Guild Wars 2

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Vayne.8563:

But you’re also making the assumption that all casual players are cut from the same cloth. I can assure you they’re not. Some casual players like the stuff introduced in HoT. Some are still working on collections or achievements, or a legendary weapon.

One casual player in my guild refuses to buy mats on the trading post and simple gathers all the time on multiple toons to get the mats she needs for a legendary. She thinks somehow buying them is cheating. I don’t get it myself, but you know, to each his/her own.

Casual people may not raid, but some casuals do enjoy WvW occassionally (or Edge of the Mists) and they can enjoy that more now with more going on there. And yes, there are casual PvPers too, that can still PvP and enjoy changes there.

And on top of that there are plenty of little new events and achievements for casuals to bang away at.

Sure it’s not new zones. Sure it’s not the living story, which is coming.

But to say that there’s nothing at all for casuals to do…well there’s plenty of casuals in my guild who are here since launch that still have stuff to do simply because they haven’t even gotten to everything yet.

Some of them have only recently discovered fractals now that they’re so much easier and they do those for the first time.

Well I’m a realist and i can say with all certainty our guild has dwindled and we were 300 plus strong. You can defend the path they’ve taken and many have but lets be realistic the hardcore they spent weeks and months developing has always in every MMO had a minority of players using that content. If they would have spent all their time developing the same type of content that got people here in the 1st place we would be much better off. Anyone online can make a case for any point they choose but this is pretty bloody inescapable, the majority of players bought the game to play what was advertised and they didn’t sign up for developer of the day content.
Had this game stayed it’s course we would likely be deep into the 2nd expansion and had a sheep ton more area to explore, quests and bosses to go up against and a whole lot more players still playing.
One important thing to remember Vayne is this, you may still have the same amount of players in your guild, though i seriously doubt that but i have no way of knowing, but I’ve watched ours dwindle in half due to the course management took the game in. That is infuriating and was totally unnecessary had they stuck to the original manifest and concept i doubt highly most who stepped into this 3 years ago under it’s premise would have bolted. Raids have not worked in over a decade, certainly not for the majority of games produced, and that along with many other things should have been left where they belong. I guarantee for every raid player there are a hundred who only long for the content that made GW2 so appealing in the 1st place.

Presumably though you’re in a casual guild, rather than a hard core guild. So casual guild attendance falls (this happens to my guild too, until the new content comes out and like magic everyone shows up again) and hard core guilds, who had languished before start coming back to life.

But my guild had the same patterns every single time there was a content drought. People didn’t leave forever. They came back when there was content they want to play.

The problem is people believe MMOs should have enough new content for them all the time, and it’s not a reasonble expectation and no MMORPG I’ve seen, certainly no themepark MMO, has managed to do this.

You get 3-5 months out of a WoW expansion. I’m pretty sure those who played it got about that much out of HoT.

The fact that WvW got some much needed love and the fact that PvP now has some action is good for those groups of players. The fact that raiders got some love is good for them. It’s bad for me, and not particularly great for my guild.

But I can guarantee you as before, my guild will be playing full time when LS 3 comes out, because it’s what we do.

How do I know? Because I talk to people taking a break playing other games or doing house repairs or whatever.

Mirta.5029:

I would worry if this was Wildstar level of bad. Currently no, GW2 is not dying. However has it shrunk greatly in population following HoT and all HoT patches? Yes.

How do you know? What is your evidence? Source please?

echo.2053:

Vayne.8563:

You insist you KNOW why the mega server was implemented. I’ve offered other possibilities.

You do realize that your suggested possibility is the other side of the same coin right? probably not so I’ll break it down for you – you say a glass is 1/3 full of water while i say its 2/3 empty – is the actual amount water different between the two statements? Answer is no. In this case players were complaining about guesting taking up spots on a world server meanwhile the lower tiered world servers were guesting from a lack of players.

LOL you really believe that completely changed server groupings over such a veeerrrrryy minor inconvience for a few number of servers, but yet can’t separate skills for pve/pvp modes – that is pretty choice LMFAO. Saying 2 out of 24 worlds being the cause for change is rather counterintuitive to the arugment.

Vayne.8563:

Maybe people left your guild.

Were you ever actually in a guild? It’s rather hard to believe you were since there is a log feature that clearly states whether a player left on their own accord or was kicked by x player. Interestingly enough how would one know their last login date if they have left the guild and were not on friends list?

Since you want to be “factual” where did you get the “fact” that for every player leaving a new one joins to the point where you made this statement despite no one having access to actual numbers:

Vayne.8563:

In other words, if 50,000 people left the game and 50,000 people joined, that would be the same.

Free players don’t bring anything to the table until they purchase the game which is only possible through the HoT bundle. We’ve talked about the free player converison already.

The game has an air of staleness which inevitably leads to the decline in population much like a leak to a boat – it may be afloat for the time being but it wont last forever.[/quote]

Free players can buy gems…and I know some that have done so.

Darlgon.9273:

This is an interesting thread.. as I am burned out on BDO, tired of ESO and was a founder/beta tester for this game. Then I left because my guildies wanted something else while the Lions Gate was under attack… Now, I am back to lone wolf status and wondering if its worthwhile to buy HoT.

HoT is the way forward. It’s worth buying it if you want to continue with the game moving forward. The core game is going to get less and less updates over time.

Some people enjoy it, some less so. It’s more challenging than the open world core game, which some people like and some people don’t. The maps are harder to navigate, but I find them more interesting over all.

DLgamer is an authorized reseller that often has the game on sale, and for that price, in my opinion it’s definitely worth it.

Your mileage may vary. lol

Seyiwaji.4082:

Don’t cry if you read, this game is kittening dying.

It shows all symptoms of a dying game.
it even looks like they don’t have enough workers in the company…

less and less Guild Chat,Community Showcase Live.
They have nothing to report.
May be they even gave it up and are working on others projekt.
GW2 Failed at the most important moment where they should not fail.

whatever i reached legend, i am off until next PVP season maybe.

If you’re off until the next PvP season the game isn’t dying. And even if you don’t come back it’s still not dying.

We’ve been here before, where the game has had nothing to report. And then suddenly there’s stuff to report. A lull doesn’t mean dying.

I’m sure that having to fix HoT too make it more palatable to a wider range of players set schedules back. And in case you haven’t noticed, the April patch was well-received and the new raid wing came out this week. This is NOT the indication of a dying game.

Dying games don’t spend the kind of resources Anet did to fix their mistakes. Why would they?

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Actually I can ignore the fact that HOT sales were poor because we don’t know they were poor. We know they were less than expected.

In business terms, not meeting sales expectations is poor sales performance.

In the past you have said something to the effect that a product which is meeting its business plan is doing well. Not meeting sales expectations is not meeting the business plan for a given product.

Again, and I repeat, all Anet has said specifically is that the number of people who are free to play that didn’t buy HoT was less than expected. And that’s all they said.

That is how they accounted for the lower than expected sales.

So it’s not about people who were already playing the game who didn’t buy HoT, most of whom probably did. It’s about the group of people who came in as free to play that Anet expected to buy HoT.

These are two very different issues. And again, when it comes to the question of is the game dying, if there’s a bunch of people playing who didn’t buy HoT the answer is still no. The game is not dying.

1) I did not not claim that the game is dying.

2) you are the one that stated, and I quote, “we know they (sales of HoT) were less than expected,” not I.

3) If those F2P conversions to HoT purchases were less than expected, then there were, by definition, expectations for them as part of the overall sales expectations for HoT. These were not met. Existing player purchases of HoT and F2P conversion purchases are not two completely different things even if they are different lines in a ledger somewhere. They are both aspects of one thing, HoT sales expectations?

1) It doesn’t matter if you said yourself that Guild Wars 2 is or isn’t dying. It’s the topic of the thread. That’s what we’re discussing. We’re not discussing if there are 4.5 players when there used to be 5, or 10 players when there used to be 12, at least I’m not. People are implying by their statements that Guild Wars 2 is dying. I’ve seen dying games in my day and this isn’t one of them. Wildstar, by contrast is dying. And you can see it in sales figures, and layoffs.

