coming back. You have to like it enough to pay again to try it. That’s not really the case with a buy to play MMO. A lot of people who got bored or tired of the game came back and feel refreshed. Would they have paid to come back? Logically some would have and some wouldn’t have.
At any rate, like I said, a whole lot of people in the thread I mentioned specifically said they’d never pay a monthly fee for any game. They don’t believe in it. And we still need to know how big that group is.
It might be noted however that in similar polls, Guild Wars 1 players often said the same thing over the years, and many of those people played Guild Wars 1 for years. After all, if you’re not willing to spend monthly money on entertainment, are you going to go out and buy a ton of games all the time?
If players aren’t willing to give an MMO their time or attention, they naturally aren’t going to invest any money the goods it offers. By comparison, B2P MMOs have advantages over P2P in the lack of subs, but it’s still a stretch to assume that no subs=retention. MMOs aren’t the only type of entertainment available. How likely is it that players who left will come back at all for more of the same when there’s so much else they could do? On that note, how likely is it that the GW2 players who have left will come back at all even if they didn’t have anything else going on? Is the quality and quantity of content offered by GW2 enough to bring these players back and get enough of them to shell out money to support the developers?
If it sounds like I’m asking too many questions, that’s because the presumption of B2P=retention has that many holes in it.
On the other hand, P2P games have gamers that are generally happy to be paying for a premium service in the first place. However, the service acts as sunk cost over time and had other implications that many GW1 players wanted to get away from. I don’t think it means that these players didn’t have the money to spend (although that is true for some). It likely means they didn’t want to spend that much money or time on one game, because of financial reasons or otherwise. If could very well be worth it for them to go out and pay for or rent other shiny titles, or do real life stuff.
I never said B2P=retention. Totally putting words into my mouth here. What I did say was that there is an audience of people who will NEVER play an MMO with a monthly fee, and we don’t know how big that audience is.
If only part of that audience is retained, that means you have a base of players that aren’t ever going to play WoW unless WoW drops its monthly fee, which I don’t see happening.
I think that retention requires players. If you don’t have players, you can’t retain them. So this base of people who’ll never play a monthly fee have to be factored into any equation.
For anyone just coming into this thread, here’s a synopsis
“GW2 is doing great!”
“No it isn’t, it’s already dead or dying!”
“What? Prove it!”
“I don’t need to prove it, you prove it’s still doing well!”
“I don’t need to prove it’s doing well, you prove it’s dying!”
ad nauseum
The End.
I don’t know. I did offer a few facts. One stock company predicted Guild Wars 2 would hit 3.2 million sales in the first year, and they accomplished that in less than half that time. It was on the basis of that companies recommendations that many people bought NCSoft Stock. In other words the game has at least met expectations…that much is fact.
I also pointed out that Anet was hiring, and rather broadly hiring. Since other games that have no met expectations recently have cut their staff, rather than hired, I would say that there’s at the very least anecdotal evidence that the game isn’t dying.
Doing well or not, there’s no real evidence of it dying. There is some evidence that it’s at least met expectations.
You know, SAB reminds me of Minecraft, a very recent game, notably enjoyed by people the age of 13 and younger. You may need to be an old fart to get some of the homages, but I think much of SAB could be close to home to any child who’s played the blockbuster sandbox game.
I don’t know where you pulled that demographic from Minecraft from, but my guild, which is 18 and over (with one 17 year old) has a strong Mindcraft playerbase in it. One of the guys in his 20s has his own server and several of the group play Mindcraft together. Most of the people enjoying this are much older than in their 20s.
I actually go by what they say. They’ve said straight out that they’ve made a game that’s cooperative. They’ve tried to take out all the little selfish and griefing parts that other games have. Sometimes with mixed success, but it is what they’ve said, and there’s plenty of evidence to support where they’re going.
And yet, much of the game is solo-able. By design. That is kind of the antithesis of cooperative, or am I wrong?
They tried to take out the selfish parts? How? Where did they ever say that except in your head? Making rewards better than others is inherently creating selfish content. Why in God’s name do you think that people want gear grind so bad in MMO’s? It’s to measure their kitten with. That is selfish.
