Guild Wars 2

They don’t acknowledge the problem because they don’t believe there is one. They designed it to require 80+ people (or so they claim), and have no desire to tone it down in the slightest.

Not even close to what you think happens.

Shareholders have NO direct say in how a company is run, much less someone with 15% of the shares. They get money and occasionally a meeting where they are told what is happening. If they don’t like what is happening, they sell. THAT is the power of a shareholder. They put in money with the expectation that they’ll get more money back.

About the only time a shareholder directly impacts a company is in the election of a person onto the Board of Directors. And you need a LOT more than a 15% share in order to push a hand-picked person onto said board. Otherwise you have to compromise with other shareholders to get that clout.

As for Crystin Cox (the monetization manager in question), it would take some pretty slick maneuvers for a group to slip in one of their plants BEFORE they even had a stake in the parent company of the developer in question.

Maybe a more, I dunno… realistic… explanation is Arena.net going, “This cash shop is going to be our primary revenue stream, how do we maximize its effectiveness? Hmm… maybe we should hire a person who helped with one of the most profitable cash shops of the last decade?”

Nah… you’re right. Gotta be a dark conspiracy by Nexon to bleed Arena.net dry of creativity and money through a gross minority share of its parent company.

Pardon me while I roll my eyes.

And out comes the tinfoil hat brigade.

One more time… Nexon’s share gives them the power to do absolutely kitten all. They don’t have majority control, they don’t even have enough shares to push someone onto the Board of Directors.

ANYTHING that Arena.net thinks players will be willing to spend cash dollars on is GOING to be in the gem store, because it’s their primary revenue stream. It wouldn’t take Nexon’s “influence” to convince them of that. That’s just common business sense. Arena.net exists to make money first and foremost, and always has.

It’s okay to take off the tin foil. There is no conspiracy at play.

It’s harkening back to the Marionette event (iirc), where Kasmeer admits that she gets hiccups when she’s nervous or anxious.

Looks legit.

That’s canon.

I’m not the least bit bothered that Tormented weapons are in the gem store and not somehow free for me.

I AM bothered that once again, they’re tucked behind an RNG wall. I really wish people would stop telling Arena.net it’s a great idea (by giving them money for the RNG… which they are).

A R W E N.6895:

So basically you are implying that we should wait, not knowing what will happen. Being true with your playerbase and telling them that they should expect things actually helps to keep an healthy player-dev relationship. If that relationship is not good (the feeling i have right now) it will get more and more negative.

Transparency is an extremely important thing today. Because people don’t like to be surprised with things they don’t want

Yes. That’s EXACTLY what you should do.

I’m sorry, but developer interaction is, sadly, more often than not a lose/lose proposition. They tell you what they’re planning, and if something happens and they miss their timeframe, they’re raked over the coals for not being on time. They rush it to make it on time, they’re raked over the coals for it being buggy and rushed. They don’t say anything until it’s kitten near ready, they’re raked over the coals for not being “transparent.”

I know you’re going to hate hearing this, but developers don’t owe you transparency. Period. If they don’t want to tell you what they’re planning; they don’t have to. You AREN’T a shareholder. You AREN’T their boss. You have no grounds to expect or demand ANYTHING from them.

If you can’t accept that… that’s YOUR problem, not theirs.

Oh good grief…

There’s little that isn’t “cliche” at this point. With the way that we have been able to preserve stories, there’s precious little, if anything, that is profoundly unique or original. Having a bunch of tragic characters in a grimdark setting? Les Miserables has already got that covered… and even that was old hat all the way back to the Greek tragedies like Medea… which was no doubt borrowed from Babylonian stories that they took from oral tradition tales in the region.

“Happy” endings and conclusion are no less, and no more, cliche than anything else. The trick is when you’re standing on the shoulders of what has come before that you put the elements together in a way that is unique to you.

Has GW2 done that? Debatable. It’s intriguing enough for me to see what comes next, and honestly… I’m content with that for now.

Scarlet wears the Magitech Medium Armor set… unless you mean someone datamined those specific items.

Traveller.7496:

To be honest, I think personally my biggest problem is Braham – acting as ANet proxy – saying “we don’t want to know more”, as in, “we don’t have all the answers to give you so go away please”. I was like, the hell I don’t! I’ve been waiting for Scarlet to spill the beans for ages, but then Leroy Marjory and Ham-Boy here just go RAAAAARGH and I’m standing there fiddling with my gear. Great.

