Any tier 1 player will tell you emphatically that the cap is much more than 60. Any commander even in lower tiers can gather a zerg, /supplyinfo and get way more than 60. Stop saying the number 60. It just makes anything else you say look stupid.
Lot of commanders seem to be confirming my low ball number bro. So next time you call others stupid, try and do some research yourself. Because otherwise you look stupid.
As I said it does hover around 60-80. I am going to go with 80 as being the safe bet.
In game Polls:
Barmen.
You talk to a barman in a tavern, they chat yto you, ask you questions, you give your responses.
Anet get their poll.
Player recieves tankard of ale for their time.Encourage participation by making “visit tavern for a drink” a daily achievement when a poll is needed
haha this makes ingame polls actually immersive, nice idea
Only problem I can think of: how do you make the connection between the things you want to ask about (a specific event etc.) and the dialogue?
NPC: “Grab a seat, I’ll pull up a drink for you. Heard news at the Splintered Coast is pretty bad. One of the Dragon’s lieutenants seems to be getting stronger”
Player: “Yep, you wouldn’t catch me there” [didn’t participate] / “I was actually there in the fight” [participated].
NPC [if participated]: “Really?! I bet it was a close fight.”
Player: “Psh. A walk in the park for someone like me” [easy] / “Well, it was a sight more difficult than the usual fights I get into” [medium] / “You have no idea. Bodies. Bodies everywhere” [hard].
NPC: “Really…Fancy talking about it?”
Player: “Sure” [brings up a text box] / “Not really, it’d probably bore you” [if answer was easy] / “I’m trying to forget it, why do you think I’m here?” [hard]
NPC: “Truly a thrilling tale” [text box filled] / “No problem, I understand” [text box not filled]
NPC: “Here you go. This drink is on the house.”
Or something along those lines.
That is pretty cool.
The title is misleading, he talks about what future MMORPGs should do, but fail to do when they create new mmos. A lot of what he says makes perfect sense, and a lot of his reasoning is my reasoning as well. Watch the first 10 minutes, and if you feel the need, watch the entire 21 minutes. You’ll see the mistakes that Anet made when creating GW2 as well as things they should’ve improved instead of entirely getting rid of.
Pretty bad arguments there… You really think that MMO’s with vibrant colors succeed because of that fact?!(lol) And gw2 is not dead. It’s just broken and is made even more broken with each patch.
MMO’s do not succeed solely because of vibrant colors. Vibrant colors help a ton though, and they help you to pay attention a little more. When he said GW2 is dead, he was basically saying that it is dead enough at the moment to know that it will become dead in the future. You’d have to take a marketing class or a business class to believe that colors and shapes help a game a lot.
I don’t think it necessarily has to do with vibrant colors, but it has to be pleasing to the eye as we look at it a lot. Vibrant colors might help with that a lot. I do think GW2 is pleasing to the eye. A game like SWTOR was not even though it had vibrant colors. I am not talking about graphics but art style.
From Devon Carver’s Q&A yesterday…
This is not something we are considering as all our servers have robust populations. Server structure has more implications that just WvW, which means any changes of these sorts would have to take all aspects of the player base into account. In addition, with the queues as they currently exist on those top tier servers, I think it’s more important for us to solve the underlying scoring issues which would let more people play than if we were to cut the number of possible players at any time in half.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/view/forums/thread/397784/page/1
I don’t believe him, having played in less than robust servers.
If the player population is rising, where are they?
they’re spread across:
-26 PvE zones
-6 cities
-dungeons/fractals
-WvW
-sPvP
-daily activity
Saying things like 26 PvE zones, sPvP and 6 cities is deceptive. Most of the PvE zones are ghost towns. sPvP at the moment is pretty much dead. And save for Lion’s Arch the rest of the cities are empty.
Which is so unfortunate. Black Citadel for example has so much potential. I hope they use their arena for something like GvG or something of that nature.
This is one of the reasons I love playing on TC. The cities have people.
I don’t think the game is growing, I don’t think the game is dying. I think the game saw a drop after launch and then stabilized. Most servers are healthy, but a few definitely aren’t.
I do hope they do what a lot of MMOs are doing and pretty much make all servers, one big server. And make WvW completely separate.