You keep saying their is all the evidence, but you rarely ever provide it. I wonder why that is…
Well for example, I did say there was an anti-farming policy and I didn’t take the time to get the evidence, because I don’t really care enough to do that research for the benefit of lazy people. Fortunately, someone else has done that research for me.
On the issue with the manifesto, I have gone in quite a few threads on the subject and posted the relevant text. Again, lazy people who don’t read the text, and won’t wiki it can comment all they want. It’s obvious to me you’d rather have me do the work for you. Do it yourself.
As for the stuff that Anet set specifically about cooperation rather than competition, I thought it would be obvious but here’s some evidence.
Anet has said, paraphrasing here, “they want people to be happy to see other players”. To this end, they’ve added to the game…
Everyone gets full experience for kills, and full loot (instead of making it that someone who does most of the work gets more loot and experience).
Everyone has their own resource nodes (so you’re not competing for it and don’t have to worry about other players taking “your” node as in most other games.
Everyone can rez everyone else and yes, they even reward people for rezzing other people with title and experience.
Almost every profession can combo with another profession. Cross profession combos can be useful.
Everyone has their own loot. No rollling for loot like in other games, means less fighting over drops.
Again, anyone whos’ followed this game at all, will tell you that Anet has said MORE THAN ONCE that this game was made so that you’d be happy to see other players, instead of feeling annoyed that another player showed up to ruin your experience.
I didn’t want to have to list these completely obvious design decisons, partly because they’re completely obvious and partly because you should have heard Anet say these things if you’ve followed the game at all.
I don’t think the presence subs is a good basis for argument. There are too many problems with that premise. First of all, MMOs are in competition for people’s time. If people aren’t willing to give the game their time (much less their money), then it can’t rightfully factor them into their playerbase. And then there’s the issue with knowing the relative sizes of the ones willing to pay subs and the ones who aren’t, and more importantly how loyal the latter group will be.
Being willing to give time is completely different than being willing to give money. I paid for Guild Wars 2. If I am willing to wait for it to mature, then I can do so without throwing money at it every month. So many people play and leave and come back.
With a pay to play MMO there’s an extra barrier to coming back. You have to like it enough to pay again to try it. That’s not really the case with a buy to play MMO. A lot of people who got bored or tired of the game came back and feel refreshed. Would they have paid to come back? Logically some would have and some wouldn’t have.
At any rate, like I said, a whole lot of people in the thread I mentioned specifically said they’d never pay a monthly fee for any game. They don’t believe in it. And we still need to know how big that group is.
It might be noted however that in similar polls, Guild Wars 1 players often said the same thing over the years, and many of those people played Guild Wars 1 for years. After all, if you’re not willing to spend monthly money on entertainment, are you going to go out and buy a ton of games all the time?
@Clay (I left out your response because the post is just too kitten long with it)
There was a thread on these forums, asking if Guild Wars 2 went pay to play would you still play. One of the most common responses to this was, if it was pay to play I wouldn’t have bought it in the first place. I find it naive to believe that everyone is willing to pay a monthly fee to play ANY game. That’s why MMOs in general, pay to play particularly, remain niche. Even WoW only has a relatively small percentage of all gamers, though it has a huge percentage of MMO gamers. Many many people will not pay a month fee to a game for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it’s principle, sometimes it’s financial. But at least anecdotally we see that many people are not willing to pay a monthly fee. That gives a game like Guild Wars 2 an audience of indeterminate size that WoW will never see. That means the pay to play model will get people that would never consider WoW and for those people, it’s not even competition. How many of these people exist? I don’t know. But I suspect it’s more than you give credit for.
You also say some people really like this game. You also say a lot of people don’t. How come the one that disagrees with you is only some and the ones that agree with you are many. Maybe that’s your own bias talking. It seems to me most people who play the game like it….and some don’t. The rating on meta critic and sites like that seem to show most people do like it, even after the people tried to sabotage it by giving it zeros after the ascended gear release.
I think you are like most people. You believe something, so you believe most people feel as you do. This is human nature. The more obvious you think something is, the more you’re sure you have the numbers. But it’s not true in every case, because there are people who feel just as strongly who are opposite you. They all can’t be right.