Really? I’d say Braham was acting as the fanbase proxy. This forum especially was rife with complaining about people claiming they don’t care about Scarlet or what she thinks she’s doing or why she’s doing it and that she should just die and go away now please.

Well, we got what we claimed we wanted.

No.

There was NOTHING wrong with it, it was obvious what you should have done, and anyone paying attention would be able to see it.

Player-side problem here. Move along.

Brutalistik.6473:

All I’m going to say is Braham you’re lucky to have Rox dude. She’s the only team player trying to keep everyone up when you’re down. I love when Rox comes to my rescue d-(^.^)z

Rangers are helpful like that. But I gotta wag my finger at Rox about one thing… clearly she doesn’t run with “Search and Rescue!”… for shame, girl.

I’m amused that Braham simply said what was SUPPOSEDLY what so many fans were thinking throughout the entire story arc.

“We don’t give a kitten about Scarlet’s reasoning! Just kill her and get on it with A.net!!!”

Well, be careful what you ask for, I guess.

The only thing that REALLY made me roll my eyes was remembering one of the writing team claiming that a small handful of people had figured it out.

Uhhh… Bobby… a good half of the forum here suspected that Scarlet was a tool for an elder dragon, and most of them guessed it was Mordramoth as well. It was fairly obvious, really… most of the speculation was done with the caveat of, “Just in case it isn’t the obvious… what if…?”

Now with that said, the obvious conclusion WASN’T a bad one, really. A story doesn’t have to be one shocking twist after another. I’m content with finally getting on with the supposed thrust of the game (the fight against the Elder Dragons), and what will most likely be some new explorable zones to work with.

It boggles my mind the people who sit on these time-sensitive things anyway. What’s the point in holding onto them AFTER the events relating to it are gone?

Warcry.1596:

The issues with Guild Wars 1:

Shadow Form
Ether Renewal working with Protective Bond
Signet of Spirits not being tied to Spawning Power
Obsidian Flesh
Hundred Blades
Vow of Strength (post Dervish change)
Save Yourselves
Pain Inverter
Everyone thinking Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support was a high DPS ability
Assassin’s Promise working with non Assassin skills
People using skills that are 100% from the secondary profession (I’m looking at you ?/Rt people)
Destructive Was Glaive dealing the damage it did, yet not causing Exhaustion (Overcast now, I guess), when comparing to elementalist skills that did LESS damage and still caused it.
Unyielding Aura and/ Healer’s Boon, or kick (Glimmer of Light is best elite <3)

Probably more, but those are what stand out the most. And no, I didn’t use any of the aforementioned skills, I liked using my brain to make creative skill sets and use sets that actually required more skill than pressing “1” and win game. I mean really, if you died with Shadow Form you were pretty bad :p

That was a BIG problem with having the number of skills GW1 veterans want. There were so many builds that could completely break and trivialize the content, and every time one hole was plugged it simply opened up a different one. I didn’t like it one bit, and I’m glad GW2 hasn’t gone down that rabbit hole.

Warcry.1596:

I also didn’t care for the boring fighting mechanics:

1) Stack here using choke point
2) Wait for tank to ball em up and snare
3) Spike em down

I can go on and on, but this game is a lot more challenging, and I love it for that =)

Well, to be fair, GW2 has a lot of that “Stack ’n Spike” sort of combat as well.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Guild Wars 1 was better because:
The build system was better and more free-form.
Builds could be changed with max performance in 3 minutes, rather than 3 months.
PvP was far superior, with more mode variety, better competitive support features, and fewer random procs.

A lot of GW1 veterans loved this. I personally didn’t. I found the skill hunting to fill out the builds that groups DEMANDED you have was obnoxious.

I don’t know how many times this scenario played out for me:

“Welcome. Do you have [x] build?”
“No.”
gets kicked
“Well fine… what does it take to get this build? Jesus, gotta grab skills from all over hell, because many of them can’t be purchased at a trainer…”
One month later, the meta changes and I get to go skill hunting all over again

It only got worse with Nightfall and EotN:

“Welcome. Do you have [x] build with [insert reputation skill here].”
“Yep!”
“Is it Rank 5 at least?”
“No.”
gets kicked
“Well, fine… what does it takes to get to Rank 5? Oh fer Chrissake… grind grind grind…”

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Elite skills weren’t arbitrary.

See above, only made worse because you had to find a specific boss to capture the elite from, some of which spawned randomly (which means there was no guarantee the boss you were looking for was on that map at all).

Duke Blackrose.4981:

The story was more coherent with major overarching plotlines in Nightfall.