Amount of people in the zones is about 100. At launch it was 133 I think, but number has been lowered by quite a lot.
People in my guild were saying they lowered it after they removed the culling. An assumption, but that is all we have to go by.
The number is definitely not static and has been adjusted over time.
Borderlands have lower cap than EB.
Interesting, that is news to me.
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In no particular order:
- Living World & Permanent Content
- Character progression (vertical/horizontal/diagonal/whatever)
- Revenue model (Microtransation vs Expansions)
- Berserker gear vs Everything else
- DE: Scaling Challenges & Rewards
- Guild features
- Personal Story (evolution/concerns)
- Open World: reasons to replay the whole content.
- RNG (I almost forgot this one xD)
Those are some of the suggestions that came to my mind for now.
I like this list, but number 3 is not needed, probably best left to them internally. However, it would be nice to know if we will be getting an expansion.
I highly doubt they go through all accounts and define what is inactive and what is active. So I am fairly certain it is based on all accounts, both active and inactive.
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Let’s broaden that … 60-133 … Until we can prove wrong or narrow that..
That sounds good to me.
Any tier 1 player will tell you emphatically that the cap is much more than 60. Any commander even in lower tiers can gather a zerg, /supplyinfo and get way more than 60. Stop saying the number 60. It just makes anything else you say look stupid.
It is between 60-100 players per server per map. One is a low estimate, one is a high estimate. It doesn’t have to be 60, but I provided a range where it could lie. I hope that made it simple enough for you to understand.
You seem to get upset easily, there is nothing to get upset out. People are guessing here, nothing to get insecure about.
60 players is not correct. That is way too low.
You think there are more than about 180-200 people per map?
Being as I have personally sat in a pile of 70+ people, yes.
I will tell you one thing for sure, it is not higher than 100 player per world per map. A safe bet is 80 players per world per map. But in my opinion it is 60. Usually the zergs I follow have about 40-50 people on a map.
That’s a cool story about the zergs you personally follow. Has no relevance to anything, but thanks for sharing.
It does have relevance especially since you stated the number of people you usually see. Thanks for sharing your info also.
As I said, the number is basically between 60-100 per world per map. Nothing more, nothing less. We won’t ever get the exact number, but that is the range.
60 players is not correct. That is way too low.
You think there are more than about 180-200 people per map?
Being as I have personally sat in a pile of 70+ people, yes.
I will tell you one thing for sure, it is not higher than 100 player per world per map. A safe bet is 80 players per world per map. But in my opinion it is 60. Usually the zergs I follow have about 40-50 people on a map.
======
It’s 166 people per side per map max. 2000 in total in the entire WvW land.
======Come on Devon. You have to be laughing, I know this information has been posted long ago somewhere and there was an indirect response but it was affirming more than ‘x’ We are not winning the race to find the source though.
That was what was originally promised, but after testing they lowered it to about 100 or less. (per world per map) at launch.
60 players is not correct. That is way too low.
You think there are more than about 180-200 people per map?
yes but can we have a time frame when it will be released?
one month?
two month?how long do you think it gonna take to create this?
I know that you are probably 110% focusing and your crew focusing on the league but how long when league have been launched should it take to create this?
I highly doubt we see it this year. It will probably come during the first quarter of next year Jan-Mar.
This is a good first step.
We really want to get to the heart of resolving the issue of making PvP feel rewarding, and tying those rewards back into the core of the game itself rather than as a totally separate game where it feels like you’re simply losing rewards/progress you could have made playing elsewhere. In doing this, a lot of the current MTX items available suddenly become more interesting and exciting as well.
Bingo. You guys need to fix the core problem, which is what you said. And I think everything else will fix itself. We can’t look to other things unless the foundation is solid, and right now it just isn’t. Far from it.
The ultimate goal should be to get more people into sPvP. And from there, matchmaking will make sense. And if matchmaking starts working, new players won’t be scared to play sPvP as they are matched up correctly with players at their experience (something that should have been in at launch).
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We want to totally revamp the way rewards and PvP interact with the entire game
This sounds interesting, wonder how far they are going to go with the “revamp”. However, if this is anything like the past, it might take more than a year for us to see something like this.
