Guild Wars 2

I’ve said it before and I’d like to say it again:
If constant transfers are a problem for WvWvW, byt all means fix it… for WvWvW.

Free transfers are obviously meant as a substitute for Guesting that is not implemented, but 7week long cooldown on it does not work at all (24h hardly worked too, if you ask me).
Put the cooldown on accessing WvWvW after transfering instead and let players needing it to play with friends able to use it as such again.

Slark: no, that’s not the anwser.
We are not “all friends”: the guilds are groups of people I played over the years across different games and almost each of us is in the same situation. There’s no way everyone will end up on one server, it’s dozens of people with various friend connections of their own.

Indeed, Guesting needs to be implemented as promised, but until it is limiting World Transfers to once a week is not really handy, especially since there is no ETA on Guesting.
The feature was one of the advertising elements of GW2, but over a month after release it’s still not in. I understand technical dificulties but the Dev Team needs to chose a solution that will work for most players.
Again, if WvWvW is the problem, limit WvWvW access after transfer and not just transfers themselves. Everyone is happy then, I suppose.

I understand you’re worried about WvWvW, but the transfers ( together with the lack of promised Guesting functionality) affect PvE players as well.
Many friends split between the servers convinced they will be able to roam together anyway (guesting) and we can’t.

If you’re worried about WvWvW, why not limit access to the Mists to a week after transfer, at least until you implement Guesting? Because if WvWvW is the root of the problem, your fix and it’s punishing consequences should be limited to that part of your game.
I personally barely access WvWvW, but I have friends on 4 servers. Playing together wasn’t supposed to be that hard. Please reconsider.

I love the clocktower!
Best puzzle ever!

I must admit it was extremely frustrating initially, but once I’ve done it, it felt the most rewarding too.
If only I could turn off player models..

I’d actually love to know who voices him!
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the voice before, or at least the manierism…

I don’t agree with OP at all, this was the best puzzle I’ve done so far.
Unlike EB, you can’t be griefed.
You do not need speed buff to complete it.

Camera issues? Yes, I agree, this puzzle can suffer from them and this should be fixed.
Traits / Items influencing the players? Also a bug and should be fixed.

If only the models of other players wpouldn’t show, I think I wouldn’t have any more complains, i actually loved this one even though I’m not usually one for times stuff (hated the griffon puzzle).

Also – and I haven’t seen this one in a long time – guilds seem to be borked again.
In most guilds I don;t see tag, I’m the only one in and no influence is shown.

Magister Tassi asking “Are you having a satisfactory Halloween?” is adding insult to injury, if you ask me…

19:9:18:1614:101
when trying to join the instance

Yeah…
The party got separated into 5 instances and now we can’t even enter at all.
Great idea that one time event guys, thanks! It “really feels epic” now.

Human female cultural T2 seems to have a short model in general.
I really hope this is not by design? Because for me, lower back showing simply looks sloppy…
I love that chest but I won’t use it unless the model is lengthened, especially since I mostly see my character form behind

It’s still a sad excuse to boost sales :/

zogrim,
do you know what GMT is? I think you might be mistaking it for something.
In game clock does not show GMT time, it either shows server time or your local time (time on your machine).
Also, are you aware of the fact that f.e. DST (Daylight-Saving Time) is observed quite differently in different regions of the world? Some of regions not observing it at all, others begining/ending on different days?
So it’s not always that simple as adding / substractijng same number of hours to get your timezone, unfortunatelly.

I don’t see how listing xx PST (yy GMT) would make much difference for ANet and it makes a world of a difference for players around the world.
To be honest, I can’t even think of any other company handling global business / announcements without giving out times in GMT as well.
It is much easier to only have to know how your zone is relative to GMT times at any given moment.

And Tyrick, it’s really ignorant and flat out rude to sent people to Google when they can handle themselves perfectly otherwise.

caufenkamp and others, leaving town and coming back on it’s own will NOT reset the pumpkins.
You need to actually land on a different overflow server for this to work.
If you’re not hitting overflow, better use an alt.