I think you find things to say that support your argument, most of which are guesses, too weak to be even speculation. Dismissing the buy to play model, for example, makes absolutely zero sense, until you can figure out what percentage of people would play an MMO but would never consider paying a monthly fee. And you have no evidence either way of how big a market that is.
Every time to you try to dismiss someone, the exact same thing you say can be applied to your post. Also, show me the numbers that definitively say that more people agree with you than me? Oh, that’s right, they don’t exist. Your opinion is no more valid than mine, no matter how hard you try to make it sound that way.
I just want to know what there is this big supposition that Buy to Play models can’t die?
That is all I asked and you couldn’t answer my simple question, because, I think, you don’t think there is an answer. So, let’s try again without all the rhetoric this time:
What is the threshold at which you would call a B2P game dying or dead?
What I said was buy to play was a factor, you said it’s not. How can you dismiss something so obvious. It’s obvious to anyone who has read forums anywhere, including this one, that a percentage of people would NEVER pay a month fee for a game. We don’t know what the percentage is..we DO know it exists. Just search for the thread in these forums if you don’t believe me and count the answers that says I’d never pay a month fee for ANY game. Then come back and tell me it doesn’t matter.
You who already claim that forums can be used to get such information.
Most here are missing the point. It doesn’t matter if you like or don’t like SAB. It doesn’t matter what you think of the 8-bit retro style or the Super Mario cut and paste. That’s an entirely subjective thing, and whatever your taste, more power to you. The only thing that matters is that the new content does violence to, and trivializes the aesthetic of the existing game world. This is the only point. It undermines the world and art style (and flows on into the gameplay) that the original GW2 devs went to such extraordinary lengths to establish. That is why SAB and it’s ilk makes no sense, and takes more from the game than it gives. Most people will feel this and not be able to articulate what it is, but all they will know after time is that the game doesn’t “feel” like it used to and is somehow less fun. Some people will never feel it because aesthetics simply don’t matter to them or they like the pizza pastiche of conflicting styles and brash, jarring aesthetics (that’s not a criticism, some people genuinely like that and I acknowledge it). That doesn’t mean the new elements aren’t fighting against the rest of the GW2 world. They are, and do, and it’s frankly bizarre.
Saying most people will feel this is sorta an assumption. You don’t know what most people will feel.
I’m largely an immersion player. I love the feel the world. I love Tyria in general and have since Guild Wars 1…and I don’t mind the fun box. It’s not in the world, it’s something you go into, created by an Asura. It’s not relevant to anything else in the world. What it affects is your mind. If you never go into it, it has zero effect on the world.
Christmas boxes and Halloween doors had far more effect on the world than something they did in world on April Fools day.
Let me ask you this? If you are playing in Orr, how does this affect the world? If you’re playing in Frostgorge, how does this affect the world. I’ve done fractals and dungeons and WvW and none of it was affected by this.
Maybe some of this is in your head?
It was supposed to be a cooperative game, not a selfish one.
MMO’s are inherently selfish.
Also, this game is not supposed to be a cooperative game. That is evidenced by the fact that much of it is solo-able.
You try to speak for the developers in this game so much, yet I don’t think you are one. Why do you keep trying to poke around in their heads, saying what is and is not their intentions?
I actually go by what they say. They’ve said straight out that they’ve made a game that’s cooperative. They’ve tried to take out all the little selfish and griefing parts that other games have. Sometimes with mixed success, but it is what they’ve said, and there’s plenty of evidence to support where they’re going.
I’ve said all along, even from Guild Wars 1, that Anet had an anti-farming policy. It hasn’t changed since then. They don’t announce that the policy is, because it would help botters but the fact is the policy did exist in Guild Wars 1. I didn’t make it up. There’s a page about it on the Guild Wars 1 wiki.
So when I "take for Anet’ as you put it, what I’m really doing it reiterating what they’ve said, since some people migh not be aware of it. Nappy Chappy was certainly not aware of a Guild Wars 1 anti-farming policy, and he’s maintained for some time now that the anti-farming policy of Guild Wars 2 has everything to do with the cash shop. Except that they’ve always had a similar policy, including DR. It’s a matter of public record.