We have been promised a more meaningful reward system in sPvP for almost a year now. And we kept being strung along. So I will believe it when I see it.
But thanks for the update Colin, really appreciate it.
The thing that’s starting to creep into my mind with that topic is it feels like they’ve lost control over the game. They tried to please everyone but now every time they make a change they’ve stepped on someone’s toes.
It feels like there’s no concrete leadership or direction to the game, and the whole collaborating with the players reeks of ’too many chefs spoil the broth
I agree with this 100%, and mentioned it in the thread that Chris Whiteside had created. I find this to be the biggest problem in the game. The game doesn’t know what it wants to be. It is so indecisive.
My point is, without knowing how many people or the percentage of people, the entire post becomes 100% meaningless. If two people want it, why should Anet consider it? It’s only worth posting if “enough people” want it.
Do you know how many “people” want it? Do you know a “majority” of the GW2 community want it? Off course you don’t. You are just making assumptions just like everyone else.
Which is why ANet should decide not you. They are the only one with data behind things like this, not you or I. You are not the judge of this or the gate keeper.
I think that conquest is easy for new players to get into, and it’s allowed for some amazing high-level games so far! But we’d like to try some new things that get away from conquest.
New players can get into any game mode easily, even if it is a little bit more complicated. DoTA mechanics are significantly more complex to understand than GW2 conquest, yet it is extremely popular and noob/casual friendly.
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while also being sure that we don’t fracture the player-base by spreading players out to too many different game types.
I honest to god do NOT understand your ‘fracture’ point you have been trying to make since the release of GW2.
Yeah I never understood it either, because the community is as fractured as you are going to get already, with them designing for it not to be fractured.
If they had a queue system in place at launch, they could have easily treated different “game modes” as “different” maps we have for domination currently. So as “fractured” as we would be in maps right now, we would be in game modes in that plan.
I think the problem is there were so paranoid from perceived notions of player base being fractured in GW1 (which probably is true) that they designed GW2 with that paranoia in mind. Which is why there is one game mode with several maps. I also think they felt having one game mode like LoL would be conductive to eSports. Their map, mini-map and UI seems extremely eSport friendly when you look at it.
They should have designed their sPvP with more emphasis on “fun” instead of an emphasis on the paranoia of fracturing the community and eSports and I think we would have been in better shape.
But this is me just saying stuff, it is easier said than done.
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The loudest and most frequent posters on the forum do not necessarily represent a good cross-section of the playerbase as a whole.
And the loudest and most frequent posts on the forum can represent a good cross-section of the playerbase as a whole. We don’t have any evidence either way, so it is silly to make such arguments, and try to dismiss it as such.
Except that the post I first replied to wasn’t talking just about SPvP modes which affects no one but PvPers. And therein lies the problem.
If someone says people want vertical progression, for example, I’d want to see the numbers before saying Anet should or shouldn’t commit to vertical progression. That’s about the size of it.
If someone had said people want a more stable game, you’d not hear a peep out of me. Sometimes context is everything.
It doesn’t matter what it says, “sPvP modes” or even “Vertical Progression”. “People want vertical progression” also is just as valid of a statement.
Regardless, I don’t see why you are trying to deflect the issue of what the post actually said by nitpicking one random word. This thread is about feedback that people are giving devs. It isn’t about people telling others their point is invalid.
This isn’t about you and “what you want to see”. It was feedback by players to ANet and ANet can do with it what they please. Stop trying to argue with other players and telling them their point doesn’t “count”. It is annoying.
I think you’re wrong about the usage being justified. Because you don’t really know how many people like something.
Assuming that people come to the forums to complain, you’re naturally going to see more complaints on the forum. It’s not an accurate indication of the entire player base…only a very vocal percentage of the playerbase.
Saying people are mad and that gives them the right to act badly is wrong anyway.
The same goes with you saying the exact opposite based only by what you see on your T1 server where “Overflow has overflows”.
He said “people”, not “all the people”, “most people”, “the vast majority of people”.The implication is in the phrasing. Saying “people want something” implies most people, because if only a minority of people want it, there’s no much point bringing it up that way.