Haha the charr is very adorable and the line is still hilarious despite hearing it xx times by now.
But yes he could be persuaded to say that line a bit less often, I agree.

However, quaggan calfs win hands down in the cuteness department.

Where do you actually obtain the recipes for the permanent skins?

Refuh, I agree with your overall philosophy. however…

If you don’t understand the reaction of some players being vocal about the chests, maybe you should spent some more time and effort to emphasize.
There is definietly a lot of not very constructive feedback in the 1100-posts long thread, but there is also some very to the point that should shed some light on what others feel and why and really, it does make sense.

To summerize very fast some of the more improtant reasons for the outrage that I’ve personally found, please take a moment to think about the following questions:

- was there such outrage about the chests before the Halloween? Why not?
- was there such outrage about the chests after they’ve announed “small chance of permanent remote TP access” drop from the chests? Why not?

People, from what I’ve seen, generally didn’t care about the chests and not too many bought the keys, most reasonable assumption would be that they didn’t see the keys worth their money.

This changed with ANets marketing campaign for Halloween: do note that the chests are mentioned everywhere where they speak about the event, this gives an impression that the chests were to be one of the main parts of the event – can you really argue that given the marketing? And not a side part where you have a tiny bit of receiving anything event-related, but a vital part of the festivities.
For me personally – and for many others, as you can see on the forums – that was deceptive marketing. They were expecting something different for their money’s worth. That’s where some (most?) of the outrage is coming from. They might word it differently but really, most of it boils down to “This is not what I expected” with an occasional “from you, Arena Net”.

Again personally: I would not be at all surprised with such “event” being handled by one of the many games popular in Asia (Aion, Lineage etc), but up until this event if you’d ask me what does “a chance of Halloween-themed items drop” marketed by ANet, I’d bet my GW1 account the chance would be high enough for any casual player to get a few of the items in question without much hastle.
I do think that for many people, especially GW1-veterans, trust in ANets approach towards players and how they handled events in general was a huge factor when trying to judge what that “chance” meant in Halloween marketing.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Bloodthirsty.9604:

the real question is, how can they restore our faith in them?

Faith? What faith?
If you learned something from this event and Anet attitude, next event (Christmas etc) you will use JUST what you dropped (keys, gems bough just with ingame gold) and keep your credit card inside your pocket and the childish desire of stupid things (noone around of you care of your halloween weapon/armor no more than a couple minutes) under control, and get what you can. What you didn’t got, amen. After all, are you truly planning to use halloween armor skin or halloween themed weapons during christmas?
Enjoy your childish pleasure, i’ll go around with a Santa’s sword, using inworld currency farming a DE

First of all Lucas, are you aware of the fact that games you buy for ing-gold have to first be bought by some other player for real money?
If, as you suggest, everyone indeed stops buying gems for real money, there will be no gems to be bought in-game.
The problem here is that the people who were most likely to spend big real bucks have done so this event and are mostly very unhappy about the outcome and many of them are unlikely to spend big again.

Also, who are you to tell people how are they to enjoy their free time, proceed with their money or hobby?
Personally: yes, if a Halloween skin fit my RP desires for the night, I’d use my Halloween skin during Christmas, because I want to.

I also hope they don’t use tonics for that as I always delete or spam-use them as well directly after opening the chests because I find them utterly useless and just clogging my inventory.

If I have opened a lot of chests, I’d already be out of tonics.
For the sake of people who actually opened a lot of chests (I haven’t myself), ANet please look into this because there is definietly quite a bunch of people doing exactly the same, as i can see in this thread.

I see they have been both increased, if I’m not mistaken one more tier has been added to each of them.

Will that happen each day (I hope not) or was it a one-time occurence?
Also, if possible, why were they increased?

