The Things We Forget About GuildWars

Keeping a 4 and a half year old game alive when they don't have too.
3 guild wars games for $50?!

They don't have to add content to GW1 and focus on GW2. An bad company would just say, "Op, done. Time for next game."

Minor lag in GW1, comparing this to other online games. GW has the least lag I have seen.

You can QQ all you want, Anet is awesome!

See here is the big problem
according to who?
Anet is not going to have the same "priorities" as many of the users of their product {many of these same users won't have the same "priorities" as each other either} so who should be making decisions about the making and running of the game?
A - the people who made it and make games for a living.
B - the random people who pump out 10,000 random ideas everyday without a clue about how to make or run a successful video game.
{sorry but "so and so sounded smart on the forums" doesn't qualify them in my book}

I'll go with A personally and if they really do such a bad job running the game I will move on to something that suits what I would like to see in a game better as I understand that I am not qualified to make videos games no matter how many ideas I have about what may or may not improve one.

If you really think Anet does such a horrible job you should walk away from their products and never look back, after seeing how most if not all other companies manage/mismanage the games that they have I'll give these guys a shot before any of the other clowns out there and if they are doing such a bad job as someone might think from reading the constant QQs on the forums how is it that they are still up and running 5 years laters when so many "bigger/better" titles and companies have bit the dust since the launch of GWs?

Happy New Year and always remember video games aren't life, when the former start seeming too important perhaps it's time to get back to the latter!

Peace

No I am saying that it does not effect EVERYONE, while you want those things fixed does not mean they are the most pressing matters. There are plenty of Casual PvE'ers just casually playing and maybe working on titles that don't care about your list. Your points might be important, but don't say ANet is dropping the ball because they wont fix your problems.

You must have misunderstood me. I was intentionally using looser descriptors to try and just include myself and a vaguely sized group of others (because we know from the threads here and on GWW that they exist).

I'm not saying that my list has priority. Hell, I wasn't even claiming it as my list. I was just trying to think of things that I've heard people complain about recently in-game, on here, or on GWW. And for the most part, it's a valid list of concerns.

Sorry then for accusing you, my apologies.

The biggest thing that people forget about GW is the fact that anet does not owe us a damn thing.

The esteemed poster above me made a whole long list 1-10 of qq's, but he forgets ANET doesn’t owe us a XTH, nor a word about XTH. He forgets they don’t owe us a skill balance. They don’t owe us a skill-function change. They did owe us security measures, but they fixed the problem that came from their end. We got what we paid for. They don’t owe us a holiday snow, a new hat, a new pet, or new quests.

what I hate is that while they made this great game that everyone loves so much, (this is a fansite after all - haters don’t bother to show up, no matter how negative the posts get.) the devs seem to have reached a point that they just don’t care anymore.

I always have and always will enjoy GW. I see a lot of miserable fools on here always whining endlessly about this and that completely forgetting about how great a game GW is down at the core. All i can say is i'm so glad i'm not that jaded and ungrateful.

I love teh guildwarz.

I don't remember claiming that Anet owed us anything. I remember suggesting that it is a list of player concerns, but that's all.

Please, all anet has to do is say it (they're already acting like it) and I'll finally have a solid basis on which to put down GW and NEVER buy another product from Anet again. Probably never from NCSoft again for that matter.

As mentioned earlier, there has not been a skill update in quite awhile. That person said 2 months, I believe its 3. This when they said they wanted to do them every 2 months and Regina or someone said they wouldn't get it out the door till January (4 months).

The level of productivity is pathetic right now. I don't blame people like Linsey or Regina specifically, but upper Anet management who think that they can hand former GW1 players the short end of the stick but that we'll still come back like lemmings for GW2. Wrong. Anet made a good game, but how they've handled the game's direction, oversight, and CR is terrible.

EDIT:
In short, they're already acting like they don't owe us a damn thing considering the microtransactions, sloppy/late updates. This has already turned people away from GW1 and probably GW2. They keep acting like it, and people who aren't fanbois will find a company that DOES act like it owes its fans a damn thing.

True, but it's not the nicest thing to do to get this stuff up and running with flaws while they knew they would sell extra accounts, only to close down XTH after a while. Just doesn't seem fair imo, but they can and owe us nothing, that's right. But there's such a thing as customer relations etc.

On topic, yes I agree with the OP, GW was revolutionising and so much fun. I also agree with Karate Jesus although some points in his list are overlapping.

And, as I've already said, I agree that the game is amazing. Otherwise I would just play my PS3 and forget about GW. And some of my points on the skill balance and meta are overlapping, but I put them like that because in the past those issues have been handled separately.

For example, you can have a skill balance w/o doing a skill "update" (changing the functionality of a skill). And you can do a skill balance without addressing the terrible meta, which has happened many times. And etc.