2) Yes, I did say that HoT didnt’ meet the target. But HoT is not Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 1 went free to play and for all we know that exceeded the target. HoT was a setback. HoT itself can not be said to be successful. But HoT’s success or failure is not actually an indicator to the health of the game over all, only the health of HoT. I don’t really believe that HoT was an abject failure. It was a minor disappointment.

This answers your 2-3 actually. Is Guild Wars 2 dying? No. In my OPINION it’s not dying and there’s very little actual evidence to suggest it is. However, HoT did not do as well as expected….which does mean HoT is dying either.

When someone asks a question, my answers are almost always going to be in the context of that question. Not sure why some people don’t get that.

hardy.7469:

Zelanard.5806:

Gosh guys, really… Wait with the disappointment until you see what’s coming.

That’s part of the reason people are complaining. Very close to one full year of absolutely zero real content updates? The only one being raids, where the rest of PvE and PvP get either just balance changes or things so minor that you might not even be bothered to do them?

Hard not to complain. It’s part of a give and take for business and consumers. If a consumer gets so disappointing for so long, it’s very hard for a business to take people out of that mindset even with announcements like this (though it’s not even official, since it’s a leak, it’s safe to assume we wouldn’t even hear anything about this until the end of July).

Let’s not even begin to think how everyone will feel if S3 of LS isn’t even as good kitten or is disappointing in one or more ways.
It also lingers questions like “Well how big will the drought be after this is over? Should I bother buying the next Xpac knowing that this can easily happen again?” and so on.

Close to a year? I guess you’re not counting the four zones of HoT, huh?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Beorn Raukar.4328:

What I don’t understand is people were complaining that raids were getting so much high quality content, and that is one release every 4 months. We told them that those release were HoT content spread out over time. Now that they are getting the same cadence that they praised before with raids (and even much much faster at a chapter per 2 months) it is “too slow” and “locking content”. ANET can never win.

Raids were praised because they were built designed and developed by a 6 man team.

LS has 70 people working on it… the fact that it is now being announced as the same release cadence is not acceptable.

You’re comparing a single apple tree that produces a lot of fruit to a multi-million dollar orange cooperation that can’t even seem to produce a single orange.

I’d love to see a quote about LS having 70 people working on it. Because I don’t believe that’s the case. The new expansion had, last we heard, 70 people working on it, but I’ve not seen numbers on how many people are working on it.

We did know that at one point, there was a 20 man team.

Let’s keep in mind though that the LS wasn’t just coming out with instances like raids. LS also provided us with Drytop and the Silverwastes, which are both maps, in addition to instances.

So yeah, a five or six man team doing three instances with two or three bosses each is a lot less work than the living story chapters we’ve seen so far.

I don’t even know why you’d think to compare them. And I don’t know where you got that 70 number from but I’m relatively sure it’s not correct.

Doam.8305:

Vayne.8563:

Think of it this way. For years they’ve focused on us and the hard core guys have gotten nothing. Content takes time to make. So they are filling in the blanks now. But next month, most likely. the LS begins again, a new fractal is coming, it just can’t all be done at once.

That’s neat and all but they’ve built and established a base of casual players over the course of three years the game literally grew and became a name due to those casual bits.

After waiting so long those that would leave the game over lack of hardcore content have left and those that remain and fought for it would have never left the game regardless after such a lengthy space of time.

Switching it up now doesn’t bring back the ones who grew tired of playing and it doesn’t retain those who spent years asking for it. It does however knock out a good portion of those who flocked to the game during the early years.

There are people that will leave and their are people who will take anything and remain the casuals have been catered to yes over the first three years so they had no legit reason to complain then everything changed for them with HoT. However they are not right now because Anet shifted their focus and experience something they want no part in fo the first time in this game many have left. The longer they are gone the higher chance they won’t return as is the case with anything when someone decides to take a break from it.

But you’re also making the assumption that all casual players are cut from the same cloth. I can assure you they’re not. Some casual players like the stuff introduced in HoT. Some are still working on collections or achievements, or a legendary weapon.

One casual player in my guild refuses to buy mats on the trading post and simple gathers all the time on multiple toons to get the mats she needs for a legendary. She thinks somehow buying them is cheating. I don’t get it myself, but you know, to each his/her own.

Casual people may not raid, but some casuals do enjoy WvW occassionally (or Edge of the Mists) and they can enjoy that more now with more going on there. And yes, there are casual PvPers too, that can still PvP and enjoy changes there.

And on top of that there are plenty of little new events and achievements for casuals to bang away at.

Sure it’s not new zones. Sure it’s not the living story, which is coming.

But to say that there’s nothing at all for casuals to do…well there’s plenty of casuals in my guild who are here since launch that still have stuff to do simply because they haven’t even gotten to everything yet.

Some of them have only recently discovered fractals now that they’re so much easier and they do those for the first time.

echo.2053:

Vayne.8563:

echo.2053:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t know anyone in my guild who hasn’t bought HoT. Not one single person. And yes, that’s only a couple of hundred people, but that’s the point.

Your guild does not represent the gw2 community, it’s a rather erroneous attempt to even to make such a statment.

Actually I never made claim that my guild didn’t. But NcSoft absolutely said that free to play players didn’t pick up on HoT. They said nothing about existing players.

It’s perfectly acceptable to say that my guild has universally bought the game if that’s the case. Forum-goers can draw what conclusions they want from it.

Why not say something to people who saying that they know why Anet instigated a mega-server system, who have no proof at all of what they’re claiming?

Partial much?

For what other purpose to mention that than to attempt to make that claim?

Peoples friend lists and guild have gone quiet grey with last logins 6+ months. Their point of view is just as valid as yours, you aren’t speical. Your guild might even purge users who haven’t logged in for x amount of time which would alter that result quite a bit would it not?

Likewise you ALSO have no proof to your claims as you do not have access to player numbers as well. Sales doesn’t show rate of decay.

Megaservers were introduced to mask low player numbers. Players weren’t guesting to other servers because those servers were omageeerddd at pve but rather their own servers were empty.

If it were meeting expectations they would of flat out stated that. Instead they are pulling other departments for other work.

Games dying is a point of view idea with no definite answer. The population is not the same as it was a few years ago. Maybe it’ll take the next full priced to see that.

You’re making a statement. “Megaservers were introduced to mask low player numbers.”

I’ve said consistently no one has the numbers. Not me, not you. Well Anet does. You’re the one making claims here. Not me. I’m telling you that you’re essentially making a raft of assumptions. I’m the one not making assumptions.

You insist you KNOW why the mega server was implemented. I’ve offered other possibilities.

Now, it’s POSSIBLE you’re right, but you have NO evidence. None. Zero. Zilch. You have your own thought process. Maybe people left your guild.

I’m the one saying no one knows. You’re the one making a definitive statement with no evidence. I’m happy to let the rest of the forum judge based on that.

Do you see me saying without a doubt why the megaserver was instituted? Are you sure it wasn’t simply an efficiency measure? A way to stop people from complaining about being on overflows on crowded servers because everyone was guesting to a few servers.

You may well think you know the single solitary reason of why mega servers were created. And you’re entitled to that OPINION. But stop stating it as fact, because you don’t have any facts. You have an opinion you’re expressing as a fact.

Now, if Anet did implement megaservers because of the guesting problems (I sure remember complaints on these forums even if you don’t), then they would ALSO have the side effect of masking a dropping population IF the population was dropping.

But to make the assumption that you’re right with no evidence except your say so is nothing more than stating an opinion or maybe a guess as a fact.

I’m still waiting for a shred of evidence besides you saying so.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Actually I can ignore the fact that HOT sales were poor because we don’t know they were poor. We know they were less than expected.

In business terms, not meeting sales expectations is poor sales performance.

In the past you have said something to the effect that a product which is meeting its business plan is doing well. Not meeting sales expectations is not meeting the business plan for a given product.

Again, and I repeat, all Anet has said specifically is that the number of people who are free to play that didn’t buy HoT was less than expected. And that’s all they said.