Odd, I remember Kormir got just about as much hate as Trehearne and Scarlet. I’m dubious about the coherence part as well… there were some truly painful and disjointed elements to the GW1 stories (Abaddon’s corrupting of Khilbron and Shiro REALLY felt jammed in after the fact rather than something planned from the start, for example).

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Endgame content felt like endgame content.

You mean artificial difficulty that could only be completed if you had an “endgame guild” or the flavor of the month exploitable build? Then yeah, you’re right.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Content required build adaptation more frequently than it does in GW2.

That is a BAD thing to me. I’m GLAD GW2 dumped that terrible concept.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Horizontal rather than vertical progression was dominant.

I agree for the most part, but that was changing pretty quick by the end of GW1’s run, though. By the time GW2 was announced, if you didn’t have several reputation skills beefed up vertically, the chances of you finding a reliable endgame group was slim to none.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Alliance Battles felt more intense and had a greater impact than WvW.

THIS I can agree with… but that was something introduced with Factions, and was not part of the base game. The PvP part of the game impacted the actual world an immense amount of kitten all until then… and wasn’t revisited in Nightfall or Eye of the North. I don’t even think the bulk of the GW1 audience received that well.

Doggie.3184:

Ugh, bad RNG strikes again.

Like hell. Norn is the precursor for Awesome. It’s amazing he got it with four trash Asura.

It’s amazing how a fanbase can rake a company over the coals for not meeting every “promise” they intend to implement… then in the same breath demand more “promises.”

darkace.8925:

runeblade.7514:

Even if they added a increase level cap to 85, permanent +200 power stat boost, and a instant pvp r80 boost. It wouldn’t be pay to win because you can buy it with in game gold.

That’s some faulty logic you got there.

Not really.

“Pay 2 Win” would imply a system where in order to be ABLE to succeed at the game’s highest level you have to use real money to do it.

Now, with that said, just because an in-game store isn’t “Pay 2 Win” doesn’t mean it can’t have several money grab items that detract from the player’s experience. Personally, for me, I find RNG items, like the Black Lion Chest and Keys, to be awful and despicable… but they are hardly “Pay 2 Win” by any stretch.

Aquila.5142:

Shufflepants.9785:

But what if I wanna /wave from a distance?!

Do you consider that a vital part of your GW2 experience?

It’s as vital as your opinion. You want something, someone else doesn’t. At the end of the day, only one of you is going to get what you want.

Shockwave.1230:

Interesting tid-bit, Eric Rane mentions how overwhelming it can seem to have code being used by 500,000 players. Not sure why he uses that number, but he does.

Because it’s a decent round number that’s probably somewhere in the ballpark of their heaviest concurrent usage, would be my guess.

Dahkeus.8243:

I would love to see raids in GW2. I think the reason raiding can work in GW2 is because it wouldn’t require the hellacious gear treadmill that games like WoW have.

The problem here is that the Seven Star Stalker guy you read above? THAT’S the sort of mindset that a raider has.

They really don’t care about the challenge. They’re in it for the loot. Truth is, challenge is a horrible motivator for MMO players. Give them an easier option, and 9 of 10 will take the easier path every single time.

Hell, even WITH the promise of phat purplez, the player base as a whole doesn’t buy in. It’s literally less than 5% of a game’s playerbase that sees the end of that raid content.

I understand WHY Arena.net is reluctant to do it. But dumping raid difficult content in the open world really isn’t a good answer either. It’s going to boil down to either;

A) Instanced raid content, even if its it doesn’t get optimal use.

or

B) Abandon the idea of challenging content.

Because, I’m sorry… the glut of the playerbase simply DOESN’T WANT IT. Period. In any form, and they get furiously kittened off when it’s pushed on them.

Malediktus.9250:

I dont like this open world raid content. It just asks for large guilds to abuse an overflow as their private raid instance and have an easy kill, while the normal people have to deal with all the griefers, afkers and non TS people.

The problem is raid instances don’t really solve THAT. If you’re not getting into the groups with those large guilds already, you’re certainly not going to get the opportunity with that content gated behind an instance wall.

Honestly, the only reason I’d say to instance it is because that’s effectively what’s already being done, just in a much less convenient manner for everyone already doing it.

Arena.net has decided (and seem dead-set on it) that they will NEVER do instanced raids. They don’t even deign the question with a response anymore. They want an open-world experience, and have decided raid instances take away from that.