Would appreciate a red reply

brickforlife.1364:

@cherrie

You can’t blame someone just because you assumed something. THey stated chances, yes it is ambiguous, but when ever did you see chance on something that isn’t low and is not in middle school maths?

I don’t understand your second sentence, sorry. Could you elaborate?

As for the first one: yes, you can when it is deceptive and for many players, it was.
Some countries have laws againt deceptive marketing and then you can legally sue the companies that use it.
I am not saying that what ANet did is against the law, but it feels borderline.

I hope it’s a “one time thing” like Halloween / Wintersday was in GW1: happens on one day only, but on multiple times so everyone can enjoy it, no matter what their time zone is.
Otherwise it would be extremely disappointing: “oh you had to work on 28th, that’s just too bad” sort of thing.

I’m sorry OP and others in this thread but I think you are missing some key points here.

it is not about players “wanting everything easy”
Do you see 1100-post long topic about legendary items or PvP achievements?

it’s not, for everyone complaining, about RNG element available in the store for real money
Again, do you see a thread of substantial length on these forums about the chests in general? No, people didn’t like them and almost no one bought the keys, it was more than evident by the amount of chests on TP and by ANets recent moves to make chests more appealing (more on that below)

it’s not about chances / low chances from the chest in general
Again, no substantial protests from people against the recently added “small chance of permanent remote TP access” – but this was clearly stated as “small chance”

it’s not about the rest of the update
Yes, for some people the festival spirit is ruined when they feel they wasted 50$ and really, can you blame them?
But the root of the problem is not the rest of the festival, which is really enjoyable

IT IS about deceptive marketing (or what players felt as deceptive marketing) from a company that has over the years earned a huge trust among their player base
Their newsletter e-mail, official web page and every press release stated prominently that chests will be a part of the Halloween event. Indeed, there was a “chance” involved, but the chance was not – unlike with the permanent TP access – listed as small and given the company history and the fact that it’s an event, people assumed the chances would be quite high

“but the haven’t listed the chances, it’s your fault” – NO
If you’d read the thread you’d know that quite a few countries in the world make it mandatory for any game of chance to list odds. ANet probably didn’t have to do it and their lawyers will prove it, but that’s not the point.
The point is that this kind of law is made against deceptive companies and their deceptive practices: when you tell someone “you have a chance of winning”, from semantic point of view you are not lying either when you have 1:3 chance or 1:15000 chance. But that’s deceptive. And that’s what many players feel about the chests: the marketing was deceptive.
Maybe they would pay more attention or be more cautious if it was a different company, if it wasn’t an event and if the info about event items from chests were not highlighted everywhere possible.
But it was ANet. A company that players from GW1 learned to trust.

Guys, there are more chapters coming with more stuff happening.
What if event will be winding up and when the next chapters open, it won’t be only through the doors that you can kill these mobs?

My guess is, there will be other ways to kill them. So don’t sweat.

I hope as the event progresses there will be more ways to kill these creatures than just the doors? :x

Kephas Isidore, yes I am aware that “this is one element of the game where they are emulating other companies”, that’s pretty obvious.

My point is: they don’t have to. There are plenty of games that do exactly the same thing and they could – like they did in GW1 – find a niche and cash on people who appreciate different approach. Especially since – let me stess that one again – they both said they will continue the model of shop from GW1 (which they didn’t much, apparently) and stated many times they are not like the others.
Again, if I appreciated this sort of thing, I’d be playing [insert korean grinder here], but I am not there and I am not the only one who thinks that way.
And again: “everyone is doing it” is never a valid argument.

For the record, I’ve opened 3 chests this event and I am unlikely to open any more because neither do I like the skins nor I find the drop rate amusing.
But the fact that I personally was not hit hard on my wallet here does not mean I can’t notice something about their marketing/practices I more than not appreciate.

And it’s also not that I don’t want ANet to earn money.
By gods, I want them to take loads of my money, like they did in GW1, the only game I’ve spent real money in game shop and a lot, really.
But this is not the way to get my money.