That is how they accounted for the lower than expected sales.

So it’s not about people who were already playing the game who didn’t buy HoT, most of whom probably did. It’s about the group of people who came in as free to play that Anet expected to buy HoT.

These are two very different issues. And again, when it comes to the question of is the game dying, if there’s a bunch of people playing who didn’t buy HoT the answer is still no. The game is not dying.

echo.2053:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t know anyone in my guild who hasn’t bought HoT. Not one single person. And yes, that’s only a couple of hundred people, but that’s the point.

Your guild does not represent the gw2 community, it’s a rather erroneous attempt to even to make such a statment.

Actually I never made claim that my guild didn’t. But NcSoft absolutely said that free to play players didn’t pick up on HoT. They said nothing about existing players.

It’s perfectly acceptable to say that my guild has universally bought the game if that’s the case. Forum-goers can draw what conclusions they want from it.

Why not say something to people who saying that they know why Anet instigated a mega-server system, who have no proof at all of what they’re claiming?

Partial much?

Think of it this way. For years they’ve focused on us and the hard core guys have gotten nothing. Content takes time to make. So they are filling in the blanks now. But next month, most likely. the LS begins again, a new fractal is coming, it just can’t all be done at once.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Vayne.8563:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Vayne.8563:

Anyone can look at the quarterly statement, see the profits and know the game is healthy. That’s far more factual than making assumptions about why certain decisions were made.

One thing is just guessing. The other is factual.

You are insinuating that “healthy profits” imply “healthy population” which it most certainly does not. …and using the word healthy to describe anything, unless you define exactly what you mean by healthy, is certainly a very vague term.

Healthy can mean, okay, fine, acceptable, good, or even… what I’m assuming you are going for…. not dead.

You reference quarterly statements…

Microtransactions are what anet initially said was supposed to keep the game afloat, and it is still a topic of discussion at earnings reports.

“The amount of gem sales and item sales versus active players is ok.”

Meaning… there are enough active players who are willing to make gemstore purchases to sustain the game upkeep costs and still return a profit… and only this.

Healthy, as I would take from the earnings report, would simply be defined as ‘acceptable’ and it is in regards to population contributing to revenue, not population as a whole.

Lets not forget how HoT sales were lower than anticipated.
“we have not seen the level (of sales) we have hoped”

What does that tell you?

Nothing… or should I say next to nothing.

…because anet sold the core game bundled in with the expansion.

(in order to obscure data regarding new game sales as well as existing player expansion purchases.)

…so we will never know if:
Anet sold an acceptable amount of copies to new players, but failed to earn enough sales from existing vet players
Anet sold an acceptable amount of copies to existing vet players, but failed to earn enough sales from new players
or
Anet failed to sell acceptable amounts of copies to existing vet players AND new players.

But it is definitely one of the three, and I would not declare that healthy by any definition.

Also regardless of which is actually true…. THEY ALL MEAN LOWER POPULATION THAN ANTICIPATED.

Actually they don’t. You’re making unwarranted assumptions. That is to say every single MMO in existence, all of them bar none, suffer from natural attrition.

Some people buy games and never end up playing them. There are many reasons, some times game related and sometimes not. People get too busy. They lose the internet. Their computer is too slow to do anything. Sometimes they don’t like the graphic style. Or the grind. Or the combat system, or the lack of content.

Every game has natural attrition. That’s normal. So how do you get new players into the game.

Sure original people have left the game. That’s the same as every game. But since the game has gone free to play there are also new players. How many of each, no one knows.

You’re making the assumption that the new players coming in our less than the players that left permanently as opposed to players who left and came back, of which there are at least a few, because there’s a bunch of those in my guild.

You don’t have math, or numbers. You have conjecture. Of course, I don’t have math or numbers, I just have conjecture too.

The different is, I’m not the one positing the position of the game is lower or higher. I’m simply saying your claim isn’t based on anything but your personal experiences, which may not tell you anything.

For example, there may be less people in dungeons and more people in fractals. There may be less people in WvW and more in SPvP. There may be more raiders but less open world players.

There’s simply no way to know. I don’t make posts saying the population is this or the population is that.

I simply make posts saying no one can know and making assumptions is just that. Making assumptions. It is my belief you’re making kittenumptions.

Because many of those who take a break from the game do come back for new content.

You don’t always need to apply a quantitative label to kitten data or information.

…and simply because we, the consumer, do not have raw number data, doesn’t mean we can’t come to conclusions using facts presented to us.

You can’t ignore the fact that HoT sales were poor… and you can’t pretend that poor game sales is not something contrary to your statements about the game being healthy.

…and certainly…

You can’t ignore the fact that GW2 is now free to play and Anet isn’t getting the free to permanent conversions they hoped for.

There are many other things that CAN be ignored, and in true white knight fashion you dismiss them left and right.

Megaserver implementation masks dwindling map populations.
PvP matchmaking reworked to lower queue times and mask low pvp playerbase.
Entire WvW servers devoid of activity.
Development team relocating resources away from content that was paid for and promised to focus on “something else.”
Flagship members of the Anet team leaving without being replaced.

It all points to the same thing, regardless of the absence raw number data.

The game’s not doing so hot.

Actually I can ignore the fact that HOT sales were poor because we don’t know they were poor. We know they were less than expected. That CAN mean poor. It can mean okay. It can even made decent but we expected more.

And HOT sales don’t mean anything when the core game is free to play and many new players signed on for that.

In other words, if 50,000 people left the game and 50,000 people joined, that would be the same. Which has nothing at all to do with HOT sales. That’s simply a red herring.

I don’t know anyone in my guild who hasn’t bought HoT. Not one single person. And yes, that’s only a couple of hundred people, but that’s the point.

What NcSoft said SPECIFICALLY is that they expected more free to play players to move on to HOT and that didn’t happen.

That’s the reason for the level 80 boost. It’s likely a lot of people were leveling too slow and there’s no reason to buy HoT pre level 80.

Megaserver does mask dwindling populations but that’s not necessarily evidence of population dwindling. That’s an side-effect, because the problem of guesting existed at the time mega-servers were introduced.

You’re saying the mega server was introduced to solve the problem of dwindling numbers. It was introduced ages ago. The problem at that time had nothing to do with HOT. It had everything to do with guesting and people loading themselves onto the most active servers. Don’t you remember people in TC and Blackgate complaining they couldn’t get on their own servers, due to guesting.

That’s one of the reasons the mega server was introduced. That is has the ability to make dwindling numbers doesn’t actually indicate numbers have dwindled. It only indicated we don’t know if they dwindled.

Back in the day when everyone and their brother were guesting to the three busiest servers, that was a problem and that’s when they started working on megaservers.

At that point, most people didn’t think the population was declining, UNLESS they refused to guest. The rest of us were stuck on overflow servers.

Halandir.3609:

Vayne.8563:

Some of the raids are tied to story. They were intended to provide a bridge between the end of HoT and the beginning of season 3.

That’s good to know. Since I lack both the will, ability and the interest to meet raid-requirements I no longer have to keep an eye on this forum/game.

Yes it has been hard to let go of this game: I loved Guild wars, I liked GW2, HoT was not my cup of tea, but I hoped they would eventually turn the ship in the direction I prefer.

At this point I guess they probably have to stick to the new plan instead of risking to lose all the people who actually enjoy the new direction.

It’s not that much story. It’s very very sparse. It’s mostly in the interactable items that you can view in any cleared raid instance. People will let you in if you must see it, but it’s minimal.

It’s like these bandit events. They don’t really provide any story so much as letting you know that the story is continuing with increased bandit activity.

Dante.1508:

AliamRationem.5172:

Dante.1508:

And as for HoT i know i hate it, having a chauffeur will not magically make me like it.

When I offered to help you in the jungle my intent was more to help you figure out how to appreciate it for what it is rather than what you wish it were.

You said that you have difficulty exploring the place and learning your way around because you can’t get away from all the monsters trying to kill you. So tell me why it wouldn’t help you to learn your way around if you had someone else there to keep those monsters off of you and show you the shortcuts you’re missing to get where you want to go?