When I talk for the devs, I’m usually paraphrasing stuff the devs have said, because other people are saying other things that I don’t believe are true.
@Clay (I left out your response because the post is just too kitten long with it)
There was a thread on these forums, asking if Guild Wars 2 went pay to play would you still play. One of the most common responses to this was, if it was pay to play I wouldn’t have bought it in the first place. I find it naive to believe that everyone is willing to pay a monthly fee to play ANY game. That’s why MMOs in general, pay to play particularly, remain niche. Even WoW only has a relatively small percentage of all gamers, though it has a huge percentage of MMO gamers. Many many people will not pay a month fee to a game for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it’s principle, sometimes it’s financial. But at least anecdotally we see that many people are not willing to pay a monthly fee. That gives a game like Guild Wars 2 an audience of indeterminate size that WoW will never see. That means the pay to play model will get people that would never consider WoW and for those people, it’s not even competition. How many of these people exist? I don’t know. But I suspect it’s more than you give credit for.
You also say some people really like this game. You also say a lot of people don’t. How come the one that disagrees with you is only some and the ones that agree with you are many. Maybe that’s your own bias talking. It seems to me most people who play the game like it….and some don’t. The rating on meta critic and sites like that seem to show most people do like it, even after the people tried to sabotage it by giving it zeros after the ascended gear release.
I think you are like most people. You believe something, so you believe most people feel as you do. This is human nature. The more obvious you think something is, the more you’re sure you have the numbers. But it’s not true in every case, because there are people who feel just as strongly who are opposite you. They all can’t be right.
I think you find things to say that support your argument, most of which are guesses, too weak to be even speculation. Dismissing the buy to play model, for example, makes absolutely zero sense, until you can figure out what percentage of people would play an MMO but would never consider paying a monthly fee. And you have no evidence either way of how big a market that is.
Commercially it is doing well.
But it had to sacrifice manifesto, the credibility of the developers, and the experience of the players to achieve it.
This is getting old. How did they sacrifice the manifesto?
Have you read it?
Sure, posted the entire thing in text. Generally people refer to the grinding bit, taking it entirely out of context. Anyone who has even a rudimentary grasp of English can hear what is being said there. It doesn’t say anything at all about vertical progression. It’s talking about fun things to do at low level without having to grind to get to the good stuff. That’s ALL it’s talking about. Some of the other stuff is marketspeak for sure.
We take everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and place it into a persistent world. Well, yeah, but since different people love different things, you obviously have to wonder what he’s really talking about. Most of the stuff from Guild Wars 1 that I loved is in here. The few things that aren’t…they’re small enough. So the question is, who are they talking to or about. The art is in there, that’s true. The no monthly fee is there, that’s true. The branching personal story is there, that’s true.
Most of the confusion comes from the idea that Collin is talking about dynamic events and Ree it talking about personal story. A clarification of it was released after to explain the confusion caused by editing.
I’m going to pass on reading the entire thread, and simply give you my answer as I see it.
Is GW2 doing well? No.
Both GW2 and Arena Net are very successful at the moment. However, that’s not the same as doing WELL. ANet is stuck with NCSoft, well known for killing games. GW2 has a list of problems that are not being correctly addressed, for whatever reason. Both GW2 and ANet as a whole are pushing forward, using momentum to keep things going and growing.
This is like a person using caffeine and energy drinks to keep themselves going. It works, and it can work pretty darned well. However, what you’re avoiding keeps building up, and eventually you can’t keep going anymore and you crash. I don’t think it’ll happen this year, but sometime in the next 2 or so, the GW2 team will take a look at the game and say something along the lines of “My god, how did it get like this?” When that day comes, it won’t be pretty.
Maybe you’re confusing NCsoft with another company. Aion has been one of the most played MMOs of all time, next to Lineage, both of which are still running. I can’t think of a single game that NCsoft killed.
This is for all the people who claim the game is dying.
Star Wars The Old Republic ended up laying off a significant portion of their staff six months or so after launch. TSW ended up laying off a third of their staff, due to disappointing sales.
Anet, on the other hand, is hiring. Here’s the link to their website, which I got by following the shifting news on top of the main Guild Wars 2 page.
