Curse

Skyy High · Feb 18, 2009, 01:53 PM // 13:53

I'm still confused why people think they can only play either GW2 or D3. Have you guys not been playing any other games for the past 4 years?

R.Shayne · Feb 18, 2009, 02:42 PM // 14:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyy High

I'm still confused why people think they can only play either GW2 or D3. Have you guys not been playing any other games for the past 4 years?

Probably because you are a hardcore gamer (and the minority in the market) and casual or semi-casual gamers purchase fewer games, take my wife. She is a casual gamer, and has purchased 5 games in the last four years, GW, Factions, NF, Eotn, and supreme commander.

I agree with Ate of DK, I expect D3 to come out in late 2010 or mid 2011 and if ANET releases in the same time frame as D3 it will be bad for ANET. I wonder how many of NCSoft's investors have made this connection yet?

Vel · Feb 18, 2009, 03:44 PM // 15:44

Regardless of how good GW2 is D3 will beat it hands down in revenue. Blizzard knows how to numb the opposition and they have been doing it for years.

That said, there is no reason to believe GW2 will not have a great fan-base if they really incorporate lessons learned from GW1 correctly in GW2.

AJD · Feb 18, 2009, 03:56 PM // 15:56

Meanwhile Mike...

Your original game is dead and you lost your player base. Good luck.

Shadowmoon · Feb 18, 2009, 04:21 PM // 16:21

I wonder how many people would have preferred expansions like gw:en once a year until gw2 came out. I mean I think allot of people feel the bait and switch now. I personally know alot of people after gw:en just thinking, well gw2 beta coming in a year and I can forgive how rushed and cut cornered gw:en is, to what is now, guessing beta might be 2 years away and the best things coming to gw1 is storage upgrade, this sucks.
Personally I think they need to get some more resources to gw1, and release some mini-transaction content. Make a new dungeon and charge $5 for it, but have it uw, fow or sf quality, not cut and paste gw:en quality. Do this very 4-6 months, and I bet the game wouldn't be nearly as dead.

Rocky Raccoon · Feb 18, 2009, 04:26 PM // 16:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadowmoon

I wonder how many people would have preferred expansions like gw:en once a year until gw2 came out. I mean I think allot of people feel the bait and switch now. I personally know alot of people after gw:en just thinking, well gw2 beta coming in a year and I can forgive how rushed and cut cornered gw:en is, to what is now, guessing beta might be 2 years away and the best things coming to gw1 is storage upgrade, this sucks.
Personally I think they need to get some more resources to gw1, and release some mini-transaction content. Make a new dungeon and charge $5 for it, but have it uw, fow or sf quality, not cut and paste gw:en quality. Do this very 4-6 months, and I bet the game wouldn't be nearly as dead.

I believe that the storage was mentioned as among other things. I don't think you should complain until we see what we get, then if you aren't happy feel free.

drago34 · Feb 18, 2009, 05:03 PM // 17:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Risky Ranger

Can anyone explain the obsessive need that some people have for screen shots? It seems to me that screen shots from a game 2 years away would have no useful purpose. I also would like to know why those same people have such a distrust of ANET. What has ANET done to warrant that distrust?

For the most part it is just cynicism of companies in general, on the other hand GW:EN is another reason.

JR · Feb 18, 2009, 06:26 PM // 18:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by AJD

Meanwhile Mike...

Your original game is dead and you lost your player base. Good luck.

Let's try not to be quite so sensationalist.

Arkantos · Feb 18, 2009, 06:31 PM // 18:31

Quote:

I'm telling you this because it's an asinine comparison.

Yes, it is. If you read the post I quoted, you'd understand why I made the comparison.

pumpkin pie · Feb 18, 2009, 06:55 PM // 18:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyy High

I'm still confused why people think they can only play either GW2 or D3. Have you guys not been playing any other games for the past 4 years?

I know I'll be playing The Sims3 . Sims has alignments ! good and evil (i don't know what for exactly because how you play already determine what alignmet your sims are but whatever, i have a desperate need to mod some sims item. and they "stole" my slider for coloring skintone and hair idea

i should have patent it lol ...