Personally, I think they’re off point on that score. The cited reason is they don’t want to fragment the player base, they don’t want to “wall off” content and only make it accessible to a select few (which admittedly raids tend to do… they get extremely selective as to who can be in their raid party).

The problem though is that really… players are kinda doing it ANYWAY. As I understand, TTS forms groups for this content by either forcing an overflow or guesting to a low population server. Large scale groups are pretty much forging their own instances as it is… leaving players who just want to give it an honest shot without worrying about having “x” number of warriors for banners, or a specific makeup of defense groups, or making sure everyone has specific consumables to pop at specific times… and leaving them with no real recourse.

But, at the same time, raid instances have their own problems. It IS a bit of resource waste to have content that only 5% of your playerbase legitimately sees (and depending on the raid instance, 5% is being GENEROUS).

Nor is it quite as simple to have a “Looking for Raid” equivalent in GW2 because WoW gets away with it by having the carrot of superior loot to dangle in front of guilds to attempt the more difficult versions. Arena.net really doesn’t have that carrot (is a chance at the modestly superior Ascended gear really worth it), and while I’m sure some will protest this, let’s be perfectly honest and admit that challenge alone is a TERRIBLE motivator for MMO players.

tl;dr version; Arena.net doesn’t want raid instances for good reason, but the angle they’re taking really doesn’t solve the problem with raid instances, either.

I think they’ve made it pretty clear over the last couple years that they aren’t going to produce any specifically designed “GvG mode.” I do believe the Obsidian Sanctum arena is going to be closest players get.

I suspect the reason for that is concern about win-trading (that was an issue in the first Guild Wars), and that the mechanic that allows you to be in 5 different guilds would make it kitten near impossible to prove shady dealings in a structured, reward-based, ranked, and supported game mode.

That’s what I think it boils down to; does the general sentiment of their player base like the convenience of being in multiple guilds or a genuine GvG more… and as of this moment, Arena.net is siding with the former.

Here’s another problem. Players aren’t created equal. How would you determine what player is the boss? What if no one wants to do it? How would they learn HOW to play the boss? Would you even WANT someone who knows how?

You’d just add another layer of complaints, really. “[x] server got world first [y]!!!”
“Yeah, only because you had a scrub playing the boss. How much did you pay him?”

Player controlled world bosses would only bring out the worst in the player base, because:

1) Players as a general rule will seek the path of least resistance.
2) Players will exploit the living hell out of anything whenever possible.

You would need an Arena.net representative at every boss, on every world, every time it spawns, just to make sure everything is on the up and up. That’s simply not feasible.

Terrible idea, wide open for abuse and kill selling.

Yimiko.8524:

Either way, there is a way to please both parties. You can create instanced “versions” of areas, using that overflow system, where say everyone that hasn’t completed the story is forced into the zombie nightmare Orr maps, while people that have can go into a less cluttered, hellish Orr reflecting the supposedly healing land and dwindling corruption. You could even allow post story characters to choose to go into Zhaitan’s Orr to help out other players or mess around with whatever content might be exclusive to that version.

The problem with that is that even World of Warcraft (with its millions upon millions of players) discovered such phasing splintered their player base far too much, and made it extremely difficult to play together.

There’s a reason why developers that try phasing wind up dumping the mechanic quickly… it just doesn’t work the way players want it to. It’s a bad idea, plain and simple.

Ehhh…

There are people who simply DON’T like change, of any sort. They like being able to sign in and not worry about, “Will this content be here tomorrow/next week/next month?” They take comfort knowing that every say “x” will be at “y” and I can do “z.”

So, yeah, they get disappointed when a company they supported changes the game, whether it’s dropping what they consider made GW1 so awesome for them to cater to an entirely different group of players, or lore that they loved from before getting pushed aside for lore they don’t.

Does it excuse the behavior from a very small subset of that disenfranchised player base? No. But it is a legitimate criticism that they can (and should) voice.

The event itself screams in big, bold letters to focus on saving citizens.

The freakin’ event UI has a “citizens saved” counter.

If you honestly don’t understand what the goal of the event is, I don’t know what else to tell you that you won’t ignore as well.

Associated Risks

Even more intense kittening from a whiny segment of the player base that the Airship is now even MORE “Pay 2 Win” than before.

Aajolea.8132:

To kill the zerg, make several event happens at same time, and no mobs drop loot on death, but the progress of rescues and events won creates a zone progress and graded loot chest popups, also cap each event to max of certain mobs.

Then players would have to split up for better loot, now event are maxed out so over attendance does nothing extra, mob tagging is not a significant factor either, then you encourage zerg across the whole map.