The entire post implies that there’s this huge group of people who want this. I submit that people don’t really know what the majority wants.
No you are reading way to much into one specific word. When I read “People want more sPvP modes”. I don’t read it as “most”. Why are we nitpicking words anyway?
People want “x”. Couple imply 20,000 people or 100% of the audience.
Could we also use PR speak and instead say “A huge chunk of the audience want more sPvP modes”? And not define what “huge chunk” means? I think we should do that instead. This way people won’t nitpick one word within an argument.
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Everyone either quit, went on a hiatus, or are causal players now cause of the pvp development. If the game mode gets better in the future, people may come back, but for now it is what it is.
“Everyone” did not quit that streams on that. A number of those streamers still play all the time.
He didn’t only say everyone quit, he also said some went on a break or are casual players which is true. The stream is no where close to how it was. It seems like to me as an avid viewer of the stream, day by day the less the channel streams.
These are the servers I was going to recommend – Sanctum of Rall, Jade Quarry, Blackgate and Tarnished Coast.
I agree with Galtrix, TC to me is the best server for a new player. Full of people, and a very friendly community.
Thanks for the info Jon. I truly believe if GW2 launched with death match, sPvP would be way way way more popular, like 20 times more popular. Now I am afraid it might be too late. But hopefully not.
And as much as I hate the downed state mechanic for PvP, I think it would have worked for death match.
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Don’t remind me of Aion, pls.
Another thing that some MMOs do is take common questions that people have on the forums and answer them in a blog instead of actually answering them on the forums. This way the Q/A is organized and more easy to read.
And another benefit of doing it this way, is the community team can give the commonly asked questions to each dev department and they can answer that. This can be done monthly or quarterly.
I want to echo the people who have recently been requesting in-game polls. Since currently there has been no real acknowledgement or response to player dissatisfaction with the pace of Living Story releases, I have chosen to simply not log in at all to avoid being counted as a “satisfied customer” in your concurrency metrics.
An in-game poll where I would have the chance to have my opinions actually be counted would be something worth logging in for.
I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:
Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?
Chris
Why not just email polls to players like you do with the high level updates for each month? Add an ‘unsubscribe from polls function’ and occasionally post the results or atleast a high level analysis on the forums.
Pure ‘in game polls’ would be easy to miss and we get enough spam mail as it is. :P
Personally I wouldn’t want it in-game. That would make the game feel like it is in beta and ruin the immersion, but I like your idea of an e-mail.
Chris Whiteside has a team of writers/PR people and Marketeers talking through him!
This is not the case. i just happen to write this way. Everything i say comes from the heart and if it helps i can write in a less passionate manner. Note i am English and this may have some effect on the way i write (People in the studio tend to blame a lot of the mistakes i make on being English so you are all in good company there)
To me it is so much more refreshing to see you post something like this, than your original post. The first one was so PR this one is so much more human. Some other devs do that, and they can, their choice. But you don’t have to use PR on us, you already got us man!
But thanks for your comments, people do appreciate it. As I said earlier, secrecy breeds distrust and uncertainty (I don’t think you were being secretive but some perceived it as such).
I don’t think anyone expects developers to post on the forums a lot. We know how hard your job is in the MMO space, and I personally appreciate it a lot. But the communication needs to be more open. For example, it would have been better if you guys had communicated with us the stats of precursor crafting a little while ago, instead of us asking about it, and then getting the answer it might not come this year.
Another issue that we haven’t gotten any communication on for almost a year is condition damage:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/No-love-for-condition-builds/page/2
There are some examples that I have seen asked about for a year, with little to no updates/response.
Thanks Chris.
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Arenanet please don’t forget these words by Mike O’Brien and about about your company and feedback back in 2010:
In answer to the OP’s question, it has to be answer 1 or 2.
A-Net has acknowledged condition stacking in an issue on these forums:
John Peters in October (2012): “Condition damage is an issue we are looking into.”
John Peters in February (2013): “Condition damage is an issue we are looking into.”
Original Posts:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/No-love-for-condition-builds/page/2#
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Comfirmed-Nothing-being-done-re-conditions/page/4
But it has been a year since this was first acknowledged and in my frustration I am leaning towards answer number 1… they do not know how to fix it and they are hoping it goes away.