Would that not likely result in a better understanding of the map layout and how to navigate it? And would that not be half the battle for you?

The other half is combat. As I told you before, my initial experience with the jungle was no different: It was confusing and I died constantly. It seems I wasn’t a special case. What makes you think you are? If I can learn to exploit the weaknesses of jungle enemies, I feel confident that you can, too.

Anyway, I’m not telling you that you should come back and play a game that you don’t enjoy. But I do think you’re wrong when you say that a little help from other players would be no use. You could be right, but I’ve helped enough players in the jungle to know that what at first seems impossible can become easy with some practice and a bit of help.

The offer is on the table, man. Any time you feel like coming back and giving it a go, just hit me up in game. We’ll see if we can figure this thing out.

Its not the i cannot do it, even if those frogs killed me 10 times in a row, i passed them in the end and moved on, its the fact that the whole content is based on cheese mechanics grind masteries which unless you have you cannot continue the maps completions or story, the fact the whole thing is tedious and not fun at all for me..

Sure over time i could pass those maps and get what i need even solo, but at what cost, to move on, but to actually enjoy the content no never, i hate it with a passion, going there drains my will and fun away, makes me angry with myself and at the game and generally just frustrates me to no end..

That to me is not why i play games, to actually get angry, stressed and want to break things by going to HoT is not a good gaming experience so i left the game for now.

I’ve lost count of the number of people who said they hate HoT, who I’ve played with who now enjoy HoT. Your hate of HoT could very well come from your lack of understanding and your lack of ability.

That you think hearts are some kind of great MMO content, frankly, blows my mind. They were and have always been filler.

As a person working on his sixth world complete, I don’t know how anyone thinks hearts are particularly fun.

Its not a lack of understanding or ability i’ve played since release, i have skills i just don’t have the patience anymore to deal with tedious cheese content and filler as you called it, yes hearts were filler but casual filler, hot has far far more filler and now gated filler as well..

Thank you for the offers both of you but trust me on this running hot with me would not be a pleasant experience, i play this content solo for a reason so i don’t “effect” other players with my anger and frustrations.. I do not group up because i’m bad at interacting with others and i stay away from it for a reason..

What you’re actually saying then is you’re bad and you truly believe you’re going to remain bad, and that you’re not going to get better.

And because of this you want Anet to produce more and more content completely devoid of challenge.

I don’t accept that you can’t learn, and I don’t accept that if you played with me it would affect me negatively. You’ve made up your mind, and that’s fine.

But you can’t expect a game to continue to be designed around anyone’s inflexibility. That’s not really reasonable.

In my opinion there aren’t enough people by percentage that thought hearts were good content for Anet to keep producing them. Even if they made new hearts, they’d have to be more challenging than the old ones, because I’m relatively sure most players find them obnoxious and a waste of time.

If you want to complete this zone you have to do 10-20 hearts.

If you’re like me and you make legendaries, you need multiple world completes. The first time through, yeah the hearts were okay. The 5th time through, not so much.

Hey, let’s trade a rock to this Jotun chief to get a reward to hand in, to fill in a heart.

And hearts have another issue of being just one time content. If you like them you have to keep making new characters to do them.

Dynamic events, on the other hand, cycle, so you can do them whenever you want.

There were plenty of quite easy dynamic events added to HoT that aren’t at all challenging. But you probably didn’t even bother giving those a chance.

It’s usually cheaper at dlgamer.com, which is an authorized retailer.

I’ve made nine legendary weapons and so I’ve done five world completes on core Tyria. I wouldn’t complain about having to do four zones. Once you figure them out they’re not that hard anyway.

Some of the raids are tied to story. They were intended to provide a bridge between the end of HoT and the beginning of season 3.

There will be a living world season 3. Some of the events in game right now are linked to that as well.

I’m guess that the new LS will come out in July.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Vayne.8563:

Anyone can look at the quarterly statement, see the profits and know the game is healthy. That’s far more factual than making assumptions about why certain decisions were made.

One thing is just guessing. The other is factual.

You are insinuating that “healthy profits” imply “healthy population” which it most certainly does not. …and using the word healthy to describe anything, unless you define exactly what you mean by healthy, is certainly a very vague term.

Healthy can mean, okay, fine, acceptable, good, or even… what I’m assuming you are going for…. not dead.

You reference quarterly statements…

Microtransactions are what anet initially said was supposed to keep the game afloat, and it is still a topic of discussion at earnings reports.

“The amount of gem sales and item sales versus active players is ok.”

Meaning… there are enough active players who are willing to make gemstore purchases to sustain the game upkeep costs and still return a profit… and only this.

Healthy, as I would take from the earnings report, would simply be defined as ‘acceptable’ and it is in regards to population contributing to revenue, not population as a whole.

Lets not forget how HoT sales were lower than anticipated.
“we have not seen the level (of sales) we have hoped”

What does that tell you?

Nothing… or should I say next to nothing.

…because anet sold the core game bundled in with the expansion.

(in order to obscure data regarding new game sales as well as existing player expansion purchases.)

…so we will never know if:
Anet sold an acceptable amount of copies to new players, but failed to earn enough sales from existing vet players
Anet sold an acceptable amount of copies to existing vet players, but failed to earn enough sales from new players
or
Anet failed to sell acceptable amounts of copies to existing vet players AND new players.

But it is definitely one of the three, and I would not declare that healthy by any definition.

Also regardless of which is actually true…. THEY ALL MEAN LOWER POPULATION THAN ANTICIPATED.

Actually they don’t. You’re making unwarranted assumptions. That is to say every single MMO in existence, all of them bar none, suffer from natural attrition.

Some people buy games and never end up playing them. There are many reasons, some times game related and sometimes not. People get too busy. They lose the internet. Their computer is too slow to do anything. Sometimes they don’t like the graphic style. Or the grind. Or the combat system, or the lack of content.

Every game has natural attrition. That’s normal. So how do you get new players into the game.

Sure original people have left the game. That’s the same as every game. But since the game has gone free to play there are also new players. How many of each, no one knows.

You’re making the assumption that the new players coming in our less than the players that left permanently as opposed to players who left and came back, of which there are at least a few, because there’s a bunch of those in my guild.

You don’t have math, or numbers. You have conjecture. Of course, I don’t have math or numbers, I just have conjecture too.

The different is, I’m not the one positing the position of the game is lower or higher. I’m simply saying your claim isn’t based on anything but your personal experiences, which may not tell you anything.

For example, there may be less people in dungeons and more people in fractals. There may be less people in WvW and more in SPvP. There may be more raiders but less open world players.

There’s simply no way to know. I don’t make posts saying the population is this or the population is that.

I simply make posts saying no one can know and making assumptions is just that. Making assumptions. It is my belief you’re making kittenumptions.

Because many of those who take a break from the game do come back for new content.

Dashingsteel.3410:

I am not sure I like the term active participation for the new wvw reward track. That makes it sound like those players who earned badges of honor in the past weren’t actively participating. I know I had to actively participate to earn my badges of honor. This is just one of many nonsensical moves by Anet.

Strange. I’ve gotten hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of badges of honor from achievement point chests, far more than I ever got from WvW.

KINGRPG.3492:

Sadly, Now the main point of GW2 HoT is equipment and fashion!

Fashion Wars…………!!!!

What would you like to be the point?

femalehumanmeta.8351:

Obtena.7952:

femalehumanmeta.8351:

Vayne.8563:

From my point of view the game is more populated now than back then.

If you think the game is more populated now than at launch, why does Anet not give us more concrete player population numbers like the peak concurrent user figures they included in their “the first year” blog post? It’s definitely not because there are more people playing the game.

Anet has never given those numbers, so concluding there is a correlation between them releasing those numbers and the health of the game is bad.

The blog post I linked do include those numbers. At the peak of the games popularity, during the first year, there were 460k concurrent users. Anet haven’t released concrete player population numbers like that since.