That actually IS how Lions’ Arch Under Attack works. You are given increasingly better rewards the better you do, and the way to get the best score is to split up, break the zerg, and focus on zone coverage.

The only way it could be MORE inclined to break up the zerg is if those rewards were the ONLY rewards you got… and by God could you imagine the incendiary fury in this forum if THAT was the case?

Oh, you’re right that Arena.net isn’t blaming the players for zerging through their content.

But players CAN and SHOULD note that it’s rather disingenuous for players to complain about zerging, and the counter that players zerg because it’s the most rewarding when:

1) Zerging ISN’T more rewarding, and
2) Players continue to zerg up even when presented with that fact.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

There fixed. Don’t act like waiting for an expansion is suddenly a bad thing. If guild wars 2 had a traditional expansion model we would have had an expansion by now before the game became a “boring grind”. Which is exactly what the game is now because of LS.

Maybe. It’s possible that the Living Story came about mostly because of NCSoft pulling the plug on Cantha and telling them, “Nope, unacceptable. Start over” shortly before they went to beta, and they needed to keep players occupied while they rebuilt everything mostly from scratch.

I honestly do NOT believe that we would have seen an expansion by this point anyway. It’s a LOT more time-consuming to put together content that is more open-world on three axis than the narrow path, 2 axis content of Guild Wars 1. I suppose it’s POSSIBLE, but I am wholly unconvinced of the claim.

I don’t think “good armor” has much to do with it at all.

Beast-like races have pretty much ALWAYS represented poorly in terms of population whenever a “human-like” option is available. On the flip-side, human races have traditionally always been a majority of the population base whenever that option is available.

No person is ever going to LIKE having things taken from them. Whether it is convenience, functionality, nerfing a skill, or an item’s stats… no person is ever going to say, “Oh! That’s AWESOME!” when it happens. The response may not always be spiteful hate, but it’s never going to be adoration.

Now sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes it’s easier to nerf one stat or skill than to buff everything else. You’re going to have people complain about it, but it’s for the good of the game, so you do it anyway.

I’m not entirely convinced the reason for this is a good one. Yes, I know the call from elements of the community were to make capitol cities more appealing to draw people to them… but I feel the call was to ADD things to said cities rather than REMOVE functionality from other places to do it.

Now with that said… I’m also not entirely certain this change necessitates the “OMG THE SKY IS FALLING!” response… but you’re always going to have that whenever you make a change.

tl;dr version; I don’t like it, I think Arena.net made a bad decision… but I don’t think it’s THIS huge of a deal either.

Eleri Tezhme.3048:

Zergs don’t have to happen, they don’t need to happen, if people make the effort to do something different. If this is a zergfest, it is because the players aren’t thinking outside the zergfest box.

The first run in the new LA I was a part of, (in an overflow, mind you) immediately after the patch, there was no tidal wave zerg of people, running mindlessly around. There were several commanders who each focused on a quadrant of LA, and people joined them there. Even with the miasma being already half full, we saved almost 900 citizens, and got most of the rewards. We did awesome, without a major zerg in sight.

Each time since then, I’ve seen nothing but Wall O Players zerging, less than 400 citizens rescued every time, and most of the events failing, because the zerg is off doing something else.

Don’t want it to be a zergfest? Stop zerging all over the map. Actively resist just being a zerg. Split into smaller groups and kill, kill, kill. Rescue more people, because that gets everyone more and snazzier rewards.

This.

Zerging into a ball makes the event overall LESS effective… but players continue zerging up because they think that’s what gets them the most loot. Even when it doesn’t.

Player-side problem.

As opposed to Gnashblade who ran to the Vigil Keep with his tail between his legs?

You mean THAT paragon of heroism?

As for the ship, I suspect that is Mai Trin’s old craft that was given to Kiel so that she could run for the Captain’s seat.

It’s only full access if they put access to something behind a pay wall.

Just like with the Royal Terrace, there is NOTHING there that you cannot find elsewhere in the world. It’s a lot less convenient now, but that’s the extent of it.

Randulf.7614:

To be honest, I prefer this. One of the big things the community asked for was to give a reason to send people to the other cities. OK, this is only a small step, but it will help re-populate them somewhat.

Well, to be fair, I think what the community was imagining was for Arena.net to ADD reasons to make people go to the other cities, not TAKE AWAY reasons to go to Lion’s Arch.

That said, it’s not nearly as big of an issue as the crying would suggest.

Dunno what to tell ya.