Ulari
This is a good example of what people are talking about in the Chris Whiteside post. We always get “we are looking into it”, and a year later no answer.
I call BS. Because again, Teq IS NOT HARD. The difficulty comes in the DPS check, and the AFK check.
The difficulty is not based on any kind of mechanics, jump spamming when waves come and not standing in kitten is not exactly rocket brain surgery.
“Hard” or not is relative really. You may not find it difficult, someone else may. Others may consider only the required coordination to be the hard part. Either way, Teq is no longer a ‘stand and spam’ boss. You have to have reliable people on the turrets. You have to have decent players defending those turrets. All in addition to having people beating on him. You then need to have reliable communication to split to defend the batteries.
No, it is not rocket science. It is not brain surgery. Hell for some people, they might consider those things easy in comparison. It’s different for each participant.
And you don’t see a problem with making a world boss like this? “Fun and open content for all players” was the idea that Anet put forth.
It’s no longer true for Tequatl. Looking at the site posted by the guy above, some servers have only killed it ONCE. That kind of seems like badly designed content to me.
Many servers haven’t downed him yet. And a lot of the smaller servers got help from other servers or the TKS guilds on the forums. Because they couldn’t do it themselves.
Yep and this is clearly shown by the incredible participation the event is experiencing…
< end sarcasm >Regardless it’s a little wrong to call the event “easy” (and yes that’s the opposite of “difficult”) given the current community feedback. If you’ve found yourself a nice guild to participate in your overflow “instance” — great. P
No the “difficulty” is based on the fact that it is difficult for people on medium/low population servers to get enough organized people to do the event. The difficulty is not based on the fight but the organization of people. That is why the top 3-4 servers have killed Tequatl more times than the rest of all servers COMBINED.
http://gw2dragons.com/dragons/leaderboard
Calling the encounter challenging and difficult based on the mechanics is laughable. People that played Mario on the Nintendo and can jump correctly should be fine in this fight.
I call BS. Because again, Teq IS NOT HARD. The difficulty comes in the DPS check, and the AFK check.
The difficulty is not based on any kind of mechanics, jump spamming when waves come and not standing in kitten is not exactly rocket brain surgery.
I found it pretty funny when you said “not based on any kind of mechanics” and then followed it with “jump spamming when waves come”
.
The fight has lots of mechanics… maybe you meant to use a different word?
It seems pretty easy to understand actually. He didn’t say the fight doesn’t have mechanics, he said the difficulty is not based on the mechanics. They are simple mechanics. The fight and the mechanics are not hard.
I am almost sure it is number 1. They know it is a problem, don’t know how to fix it (or it will take a lot of time) and hoping it goes away.
I hope it is not 3, because if they are ok with it currently. They should be decisive and tell their player-base that it is ok.
Do you play a Norn or Charr by any chance? I know the experience sucks with those two races as they are so big.
The game isn’t growing, the game isn’t dying. There was a drop in population after launch and it has stabilized. I don’t believe PR speak about their population. I have played on low population servers in which I could find no one around. I played on high population servers that had plenty of people around.
But I will tell you one thing, the experience is way better on high population servers. Way better. So if you can, try to guest on one and see how you like it compared to your server.
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That is pretty amusing.
Had to double check the dates for a second.
There is so many things that you’ve tried to “sweep under the rug” and completely ignore. That is completely disrespectful.
I think this is extremely relevant and I agree 100%. Chris and team, here is some constructive advice from one random customer of yours:
- Sweeping issues under a rug, doesn’t make it go away. Ignoring the issue only magnifies it. We have seen a couple instances of that on these very forums.
- Please be open and honest with us, speak to us as people. I can assure you most of us would appreciate that more than excessive PR speak. Some ANet developers use way too much PR speak when talking to their customers.
- You have a great community team, please use them more. We don’t expect developers to be on the forums or answer questions. But there needs to be more communication between ANet and the community. It is severely lacking.
- This goes with the previous point. More interaction less moderation.
Thanks.
