I think you’ve hit a nail on the head however it’s not just the new guild system that’s the problem. I too come from a background of multiple mmo’s and have watched the team on this title one by one ignore the basics of mmo history as-it-were.
Each update, each control mechanism introduced has already been tried and has already been shown to fail miserably. Some of the items they’ve introduced have even shut down whole companies because these companies were new, made a game, and decided to artificially restrict the loot and currency (DR). They too publically broadcasted that this was to prevent Gold Farmers from affecting the economy and I watched these games slowly die off and close shop because the Devs didn’t listen to the community and realize that it was them not the gold farmers that were destroying their in game economy thus killing the fun for many players and making them leave the game en masse. Most recently it happened in D3 however Blizzard caught it just in time and made the appropriate changes to keep the remaining players.
This is only one example of the problems with this game due to mismanagement of resources and restrictions.
The list of problems I’ve seen so far are:
- live team disregarding original manifesto and ignoring the quicker easier cheaper content infusion engine we heard about years prior to launch, the DE meta system.
- lack of proper quality control, ie no PTR to properly test bugs prior to patch launch
- serious lack of UI elements most mmo gamers find easily in just about every other mmo of any design or profit model (ie LFG tool[necessary now with their new dungeon focus], “last online” in guild roster, guildwide/personal calendar, egg timer, alarm clock, LFguild system, non-cosmetic guild gear [usually the biggest success because it provides a sense of pride and projects the guild works on to get the best gear in the game])
- lack of prelaunch promises kept (ie mobile app, web app, lottery, mini-games)
- allocation of resources necessary to completely squash the bugs in the weakest classes, enhance pet AI, and repair the design flaws of the weakest classes in the game.
We’ve asked multiple times what they’d do about these issues, really haven’t received very many answers which leads me to believe that they really aren’t concerned.
When the game launched I had a 3 full page post of ui enhancements they could have used in their suggestions forums to bring the ui of this game up to the current century and I was not alone in this others put out long lists of their own in the very same forums, but they were drowned out most likely by those who wanted yet another WoW like dungeon only lobby game element added to this title.
(edited by tigirius.9014)