It’s only when they do stupid stuff like change the gem conversion process that I start thinking that they should make expansions, if only to prevent the microtransaction focus from consuming the game.
The problem with this line of thought is that battle is already over and smart customers lost years ago. EVERY game (even subscription ones) run some degree of microtransactions. It’s simply too huge of a money maker. Going to a traditional expansion model won’t change the gem store focus, I don’t think.
I think if they were to return to a secondary class mechanic that the only thing you’d be able to change would be your utility/elites, while your primary profession determines your weapon skills.
Because no two classes uses the same weapons, allowing those to be shared would kinda LIMIT builds in a way, rather than expanding them (because you’d only get decent synergy with specific classes with specific weapons).
Arena.net has been trying to make GW2 into an e-sport since the beginning.
I still think they’re barking up the wrong tree. MMOs aren’t really a good medium for it. Seriously guys, if you wanted a piece of Riot’s market, you should have made a game that appeals to the League of Legends crowd.
It doesn’t work here. Stop trying.
AI heroes basically turned GW1 into a single player game.
No thank you. Stop trying to drag everything from GW1 into this game simply because it was in GW1.
RNG is a necessary evil. You will not find an MMO that does not use it. It is impossible for a game company (especially an MMO) to provide carrots faster than the players can consume them without it, and even then you can argue they STILL can’t keep up with their players very well.
If you cannot accept that, you should not be playing MMOs. Good day.
What about the fact that they knew what the right thing was before launching this? Does that come into play at all for you? I mean…they aren’t stupid. They are smart enough to make an MMO and sell it to millions. They know what they are doing.
This isn’t an “Oh mai gawsh, we never thought about this..so you want to be able to manually enter in your amounts?? Got it! Thanks”.
This is a “We’ll force them to overbuy and over pay…lets wait and see if they reach a 10.0 on the ‘Rage-o-meter’ we have on the wall in the office. If so, we have the code ready to go to create a ‘Custom’ button..so we can appease them and give off the appearance of listening to their feedback. Either way, win win for us!”
Sure it was. It was attempt to try and make more money. Because shockingly, Arena.net is a business. It’s goal is to make as much money as they can. So they’ll do whatever they think they can get away with.
I’m not surprised by this. I’m not upset by it. Nor do I hold a grudge that they pushed too far and had to backtrack. They aren’t my friend. They aren’t in a relationship with me. They want my money, and everything else is secondary.
Someone who “quits”, then keeps coming back to the forums to see if changes have been made hasn’t really “quit.”
I suppose, but that’s getting into a pretty small semantic argument. “I quit” just means “I stopped completely” not necessarily “I quit forever”.
It could mean either, really.
Well, that kinda is the argument; semantics. There’s two different types of “quitters”, those who have completely divorced themselves from the game, and those who aren’t actively playing but keeping their eye on things.
Requiring an active account to post really only “hurts” the second group for no real good reason. It wouldn’t really solve the problem of trolls (who claim to be a part of that first group) anyway; because I have first hand knowledge that several of those “quitters” haven’t quit in the slightest, and still log on with regularity… and I suspect the bulk of them are the same way.
I’m almost worried about how they’d handle an expansion. It would probably just be Living Story Season 3 – Boxed Editon.
That’s my suspicion, honestly. Would players really want to spend $40-$50 dollars for that? I don’t think so.
The things players want in an expansion (new zones, new races, new professions, new skills, etc), are all things that COULD be presented as Living Story content, but are all things that Arena.net has been unwilling to do (I mentioned new professions specifically as something they’ve outright said isn’t particularly in their future plans).
They just aren’t things they’ve been inclined to do, and there’s no reason to believe pressing for a boxed expansion you pay money for would include them.
If you’ve “quit” (i.e. no intention of returning), then guess what? Your opinions on the game direction are no longer relevant.
Isn’t the implication usually “I quit, but I hope some day the game changes enough to make me want to come back”?
In which case, the opinions are still relevant.
Not really
Yes and no. Players who have quit can provide useful feedback for the future… but in most cases the personal “relationship” has been soured to the point that there’s next to no hope of getting THAT particular player back.
Someone who “quits”, then keeps coming back to the forums to see if changes have been made hasn’t really “quit.”
I would love to leave this happy, “aw shucks!” thank you for changing this, but the interface right now is so anti-consumer I can’t. Am I happy it’s getting changed? Totally! The thing I find egregious though is that a few years ago no one at ArenaNet would have allowed something like that into a Guild Wars game.