I wish I could quote taomang proper but the forum buttons are still not fixed…

1) They should be rare… NOT. No one CARES if some other person has it. You’re not gonna stare and admire at THAT person. There are so many people with legendaries running around, i can tell you that no one really pays attention to them saying “oh man look at that guy he is so cool”, but people think “oh so THAT’S what a legendary looks like. Let me check how much gold it’s worth to spend on that thing”.
So, if EVERYONE and their mother got a Halloween skin, running around NO ONE WOULD CARE. I mean if you need a weapon skin to feel special, there is something seriously wrong with you. Most of people only care about how THEIR character looks, not how you or your buddy look. We all love to “dress up” our own characters and make them look how we want to. Apparently, it’s a wrong thing.

This is so spot on.
The fact that apparently the skins are uber are won’t make me like them more as it would not make me like them less if they were common (I use Fine TStones to apply Krytan skin on my exotic weapons because I like it and I don’t give a bag of cats what someone else thinks).
GW1 had a perfect approach to festival fun: festival items were pretty common and easily obtained; if you liked it, you used it and had fun. Any store festival items (costumes only basically) were non-tradeable. Everyone was happy (well, maybe apart from people who wanted to play the market, but i couldn’t care less about them).

Kephas Isidore, many players are ehre – playing GW2 – because it’s NOT any of the games you have mentioned.
I am certainly one of these people.

I always knew GW2 will have a shop but during the whole development period Devs have always stated it wuld be like GW1 store, with no pay to win (which, to me, always meant pay for advantage so I am already pretty unhappy with the boosts, but that’s a different subject).

I have played a great deal of games on the market and I’ve never stayed for long in any that had a high RNG (or high grind factor). That’s why I always thought GW1 to be the best game on the market, and that’s why I am in GW2 and not somewhere else. And this is also precisely why I am a bit disgusted with the shop in general and totally disgusted with the whole situation surrounding chests in this event.

Also, do not forget that one of the points of GW2 marketing campaign was “we are not like the others” hence your whole argument about “everyone is doing it” is double void (double, because it’s never an argument).

Again, ANet marketing for this event was highliting chests and the unique skins you were getting.
No where it ever said “rare” (though it should say “very rare”!). Given ANet history with GW1 and events there, I can guarantee you that nearly every GW1 player thought the rate will be substantial

Kimbald.2697:

In GW1 the chances of getting something out of what you bought for real money were rather high.

They used this trust to sell chests now.

I haven’t played GW1 in a bit but unless something changed drastically, every shop item in GW1 was what you see is what you get and as for events and their rewards, they were designed in such a way that every player who could spend a moderate amout of time (around 1h) during game time was basically guaranteed to get the event item.

There was some chance involved with celestial pets dropping, but given their prices during the event, the chance was very, very high plus no real money was involved.

As I said before, the “worst” thing they’ve done (the most stingy one) is Mini Polar Bear drop during Wintersday.

So yes, they’ve gained an enormous amount of trust among their GW1 crowd and certainly a lot of good word of mouth back then.

Sobewan.3281:

People like to say “Hah! Suckers!” and honestly I do feel like a sucker. But I knew full well going in that $20 for keys in a video game wasn’t going to be worth the money in a pure monetary sense. But I wanted to support Arenanet and maybe get a few aesthetic goodies for that support. Instead I feel scammed. I went in with low expectations regarding the droprates, but I figured surely, twenty US dollars can give me more than a 1% chance at getting some stupid skin for my stupid weapons.

It’s my fault. They never said what the % was. They never said that you could open hundreds of chests and get nothing. But I trusted Arenanet to do better by me than some Korean f2p Lineage II clone. Guild Wars fans feel a sense of entitlement because Arenanet has always upheld a standard of excellence in content/holiday fun. I still have truckloads of candy canes and pumpkin heads in my Xunlai storage and I hardly ever even PARTICIPATED in the Guild Wars 1 stuff. I just accumulated it via osmosis.