GW2 is about open world content, not instanced, and that was a decision they made very quickly upon release. You’re not going to get what you want.

SuperBlunt.7105:

That was the idea of these dungeons during release but idk if the Devs just played them in blue gear or we’re just bad at the game. Either way they made a huge mistake.

They were changed because players whined CONSTANTLY about the difficulty. CoF Path 1 is the most glaring example of how players destroyed what had been a challenging explorable dungeon mode.

Players merely need to look in the mirror to find out what happened to exp dungeons.

What you are seeing are many things:

1) The nature of official forums. I ask you to visit any game, no matter how popular. If they have an official forum, it nigh always slants towards negative and disappointed. That’s the nature of humans, I fear. If you are content with something, you tend to be silent. On top of that “official” tends to be interpreted as “developers are here, and I can yell at them here.”

2) Guild Wars 1 veteran players who bought in on promises made during development and before release, and are becoming increasingly upset as Arena.net has to cave on those promises to cater to the larger MMO market that rejects the ways Arena.net tried to be different. It’s no secret that “successful” MMOs tend to become the dreaded “WoW clone”; because that’s what players want.

3) Trolls. People who bought GW2, decided they liked previous games better, or have decided that games to come are going to be the next great thing, and want to paint GW2 in the worst possible light while trumping the virtues of the current “golden boy” of MMOs.

4) Bitter, spiteful people who want everything they want and nothing they don’t, no matter how stupid the idea is or how many others it would anger.

5) Emotionally invested players who feel that the game can/should improve, and want to offer their ideas… forcefully if need be. When those ideas aren’t heeded, they feel ignored rather than “whelp, I guess the developers don’t agree”… because if the developers had actually listened, they would have seen how incredibly awesome my ideas are. Because it certainly can’t be because my ideas are stupid or not feasible!

Palador.2170:

They turned on FFA PvP in the Beta? I did not know that. Thanks for telling me. However… the game has been updated a lot after that. Even if that code is still there and still works, they’d have to test it. Make sure everything’s working right, all powers and skills are using the right numbers. And it would still create servers different from the others, adding to the stuff they have to debug. The switch makes the problem smaller, but it’s still very much there.

No, they didn’t just “turn on” FFA PvP in the beta. They created “teams” and applied players to those teams (much like the mechanics found in WvW and EotM) on two separate occasions in special instance versions of Plains of Ashford and Metrica Province.

They’ve NEVER had Free-for-All PvP at ANY point, beta or live.

You folks are missing the problem.

The people like the OP? Yeah… that’s the mindset of the content locust Arena.net has to try and keep. They always want bigger numbers. And they will get it, because they represent the vast bulk of the MMO market.

Robert.4197:

This pretty much sums it up for me. If I’m playing a game and I’m having connection issues with the game itself but the rest of the internet is working fine, I come to the forums and look for a dev response. If there is no dev response, I look on twitter. If there is nothing on twitter then considering I have no idea what’s going on, I submit a ticket. Plain and simple. Why should I have to look any further than the forums and/or twitter? This is their game, they should keep us updated.

Because if the FBI is involved (and it most likely is), Arena.net likely is not ALLOWED to say anything pertaining to the case. You’re not going to GET a response no matter how much you blame them for it.

At which point, you can do some legwork and put 1 and 1 together, like many others have. It’s not hard to piece this mess together and who claims to be responsible.

My hope? They don’t.

The reality? Probably when a new continent opens up, we’ll see a level cap increase.

Zenith.6403:

- Don’t you just hate it when “long term goal” is long just because devs decided to make it that way by changing one integer in the code?

No.

That’s the level they want. It’s their game. You don’t like it? Too bad. They likely WON’T inflate the AP if they WANT the full armor set to be uncommon or rare. Not everyone gets to have everything they want. Sorry.

Alfador.7649:

Business accountability 101.

When your supplier or subcontractor screws up, you own that. Accountability doesn’t shift because anet doesn’t want to handle the hardware themselves. If after over a week anet’s subcontractor hasn’t gotten its act together, accountability falls on anet for picking a crappy subcontractor. People are perfectly right to blame them in that regard.

Then Activision, Riot, and pretty much every major game company picked a crappy subcontractor.

This isn’t the result of crappy work. It’s a DDoS attack on a nigh unprecedented scale. kitten near every cloud server on the planet would be overwhelmed by this.

On top of that, it’s NCSoft’s call as to what cloud service they use, not Arena.net.

You want someone to blame? Go get kitten Trolling.