GW1 didn’t even have a trading post or auction hall, and you had to go out-of-game to 3rd party websites to organize trades involving anything of significant value.
So yeah, you’re right… in the sense that GW1 wasn’t even THAT user-friendly on that score.
If you were to players the choice between a paid expansion or free updates that gave you everything that normally came IN an expansion, I can’t think of too many people who would say, “Nah. I like spending money on stuff I could get for free.”
On the other hand, the problem is that as of right now, the Living Story HASN’T given a paid expansion worth of content, at least in the way that players have become used to the term. Players expect new races, new classes, new skills…
But to flip it back to the first hand, many of the things that players want in an expansion are things that Arena.net has been reluctant to provide, and lukewarm on at best (a new profession is something that Arena.net has outright said isn’t high on their to do list, for example). I’m not sure we’d get them with a paid expansion either.
I dunno. Arena.net wants to do things differently than other MMOs, and I suspect any paid expansion would be fairly different than what players are used to as well. I certainly don’t see any guarantee that a GW2 expansion would have Tengu, for example, or even new weapon skills.
Do you really think they would give 100 or 200 (otherwise unobtainable) skins to just one player basically giving that player a monopoly on that market?
The players on this forum will assume anything, in case you haven’t noticed.
But history says that in the past, holidays have not had such a dramatic effect. So why this time?
Because this time they have a raffle for one of the most highly sought after and coveted skins in the game (the chainsaw greatsword), and a item that you can buy from the gemstore (for I think 25 gems a piece) that gets you one “entry” in that raffle.
Couple that with having to buy gems 400 at a time, and knowing how much people love to gamble… no, I’m not at all surprised the gem rate spiked so highly so quickly. I have no doubt there were a multitude of players grabbing 100,000 gems or more for themselves.
There need not be any conspiracy when simple human behavior explains issues better.
There’s nothing strange about the gem conversion increase.
A holiday event coupled with people being required to convert 400 gems at a time. There ya go.
. . . any major changes your developers make to the game from now on? Expect to do it under siege.
You make it sound like that hasn’t been the Standard Operating Procedure for the gaming community for years.
Any minor change in any game is generally met with savage pushback, and it really doesn’t matter what genre it’s in. Changing the firing rate of a gun by one-tenth of a second was met with death threats in the Call of Duty series. I knew a developer at Take Two back when they made NFL games who had a customer threaten to send a pipe bomb to his house because a favorite player had a 79 overall rating instead of an 80.
Gamers, as far as I can tell, are just very, very angry people, and it doesn’t take much to set them off. And when it’s something that actually could impact their wallet (like this could have), I don’t know how Arena.net could have expected anything less than walls of fire.
To be honest I don’t get the rage against Gaile. She didn’t say anything to justify rants against her. Most of what she said was just relaying info behind the decisions…which we may not have liked, but that certainly isn’t her fault. And she was right in that a lot of people were just raging and not being constructive at all.
Gaile is certainly a nice person, but as a community mannager she did 2 big mistake the same day.
1. She didn’t realize how many players were upset, and she didn’t accept the ranting. Yes it was ranting, and it was her job to listen to it and deal with it. In the same post she said she did not have to apologize, but actually that’s exactly her job. When her company does something wrong she has to apologize for it and hope customer will understand.
2. She said to Kotaki that they will do domething, but didn’t tell us first. I think that’s a second big mistake, and it’s a lot for the same day.
Against, I have nothing personnaly against her, we all do mistakes everyday, and Gaile did such a great work back in GW1. We really love her, and maybe that’s why we are so angry. We are angry against Anet decision because we love GW2, and a little angry about Gaile reaction, because we love her.
Edit : OK, second mistake is now irrelevant. And as I said mistakes can happend.
1) No. She really DOESN’T have to accept ranting, to be perfectly honest. If you’re being rude and belligerent, a company has every right to throw you out. Being a customer does NOT give you carte blanche to behave as terrible of a little kitten as you want.
2) She’s a kitten community manager, not a developer. There’s absolutely nothing she can promise without the nod from someone higher up the chain. If all they say is “we’re working on something”, that’s all SHE can say.
I am honestly shocked that they’re being allowed to revert this change (because I am convinced it was a higher-up decision).
the fact you considered it tells me your priorities arent really that great.