I don’t know, I feel pretty bitter, pretty disappointed, and pretty dumb. I don’t think that was the intended effect of the holiday festivities. I love the work they’ve done with Halloween in every way except for this. I think I speak for a lot of “suckers” when I say I will not be purchasing gems again. This just feels icky.

This is so very true.
This game is amazing and it feels like a worthy successor of GW1 in many gameplay aspects.
But the shop seems to be from a totally different world, like it was reaped out from… I don’t know… Maple Story or something similarly disgusting.

ANet fans want to spend their money on the game.
I’ve spent big in GW1 and I never regretted a single purchase, then again it was always “what you see is what you get… and you get to keep it too, and we’ll make sure it’s easy for you!”.
Every single person I knew owned several costumes, most of my friends owned them all as well as most of the stuff offered in store. GW1 had a fair model shop and the worse thing they’ve ever done for holidays was Mini Polar Bear.

On the contrary, GW2 shop seems to be aimed at a totally different playerbase than the game actually has.

Airyll, GW1 was a free to play game.

It NEVER had this such a thing. GW1 had the most reasonable shop I’ve ever seen in any ftp game and trully, if Devs go for 4 -5 years saying “we’ll have a shop in GW2 very much (or was it Just like?) in GW1 because it was such a huge success” do understand that people expect GW1 model and not korean grinder model in shop.

GW1 had a pure “what you see is what you get” shop model.
Costumes had much better mechanics overall (even though much more limited) because it was much more player friendly and didn’t just suck gems out of you for TS, storage, multiple costumes for multiple characters and such. And you could always display a costume.

To sum it up, I don’t play korean grinders because I don’t like the model, both gameplay and shop wise and i really hate this utterly disgusting model creep into my favourite game. And I know I am not the only one. The fact that all other NCsoft or Nexon or generally Big In Asia games are doing it doesn’t mean GW has to be doing it, they actually made a pretty big deal of being different, after all.

I’ve spend a ton of money on GW1, I’m a bit scared to count it up but I had every costume, every bank tab, full hero pack (though I never used them all), several additional slots (in total I had one class each + perma pre char + 2xPvP chars), mission pack, some name changes, Game of The Year update or what not.
EVERY single of these items was a full moeny’s worth for me.

Cosmetic system in GW2 is generally very lacking, in my opinion.
Especially if compared to either GW1 (which was pretty limited) or to what competitors offer (LotRO stands out and proud).

Playing with cosmetic items in GW2 is disproportionally expensive in both in-game and real currency, because:
- unlike in GW1 or in LotRO, you need to buy a separate costume set for each character you’d like to use it on
-if you want to switch between different costumes (that are not town clothes), you either need to have
o Multiple underlying sets (for stats)
o buy multiple copies of the costume and keep on applying transmutation
- in general, having multiple costumes is in itself punishing because you run out of storage and you need to buy more of it (unlike in GW1 when costumes were “created” and you were not further punished or required to spend more money on storage)

As for Town Clothes, I really dislike the idea. It’s like saying “want to RP? Sure, but RP only out of combat!”.
That’s silly in an MMO that is mnostly combat based. I like the Witch set but really, paying 700 gems for something Iwill be able to display like 5% of my game time? Not likely….

On a side note, I got 1c from every chest I’ve opened.
Of course in-game gold is not something you open a chest for, but 1c is a bit ridiculous on it’s own.
Is it a bug?

PotatoOverdose.6583:

I love how people equate the acquisition of one cosmetic item to the quality of the entire event series, though it’s only just begun. Nice.

As to the greatsword prices, one word for you: speculation.

If you were the one who spent 50$ and got nothing, you might feel a bit different on this one.

I am still hoping the timer is on applying them so that you can’t hoard the Halloween items but the skin is permanent…

Events in GW1 were always available for low (even very low) characters so I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.