I’m not bashing the game, I like the game. Still do. I preordered hot and got my money’s worth, but to deny the changes they’ve made over the years like introducing megaservers (just a fancy word for server merging), wvw server merging, and the game going f2p (it’s not a coincidence they announced f2p after ncsofts most recent quarterly earnings report at the time had gw2 revenue at it’s lowest since launch), being a direct result of player population issues.

Only Anet knows how much the player population has dropped off, but it should be obvious to most that it has happened.

ESO launched with a mega server. Maybe the mega server was due to the fact that they expected to fail. The Anet megaserver game onboard after ESO announced theirs.

It solved a problem with population imbalance on certain servers. For example, I was on TC and never ever had a population problem anywhere at any time, because everyone was guesting to TC to get stuff done. In fact, there were complaint threads on these forums by people in TC who couldn’t get into their own server. The megaserver solved those problems.

Saying it was down to population loss is an assumption. And again since ESO launched with a mega server and advertised it, what evidence is there that the sole reason or even main reason for the mega-server was population reduction.

The real reason is more likely that running servers that had less people on them wasn’t as cost effective as making servers as you needed them. Businesses do make changes to save on cost.

The WvW problem started soon after launch because of the free server transfers. So many people wanted to be on blackgate.

Three months after launch there were already a bunch of dead WvW worlds. Merging those worlds with other servers is three years overdue.

Anyone can look at the quarterly statement, see the profits and know the game is healthy. That’s far more factual than making assumptions about why certain decisions were made.

One thing is just guessing. The other is factual.

Obtena.7952:

femalehumanmeta.8351:

Vayne.8563:

From my point of view the game is more populated now than back then.

If you think the game is more populated now than at launch, why does Anet not give us more concrete player population numbers like the peak concurrent user figures they included in their “the first year” blog post? It’s definitely not because there are more people playing the game.

Anet has never given those numbers, so concluding there is a correlation between them releasing those numbers and the health of the game is bad.

But regardless it’s not the conversation. If you use that as a criteria, most games are dying, even successful ones.

The Harry Potter books and movies were really successful and no one would say they weren’t No one could even really say Harry Potter is dying. But the amount of sales of the books and the movies at this time is miniscule compared to how many were sold when they released.

The numbers at launch don’t really speak to the health of the game, or whether something is dying as was put forth in the OP.

The question of whether it’s dying or not…well, Wildstar is dying. We can tell from sales figures. We can tell from layoffs. We can tell from the cancellation of the game moving into new regions. That’s how you can tell if a game is dying.

Lacklustre sales of a single expansion doesn’t indicate a game is dying. The real trick is, in how the game will be doing in a year. Two years.

A games success or failure has less to with with more or less playing and everything to do with the expectations of the business. That’s what business plans are for.

As for the number of people playing, it’s always going to fluctuate, depending on content releases. I’m sure we have more PvPers playing now than will be playing on July 13th for example after the season ends.

But we probably have less people showing up for other things like world bosses.

The new PvE content comes out and people will come to play it. If the game was dying that wouldn’t happen.

Loocker.4138:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Loocker.4138:

Yes, I know full well that you can do all activities with only 5 people, but the hard part is getting those 5 people together at the right time in the right place without having any outside contact with any of them. Sure I can set the “message of the day” to “Guild mission at 5pm” or whatever, but most people will ignore it and I can’t make promise that I’ll be online then either.

In short: “Active participation” seems pretty good, but it’s not always easy. I much preferred the old system as it allowed a more casual way of building guilds.

If you can’t get 5 people together, then you have a smaller guild than you think (I don’t mean this as a criticism — organizing guilds is harder than herding cats, which is why I’m retired from leadership).

The point I was making is that the old system didn’t require participation — you could fully upgrade a guild without any participation at all. That’s bad for a ‘guild’ (although perfectly fine for a social club).

I can see why lots of people liked that. At the same time, I hope you can see why “more casual” isn’t something that our New Gaming Overlords would be interested in supporting. ANet wants guilds to be active associations of players. It’s better for an MMO if groups band together, because nearly all of the content is more fun with more people.

Again, my recommendation is that instead of banging your head against the GH wall trying to worry about upgrading, join a big guild and do g-mish with them and do treks and bounties as you can (solo, in pairs, whatever) until you feel like you have something more substantive.

Either that, or get more creative about building your guild from scratch — lots of people manage to do it.

Aye, in the end it comes down to preference. Depending on weather you take guilds seriously or just want to mess about with the idea. My point is, the old system allowed for both.

Actually from my point of view, the old system was severely flawed. It conflicted against itself.

On one hand, you didn’t need many people, or active people to progress a guild. On the other hand, guild progress meant you had to depend on people repping. And therefore there were a lot of guilds that required 100% rep…but the game allows you to have five. So you either wasted four slots, or you didn’t join many guilds.

The idea of not repping and how much repping become contentious. My guild never had a rep requirement. But if people didn’t rep, it really looked bad. I hated it as a guild leader.

I prefer the new system where people repping is largely irrelevant. They can still chat in our guild chat. They aren’t required to rep the guild. They can still come into voice chat and participate in guild events and missions.

No, this one is much better for my guild. The old one caused a lot more drama.

Moyayuki.3619:

PopeUrban.2578:

They are consistently killing off characters to make room for cheaper voice actors.

Also because the part line is that all of the cuts made to HoT were made to enforce a sense of urgency in the storyline and not, you know, because it was too kitten expensive.

Those seem like lame excuses for ANet. I just dislike character deaths that are there just for cheap drama.

How is that a lame excuse. As certain voice actors demand more and more money, they become harder and harder for money to be spent on creating content to play. I don’t know about you but I think that’s a kitten ed good reason for a company to move away from a character.

At any rate, Eir is the oldest in Destiny’s Edge. She blamed herself for Snaff’s death. She was already passing on her legacy to someone. She said at the beginning of Guild Wars 2, if you played the norn story, that her time is over and that it’s time for someone to take her place.

The question wasn’t whether or not she should die but whether or not her death should be meaningful to a norn. Her death in combat, at the hands of Faolin’s betrayal really is a tale good enough for moots in Hoelbrak.

Taglor Anwamane.9468:

Asumita.2174:

It seems this game is changing its name to Raid Wars 2, with less normal game content, limited access to BIS gear, raid mentality, etc. I can see why people start to think that this game is dying. Hopefully Anet will realize this is the wrong path to take.

Seriously. 8 months with nothing substantial added but raids. I for one don’t want to see another word said about raids until we see some better forms of content.

Unless you’re a WvW player or a PvP player. So three of four groups of players have had content after a much longer drought for them. Most of the other dynamics, including not enough hard content group have been complaining for years. What there hasn’t been is content for my demographic.

And that will resume with the new living story season.

Loocker.4138:

Paulytnz.7619:

Ummmm actually no I find this new system better. I am in a 2 person guild with a friend from another game (I don’t care if people want to debate if that is a guild or not either lol). In the old system we could not do the guild missions so our influence income was on the low side and we never got to see the guild mission currency. With this system the guild missions are a little bit more forgiving and influence is a thing of the past. We have a fair bit unlocked with guild upgrades, well considering there is only 2 of us anyway.

Edit: Maybe myself and my friend have not found this an issue as we are hoarders and have been hoarding our extra mats for a long time. It seems that the required items for upgrades that Anet targeted were things that were of low value and in surplus or hoarded away so they have a use now. So since my friend and I had a lot hoarded away already we had headstart sort of. Of course people who never hoarded or saved may have had to work for those same things. Maybe that’s the issue?

Yes, it is still pretty easy for small guilds built up of friends, but for someone trying to build a big guild or play with random users it’s become much harder to get started.
Still, you have a good point.

I have a guild of well over 200 people. We’re at guild level 59 now and have all the upgrades we really care about except the new buff for WvW reward tracks, which we’re working on.

It depends on the type of guild and how much the players like a respect it. Guilds, I find, are a two way street. If the guild gives, then a percentage of people will want to give back. That’s how it’s worked for me anyway.

femalehumanmeta.8351:

Vayne.8563:

From my point of view the game is more populated now than back then.

If you think the game is more populated now than at launch, why does Anet not give us more concrete player population numbers like the peak concurrent user figures they included in their “the first year” blog post? It’s definitely not because there are more people playing the game.

