In the ideal world a class should be easy to play, hard to master. The problem with GW2 and many builds is that it is easy to play, easy to master. That shouldn’t be the case.
It really depends what class you are. I think the opposite when it comes to new/return players. I think returns are harder to manage but new players are easy to get due to free trials and this being a B2P game. Most everyone at this point has at least tried GW2 (clearly not a fact), I’m just generalizing here.
But let us say Joe Casual wants to try an MMO. The barrier to entry to GW2 is pretty high compared to games like Rift/Tera/Neverwinter/SWTOR etc. When Joe Casual is looking for an MMO he probably will try the F2P ones first instead of spending $40-$60 dollars on GW2.
A B2P system is AMAZING if all MMOs are subscription, but that isn’t the case anymore. There are so many free games to chose from.
Most F2P MMOs are garbage imo.
I agree, but the random casual player doesn’t know that. They will go with the game with the least barrier to entry. Also, tastes are weird, there are people that prefer Runescape over any other MMO in the market.
I agree that’s true but are you saying GW2 should be F2P with cash shop to keep up with the competition?
Personally I think F2P would hurt the game more than anything but that’s my opinion.
No I would hate for it to be F2P. I just think the need to incentive new players better to want to level in this game. I would throw in big XP boosts with the Box copy or “Refer a Friend” type programs in this game.
The fun thing is, Guild Wars 2 has enough potential to rival WoWs place at the top of the MMO Ranks, if it would develop in the right ways through the next years
Unfortunately that ship has past us a long time ago. MMOs don’t that time anymore, they did 10 years ago, but today if you are not competing and launch, you are old news. There are couple of big new MMOs coming out next year, and that will spread out the MMO population even more.
What concerns me more is that NCSoft will not fund GW2 and treat it like a red headed stepchild because they got WildStar to worry about. Their supposed cash cow that will have subscriptions. Why would NCSoft want WildStar and GW2 to compete with each other?
This is also one of the reasons I don’t see an expansion, at least not next year.
Because of diversification. Look at Jagex at the moment, if RuneScape dies, they’re completely screwed. That’s not a situation you want to be in.
And I don’t think Wildstar is going to be THAT successful. The game’s design rings of WoW-in-space, and I can’t think of one MMO that did amazingly well trying to out-WoW WoW.
But NCSoft is already diversified, in the last quarterly call 50% of their sales were from Lineage 1. That one game that is like 15 years old had 50% of their sales.
I never said WildStar will be successful, but I do think NCSoft sees a huge money making opportunity with WildStar even in the short term.
I don’t trust NCSoft enough that I think they will make the right decision, but we will see.
It really depends what class you are. I think the opposite when it comes to new/return players. I think returns are harder to manage but new players are easy to get due to free trials and this being a B2P game. Most everyone at this point has at least tried GW2 (clearly not a fact), I’m just generalizing here.
But let us say Joe Casual wants to try an MMO. The barrier to entry to GW2 is pretty high compared to games like Rift/Tera/Neverwinter/SWTOR etc. When Joe Casual is looking for an MMO he probably will try the F2P ones first instead of spending $40-$60 dollars on GW2.
A B2P system is AMAZING if all MMOs are subscription, but that isn’t the case anymore. There are so many free games to chose from.
Most F2P MMOs are garbage imo.
I agree, but the random casual player doesn’t know that. They will go with the game with the least barrier to entry. Also, tastes are weird, there are people that prefer Runescape over any other MMO in the market.
Not sure why people bring up Tequatl, good luck doing it on most servers today. Even on the busiest servers you will rarely see it down anymore. People have moved on sadly.
Don’t be silly. There are armies of players taking down Tequatl everyday. Day before yesterday I participated in a Tequatl kill thanks to the fine people at Tequatl Terror Squad. They were running the event in 4 overflows with more players clamoring to get in.
But it is a raid, you generally want to be part of a guild or associated with a guild to do it.
“Armies” on 4-5 servers out of the 51 servers that exist. That helps.
That’s just one guild’s efforts!
Follow this and you will see that Teq is going down regularly. (this does not include overflow information)
http://gw2dragons.com/dragons/leaderboard
The advice people are giving to returning players is that if you want to kill content about a week old you either need to be on the top 4-5 servers in the game AND have to be there right after reset and that is the only time you down him.