Gun Pierson:
you never know Gun, I have friends who play WoW (i don't) that would not move over from that game no matter how I try to explain to them that GW is better :P some of them have try GW but eventually gone back and abandon GW. i am currenty trying to get them to give me their mini pets lol or better still give me their accounts, Yay Xunlai! which reminds me, i need to submit my prediction soon.

Jecht Scye · Feb 18, 2009, 06:57 PM // 18:57

While Anet never did actually set a release date, they did set an original target for a beta in 2008/2009 and the game in 2009/2010 if I recall correctly. I don't mind that NCSoft pushed back the "target date"(A highly political term for release date) and Anet "forgot" that target date, so long as the game comes to market as an outstanding product. With that said - Anet, please do not forget to deliver.

TakagiNaoSama · Feb 18, 2009, 07:23 PM // 19:23

This makes me happy ^_^ I was worried for a bit about the future of my favorite game. Thank you for addressing this, Mike!

DreamWind · Feb 18, 2009, 07:31 PM // 19:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vel

Regardless of how good GW2 is D3 will beat it hands down in revenue and SC2 will beat both of them. Blizzard knows how to numb the opposition and they have been doing it for years.

Fixed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vel

That said, there is no reason to believe GW2 will not have a great fan-base if they really incorporate lessons learned from GW1 correctly in GW2.

I'd argue they didn't learn the lessons, but that is off topic. The problem here (and a reason they are allowed to get away to this half assed letter to the fans) is because with Anet's marketing model, their main focus is going to be new players. Keeping old players around is on their list, but it is a much lower priority.

Takeko Nakano · Feb 18, 2009, 07:31 PM // 19:31

A very pretty way of saying absolutely nothing. Basically ANet propaganda - and bad propaganda at that. "We've got everything under control folks - honest!"

aemroth · Feb 18, 2009, 08:03 PM // 20:03

First of all, i apologize for making this my first post and skipping an introduction. For better or worse i mostly lurk, but i felt i had to toss my .02 into this discussion.

I'll have to congratulate Billiard, i believe he had some very valid points. Have to say i didn't read *everything*, so apologies beforehand if i repeat stuff that has been said.

Back on topic, i think one has to look at what has happened to NCSoft and Anet recently to make some sense out of this. Whatever any of us ends up saying, it's pretty much speculation, but it might be a good hint. I'm talking specifically about a couple of keys factors:

1 - NCSoft has a very good domain in the Asian market, but has yet to get a solid grasp in the EU/US market.

If you take a look at their IR Report from November, available here, there are a couple of interesting facts to read about, most importantly, they expect the EU/US market to grow at a faster rate than the Asian market in the next few years. I believe they are very well aware of this, and while Aion and Blade&Soul are very ambitious projects, they are more targeted at the Asian market, and their foothold on the western market will probably pale in comparison. As far as upcoming release, GW2 is the most suitable to western tastes.

(On a side note, you can also see a predicted timeline of releases with GW2 expected to release *before* Blade&Soul, which is scheduled for CBT in Q4 2009 on the earnings report. This IR Report is from Novemeber. The inconsistency can be due to the data on the IR Report being older, despite release in November most likely, but who knows)

2 - The Tabula Rasa failure and the subsequent shift in the NCSoft western offices

I will not go in length into this, but i found a couple of post from Adam Martin's blog to be very interesting (former CTO of the Brighton dev studio), namely:

About the failure of TR
About NCWest restructuring

Basically, TR was NCSoft's hope for getting a foothold the western market, and it failed to do so after a long and expensive dev cycle. On the other hand, GW, although not a massive hit, has performed probably better than they expected at first, earning a lot of respect and credit in the online gaming community, finding a healthy niche of players, and generating an interesting revenue, considering the company's size and resources, and the revenue method used (no subscription fee).

So, what do they do? Shift powers and resources from Garriot brothers & company, to the hands of Anet folks. can you see where i'm going with this already? Maybe trying to take a successful business model one step further?

Conclusion?

So, summing up, this is what i believed happened: GW2 started as a split from a campaign that was starting to feature too many changes to be just that, a campaign. So, at first, it was a fairly unambitious project. More than GW, no doubt, but still relatively small. And so, it was announced, because the development cycle was expect to be relatively small.