Chris, I appreciate the post. However, I would appreciate it even more if you guys could do something like a State of the Game. And what we should expect moving forward. A lot of players don’t know where GW2 is going and they don’t know what to expect. It seems like a game without direction at the moment, and to me that is the key issue. There seems to be some sort of indecisiveness within GW2 (real or perceived).
You don’t have to do something like that, but players would like to see something like that. People are not being negative for no reason (most of the time). There are some underlying issues why it seems like people are upset. And yes I agree, being a troll or angry is not the best way to go about it.
I am afraid without tackling the root issue, nothing will change.
The great thing about GW2 is that it is (and always has been, which is a key) without a monthly fee. If you’re bored, leave for a while. They’ll keep adding content, and when something is released that you like (New fractals, heck, they’ve got to unlock the desert and some new dragons eventually!) You can pop in and check it out for free. Its one of two reasons that I can think of that this game hasn’t seen the dropoff that most games outside of WoW have seen after the first few months of release.
Why do people keep saying that? You could have said that 5 years ago, but today almost all MMOs are free to play. So GW2 isn’t special in that regard at all. And this game has seen a drop off after release, per Izzy on a Polygon article.
Basically what I am trying to say is that the payment model can’t be used as an excuse anymore, especially when the market is flooded with F2P games.
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Hey, so i’m now starting to play GW2 on Crystal Desert. There seems to be not a lot of low level players and it also feels empty. Which servers are best for beginners?
Trust me on this, leave the server. Playing on a high population server will make your experience 100% better especially while leveling and you will be less likely to quit the game. I am speaking from experience having playing on three low population servers and 2 high population servers.
Go here:
https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/na/wvw
Pick a Tier 1 server. Or even Tarnished Coast. I personally recommend:
Blackgate
Sanctum of Rall
Jade Quarry
Tarnished Coast
Maybe we have very different expectations from games and mine are much higher as yours it seems. A little like console-gamers vs PC-gamers.
Your expectations are unrealistic.
You sound like you need every possible advantage to not look like a fool. Sucks to be you I guess.
People don’t always choose the cheese in life, thats a kittening kittened statement.
“Everyone dopes in baseball, so I guess I will too because its easier!”
Bad comparison. These players are not cheating, it is all within the rules. Hacking could be compared to doping.
A better comparison would be this, while playing baseball if you knew a certain type of bat, caused you to hit 50% more home runs than the average bat. You can bet that 95%+ of all players would be using that bat. Eventually the MLB would try and ban those bats, just like the NBA has banned several sneakers in the past. Those would be the “balance” changes.
I am sure would be some players that had “integrity” to use the regular bat. But it wouldn’t be the norm by any means.
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MMOs should make you feel like you have to play them. Not randomly log on here and there. Which is exactly why GW2 has things like dailies and temp content. They want you to log on and have the urge to log on.
But there should be compulsion. There should always be that urge. You should feel like you are missing out or wasting something if you don’t log in.
From the way it sounds you want it, they should just lace the game with nicotine.
I don’t know if you’re wording it wrong or if I’m reading it wrong. They should make the game appealing and fun to play, yes…….but not like a drug as you are making it sound. Its a very wrong turn a game has made if they have to force that addictive quality onto its players to force them to play rather than just having players logging on and enjoying themselves because the content is fun.
If I feel like I’m wasting something in a game because I’m doing something in the real world, then it might be time to reevaluate my life.
No MMO is fun after a while, eventually everything gets boring. You might love ice cream, but if you eat ice cream every day for 1 year you will get fed up of it. That is why MMOs have all these things that try to make you feel bad for not logging in and make you feel bad for missing stuff.
As I said it is exactly why GW2 has temp content, dailies, and stuff like items of the cash shop that go away. There are psychological aspects of all entertainment that can be compared to drugs.
MMOs as a genre is not for the super casual player, as the whole concept itself is a time sink. That is the whole goal of an MMO. To try and make you spend as much time as possible. If you don’t like that, the genre might not be for you.
I think Dulfy became a reliable source a LONG time ago particularly when she was allowed to play test new updates before the general public…
Dulfy only collects informations that are released by a.net.
Also last time I visited her site, she was running goldselling ads.
A lot of times the ads are not controlled by people running the site but by Google Ad Sense itself.