Or you will have to join guilds that are specifically made for killing him.
Not the best advice.
Ostrich maybe you got out skilled against the Spirit Ranger, ever though about that? I also saw that you as an Engineer get farmed by a Guardian last night. Are you going to blame his class and spec for that one also?
Sometimes it is better to own up to your mistakes and work on them. It will make you a better player. I didn’t see Lil Homie making excuses.
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It really depends what class you are. I think the opposite when it comes to new/return players. I think returns are harder to manage but new players are easy to get due to free trials and this being a B2P game. Most everyone at this point has at least tried GW2 (clearly not a fact), I’m just generalizing here.
But let us say Joe Casual wants to try an MMO. The barrier to entry to GW2 is pretty high compared to games like Rift/Tera/Neverwinter/SWTOR etc. When Joe Casual is looking for an MMO he probably will try the F2P ones first instead of spending $40-$60 dollars on GW2.
A B2P system is AMAZING if all MMOs are subscription, but that isn’t the case anymore. There are so many free games to chose from.
Not sure why people bring up Tequatl, good luck doing it on most servers today. Even on the busiest servers you will rarely see it down anymore. People have moved on sadly.
Don’t be silly. There are armies of players taking down Tequatl everyday. Day before yesterday I participated in a Tequatl kill thanks to the fine people at Tequatl Terror Squad. They were running the event in 4 overflows with more players clamoring to get in.
But it is a raid, you generally want to be part of a guild or associated with a guild to do it.
“Armies” on 4-5 servers out of the 51 servers that exist. That helps.
The fun thing is, Guild Wars 2 has enough potential to rival WoWs place at the top of the MMO Ranks, if it would develop in the right ways through the next years
Unfortunately that ship has past us a long time ago. MMOs don’t that time anymore, they did 10 years ago, but today if you are not competing and launch, you are old news. There are couple of big new MMOs coming out next year, and that will spread out the MMO population even more.
What concerns me more is that NCSoft will not fund GW2 and treat it like a red headed stepchild because they got WildStar to worry about. Their supposed cash cow that will have subscriptions. Why would NCSoft want WildStar and GW2 to compete with each other?
This is also one of the reasons I don’t see an expansion, at least not next year.
(edited by Xcom.1926)
Not going to say if it is in good hands or not. But what I will say is that the game has no direction. It seems like to me the game doesn’t know what it wants to be. There is almost two sides within ANet, one wants to stick with the pre-launch plan. The other wants to make GW2 like every other MMO. It seems like the people that want to make GW2 like every other MMO is winning the battle.
I honestly think the game will have problems getting new players, not returning players. But brand new players who plan to level from level 1. And I hope they try to do something to help with this problem.
The 1-30ish experience is fine, it is fun and diverse. But from 40-80 it is a painful to level especially solo. The leveling areas are dead (which should be expected) and leveling from 40-80 by yourself sucks.
Not sure why people bring up Tequatl, good luck doing it on most servers today. Even on the busiest servers you will rarely see it down anymore. People have moved on sadly.
- “the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn,”… it takes about 2-3 weeks to get a best in slot item. Yeah… crazy amounts of time, lol. I guess you haven’t played any other mmos before. Also you don’t have to do the same raid over and over again to have a small droprate of that BIS item (or tons of runs of that dungeon to get the tokens). Also these raids require 9 or 24 people with the same schedule as you, so solo-players / player who enjoy small groups won’t see best in slot items at all. GW2 gives you a big variety of ways to earn ascended items.
What utter nonsense. I have played plenty of MMOs before, and 2-3 weeks is a long time to get an item in any MMO.
It is amusing to me that people actually think they fulfilled the “Is it Fun” and the “Manifesto”, they did nothing of that sort, they did a total 180. I have to facepalm everytime someone tries to explain why they actually fulfilled their promises.
They are not building their game around “fun” anymore, they are building their game around what they said “subscription” games do. And that is grinds, time sinks, gated content and all of that type of content they criticized.
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Wow, I read what Colin said. And it is AMAZING to me how they completely made a 180 from that. This was the funniest. He is doing the OPPOSITE of what he said.
