Are Community Relations Dead in GW1?

I've been looking over the contributions of the Community Relations team lately, and I have a question to pose to all of you:

Do you think CR is finally dead in GW1?

If you were to hop over to GW2Guru, you would find a large number of CR responses on various threads, whereas if you look on GWGuru or the wiki there is almost no correspondence at all. As a matter of fact, Regina hasn't edited the official wiki in a month.

Has Anet pushed the CR team to focus on GW2, or have we driven our CR team away? Or, if you think they're still doing community relations in GW1, how do you think they're doing it?

If this is how we're going to be treated when Guild Wars 2 is out, that's one reason not to get Guild Wars 2. Some of it is harsh and retarded criticism from this forum, but a lot of it is also idiotic choices from Anet's end. Like making announcements or information about Guild Wars on a non-Guild Wars forum...

You're posting a question that already has a clear answer.

It wont be. New games have great support (like GW1 had in the beginning) and as they age, time begins to test the fortitude of the developers' collective passion. In our case, that fortitude seems to be running thin.

Probably true, but why? So many games get great support for years. Why would GW get slack after only half a decade? Do you think Anet pushed it for GW2 or did we do it to ourselves through our asshatery?

I think they'll start ramping up in the info Dept. but it won't be for GW1. It'll be for GW2. I'd like to get more CR as well but I believe they're pushing most (if not all) of it for GW2.

C'mon, Guild wars probably has the best community relations out there

Depends on how you gauge it.
If you're basing this on the quantity of communication, then no GW doesn't.
If you're basing this on the quality of communication, then....no GW still doesn't. To be fair, some companies' quality is worse (*cough*Blizzard*cough*), but their quantity is infinitely better.

Ironically, F2P games tend to have incredibly passionate CR teams who do amazing jobs in both categories. They organize community events outside of normal celebrations and pop up in the game to PUG with normal players and often have decent relationships with their player-base. It's ironic because they probably earn half of what the Anet CR team makes...they just happen to care a lot about the community (or the game, one or the other).

GW is putting out content with the power of four people and is a game that is over five years old. GW2 has maybe over a hundred people working on it and hasn't even had its first public play testing (I think). It's obvious who's going to get the most attention between the two.

There's not enough happening in the GW world right now for CR to be commenting on.

Would be nice if they threw the game into massive anarchy for a month or so. you know, no CR at all and being able to use pve only skills in pvp and no skill splits with all the skills using there pve forms :P <--- that little sign right there entails a joke in case you didn't find it funny or think i am serious and you want to flame me.

If you were a community manager, would you like to post in a forum where everything you say is subject to criticism (even if your statement is a positive one) or on a forum where people are glad to hear what you have to say even if it is a negative statement?

You guys complain that GW1 CR is dead, yet when you do get it, you whine and complain even more about it.
At this moment there's is nothing new in GW for the CR team to say anything anyway! Derv update preview ain't ready yet you know . . .

Also, to be fair to them, they are all busy preparing for Gamescon and PAX to make sure everything goes smoothly at those two events.

GW hasn't had CR since Gaile left.

It wasn't much better before she left.

hmmm, had to think about the answer to that question.
Then I read the news...the recession is still pretty bad, unemployment figures are just as high as they have been, etc.
I think from that perspective, we should be happy that ANYONE is still checking in on this game now, though you'd think they would want to keep up appearances anyways---

Yes, I would. However, I would have pushed the development team to create an official forum where I had the administrator rights to delete comments and would have tied forum accounts to game accounts so people were responsible (read:bannable) for trolling.

You know...what every.other.game.does.

I don't see any strong complaints in this thread yet. Actually, it's been quite civil so far. Even though this could easily take a turn-for-the-worst, it hasn't yet and hopefully wont.

Even I'm being rather nice about this...which is a rarity for me.

I understand that, but we have a 4 man CR team (Regina, Emily, Stephane, and Martin), and I assume that Martin will be mostly handling Gamescon (since he speaks German), which leaves 3 other CRs who are doing....what, exactly? By "what", I mean besides commenting on GW2Guru.

And just so everyone is aware, the mark of a good CR team is one that keeps in touch with players EVEN WHEN there's not much going on. Going to community events (or organizing them), talking about GW:B (don't tell me that there's nothing to say about that yet, that would be pathetic), or hell...even just playing the game with people.

Why do we care?

Is there anything going on right now that needs CR action?

Is there any news for a-net to give us right now?
Are there any recent boneheaded mistakes that they should be listening to feedback on right now?

I think it's a combination of GW1 being B2P [buy once to play] model, and our asshatery.

Logically speaking though, GW1 won't last forever; it has an eventual end, and it's slowly getting there as more time goes by. Eventually, either the game's plug will be pulled, or there'll be some kind of offline version release [if they will it] that we can play. CR as a whole for GW1 is on its natural decline, and GW2 is around the corner. As we all know, it takes alot of developers working on it to push for a good release date, so GW1 support is obviously lacking. I say don't be surprised by this, but rather embrace it. It's to be expected of a game that we don't pay rent on and is pretty darn old.

While I would agree with everything you said, I would say that there are plenty of examples of games that had great CR leading towards their end. I don't fully understand why we aren't getting something similar.

it was way better when Gaile was around. recent sizeable posts in this forum over the last few months would of gotten some kind of response from her or multiple responses compared to the current CR team. even if it was a simple "we are aware of the problem and its being looked into" or as in the huge bot thread we most likely would of gotten a response or 2 along the lines of "we are aware of the problem but cant discuss it til a solution is found". i actually think it was a mistake by the Guru team to separate things between 2 websites so soon when there is still no sign of a GW2 release date. the separation of websites/forums should of waited til GW2 either had a set in stone release date or hit a true beta if that ever happens. the CR team is spending their time where the most activity is by the lack of their activity here, even if it means discussing a game thats not being played yet.

I mostly thinks it's because all the hate around here. It seems every other post has something that's negative towards ArenaNet. Yes KJ, I play another MMO where the CR team is extremely active, but they also the players respect them, inside jokes ect. Just like over on GW2Guru, where the CR team feels at home.

Either way, what can the CR team has nothing to comment on. "Oh sorry we are working on the dervish update, stay tuned".

I don't 15 or 20 minutes of a day is that huge of a thing. You know...answer questions, say hi, or discuss quests/lore.

Read the part in bold one more time and understand from a business perspective that money = service. We don't pay a monthly fee to merit service, and the game's 5 years old. Makeovers, costumes, etc., aren't enough to upkeep any significant skill renewals/content. This is a huge component that cannot be ignored. No money, no honey [unfortunately].