There are times that ANet has dropped the ball, and there are times that the player community has cried a river a bit too much.

ANet has done many great things with GW, and I cannot really say that it's turned out all that badly. Sure, there are things that I wish would be changed, things that should have been changed years ago, but since they haven't been, there's no use bawling about it. Instead, I try to keep my discussions regarding my complaints civil and I try to enjoy GW for what it is in the here and now.

Other than that, it is what it is - deal with it or GTFO. Simple.

I don't remember Guru ever being positive. At least not since I've been here. The only difference between 2 years ago and today is that there were a lot more people bitching 2 years ago.
*The first 2 points are due to their dwindling staff. I saw this coming a year ago when they changed to monthly updates, which is why I left for about 9 months. Now they are at quarterly which will hopefully stay until GW2 comes out.

*Ectos have always varied in price a lot depending on what people thought they saw coming. Hell a year ago when Ursan was being nerfed everyone was saying how armbraces would skyrocket because no one would be able to farm them anymore.

*I don't know pvp so ill stay out of this one.

*I don't know when updates came or anything as I wasn't playing, but I came back to some new things so you can't complain too much. Hell you paid at most $200 for like 4 or 5 years of gaming... You can't complain too much. They are adding things that don't affect the game so let it be. Once they start selling tradeable things in there I would start complaining. People were complaining about the BMP as well... who cares, a couple new skins that you can't get, big woop.

*Anet has already said what causes these account thefts, and it has nothing to do with them. Hackers have lists of emails/accounts/passwords from other games, they decided to try them on Guild Wars to see if people were dumb enough to keep them the same, some people were. End of story.

*The only server issues I have had are high pings in a Kamadan district or 2, and maybe one EotN district. otherwise, lag free here.

*Again, I don't know pvp, but if they fix these builds there will just be new ones for you to complain about...

*again, it's a dying game that hasn't had much revenue coming in for the past year+, what do you expect? They try to get some more by the in game store and you complain... They can't make everyone happy with no money.

I'll agree with that, but I'll also say that it was inevitable with their business model. There is a reason why WoW is so popular and has as many updates as it does... and it all has to do with money. If you can't pay a dev team for your game you aren't going to have any development lol.

1. If you paid attention to what was said about the xunlai house you would realise there is a huge coding issue and someone has been working on it. Would u like them to say oh were close to getting it working but there are still a crap load of problems with it? Or do you just want your free zkeys each month?
2. I can not argue there but with the skills that they said would be balanced the amount of chaos it could bring to the game might well be worth the wait while the test krewe checks it out.
3. Why does it matter that ectos are going up? I remember when they were 14-15k each and it would be nice if they get there again.
4. The pvp meta is what the player makes it. It has been stagnant since factions. Back when it was just proph people actually used there heads and made builds. Now its everyone runs the same build. Be creative and make a build to rip meta to shreds.
5. The new content being the costumes. they do not add anything to your game meaning that it is not going to make you better or worse tehn one person if you have them or don't. Therefore doesnt matter. Storage panes are the same way.
6. The lag issue is a problem but as stated by someone else. It is much worse on other mmo's
7. Account thefts and secruity are not anets fault. I believe that someone hacked the ncsoft site for those. As well as people using there ingame acc names and passwords on guru and wikis. Anet had nothing to do with those being the child company to ncsoft. Get ur facts straight. Oh btw the in game security question is anet trying to semi fix ncsofts issue.
8. They do not have to explain the server issues if they do not want to. Maybe you would like them to shut the servers down every 4 days for 6-12 hours like Wow used to for maintence?
9. Sway and fcbspam do not hold halls except during noob hour and even then they only win once. IF you can't beat them then your playing really bad.
10. This contridicts itself. There has not been a skill change for 5 months only nerfs and balances. That would be changing skill funcuality.

There's the core of it.

We paid for a role-playing game. Do we expect Oblivion or KotOR to hold our interest forever? No, because once you've finished the content, you might run through it once more, but after a while you stop playing. Oblivion was my favorite game for about a year and a half. Finally, I burned through all the content and was done. I play it perhaps once every few months or so, when I'm bored with my MMOs. Do we blame the company for that? No, we understand that role-playing games have a finite lifespan, and that companies can't just add expansions forever or the content is guaranteed to deteriorate. It's the gaming life cycle. Game is born, people enjoy the game, people finish the game, people grow bored of the game, a new game is produced that catches their interest. It's not the companies' fault.