If Guild Wars 2 is doing so badly and the game is dying, why is Anet hiring?
I dont think the game is dying. While I still hold it to be a great MMO and one with a lot of potential, the developers continue to go against what they touted this game to be, which is turning a lot of people off(myself included). Maybe Ill be back some day, if arenanet gets their crap together.
Go on any MMO/online gaming website or forum. GW2 gets a lot of criticism. Theres a reason.
But no, it isnt dying.
I haven’t been to a gaming forum where any game didn’t get a lot of criticism. I think it’s human nature to criticize. On general gaming forums, you have the problem of people from other games posting. If you love WoW, for some reason, you’re almost obligated to hate other MMOs. Have you see the hate WoW gets.
The amount of hate a game gets on forums has zero to do with a game’s health. Unless you think WoW is unhealthy.
I think of charr more like gnolls, to the point I even named one Gnoll Steakcutter. Anyone play DDO? The Black Citadel is reminiscent of the Burning City, though a hell of a lot prettier, and the Burning City was a dungeon.
Is DDO any good? Always wanted to try it, but Eberon (or however it’s spelled) was kind of a turn off. Whenever I see the Citadel I always think “Death Star”.
If you want to see REAL greed in a cash shop,. play DDO. What a P2W piece of garbage. The original game was quite okay, but the company is mega greedy. Anyone who plays that game and doesn’t fork out lots of money won’t be playing for long. Turbine is a bad, bad company. They should not be allowed to get involved with an MMO.
Lol Vayne, it’s not that bad. But it does have a different feel to Anet’s shop. Greedier? Possibly but I haven’t really compared the two. I spent a fair bit of money on it though…
Any game that’s P2W is just bad. Really bad. They do, however, have elves. But they also make the best choices and races a pay option, and limit you to not doing certain dungeons unless you pay.
Early on in the game, there’s one item that’s a shuriken that returns to you. It’s lovely. The only problem is, you have to buy that dungeon to play it go get that specific, very useful reward. On top of that, I’d already paid to play the monk profession that uses it. I have a friend who plays that game. The amount of money he spends on it is outrageous.
It really is that bad.
Does the OP really want bigger queues for WvW, filled with PvE players who don’t really know what’s going on, and don’t really give a toss about WvW? I find that hard to believe. lol
Would love to get an official statement from Anet on this since i haven’t seen anything about it on the forums.
Official statement from Anet about what? That they’ll be adding stuff to the game? Specifically skins? You really don’t need a statement for that. There’s not going to be a time table, so what would the official statement do for you?
Hello there community you’re feedback has been very helpfull and usefull…and i wish honestly a huge thank you to you all.
About the expansions i have a question, since when i bought GW2 and they say in the game box and even in several web sites we only have to buy the game once all the rest is free right? So when expansions will be launched how they will be available to players? By free download in the web site or we will actually have to spend money to have expansions?
Just like everyone MMO, you’d have to buy the expansion. Because the expansion is like a new game. Even games that charge monthly fees charge for game expansions. The amount of time, energy and work that goes into an expansion for an MMO is huge. It really is like making a whole new game.
I think of charr more like gnolls, to the point I even named one Gnoll Steakcutter. Anyone play DDO? The Black Citadel is reminiscent of the Burning City, though a hell of a lot prettier, and the Burning City was a dungeon.
Is DDO any good? Always wanted to try it, but Eberon (or however it’s spelled) was kind of a turn off. Whenever I see the Citadel I always think “Death Star”.
If you want to see REAL greed in a cash shop,. play DDO. What a P2W piece of garbage. The original game was quite okay, but the company is mega greedy. Anyone who plays that game and doesn’t fork out lots of money won’t be playing for long. Turbine is a bad, bad company. They should not be allowed to get involved with an MMO.
@Vayne.
Systems and Rewards Supporting the Living World
To make playing in our open world worthwhile, we’ll make it rewarding enough for players to spend their time there across all levels. It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/
Strange, this doesn’t support your theory.
Guild Wars 1 anti farming code: from the wiki
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Anti-farm_codeyou should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards
He did show me the link to the skele’s, still seems more like a band-aid solution more than a policy.
You should be able to play the game you want as long as it affects no one else. I’ve already explained elsewhere why that affects other people.