You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.
A lot of MMOs realize that people want solo content and are providing it. There was a stat released that said about 60%+ of MMO players play solo. So it definitely needs to be done.
Source?
This is from Jeremy Gaffney. Founder of Turbine and now working on WildStar. He was also one of the executives in NCSoft.
“And solo players are tragically underserved in most MMOs – something like 65% of players tend to play largely solo (Massively Single-player, as it were). So we can use that same tech to give them frequent updates of new solo story content for the cap frequently – advancing our world story and giving you more to do than daily quests or reputation grinds.”
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A lot of MMOs realize that people want solo content and are providing it. There was a stat released that said about 60%+ of MMO players play solo. So it definitely needs to be done.
There is a huge correlation between WvW ranking and server population. It might not be perfect but it is right most of the time. The lower the rank the less population your server has.
And the “tags” that say “High” and “Medium” mean nothing. Having played on a server that was literally dead for a long time, it was labeled “Very High”. It is probably based on accounts on the server even if the player quit months ago. And not based on people that are active or logged on.
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NCSoft’s is too busy with WildStar to be bothered.
What nonsense, there are crybabies and elitists in PvE also. Probably even more so in PvE from what I have seen.
Are there any (NA) servers that are medium? Last time I used guesting, I’m pretty sure all the servers were at least High population…
As people have said, those classifications mean nothing. There are several servers with a lack of population in WvW and PvE. I think all those mean is accounts bound on the server, even if those players quit.
So NA doesn’t get anything for free because of funky classifications.
“We want more challenging content!”
“We want raid like content”
“Pve is too easy!”insert Tequatl overhaul
“Omg its too hard, nerf it”
“Well I did it once, no point in doing it again”
mmm hmmm…. static, challenging content is so grand now isn’t it….
You do realize there are different people with different opinions right? It isn’t one hivemind with one opinion.
wish they’d update the US numbers as I’m not convinced servers like FC and AR are high population.
They aren’t. I think the tag is based on accounts on server, not active population. There is no chance in hell servers like AR, FC, ET, DR are “High” let alone “Medium”.
I looked right now and AR and GoM are listed as “Very High”. Oh man that is hilarious.
They can manipulate the system who knows.
That or it is based on accounts bound on the server. If that is the case this system is meaningless.
All NA servers are labeled Very High/High so this means nothing to us. The funny thing is at least 5-6 servers on NA are Low and they still label them Very High/High.
So there is no way low population servers will benefit from this, because the tags are not accurately telling the story of each server.
wish they’d update the US numbers as I’m not convinced servers like FC and AR are high population.
They aren’t. I think the tag is based on accounts on server, not active population. There is no chance in hell servers like AR, FC, ET, DR are “High” let alone “Medium”.
I looked right now and AR and GoM are listed as “Very High”. Oh man that is hilarious.
There are a lot of features I expect in MMOs that GW2 is missing. Not having a option in the TP to sort by armor is absurd, let alone not being able to trade directly with players.
Your name was quite inappropriate before. You deleted the character that was holding your items, and CS policy is not to replace deleted items. If they would do so, anyone could say they deleted an item and get multiple copies. This particular policy is good for the game. It is best to tell the whole story when posting.
That seems like a weird policy to have in place, in every other MMO I played. If you deleted your character/items by mistake. Customer service would return it for you.
That is how my server looked during the first week. But we just guested to Blackgate and did it. The thing about events like this is if you don’t get it done the first week you are pretty much screwed.
Open world bosses that require 80+ people is just bad design, in terms of long term content.
Just post on the Account Issues section of the forum with all the details of the item and why you think it was falsely advertised or whatever.
If you didn’t know, they extended this. Also as many of you may know, it has increased gold spammers tenfold.
Does anybody know why they extended the trial? I’m curious. Do they need more cash? Do they want to bolster their numbers up before the holiday season so they can put it down in advertising? What are your thoughts?
Tinfoil hats are also available at the front desk for your convenience.
Quarterly sales call coming up next month, they trying to boost sales numbers before then is my best guess.
What was your name before? Did it violate ToS? Seems weird they would just change your name for no reason.