If speaking in “carrot” terms, I agree with what many of you said recently about lack of gear grind being good.
What I do like in GW2 is last of the “carrot on the stick” and the fact that it makes you choose your own carrots.
What I don’t like is that, given my playstyle (semi-casual I guess), at the moment there are very few carrots within hand’s reach.
I’d like more goals to choose from that would not necessary all be gold sinks and huge grinds. :x

Personally, I feel that while GW2 is a very good game, there is a huge design flaw that makes a lot of people not enjoy it as much as the other.

The gap is that GW2 seems perfect for very casual players (no monthly fee, constant exp req for levels, small gear differences between normal and exotic) and that it has some really hardcore grinding goals (legendary items, other expensive achievements) – but there seem to be very little in between, no short-term goals really.

I’m not a hardcore player myself (anymore), I’d say myself I am casual, though by boyfriend disagrees. I do play a few hours every day, enjoying the slow wolrd completion. Bot beyond that goal, I can see nothing, absolutely no goal I can aim for that’s withing my hands reach, resonably. All the goals seem to be long-term goals giving little of feeling of achievement for months or weeks.
All the things I’d like to eventually achieve seem to be gold sinks, so I can’t work on few of them at a time either.

I am not a person who plays multiple games at the same time, I’ve never ejnoyed that.
I have not really returned to a game I’ve put away either.
I loved GW1 and I love GW2 so far, but i can’t shake off the feeling that I won’t find anything to focus on to keep me entertained for long.
Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want grind (if I wanted it, I wouldn;t nag here but farm for my Legendary), I’d like to see smaller goals I can focus on the way to the bigger ones, that don;t go against. And GW2 seems to be lacking that. So I see casuals extremely happy – and that’s great! – and extreme hardcores happy – okay too – but people in between seem to be having a bit of a harder time.

I rarely say this, but if you think Mesmer is crap in PvE, you are not playing it right.

For a Mesmer to be effective in PvE, you should probably approach it very different than for PvP and maximize AoE. Mesmer has great AoE possibilities, for example I run Greatsword / Staff Mesmer and focus on Shattering a lot. I have no problems in PvE, as a matter of fact I am having a blast, getting Gold contributions all the time, soloing Veterans with their adds and what not.

However if by saying Mesmer is bad in PvE you mean you can’t just use 1234, then yes.

Change your approach, discover new things

I find this one pretty odd, since skills like f.e. Greatsword #1 have lip animation to them and lip synch of one type or annother is very present in the game, yet mantras – which have clear text to them – don’t have any lip syns to them.

Bug or WAI?

I tried the organ on Piken Square, also not interactable.

Also, HoM Dwayna gloves clip a lot.
Example is my Norn but I believe this happens to every model.

Sorry for double posts but I can’t figure out how to add multiple attachments

I might have reported this before, however without screenshots.

Norn Female, long ponytail
It clips a lot. Below examples of clipping with shield in idle (running is also affected) and also of the ponytail creating a “spear” that pierces my Guard when using the Staff might-channelling skill.

I might have reported this before, however without screenshots.

Norn Female, long ponytail
It clips a lot. Below examples of clipping with shield in idle (running is also affected) and also of the ponytail creating a “spear” that pierces my Guard when using the Staff might-channelling skill.

I totally agree with the arguments regarding Asuran race armours: that’s obviously race thing.

But if a crafted gear for Norm or Human females has wings, I get a bit jealous my female Asura doesn’t get a chance. That’s what I mean

Not exactly a visual bug, but – I would suspect – an oversight in texture development.
Female light heritage around has much less incrinate details overall than the male version has.
Especially on the dress, the whole skirt part is plain, without gold trim that male coat (and female artwork too!) has.

I love the light heritage armour a lot, Noble armour was one of my favourite in GW1, but there also the 1.5k version had a nice ornament on the skirt at the back.
I would not mention it if it wasn’t for two facts really:
- the trim is visible on the artwork, as I’ve mentioned
- I’m mostly looking at my character from behind and the huge skirt is basically empty from any sort of detail on the back, no other armour, even the starter armours, feel so empty.