Farming can ruin the game for other people. Anet is right to limit it as a play style. The harder core farmers, who care only about farming, will likely leave. This won’t make the game weaker in my opinion.
Players farming doesn’t ruin the game, gold farming bots will.
Those people who farm legit for what they want, will not ruin the economy. Bots on the other hand farm for what you want and sell what you want. Eventually gold farmers will dominate the economy, then pushing people to leave, or buy gold and supporting them making the problem worse.
When you are out in the world doing events, you are surrounded by others doing the same, multiply this 1000’s of times. Now figure in drops, chests, karma, coin – It’s mass farming, some people get upgrades, some get rares/exotics, some get both. You are just playing the game, loot happens, RNG happens, it’s inevitable. The difference is? You probably didn’t guess it, but the answer is 1000’s of people are doing it for 1000’s of different reasons.
Gold farmers do it for 1 thing, money. It is a job.
Legit farmers farm for what they want and will most likely stop farming once they achieve their goal, getting it doesn’t ruin the economy, if anything it boosts it. The lack of supply and demand pushes prices up, DR’s tip the scale in demands favor and this is where gold selling comes in, but what if you could get more for less? You would be supporting bots, but then again they are doing the work that ANet refuses to let us do.
I’d also like to add that, yes people buy gold, lots of it, otherwise they would have gone to a more profitable game.
The people who run the same stuff in Orr over and over again, DID ruin the game for anyone who just wanted to play. You have to either play the tag mob game (not something that the devs intended, I can assure you) or you have people tagging a few mobs, scaling the event up and moving on. Do you really think that kind of selfish behavior is what the devs had in mind.
It was supposed to be a cooperative game, not a selfish one. But farmers are inherently selfish. I know one of them. He’s my son. He’ll tag a mob, tag a bunch of them, enough to get his reward and move into the next event. He doesn’t care if the event fails or succeeds. He’s not interested in playing the game created by Anet. He’s interested in getting loot. And if he gets loot at the expense of another, so what?
You asked for an anti-farming policy and someone linked a page from the Guild Wars wiki about it, but you still haven’t commented on it. Could it be that you’re actually wrong about Anet and their policy on farming?
Yes farmers ruin the game for people who just want to play it “normally”. If you don’t think so…well that’s your opinion. Good thing Anet seems to share mine.
I don’t think you can stop the bounties by talking to them anymore. They took that out, so people couldn’t hold them.
But I agree, it’s too hard…and just saying where you’ve seen them in map chat would be the best you could do for the guilds looking for that particularly bounty.
I think these guys move around too fast for that to be efficient. The best thing you can do is to announce the location in map chat. In less than two minutes the information is all but useless.
And removing one facet of a trope does not make them less elf like. Eh, just my op anyway. I’ll always think of em as leafy, whimsical, tree hugging, hippie elves. Although the interaction between them and the nightmare court is more like the Seelie and Unseelie fae than the light and dark elves. So maybe more true fae than the elven offshoot. BTW Vayne, I noticed in another thread that you read some fantasy, have you read Prince of Thorns yet?
Nope, I haven’t. Are you saying I should?
You guys claim you like all the races, but how many of you would play as Asura or Charr as your main? I still think that the vast majority of players don’t want to play as these races. More compelling races would have attracted more players to this game. Lots of people like the traditional fantasy races like elves.
I would. In fact, I have no main, but I’m very much attached to both my Asura and my Charr characters.
I’m hoping the next thing they nerf is the forums.
Tropes are still tropes
Sylvari-Elves
Charr-Orcs
Humans-duh
Asura-Gnomes
Norns are the only ones that actually break the typical fantasy race mold, woulda been more interesting though if they weren’t just bigger human models. Perhaps blue skin, or ice/ frost as part of the make up. More like Ice brood.No, just no.
Sylvari are “maybe” Elf like, but not really. They’re created from a tree and raised by a tablet from a dead Centaur from a century prior. Their main goal in life that’s been drilled into them by the Pale Tree is an ever-urging lust to defeat the Elder Dragons. Some rumor with speculation that the Pale Tree itself is in fact an Elder Dragon of a “good” kind born into the world to counter the other Dragons and that the Sylvari are it’s minions.