Sorry kid, but you’re just the minority
Source?
I hope it is a class. Would love to see a new class.
You have to view WoW separate from every other MMO because WoW is awesomely successful and no other MMO as ever got near it.
WoW’s subscription base does show a constant decline over a period of years but every time a new expansion comes out they regain several million players. So expansions, at least in WoW ATTRACT players.
Last time I checked WoW still had 8 million subscription players which is AWESOME and any other MMO would love…
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1325466-WoW-MoP-down-to-only-6-15-million-active-subscribers
Well currently it’s 7.7 million subscriptions and 6.5 million players that logged in at least once a week.
Yeah it went down after the expansion, but the expansion did boost them up 1 million. But it wasn’t good enough for them to stay. Without an expansion I would argue it would be down even more than it is currently.
At the end of every WoW expansion there is a huge decrease in players. Then after the expansion it goes back up. I think that is true for most MMOs. People need something big to look forward too. Small living world updates aren’t going to cut it.
(edited by Xcom.1926)
GW2 needs an expansion more than any games released in the last 5 years.
Agreed but when should they release it? Do you think a good time would be Spring 2014 when games like ESO, NCSoft’ own WildStar and games like Destiny are released? Not to mention a WoW expansion.
Seems like it is a very saturated time to release any type of MMO.
Galtrix has it nailed. “Very High” or “High” mean NOTHING. Trust me from experience on a couple of other servers. Best option if you like activity is a T1 server (Blackgate, Sanctum of Rall or Tarnished Coast). T2 servers should be fine too.
But remember though, if you are on a T1 server, WvW might have long queues.
According to Anet’s metric and money, yes, to them.
But if you look at their quarterly sales report, it isn’t looking good as time moves on. They have to do something. They can’t keep losing 30% in sales every quarter.
GW2 is a year old, it’s not unusual for software to decrease in sales in that amount of time. Perhaps you should have listened to the conference call where they talked about revenue from the cash shop. I suspect you did, but try to ignore it because it doesn’t support your world view.
I know software decreases as time goes on. THAT IS THE POINT. You need an expansion to rejuvenate sales and the game itself. I did see ANet’s overall revenue and it keeps going down. They need some sort of big expansion to bring it back up.
According to Anet’s metric and money, yes, to them.
But if you look at their quarterly sales report, it isn’t looking good as time moves on. They have to do something. They can’t keep losing 30% in sales every quarter.
As far as expansions go, sales are sales. If you are still selling 10+ million copies for an expansion to a 9 year old game, I’d say it’s pretty kitten good. Maybe not as good as when it peaked, but still pretty good. Can you realistically expect to have even an 80% retention rate at that stage of the franchise?
The claim is that expansions are an MMO’s saving grace. They bring back old players, retain current players, and entice new ones.
That isn’t necessarily true, as Mists of Pandaria demonstrates. If people are growing tired of a game, more of that game isn’t necessarily going to save it.
MoP brought at least 1 million additional subscribers. Eventually the subscribers went lower but MoP did bring them back.
The market is too competitive for games to retain players. No MMO is doing it, every MMO is losing players.
Wait… you mean to tell me a year old game isn’t selling like hotcakes? STOP THE PRESSES! At this point, anyone who is going to get the game off the shelves has already done so. That’s just as true for Warcraft as it is for Call of Duty. An expansion would certainly fly off shelves… but it would simply be from all the players who already have the first.
It’s kinda funny… how people complain that Arena.net is just in it for the money… yet the company is reluctant to put out a guaranteed cash cow (in the form of an expansion) in lieu of content offered for free (that they HOPE will encourage gem store sales).
MoP and D3 are still in the top 20 as my post above states. Here is what I think, either GW2 is making an expansion secretly without anyone of us knowing and they will surprise us. Or that NCSoft just wants to support WildStar and not give money to GW2. Just assumptions off course.
To be honest I never felt like purchasing an MMO that has expansions. It kind of feels like you’re buying a full game, but you’re missing 3/4rths of the content, so you have to buy the full game 4 times over.
How do you check how much of a certain product was sold on amazon recently exactly? Because judging from th in game population and more and more game shops agreeing to sell gem cards, the game still being on the shelves I do not see it as doing badly in sustaining itself.