Below two screens from this thread
Male: https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/9221/gw021.jpg
Female: https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/7622/gw673.jpg
Better view of female from behind for comprasion (note the trim is clearly visible on the inventory icon too!): http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Heritage_Light_Armor_HF.jpg

Algreg.3629:

the fun thing is that GW1 did not have any more “endgame” content than this game, the superhard domains weren´t there for quite a while after start, progression stopped rather early, and so on. If it would be released today people would complain about the exactly same things they do now +the game being insanely hard in DoA, FoW and UW – and where is my obisidian armor after 3 weeks of playing for kittenssake. Probably best to ignore game forums these days.

First of all, GW1 was released ages ago. Times have changed since then, industry did as well. Players have different expectations. Look at D3 for example. Or Duke Nukem: this was such a hit back in it’s day, but a huge fail when teh sequel was released with little changes to the main idea recently. A succesful model from almost a decade ago does not guarantee success and the mechanics should not simply be copied, they need to be matched to what your playerbase will enjoy now, not what they found fun years ago.

Secondly, GW1 was a PvP oriented game, and heavily so. PvE was treated as a side dish for a long, long time after release.

Thirdly, it still had a lot of short-term goals to keep you going (unlocking skills, PvP equipment). And if you wanted Obsidian Armour or a Crystaline sword, you didn’t have to farm UW or FoW or Shiverpeaks only, you could have done anything you enjoyed and eventually save to purchase your goal. GW2 lacks that opportunity.

Obtena.7952:

This thread could be posted in ANY MMO game forum. Bottom line is that there are things to do once you hit 80, it’s simply a matter of if you wish to do them. I’m really doubtful there are people out there that have nothing left to do once they hit level 80. What’s even more juicy … why does everyone expect a new MMO to drown you in end game content? That doesn’t even make sense. It might not be the trend but new MMO’s may want to think about developing low and midrange level content to encourage replay value.

Your understanding of “content” is pretty narrow.
For example, goals to achieve are also content. But this is exactly where GW2 lacks so severly many people are on the verge of quiting: there are very few short term goals in GW2. The ones Developers seem to focus at the moment are Dungeons and their rewards plus Legendary weapons, both long term goals.
But for most players to strive for long term goals, they need to have short term goals to keep them goin.

When I started playing GW2 and learned about Legendaries, I thought it will be something i will work gradually towards for the next few years that I’ll be playing the game. But with nothing interesting in sight to occupy me, I don’t see myself playing for a few years.
It doesn’t matter how many zones or dungeons a game has, players will play through them in a rate much, much faster than developers can deliver (definietly in quality). Goals is what keeps players in game by adding re-play value or incentive, but when all goals are forbidding, grindy, repetative, there’s just no reason to keep going.

If you’re among the people who do find goals in GW2 worth going for, I envy you.
I waited for this game for years and I really wanted to like it (I loved it at the start) and to keep on playing it for the forseeable future. But there is just no reason for me to play, no goal I believe I can achieve in an acceptable time frame that would actually satisfy me.

I don’t care for all the Slayers, Weapon Masters and what not. I planned on having a character of each race and each profession and customising them to reflect their back story, armour and weapon wise. Given the price of race, dungeon and karma weapons and sets, this is definietly not a goal i can forsee myself going for on even a single alt. And hence I don’t even feel like playing any of the alts. As a matter of fact, I am not tempted to go for those sets even on my main (though truth be told I planned a regular skins from 40 range for her because I like the look a lot).

Again, if you see short- or long-term goals in GW2 that can keep you going, I envy you.
I’m not even done with my first goal of 100% world completion as I decided to take it slow and enjoy, but looking at the state of the game right now I don’t even feel like finishing that anymore.

Amen, Amen!
I’ve already finished my story, I hopeI’ll get a token too…