Charr are not Orc like at all. Orcs are dumb brutes that charge into battle with sticks, rocks, and the crudest of things to beat the enemy to a pulp. The Charr, they’re part of a massive war machine; they even create massive war machines. They craft steel and bronze and other metals together to create their style in the world. They have giant metal cities, NOT dirt and stick cities that Orcs live in.
Humans….well crap, you’ve got me there. Can’t really get away from this one without making a completely unique “alien” lore"
Asuran people are above everyone else. Even though they’re smaller than others, they are smarter and all around better. They’re technologically advanced, and over 95% of Tyria rely on their Gate and Waypoint technology (amongst other things). Gnomes in other games are the butt of the joke, not useful at anything and the most untrustworthy creatures around; however in this game there’s always an Asura at the forefront of every invasion, investigation, and war strategy using their superiority to save everyone else (see Mad King invading Lion’s Arch, Karka invading Lion’s Arch, Tixx taking over Wintersday from the bookah Humans, and so on). P.S. Gnomes are Steampunk, Asurans are Techno.
Sylvari- In touch with nature, like hugging trees, live in a tree, everything about them screams “I’m an elf trope” regardless of how they came to be created. Also, that fan fiction stuff about the Pale Tree as a dragon is false, the dragons have all been confirmed except for the water dragon.
Charr- Smash, smash, smash. War, war, war. Growl, grumble, spit, curse. Orc. Just a bit more refined. Put a dress on a pig and it’s still a pig.
Asurans- “We live underground and like to make robots and other inventions that usually go horribly awry!! Sometimes for profit!!” This is about one step away from WoW gnomes and goblins. Gnomes in most other fantasy lore also share the “Mad inventor” trope. There just isn’t enough to set them apart from other gnome like races to say they don’t follow the stereotype. (They’re my favorite race in game though, with Charr a close second)
Except that elves are almost always an ancient and wise race, where as the Sylvari are a young race that hasn’t found itself. Hugging trees does not a race make.
Look at some of the dungeon sets. I use one from the Hall of Monuments set as well. I agree there are less mace skins over all, but then the mace is one of the less popular weapons. More will come over time. In the mean time, some of the ones from dungeon sets are pretty cool.
Vayne, 51% does not automatically mean that the other 49% can’t have a huge impact on a company. Yes, there are large advantages to the one holding 51%, but it doesn’t exclude the weight of the other shareholders out-right. Especially with a new game that is only half a year or so into recouping their initial investment/development costs.
We don’t even know what percentage Nexon has. It’s not like they have 49%. Again, I draw your attention to the shop, comparing them to shops in Nexon games. If there was that much influence, the shops would be a lot closer.
I am an adult and do not like this. I tried it just now, and it was as I figured. It was not even fun in the slightest.
But I see that some of the weapon skin rewards are pretty nice looking and would look good on an Asura. They need to make them available outside that mini game for the mature people who refuse to play something so childish.
But then again I always have been baffled as to why Minecraft is so popular. I have the exact same feelings about that game. I also never have liked the Mario brothers games, ever.
Next is Arenanet going to add checkbook software in the game, so we can do our finances? Thats how ridiculous it is.
Calling it childish makes you sound very judgmental. My wife and I love it, an we’re likely older than you are. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t make it childish.
Obby shards go in your materials storage. Why destroy it. Leave it there. It’s not like it’s taking up a bank slot, unless you have more than a stack of them.
The launch was great and the game was great at launch and up till November. It’s almost a completely different game now.
Your right i remember all the bugged skill points when the game first came out and they fixed them. It was a great game when it was first launched now its even better.
Oh you must mean how the ranger pet is fixed right?
Ranger pets are much better now than they were at launch. You may not like them, but some people have no problem with them. Arguably, the only place you really have a problem with ranger pets is in dungeons. The solution to this is to bring two ranged pets, instead of melee pets, and learn to swap them out before they die. It’s much better than using melee pets in dungeons.
In the last patch they made them resistent to agony so you can take them into the mists, as well as fixing bugs to two hall of monuments pets.
Everyone else in the world, I have no problem with my ranger pet.