How would it be all that terribly different than how sub games restrict forum presence to people still paying an active subscription?
Now you just sound like someone looking for reasons to pick a fight with Arena.net.
If it’s “sleazy” then kitten near every company with an in-game store is “sleazy.”
This is, if anything, the market standard. It’s dumb. It’s insane. But it also makes a lot of money.
Because people are dumb and insane.
There is a BIT of merit to limit the number of players who haven’t played in a long time to keep them from trolling… but how many people do you think that really is? Would it be worth the time to add functionality to keep them from posting?
I really don’t think so.
Don’t kid yourself. This is all about increasing revenue. That’s fine with me. What isn’t fine is the ridiculous excuses that we were subjected to.
You and I are a rare breed. It’s obvious that it’s hacked from the F2P mechanic that companies like Riot uses. But there’s no way Arena.net or any company would actually admit that (and why you get the excuses)… because they admit that, and you would see a rage upon these forums even WORSE than what we have now.
It’s because there’s nothing left to say.
It’s not changing. Period. No matter how much people whine and complain. Because they see the evidence all over the gaming world that this setup works, and works very well. They are confident that the amount of money they’ll get with this change will more than make up for the lost sales from the legion of forum discontent.
What’s sad is that they are probably right.
fair enough, assuming you are the casual gamer. ty for your input
If 2,000 hours played so far is “casual”, so be it.
It’s just simply not something I’m going to get torqued about. First it was ESO that was going to kill this game (it didn’t). Then it was Wildstar (it didn’t). Then it was Destiny (it didn’t). Now it’s Star Citizen, EQN… the list is going to go on and on.
The grass ISN’T greener on the other side of the fence. And if THIS game angers you, get ready for a migrane, because at the very best, it’s the exact same (if not a lot worse) everywhere else. The complaints may vary, but the rage is the same or greater.
At some point, players need to start asking themselves, “Is what we want out of a game even possible? If so, what are WE doing that convinces game companies not to give it to us?”
Because here’s the painful truth. Arena.net doesn’t do things because it will anger their player base and kill the game. They do them because it been shown to WORK to put money into a game company’s pockets.
I’m just long past the point of trying to get people to see the truth in the mirror. People don’t care. They’d rather just rage impotently. So be it.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
i dunno if the monetization guys are missing this key understanding. The system was probably made to eliminate people using any functionality to get around the 400 block increments.
the flaw in the old system was people buying gold to gems were getting around the buying in blocks psychology. Now, people will HAVE to participate in the kitten i got excess gems loop regardless of gold or real life cash. All the people who used gold to make change will no longer have that option.Essentially they are trying to increase gems sales through any source, and in the short term it will probably work.
The gold value spike, well that could work against them, high gold prices may lead players not to want to buy things, on the flip side, gem to gold being more attractive may cover those costs.
imo, lower gold to gem ratios would probably be more profitable overall, but thats just theory.
This is true, but for THAT to work, they need to make the gold → gems and gems → gold as inconvenient as possible. Because what was happening was even with people who bought gems with RL cash would more often than not shift their excess gems to gold as people were using gold to get exactly the number of gems they wanted.
Let’s not forget the OTHER half of that new window. You notice how it’s not at all intuitive? This entire revamp is all about making sure EVERYONE has those odd number of gems to start the entire OCD cycle.
I’ll worry about where they are 1 year from today 1 year from today.
I’m not paid nearly enough to speculate or worry about upward/downward trends. If the game fails in that time, I’ll find something else.
i hope this kind of greedy updates will eventually backfire
Other games and companies making money hand over fist with exactly this same model tells me you are going to be tragically disappointed.
As has been discussed on the forums many times, ANet actually makes up to twice as much money by allowing Gold->Gem conversions than they would if they only sold Gems for RL $.
When the price of Gems is relatively stable, that means that there as just as many gems going INTO the Exchange as there are coming OUT of the Exchange; hence, the stable price. The only way Gems get INTO the Exchange is someone specifically buys Gems (with RL Money) and sells those Gems for gold.
Another way you can think of it is like this – Every single gem that is used in the Gem Store was bought with RL $. Every single one. YOU may have used gold to buy them, but someone else had to use RL $ and put them into the Exchange in order for you to be able to buy them with Gold.
Without the Gem Exchange, they will have to rely solely on players who can afford to buy Gems JUST for Gem Store items. No more will they be able to buy Gems and sell them for InGame gold (Unless they make some arbitrary static exchange rate).