The problem lies in marketing Guild Wars as an MMO. Sure, they can BS all they want about it being a "competetive online role-playing game", but people expected an MMO. Trouble is, MMOs AREN'T expected to have a lifespan. They're expected to go on indefinitely until some newer, better game comes along (and even then hover on for years with a small but devoted playerbase - see EverQuest). But while the multiplayer activity can extend a game's lifespan, no game can last forever unless it's constantly being updated and injected with new life by means of fresh content and reworking of existing mechanics. It's how things work.

But you can't do that on a traditional singleplayer payment option. Eventually, it gets expensive for the company, and they can't afford to do that and stay in business, because unless they're producing major expansions that we pay for, those updates are probably free. Company is losing money, so it cuts costs, scales back. Now the playerbase starts to lose interest; people quit. The rest get needy, start complaining about the lack of stuff. Company struggles to keep them entertained for a few more years while they produce a new game. Eventually, the juggling act is bound to fail. ANet realized they were screwed.

But because we think of GW as an MMO, we expect it to go on forever, and it CAN'T, because it's not really an MMO at all but merely a single-player game with multiplayer capability (and I think we've noticed this more and more as ANet has made it easier for people to live without other people). So we keep denying that the game is simply coming to the end of its lifespan.

Ultimately, it comes down to the payment model. It was a lovely attempt, and I applaud ANet for making the effort. But it can't work, not as an MMO proper, because it can't support the constant change an MMO requires. So unless we learn to accept the fact that any game on this model is going to die after a time, I see this same argument sparking up again the minute GW2 starts to wind down.

It's why I stopped beating myself up over slowly switching from GW to WoW over this past year. I had a great two years with Guild Wars. I still enjoy spending time with my friends there and playing when the festivals come around. But that game's life is ending, and that's just the natural course of things. I'll be happy to play Guild Wars 2 for a few years or so. But in the meantime, I have to face the truth that MMOs as we know them can only be maintained on a subscription or microtransaction system.

*tilts head* Isn't points 9 and 10 the same as points 4 and 2 (respectively)? Isn't point 5 false (Menagerie, zquests, codex, nicholas, dhuum vs pet unlock pack, costumes... something I missed?). I am unaffected by 6 (except this last week), so not everyone is affected by bad lags for "months."

Sounds like a some of the QQ is just fluff to me then. ^^

However, said Live Team, is relatively small compared to an average game developer team. What is it, 2 designers (Linsey and Rober), a programmer (Joe), and the QA? No artists, no model designers, limited programming abilities (due to there being just one).

Yeah, they're really going to crank out "good" updates and "perfect" skill balances (by good I mean Sorrow's Furnace sized, by perfect I mean addressing all the skill balancing issues seen currently, such as the PvP meta and farming). Now, of course, there is the Test Krewe to help out, but that's basically expanding the QA, so it doesn't help with where it is needed for the stuff people are "demanding."

My source (TK), shows a few different people, but still, only 3 people do the needed work to get things done faster, everyone else is just there to check for bugs and give comments on how to change skills: I.e., the QA.

Hm, last time I saw, exploiting something was a bannable offense. Not that it matters to me since I don't do that junk anyways.

/sigh. For the last time, that list is a representation of what I've heard other complaining about. It is not a personal list of mine. As a matter of fact, several of those issues I am completely unbothered by.

Damn, people.

I respond to posts one at a time, and usually don't remove responses when it was covered. But I never did say it was a personal list of yours. I was simply stating that your list can, in fact, be condensed. The more points, the more it sounds like you're trying to degrade the Live Team, especially with unnecessary points which is practically the same, though more specific, than previous points.

Lets face it, ArenaNet built an outstanding game for it time in Guild Wars. Like anything man made it has it’s flaws, but Guild Wars has a lot less of them than most games do. We all have things we want to see “fixed,” but how often do these things make the game unplayable? Very rarely. The fact that they are even maintaining the game should be considered a feather in their cap.
Everyone knows that there is a skill update coming; everyone seems to be spending a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly that update is. As I see it, ArenaNet is trying to figure out how to fix the skills without actually breaking them or drastically changing their base functionality. If ArenaNet did not care they would have a simpler task ahead of them, they would simply bring out the nerf bat.

Thats true. it is rare. but when it does happen, (and yes there is one right now)
and doesn't get fixed, it shows a certain attitude toward the game. My comment wasn't actually a qq about 'fix Zos Shivros nao', but an observation that at one time, there was NO way that would have been allowed to last overnight. Now, as I said, they wont bother to make what is a simple spawnpoint fix, nor bother to ask a certain crap-fest phail fansite whose name I never mentioned (but KJ did - but its ok real players dont use that site anyway, its for the phail-folk) to take down the directions it has posted on how to screw over legitimate players.
Since they wont bother with these simple actions, I say it is ANET who has forgotten some of the great things about thier game.
it wasnt all that off-topic.