First of all I never ever used the word at launch. That’s really not the issue. People are saying the game’s population is declining, but there’s little to no evidence of it. It’s declining since the day everyone logged in at the same time to try a new game? Of course it is. That’s not really the discussion though.

Launch numbers in every modern MMO are going to be higher than any other time in the games life. This is true of pretty much all entertainment. I was in the publishing industry and 90% of all books sell 90% of the copies they ever sell in the first 90 days. That’s a staggering statistic. Games sell when they’re new, and they they go down in price to try to sell more, to get the people who won’t pay full price to buy too. In the case of MMOs they go free to play. Why? Because everyone who wanted it has already bought it. Now you have to get more people to try it.

The conversation is is the population declining say from last year. Well last year at this time, the game population was likely lower because at that point it wasn’t free to play.

Once a game goes free to play, logically the numbers go up some.

As I said in my posts, the game population fluctuates depending on when the new content comes out. Raiders will come back for raids, story people will come back for living story and PvPers come back to play for the season rewards.

When they made changes to WvW lots of WvW people showed up to see what the changes were like.

It’s not rocket science.

There is a list of which ones you missed. Each outpost has an event chain and it’s own list for their own achievements. Instead of checking ground pounder, you needed to look at each outpost separately. Ground Pounders is like a compound achievement for getting the other five.

My money is on the July update.

femalehumanmeta.8351:

I doubt the game is “dying”, but the player base has unarguably dropped off since launch. How much? Only Anet knows, and they’re definitely not going to be making those figures public.

There are three obvious changes to the game since launch that indicate the player base has decreased. Megaservers, wvw server merging, and the game going F2P. You could also make an argument that login rewards and changes to the daily system are also indicative of player population issues, but those changes aren’t as obvious.

The megaservers solved a problem. That problem was is that people were guesting to busier servers, like TC and on other servers, people who didn’t guest, were stuck with less people. Does this necessarily indicate a drop in overall population. No. It MIGHT indicate that, it’s simply a conclusion you can’t logically draw.

The WvW issue has been here since launch. Server transfers were free at launch. Completely free. Most serious WvW players went to T1 or T2 servers. There have been servers languishing in this state for 3 years. Please explain how merging those low pop servers with more populated ones indicates a drop in population.

Free to play also doesn’t indicate a drop in players. It indicates a drop in new players coming in. That has nothing to do with existing population.

From a logical standpoint, none of these changes directly call to the population of the game.

On the other hand, most games that have significant population drops also have significant drops in income and usually layoffs follow. That hasn’t happened here.

The population of this game has fluctuated since the early days. The deadest I ever remember seeing this game is a few months after launch. People hit max level, didn’t have anything to do, came to the forums to complain about it, and left in droves. Then Anet introduced ascended accessories and a bunch of players got really angry that that introduction, saw it as a personal attack on their play style and many people left. That was the least populated I can ever remember this game.

From my point of view the game is more populated now than back then.

Every time there’s a pause in content, the population dips and every time new content comes out, the population goes back up. It’s not always the same people, but as time goes on, Anet has done a decent job of replacing those who left with new players.

I’m consistently getting new players for me guild now. There are new player posts on reddit almost every day, probably at about the speed they’ve always been.

However, map chat and the official forums are going to be more quiet, since free to play players can’t post in either.

Ryou.2398:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Ryou.2398:

Man guys, I dont know I think the cost is way to high for skills in this rpg im playing right now, is it to much to ask to max my character in 2 hours? I only paid 60 bucks for it plus dlc, geesh its not like ill get bored with it having all my skills nearly instant in an rpg then actually progressing towards it with great pacing through the content itself.

Like seriously rpgs are suppose to only last an hour or two dont you know this?

Some people are interested in playing the new specs, but not in earning them. Others prefer to earn them. Some people can make RPG’s last a long time without the game providing time sinks. Others can’t.

It doesnt mean it shouldn’t change for them either, it doesnt matter what kind of style that like rpg is a specific style and this is an mmorpg. I am sure there is certain online games where you start with everything unlocked.

Online games maybe, but I seriously, seriously doubt there’s a single mmoRPG that starts with everything unlocked.

If you play RPGs (and MMORPGS are just an extension of that genre) the expectation it to progress through stats or skills or gear. Even the original D&D which the RPG genre is pretty much based on had such progression in pen and paper.

Taking the progression out of an RPG, even an MMORPG, is like taking the combat out of an FPS.

Dashingsteel.3410:

The first year and a half of gw2 was truly “play as you want”. When I refer to “play as you want”, I am referring to how the game was the 1st year and a half not Anet’s manifesto. I think the system Anet had in place truly enabled players to play what they wanted in pve and always progress. There was no content that you were forced into to progress your character.

If you will read my first post in this thread, Obtena, I clearly said the “play as you want” aspect of this game was strong at launch. I never stated that this was what the developers meant by “play as you want”. However, I do find it odd that gw2 launched as a truly play as you want game.

I am not trying to define Anet’s policy on “play as you want”. I am saying that the system they had in place originally was the best for player freedom. I think forcing players into content that is either tedious or offputting(adventures, gold sink mastery points, etc.) in the name of character progression is not a good thing for the game

Well it was certainly play as you want to level. It was not play as you want to get a legendary. It wasn’t even play as you want to get dungeon armor and weapons. Specific goals required specific content to be completed since launch.

When Anet made the PvP reward tracks, that was a step toward play as you want, because then PvP players could get dungeon armor and weapons.

At launch there were many things that WvW players had to do to get what they wanted in the game.

I should also mention ascended gear was introduced only two months after the game launched. From that point on, the game was a whole lot less play as you want for some portion of the player base.

Now, you could argue you don’t need ascended gear, and you’d be right…technically. But certain players feel they need it and thus they need it. No saying you don’t need it to those people will convince them. And then those people could no longer play as they wanted, two months after launch.

The same exact thing can be said for masteries. Masteries are not required for most content. There are only a handful of masteries you need to get and you can get the point for them by either playing the story or getting a few lock boxes and mastery point communes in game.

The rest of it is optional. If you want it, you go for it. Of course, some people will say it’s not optional, in the way I argue that raids aren’t optional if you want legendary armor.

The point is, it’s play as you want for what you need and always has been. It remains that way, more or less, even now.

It only changes when you feel you need something that is only necessary to your way of thinking or your play style.

Follyfoot.2803:

If GW2 is dying, then MMO’s are dying. As for all it’s little misgiving’s GW2 is still the best overall online experience out there.

Arguably MMO RPGS are dying, having been replaced by mobas for many people. There was a time when Mobas didn’t exist, and this was the dominant multiplayer genre. No more.

And consoles take a big hit out of the number of people playing computer games, where most MMOs reside.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Vayne.8563:

Mentor.4130:

Vayne.8563:

Mentor.4130:

When you see zealot supporters dissapointed in Anets actions and spending time in other games then there is “Something rotten in the state of Denmark”/Tyria.

Dying games have less complaints by percentage, because people tend to know they’re dying. WoW has always had tons of complaints, even at it’s height. Your point?

Shame GW2 doesn’t have more supporters like you. If you don’t stop bleeding you will eventualy die. And there are problems right now with many things in GW2.

Evidence? Because last I saw Guild Wars 2 was still making 8 million dollars a month. I assure you that’s not all me. lol

Guild Wars 2 has a churn and burn playerbase.

Older players get bored and leave, new ones take their place.

The only people who stick around longer than a few months are people (like myself) who feel they have invested too much to give up on the game…. but the content is and has been stale for a really REALLY long time.

I find myself logging in…. and wanting to play so badly…. yet find myself bored to tears in a matter of moments and logging out.

Anet knows its playerbase has declined quite a bit, and has gone to great lengths to attempt to hide it.

Megaservers, and pvp matchmaking specifically are perfect examples of Anet attempting to mask the steady decline in player population.