So if you really stop and think about it, when you buy Gems with InGame gold, you’re still generating a profit for ArenaNet because someone had to buy those Gems with RL $ and sell them for gold in the first place. If that option didn’t exist, then ANet would undoubtedly lose a lot of Gem Sales as I know a lot of people who specifically buy Gems JUST to trade them for gold (I have a Guildy who is buying enough Gems for 1,200g so he can buy a precursor right now. Seriously.) Those Gems will go into the Exchange, and someone else will be able to buy them FOR gold (at a total of a 28.5% transaction fee overall. It’s not a bad gold sink, either!).
You can tell yourself that, and it might even be true, but that’s NOT what a publisher sees.
They see people buying gems with gold > people buying gems with cash. And their immediate questions is, “How do I flip that equation?”
At it’s core, it shares the same flawed logic that game publishers have with “piracy = lost sales.” These people see someone NOT spending money, and assume that if the “free” option didn’t exist, they WOULD spend money.
After the 400-gem minimum, the part I find most irritating is the gold amounts are static, leaving the gem amounts to fluctuate.
Ahem
That’s not how we spend our gems, people!It should be easier to spend gems, not harder or more obnoxious.
They WANT you to have excess gems.
That’s HOW it works. You have these odd number of gems, the OCD kicks in, and you buy MORE gems to try and get something you probably wouldn’t have bought normally because it “fixes” the balance (but not entirely).
And it’s a method that works very, very well.
I could see Arena.net eventually caving and offering 200 increments. But you’re not going to see much more than that. The entire goal of this change is try and discourage gold → gem transactions.
The hope is that by doing so they’ll encourage cash → gems → gems left over → more cash → more gems.
In short, how pretty much every other cash shop in existence does things.
The game is not close do dying. Nor will this change kill it. The vast majority of the players probably don’t even know/care about this change nor what is happening (or not happening) on the forums.
The thing is if people keep abusing the devs and the company they might simply decide that it is not worth posting at all or even have a forum for anything other than supports (as in Guild Wars 1). Which could quite easily mean that they would just close them down.
While I am all for a dial back on the incendiary rage, they aren’t going to close this forum for any reason than a lack of activity.
YOU’RE getting old?
I’m THIRTY-six today. Now git off mah lawn!
Something tells me the lack of any reassurance on this matter means that a whole bunch of team members were just “following orders,” as companies sometimes go, and nobody is really sure what to say. It may even be that they can’t be reassuring because they’re getting pressured from on high.
Either way, this would have been the perfect opportunity for them to show that their communication has improved. Every hour that ticks by with them giving us little more than (love ya Gaile!) barely-knows-what’s-going-on-with-this-change PR responses is an hour of people feeling like Anet just can’t get their communication together.
That said, I hope the effects aren’t as bad for the company as the mood would make it seem. Cause honestly, that’s a lot of jobs in limbo.
I know I’ve posted many times that I think the whole situation is out of their hands but still there has to be someone there with their head screwed tightly to their shoulders and know that silence is not helping. I do feel bad for the existing staff but more so for all those before them and those that had thrown their heart and soul into building the game only to watch what is happening today. That has got to be disheartening and quite depressing to say the least.
Welcome to online gaming of this decade.
Because I can promise you there’s a massive divide right now, not just at Arena.net, but at just about every developer and their publishers. This sort of thing isn’t unique to Guild Wars 2, guys. It’s EVERYWHERE.
Publishers used to covet the Blizzard and World of Warcraft revenue train. But they’ve come to realize that no one is going to be able to corner the market like that ever again. Even Blizzard knows that at this point.
But there’s a new market they covet. The market that made simple-minded games like Farmville and Candy Crush Saga the biggest money makers of the last five years. Executives and publishers see THAT money, and start to salivate. They’re trying to lure and entice THAT market, appeal to their interests, give them a payment model they are already familiar with, and the promise of a fuller more immersive game than they will find on their iPhone.
Will THAT gambit work? Who knows… but every single kitten MMO publisher on the planet sure as hell seems to be trying.
Made myself a habit of purchasing gems for 10 gold each day. So that one day, when I want smth, I don’t think “that’s so expensive!”. Now I can’t do that.
Today I purchased gems for the thing I needed, got a leftover of 200, and really not planning to buy gems soon.In, taking into consideration 1 day – ANet made a right decision: I purchased 400 gems, not 200 I needed. 200 Gems profit!