The things start to shake in TR development. there are doubts on it's success, and a lot of people inside just *know* deep down that it's gonna crash and burn. Meanwhile, the folks at NCSoft in Korea start thinking of a backup plan not to lose the US/EU market completely, in the worst case scenario. Imagine the most likely project to be on their sights? that's right, GW2!

At which point, GW2 can probably become a far more ambitious project, so they order to keep it under wraps. Things progress, and TR fails. What happens next? The Origin (Garriots etc) people is replaced by Anet people at the head of NCWest, the GW2 dev team grows considerably, and still does to this date (just take a look at the jobs offered by Anet on the PlayNC website), and, as Mike says in this letter, they are having "strong support and financial backing" from NCSoft.

All of this is why, to me, they are being very silent about. Just look at AoC and WAR. What's wrong with those games? Not that much actually, they're fairly enjoyable games. So what's all the fuss about? The hype! Such games were called time and time again "wow-killer", and of course, they failed to meet such expectations. Now, i'm not saying that with GW2 growing into a much more ambitious project than it initially was, they expect it to compete with WoW, but i believe they *are* targeting a much broader audience. If any details about it were to be release, i'm pretty sure people would start calling it wow-killer, the great white hope and stuff like that. That would but damage it's possible outcome because of expectations, put pressure on the dev team that they don't need or want, and possibly even make other companies work harder and faster in upcoming releases.

So sit tight, let it be a sleeper, and have faith. I can't believe that a team that developed a game with such an intelligent design and attention to detail as GW could possibly fail. If anything, the only thing that concerns me is the size of the company at this point. GW's dev team was relatively small, and worked on an open, creative, laid-back, and family-like environment, which might not be the case at this point with GW2. But again, the less pressure, the more they can work in an environment like this again.

Note: i'm not saying GW2 is NCSoft's next big hope or anything like that. Only that with Aion and B&S covering their Asian market, GW2 is probably their best shot at the time for filling a portion in their gap in the EU/US market.

Bottom line: i'm just speculating here, and can be dead wrong about most or all of this, but i just say let'em do their thing and have faith

Commander Kanen · Feb 18, 2009, 08:49 PM // 20:49

To be fair.. anet are being lazy with the infomation. its only takes 5 mins every couple days to say something.. its not a big task to keep the community more happy. and they could try to be a little less vague. if they dont know when there will be a beta for example. And it would stop people making assumptions creating debate and getting worked up over nothing... i guess !...Also WTB Auction house for GW2 !!!

Animate · Feb 18, 2009, 08:52 PM // 20:52

I won't buy GW2 until GW1 gets fixed.

sindex · Feb 18, 2009, 09:02 PM // 21:02

I have to agree with both Billiard and Aemroth, which they touched up on my points from before. Since it, all has to do with lofty ambitions, poor economic down turn, and stiff competition.

I still like the irony in what Garriott called Guild Wars a “failed experiment,” in which his project has failed and theirs has flourished. Guild Wars still holds onto their successes and all awhile, they will continue to move forward. Garriott on the other hand (while he did apologies) will find it much more difficult to get his next project off the ground (pun intended).

However presently I think A-net needs to stop making swift generalizations of their upcoming projects in the near future. Furthermore, they need to pick up some better PR/CR ethics in the near future. If they want to be dead silent about their work after the initial hype (May 2007 PC Gamer magazine), then they should not be shocked at the negative feedback from the overall community. I understand that it gives them leeway to spin that information for saying something to the point of “they never actually said that,” but they should be aware of the consequences of doing this to their fans by now. It’s my only current complaint about the company so far, since EotN has been out.

pigdestroyer · Feb 18, 2009, 09:09 PM // 21:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by aemroth

a lot of stuff

Well informed and written post!

Sir Skullcrasher · Feb 18, 2009, 09:11 PM // 21:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Animate

I won't buy GW2 until GW1 gets fixed.

I really don't know if A-Net has the time nor efforts to fix GW1 before GW2 launch. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't most of the A-Net team assign to GW 2?