Player population can still be observed by checking out the starting areas (where new players enter the world for the first time) and witnessing how utterly and completely devoid of life they are. (unless of course a daily mission or mega event happens to be there)

If your veteran players are getting bored and leaving…. but its painfully obvious that there is an extreme shortage of new players coming into the game…. you are losing population.

Anet even made the game free to play, and if that isn’t a wake up call for anyone who has played an mmo that your game desperately needs population, idk what is.

The bottom line is…. even if you are one of the players who refuses to quit…. there just isn’t enough to do in the game to keep people entertained and playing. New players get burned out fairly quickly…. and most of the vet community thats still playing (because they don’t mind playing the same content over and over and over and over again as long as they are doing it with their friends), are getting more out of the company they keep moreso than out of the game they are playing…. and once they realize that they move onto a different game.

You saying something doesn’t make it true. There are plenty of people who still have stuff to do after years. Really I promise.

There are people who casually go about making legendaries or high end weapons and armor. There are farmers who love to farm. And do nothing else. There are people who play because they love their guild. I’m one of them.

Saying that people have nothing to do is simply wrong. Some people sure. You for sure.

But talk for yourself. Because you don’t have the numbers. And you don’t know what Anet knows any more than I do.

I just read the post you quoted. I put as much faith in anyone claiming to speak for, “most of,” the community, or who claims to know the thoughts and preferences of, “most of,” the community, as I do in the promises of a career politician in election week.

He’s saying the ONLY people who stick around are people who feel they have too much vested in the game to leave. Aside from the fact that no one has numbers of how many that demographic is, I’m sticking around for other reasons, so the statement is demonstrably false.

Making sweeping statements is will generally (but not always) end in error.

Yup, I was agreeing with you.

lol. I thought you were calling me a politician, my bad.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Vayne.8563:

Mentor.4130:

Vayne.8563:

Mentor.4130:

When you see zealot supporters dissapointed in Anets actions and spending time in other games then there is “Something rotten in the state of Denmark”/Tyria.

Dying games have less complaints by percentage, because people tend to know they’re dying. WoW has always had tons of complaints, even at it’s height. Your point?

Shame GW2 doesn’t have more supporters like you. If you don’t stop bleeding you will eventualy die. And there are problems right now with many things in GW2.

Evidence? Because last I saw Guild Wars 2 was still making 8 million dollars a month. I assure you that’s not all me. lol

Guild Wars 2 has a churn and burn playerbase.

Older players get bored and leave, new ones take their place.

The only people who stick around longer than a few months are people (like myself) who feel they have invested too much to give up on the game…. but the content is and has been stale for a really REALLY long time.

I find myself logging in…. and wanting to play so badly…. yet find myself bored to tears in a matter of moments and logging out.

Anet knows its playerbase has declined quite a bit, and has gone to great lengths to attempt to hide it.

Megaservers, and pvp matchmaking specifically are perfect examples of Anet attempting to mask the steady decline in player population.

Player population can still be observed by checking out the starting areas (where new players enter the world for the first time) and witnessing how utterly and completely devoid of life they are. (unless of course a daily mission or mega event happens to be there)

If your veteran players are getting bored and leaving…. but its painfully obvious that there is an extreme shortage of new players coming into the game…. you are losing population.

Anet even made the game free to play, and if that isn’t a wake up call for anyone who has played an mmo that your game desperately needs population, idk what is.

The bottom line is…. even if you are one of the players who refuses to quit…. there just isn’t enough to do in the game to keep people entertained and playing. New players get burned out fairly quickly…. and most of the vet community thats still playing (because they don’t mind playing the same content over and over and over and over again as long as they are doing it with their friends), are getting more out of the company they keep moreso than out of the game they are playing…. and once they realize that they move onto a different game.

You saying something doesn’t make it true. There are plenty of people who still have stuff to do after years. Really I promise.

There are people who casually go about making legendaries or high end weapons and armor. There are farmers who love to farm. And do nothing else. There are people who play because they love their guild. I’m one of them.

Saying that people have nothing to do is simply wrong. Some people sure. You for sure.

But talk for yourself. Because you don’t have the numbers. And you don’t know what Anet knows any more than I do.

I just read the post you quoted. I put as much faith in anyone claiming to speak for, “most of,” the community, or who claims to know the thoughts and preferences of, “most of,” the community, as I do in the promises of a career politician in election week.

He’s saying the ONLY people who stick around are people who feel they have too much vested in the game to leave. Aside from the fact that no one has numbers of how many that demographic is, I’m sticking around for other reasons, so the statement is demonstrably false.

Making sweeping statements is will generally (but not always) end in error.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Vayne.8563:

Mentor.4130:

Vayne.8563:

Mentor.4130:

When you see zealot supporters dissapointed in Anets actions and spending time in other games then there is “Something rotten in the state of Denmark”/Tyria.

Dying games have less complaints by percentage, because people tend to know they’re dying. WoW has always had tons of complaints, even at it’s height. Your point?

Shame GW2 doesn’t have more supporters like you. If you don’t stop bleeding you will eventualy die. And there are problems right now with many things in GW2.

Evidence? Because last I saw Guild Wars 2 was still making 8 million dollars a month. I assure you that’s not all me. lol

Guild Wars 2 has a churn and burn playerbase.

Older players get bored and leave, new ones take their place.

The only people who stick around longer than a few months are people (like myself) who feel they have invested too much to give up on the game…. but the content is and has been stale for a really REALLY long time.

I find myself logging in…. and wanting to play so badly…. yet find myself bored to tears in a matter of moments and logging out.

Anet knows its playerbase has declined quite a bit, and has gone to great lengths to attempt to hide it.

Megaservers, and pvp matchmaking specifically are perfect examples of Anet attempting to mask the steady decline in player population.

Player population can still be observed by checking out the starting areas (where new players enter the world for the first time) and witnessing how utterly and completely devoid of life they are. (unless of course a daily mission or mega event happens to be there)

If your veteran players are getting bored and leaving…. but its painfully obvious that there is an extreme shortage of new players coming into the game…. you are losing population.

Anet even made the game free to play, and if that isn’t a wake up call for anyone who has played an mmo that your game desperately needs population, idk what is.

The bottom line is…. even if you are one of the players who refuses to quit…. there just isn’t enough to do in the game to keep people entertained and playing. New players get burned out fairly quickly…. and most of the vet community thats still playing (because they don’t mind playing the same content over and over and over and over again as long as they are doing it with their friends), are getting more out of the company they keep moreso than out of the game they are playing…. and once they realize that they move onto a different game.

You saying something doesn’t make it true. There are plenty of people who still have stuff to do after years. Really I promise.

There are people who casually go about making legendaries or high end weapons and armor. There are farmers who love to farm. And do nothing else. There are people who play because they love their guild. I’m one of them.

Saying that people have nothing to do is simply wrong. Some people sure. You for sure.

But talk for yourself. Because you don’t have the numbers. And you don’t know what Anet knows any more than I do.

Swagger.1459:

Vayne.8563:

Swagger.1459:

ArchonWing.9480:

I think this is a questionable change, but on the other hand I am wondering why people didn’t use their “thousands of badges” to get what they needed especially since badges have little other use than that one daily. It makes sense if you feel you can’t grind badges to get it, but otherwise with preexisting badges? With badges becoming an increasingly devalued currency and also found via achievement chests, I think it would only be practical to buy it in case.

I have an unused Gift of Battle from years ago, because I think they announced some changes to badges even though I haven’t bothered making a legendary.

My personal opinion is there should be a substitute for the gift of battle (maybe a mastery in pve could be done as much), since there are substitutes for pve in WvW via heroics and it could involve those badges.

My thoughts…

We have had zero info on legendary armors and it’s being speculated that we will need 6 gifts of battle. So no info to prepare players for 8 months, release final wing and kill off vendor.

So if you’re sitting there with badges like I am waiting for info, it kinda sucks to be in a position where I have 25k badges and now may have to grind out that track 6 times. It’s a lack of options thing and I don’t see why both methods can’t exist.

Both methods can’t exist for exactly the reason you’re stating.

It’s like saying here’s this new legendary armor and instead of making you do stuff for it, we’re going to give it to you for all the stuff you already have. Which doesn’t make sense, because the idea of things like legendary armors is to keep people playing.