But in how many days from now that profit will turn to loss, adding every day?
Brilliant.
Here’s the thing though. And I think it’s the heart of the issue.
Arena.net DIDN’T get 200 gems profit from you. They got effectively NOTHING from you. And that’s THEIR problem here, see. Gold to gem conversions have been going up steadily without fail because more people have been converting to gems rather than buying them with IRL cash.
And don’t think that the executives don’t see that. This entire change is all about making the gold to gem conversion process as difficult and irritating as possible. Hell, if it wouldn’t amount to outright revolt, I bet you the gold to gem process would have been gone yesterday.
Because, ya know, as irritating as it is now, you STILL have more options than someone who buys gems with cold, hard cash. And Arena.net wants you doing THAT, because THAT is money.
Which is also why you probably aren’t going to see any significant change on this score. They really couldn’t care less that you keep your gold. They wrote you off as a drain to their cash model long ago. They’re now targeting the F2P crowd that is well used to this model, and have come to accept it. Because THAT crowd spends money. They spend a LOT of money. And probably far more than everyone complaining in this thread put together.
Actually, the thing being overshadowed by the Gem Conversion farce is also Gem related. The removal of the Gem conversion graph and a mysterious jump of ~22% in the cost of converting gold to gem, which is significantly higher than any jump in the same timeframe in the games history.
And they removed the gold/gem conversion call from the API.
You don’t need a tinfoil hat to smell this fish.
Gold/gem conversion ALWAYS skyrockets on a patch day. I mean… that doesn’t require a tinfoil hat in any way, shape, or form.
Do you think that the fastest increase in this rate in the game’s history coinciding with the restriction in Gem purchase agency and the obfuscation of the system is not suspicious? This update is not the most hyped update in the game’s history and, even if it was, it’s not just surpassed previous patterns it’s completely re-written the book.
You are right that the conversion sees a hike on patch/content days. It has never reached these levels at these rates. There is a reason that players like myself who have played through every update and seen these rates is questioning the authenticity of such record-breaking conversion rate changes that is without precedent on the very day ArenaNet delivered such a dubious system.
It could be down to people buying much more gems than they normally would (because the minimum purchase is 400Gems with Gold) and I’m sure that’s exactly according to the real design of this system. Bleed the gold for the highest rate possible might return higher Gems with $ down the line as gold hoarders exhaust their savings now.
I think it coincides quite well with a raffle for items that were highly sought after by the community (the chainsaw sword for example). Raffle tickets you can get via the gemstore by the truckload.
Couple that with having to convert gold to gems in groups of 400 now, yes I think that more than adequately explains the spike.
One day I’m expecting to read a detailed postmortem in Ars Technica or WIRED about how ArenaNet were misled by their own metrics. It’ll be a nice cautionary tale.
Nah, this has nothing to do with “metrics” (despite any claims).
This has everything to do with some executive at Arena.net or NCSoft seeing the number of people who trade gold for gems and not IRL cash for gems and saying, “How do we encourage these new players we’ve brought in to be the latter rather than the former?”
This sort of storefront is not new… hell, pretty much EVERY other company does it this way, in fact. And make no mistake, those companies do it because it works, and it works very, very well. People WILL get more gems rather than feel they “wasted” [x] number of gems, and they will very likely pay cash to get them.
Actually, the thing being overshadowed by the Gem Conversion farce is also Gem related. The removal of the Gem conversion graph and a mysterious jump of ~22% in the cost of converting gold to gem, which is significantly higher than any jump in the same timeframe in the games history.
And they removed the gold/gem conversion call from the API.
You don’t need a tinfoil hat to smell this fish.
Gold/gem conversion ALWAYS skyrockets on a patch day. I mean… that doesn’t require a tinfoil hat in any way, shape, or form.
I mean, I get that every other company does crap like this. And I know WHY they pull crap like this (hint; because it makes them a kitten-ton of money from people who just want to buy stuff and compel them to buy something ELSE down the road).
But this company was supposed to be different. That was your entire hook when you started this game, that you were going to do things differently. I have no doubt this “genius” idea was from some executive who wanted to encourage IRL money purchases by making the entry point higher than new players would likely have.
Nothing in video games deserves anger and rage, but it definitely deserves a lot of disappointment. You’re not seeing another cent from me, either, Arena.net.