The expansion model has seemed to work before for most MMOs including GW1.
About in-game not sure what server you play on. But ET and HoD two servers that I played on since launch saw a drastic decrease so much so that I was forced to move to Blackgate.
I wanted to buy the Heroic Edition for a friend yesterday and noticed it wasn’t selling that well on Amazon. For example for PC games: Mists of Pandaria is 17th best selling game but GW2 Heroic edition is 87th.
Also, if you look at lower level zones even on servers like Blackgate there aren’t a lot of players. So I hope to see a expansion. I personally think it is needed, not for existing players but to bring new players to the game.
But my fear is that NCSoft cares only about WildStar now and won’t give them money to make an expansion.
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This model might help with keeping players that play the game in game. But it will not attract new players to the game.
May I ask how would expansions help to increase the population? Instead of buying one game a new player would be forced to buy years of expansions, therefore chances are more people would be scared away from it.
The players that quit GW2 will come back for an expansion. New players that never played GW2 will come back for an expansion. Right now if a player wants to play a new MMO he will pick between literally a dozen MMOs most of which are free to play. However, if GW2 had a new expansion with a reset new players are likely to come back since it is a new shiny thing.
I was looking for GW2 on Amazon yesterday and it was doing really bad in sales. There isn’t enough to attract new players. I hope we see an expansion by Spring 2014 or we are in for a hurting.
This model might help with keeping players that play the game in game. But it will not attract new players to the game. The expansion model will attract new players to the game. So they need expansions, and to me within the year.
I predict this game will go f2p in a year
ya man just like gw1… so sad
To be honest it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go F2P. When GW1 was released there were literally no F2P games in the market. Today there are dozens so it will be harder for GW2 to get new players. The barrier to entry is higher in GW2 than games like Neverwinter/Rift/Tera/SWTOR etc. It isn’t like GW2 is selling tons of boxes anymore.
You think people will read it? They never will. This will be a big problem in the current iteration of the LFG FOREVER.
This is why developers should make the LFG tool idiot proof. Unfortunately, ANet didn’t make it idiot proof so we all will suffer.
They need to make money, to please their NCSoft overlords. I don’t mind it. But if you don’t like it don’t buy it, simple.
So, just as the title says, I’m tired of being in an empty server. I finally decided just to delete every single one of my level 80s (I have 4 of them) and just move to a higher population server.
My questions are:
What is the highest population server at the moment?
What servers are located on NA in the west?
Wow, and I felt bad when I deleted my level 36 on ET to move to Blackgate.
Move to a T1/T2 server:
https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/na/wvw
However, the only bad thing about the move is there will be queues for WvW. But everything else will be better on a higher population server.
Yeah I saw an ad on Twitch today, first time I have seen it. It had the tag “Lowest Price The Game Has Been Ever” or something like that. It might have to do with making people try the free trial.
I don’t understand where these “empty server” posts come from. Ehmry Bay is nearly last on the list in population, but everywhere I go, I see people.
What? Ehmry Bay is no were close to last, the fact that you thought it was last goes to show how bad some servers population is. The only good indicator we have in terms of population currently is WvW ranking and EB is ranked 10th, so it should be one of the higher populated servers.
I deleted all my characters on ET on this account and moved to a T1 server. It happened after Tequatl. I didn’t mind being in a “dead” server before that event. But after that event I want to be on a server with people.
Why do you think I mentioned to exclude FPS? Because GW1 is not a FPS. Sue me for forgetting to mention RTS games on that list as well. GW1 was the pioneer for MOBAs in eSPorts.
Better? Now you can go back to losing the argument.
It is annoying how people will try to critique anything in a post just to feel like they are contributing once they’ve lost the argument.
Losing what argument? Even in if you exclude FPS and RTS, WoW was significantly more popular as an eSport. GW1 was never at MLG it was in other events but had a smaller niche community.
I remember watching GW1 events and DJ Wheat casting them but it was always niche compared to WoW. In the real world doing something first, doesn’t make you a pioneer to the community.
When someone says “the won an argument” you know their argument is pretty weak.
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Those MMOs are coming out in like 8 months. If they wait that long, the other MMOs are least of their worries.