Too many people have too many badges, even from achievement chests, to make that a viable way to keep people playing.

Why do you think each zone now has it’s own currency moving forward. So you can’t get it with existing currencies. If you want the stuff, you play the content.

You want something from VB, play VB. If Anet wanted people to get stuff easily they’d simply have left everything karma.

I just think it would be a nice gesture and option with all things considered.

Well, it would have defeated the purpose of the change I’m guessing. What needed to be done was better communication of what was coming, rather than a single note once in the patch notes.

I’m usually pretty up on the changes, but this wasn’t on my radar either.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Someone didn’t read the FAQ on P4F accounts.

A bit of research would have saved you from " looking the fool", and given your friends a better experience. All the features where heavily discussed when the P4F was launched. ANet invited everyone to try the P4F accounts. Maybe you should have done that too so you knew what your friends would encounter.

This is not ANets fault at all OP, this is all you.

No, that’s also ANet’s responsibility, to help veterans know that there are restrictions on F2P that means they won’t be able to show off all the cool stuff to friends who haven’t purchased.

I read all of the restrictions multiple times and I still might have run into the same sort of issue as the OP, because I forget which things are gated when. I usually only remember when an F2P says, “oh, I can’t do that” or “where did you go” …which reminds me to revisit the rules again.

The point, again, is that the OP wanted to show the game off and ran into stumbling blocks. While there’s very good reasons for the gating, it’s very bad for ANet when that happens and, accordingly, it’s in ANet’s best interests to reduce the chances it happens.

You can drag a horse to water, but if you can make in float on his back, you’ve got something. The OP’s problem seems to be he wasn’t aware of restrictions at all. You were.

You wouldn’t have run into a wall, come to the forums and made an angry post because someone has to get to level 10 to get into their home city.

This isn’t hidden information. This is information that is not only up front, but also in line with every other MMO that’s free to play.

I mean you go free to play in some MMOs and you don’t have access to every class and race. The restrictions here are not only minimal in comparison, but it literally takes an hour or two to get to level 10.

People who try to play low level characters for people before they get used to the game aren’t really doing them any favors.

I just go and hang out with people in their starter zone if I want to help out. I tell them about directly depsoiting mats (something most games don’t have), I tell them about bonus experience and how it works (which is something that helps you level a lot faster) I give them a few bigger bags, maybe, or some low level food.

At the end of the day, this isn’t the problem for Anet some people are making it out to be.

Swagger.1459:

ArchonWing.9480:

I think this is a questionable change, but on the other hand I am wondering why people didn’t use their “thousands of badges” to get what they needed especially since badges have little other use than that one daily. It makes sense if you feel you can’t grind badges to get it, but otherwise with preexisting badges? With badges becoming an increasingly devalued currency and also found via achievement chests, I think it would only be practical to buy it in case.

I have an unused Gift of Battle from years ago, because I think they announced some changes to badges even though I haven’t bothered making a legendary.

My personal opinion is there should be a substitute for the gift of battle (maybe a mastery in pve could be done as much), since there are substitutes for pve in WvW via heroics and it could involve those badges.

My thoughts…

We have had zero info on legendary armors and it’s being speculated that we will need 6 gifts of battle. So no info to prepare players for 8 months, release final wing and kill off vendor.

So if you’re sitting there with badges like I am waiting for info, it kinda sucks to be in a position where I have 25k badges and now may have to grind out that track 6 times. It’s a lack of options thing and I don’t see why both methods can’t exist.

Both methods can’t exist for exactly the reason you’re stating.

It’s like saying here’s this new legendary armor and instead of making you do stuff for it, we’re going to give it to you for all the stuff you already have. Which doesn’t make sense, because the idea of things like legendary armors is to keep people playing.

Too many people have too many badges, even from achievement chests, to make that a viable way to keep people playing.

Why do you think each zone now has it’s own currency moving forward. So you can’t get it with existing currencies. If you want the stuff, you play the content.

You want something from VB, play VB. If Anet wanted people to get stuff easily they’d simply have left everything karma.

If you’re buying HoT, get the first two masteries on core Tyria done before doing Fractals. They’ll make Fractals more profitable.

As usual, though, people are going to go where the loot is.1

Yep in my mind the OP ruined his friend’s experience. I’ve never played an MMO where something wasn’t cut off from me by level, not even the original Guild Wars 2. You get weapon swapping at a certain level, traits at a certain level, your ability to use an elite at level 30.

People gain access to stuff as they level. Not sure what the OP is on about.

HoT is pretty much all end game content, so those who used to run dungeons find HoT more profitable. I’d rather run an hour dragon stand map than a 15 minute dungeon.

World bosses are still done. Whether they’re relevant or not depends on what you like to do. People still to Teq. Big guilds still do Triple Trouble. There’s even a guild dedicated to doing Dry Top.

But there’s more action in the HoT zones as far as end game stuff than the old zones, partly because it is new content.

People who raid seem to like raids, but I’m not one of them.

Can’t tell you about all servers, but I’m up in Tier 1 and there’s plenty of WvW activity.

Oh yeah, fractals are more rewarding than they used to be and a lot of people run them now because of it. Try a fractal group instead of a dungeon group.

Mentor.4130:

Vayne.8563:

Mentor.4130:

When you see zealot supporters dissapointed in Anets actions and spending time in other games then there is “Something rotten in the state of Denmark”/Tyria.

Dying games have less complaints by percentage, because people tend to know they’re dying. WoW has always had tons of complaints, even at it’s height. Your point?

Shame GW2 doesn’t have more supporters like you. If you don’t stop bleeding you will eventualy die. And there are problems right now with many things in GW2.

Evidence? Because last I saw Guild Wars 2 was still making 8 million dollars a month. I assure you that’s not all me. lol

Mentor.4130:

When you see zealot supporters dissapointed in Anets actions and spending time in other games then there is “Something rotten in the state of Denmark”/Tyria.

Dying games have less complaints by percentage, because people tend to know they’re dying. WoW has always had tons of complaints, even at it’s height. Your point?

Even free to play accounts can play with anyone since the waypoints in every starting zone are unlocked automatically.

MashMash.1645:

Lack of content, and raids only = Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Such long gaps, people just drift away and they don’t come back.

People don’t come back? How many people? Which people? How many compared to other games.

In my experience, and it’s just my experience, plenty of people do come back to play this game. Obviously not everyone does.

However, it stands to reason that if you have few barriers to entry, then more people will come back than less. This game has removed many of the barriers to entry other games experience.

There’s no sub fee. There’s no new level cap. There’s no new tiers of gear. This means any people can jump in and play if they want, pretty much right away.

SpeedFiend.4521:

Miellyn.6847:

New legendary weapons need:
- model
- effects
- footfalls
- aura
- thematic collections for the precursor and one of the gifts for the Gift of [weapon name]
- optional background story (Chuka and Champawat)

Black Lion Skins need:
- model
- optional effects

Gliders need:
- model
- optional effects

The effort for new legendary weapons is much higher than just weapon skins or gliders.

You’ll be hard pressed to convince me that cancelling content people paid for ALREADY in favour of churning out more cash shop content is due to some supposed discrepancy in effort required.

But whether you’re convinced or not doesn’t change the fact that artists aren’t necessarily developers. For all you know, these designs have been sitting around for months already done.

As opposed to legendaries which were being built as they went.

Gunsnroll.2657:

Anet stated it.

Times and conditions change. Anet says something a year ago, before the expansion launched. The expansion didn’t sell as well as predicted. If I were in business I wouldn’t do it.

Imagine the backlash, even though they said so, of people who said there wasn’t enough content in HoT, people who were angry about how the game went and now other people are going to get it for free? After a year or year and a half.

Hell there was a backlash about people getting a three year old game for free when they packaged it with the expansion.

It’s like people think stuff is written in stone. It’s not. It never has been. And it never will be.

Because situations and business realities change all the time. It’s not something Anet has continued to say and I have strong reservations about telling anyone that will definitely be the case, all things considered.