Change it back.
Before I give my verdict on this one way or another, I need a confirmation. Is the ONLY way to get Foil Wrappers by purchasing Black Lion Keys? That was my initial thought, but I’ve seen some posters suggesting there are other ways to get them.
You can also get them from Trick-or-Treat bags. I honestly didn’t even know you could get them from the gem store until I read this thread.
And if you look on this very forum page, you have people begging to get these old skins.
Who are they supposed to cater to? No matter what they did, it was going to kitten SOMEONE off.
They were RNG when they first came out? What are you talking about. Only this time they are through a Little Skritt Event NPC instead of Black Lion Chests….
And the winners of the raffle get thousands of gold from the skins while the rest get nothing for their efforts. There is A LOT more on the line this time, not just a few skins. Worst case scenario would completely destroy the in-game economy and i wouldn’t be surprised at this point if it did happen.
I don’t agree with this at all… I don’t think it will ruin the economy at all. It might bring the prices down in a few but I don’t think it will ruin anything.
It looks like there is 100 of each skin being raffled off. I highly doubt that’s going to cause the market for these items to crash.
This is a huge indication of the mindset that Anet currently has towards its playerbase, the fact that this change even happened at all is a big red flag. There was nothing wrong with the previous system, and it was one that had respect towards the players- a simple thing that said “we don’t view you as a means to take advantage of to gain revenue.” That’s changed.
The only reason tiered currency systems like the one they implemented exist is to rip people off. This change, along with some of the more recent changes and admittance that things like dungeons are not something they care about, means I won’t be playing much anymore, and that means me not spending any more money in their gem store either- gold or actual cash.
Oh come on… there were certainly things wrong with the old system. Gem exchange rates fluctuated so fast that often the number the interface said you were getting wound up very different than what you actually got (and boy did that kitten some players off), for example.
I understand you’re disappointed. I get that you (and others) are angry (like usual). But come on, let’s not pretend there was “nothing” wrong with how it was before.
Personally, I get the reason behind the change in theory, but this is what I suggest:
1) Smaller increments to purchase gems with gold (100 gems would probably be ideal).
2) The ability to change whatever gems you have remaining to gold in addition to the increments you choose (for example, if you have 350 gems, have the option to change 100, 200, 300, or [all] into gold). This would not only help those with an odd number of gems carried over from the old system, but also help those who buy gems with IRL cash (and who even now have fewer gem increments they can purchase).
People were asking for more substantial updates not quite as often. As far as I’ve seen, we aren’t getting updates more often and we aren’t getting more substantial updates. The only thing that has improved imo is that we are now getting permanent content.
Well, the answer is pretty simple to me. Arena.net can not produce the amount of content you want in the time frame you want. You’re either going to have to accept slightly more content more rarely, or smaller chunks more frequently.
If you cannot accept either of those options, you need to find a game that gives you what you’re asking for (presuming such a game even exists, which I am dubious).
You ARE aware you get those wrappers without spending one red cent… right?
Sounds like they’re doing this for PRECISELY the reasons people are complaining now… getting stuck with 199 gems and other odd numbers.
Another problem I had noticed with the old system was if the rate shifted as you were trying to hone in on that right number, and you’d wind up with say 401 or 399 or some odd crap.
Personally, I’d suggest more intervals (say in bunches of 200 gems), and add a one time purchase that allows people to get to one of those even numbers so that they aren’t permanently stuck with an odd number of gems.
Season 1, people complained there were too many updates too quickly.
Season 2, people complain there are too few updates too far apart.
Conclusion; people will complain about anything if you let them.
This thread is like looking at a still picture of an Abbott and Costello routine painted by Salvador Dali.
Crazy idea…
Considering how many times players have speculated, hyped themselves up, then got furiously mad at Arena.net when the reality didn’t meet those speculations… you just… not hype yourselves up with rampant speculation?
It’s a direct response to something you posted in this very thread, so if there’s irrelevance afoot, the source is clear.
Maybe this will help: if they tested these other things and then went ahead with implementing them, which would seem to be a clear indication that they thought these other things ‘worked’, then the notion that they tested NPE ‘and it worked’ is not particularly reassuring.
For what it’s worth, I don’t recall a developer at Arena.net claiming they “tested” temporary content. I recall their claim being that it was to make the world feel “alive” and that things were always changing.
So, yeah… I’m not quite sure I get the relevance either.