Future of Guild Wars [Chapter Concern]

Hello,

I've been playing Guild Wars since it's release last year and I've got to hand it to ANET for the most part they've done a great job on the game. Now after completing factions and obtaining the most recent update something has began to bug a bit so I thought I would seek some thoughts on my concern. Guild Wars besides the few bugs and needed features is fine at this stage and with the new release of Nightfall at the end of this year I'm sure it's going to give Guild Wars fans something to look forward to but my concern is, where do you see Guild Wars say... 2-3 years from now?

Although it may not look like it now, I think Guild Wars might run into a big issue with the rate of expansion err... standalone release. Now although you aren't required to purchase each standalone that will be released it will pose a problem to those that are serious about PVP, (Guilds and Players) if they aren't up to date with all the skills needed to PvP but before we get into that here is my main concern. By the end of this year we will be up to 10 professions which means at that rate 2 years from now we will have a total of 18 professions, now since ANET allows the option to purchase 26 slots it would lead one to believe that a few years from now there might close to that amount of professions released for the Guild Wars campaign, if not more. So my concern for those people that either are serious about the game like myself whether through PVE or PVP is do you think it will be possible to maintain say 18-26 characters when it comes to updating skills and keeping up to date with addition Chapters?

Say by Chapter 7 if ANET does release each standalone like Factions with 300 new skills total (not confirmed) for core characters only that would mean if you had 18 professions unlocked it would be extremely lengthy and costly to complete that chapter and all addition chapters if released at that rate per year, for example...

2 standalones with 2 professions each per year
That’s 4 professions total per year
Meaning 2 more additional characters per chapter that you will use to redo the same missions in the future chapters
If 18 professions are released by Chapter 7
And each chapter released 300 new skills like factions (not confirmed) for core professions only
That’s 1500 new skills unlocked by the end of Chapter 7 not including addition professions.

*Off Topic*

Now I could also mention the amount of money it will cost to purchase 2 chapters per year for a few years but lets not get into that... and instead support ANET

*Back on Topic*

Right there that's over 1500K worth of Gold and Skill Points to completely upgrade your core characters with skills, now imagine adding the 10 new professions you need to unlock that you obtain from Chapter 3 - 7. Point being I think at that rapid rate of release it might overwhelm a lot of the current players and definitely new players that start playing Guild Wars in Chapter 7 and want to participate in PvP, which overall might hurt the game due to new comers not wanting to start playing the game due to all the work that will be needed to get up to date and existing players not wanting to continue due to the amount of maintenance that will be require to get they're players up to date in the future chapters, if 18+ characters.

Now, Yes I know you don't have to purchase every standalone but again it doesn't leave players much choice if they are serious about PvP I mean I can only imagine a guild like EvIL by Chapter 7 with players that don't have every chapter trying to run a build that requires specific skills that can only be obtained in certain chapters, also Yes I know ANET is a business so they need to make money. Overall I'm not posting a solution just questioning the future of Guild Wars to know whether or not it's worth it to continue with additional chapters and to know if people think they will be playing Guild Wars a few years/chapters from now.

It's just my thoughts at the end of the day...
I would definitely love to hear some feedback on my concern...
Please reply back

Thanks,

P.S: Thanks ANET for the Guild Wars store.

I could have swore you wrote both "future" and "guildwars" in the same sentence.

My more immediate concern is the contents of the next chapter and if it offers nothing more to keep players playing then we wont need to worry about the points you mentioned in future chapters.

Nightfall is going to be sink or swim for the whole game, most people don't like Factions so if Nighfall continues with Chapter 2's lack of both PvE and PvP content then the sales may drop to the point that the funding of the future Chapters will cease.

And there's always a chance that Guild Wars will die because of NCsoft's financial problems, as described in Photics

I agree. I consider the Nightfall's preview of this weekend fake, because both characters will be nerved big time. I'll buy Nightfall and than check if it will be more playable than Fractions. Otherwise I will delete the whole thing of my computer and that will be it. I'm not willing to pay for an other Factions.

Ps. I only care about the Pve part, which sucks big time on Factions.

I have said this from the begining! That pvp will change I am glade people seeing it now! I have said it to alot pvp players in the past they hated me for it.

For gw to last, it will depend on the rpg for this game.What will keep gw strong is if the rpg is really good. Gw was was ment to be a game where you create a rpg then fight. It cannot be rts or fps. those types of games don't change as much as guild wars!i am sorry but mounts and new forms of pvp must come. Pvp will change as more chapters come about!

if they don't then by by gw. Gw needs to have strong rpg! For the people who remeber me in debates, remeber what i had said on the topic.

just think about if the make all the new classies like asassin. the asassin was nerfed badly no one is going to want the new chapters classies if they are nerfed badly or not useable!

At the core of this game is the rpg and not pvp

While I agree that Chapter 3 is going to be key to the future of GW, I don't think that the problem with chapter 2 is the lack of content, but rather the lack of quality content. [begin rant] There's a storyline full of characters, but it's uninteresting & the character acting is bad & many of the voices are worse. The City is a miserable place to visit, for the most part, wayyy to laggy. The Jade Quarry is a huge flop. The AB's are great fun, but the wait to get into a battle is a pain. The Elite missions are a great idea, but having to either pay you're way to gain access to them or rely on the kindness of others to have access to them just isn't right. (Thanks to you all who do the free ferrying, though!)[/end rant]

On the plus side, the Jade Sea is pretty neat & the Shing Jea Island is well done

Assuming that just because a vocal minority in am internet forum dislikes factions makes the game bad is just plain dumb. Guru's forums have 90941 members, I'd say atleast 30% of those members have a membership on another forum, so lets say between all the main GW forums, we have 400k people. Of those 400k people, perhaps 20k post with any regularity. Of those regular posters, how many actually think that factions is bad? It's just a guess, but I see the same names here over and over so I'm gonna be generous and say 1000. ANet has said that they have sold 2 million copies of the game, but that doesn't say Prophecies or Factions, so lets say 1 million of each. 1000 people out of 1 million factions accounts = 0.1% of the population. Is 0.1% of the population a majority? Uhm, no. You want to say majority, have some numbers to back it up.

If you plan to dabble in the fine art of statistics then I recommend that you first check what it's all about. I'm sorry to say that but what you've written is such a plain bulls**t it makes my eyes hurt.

In case you fail to see what's wrong with your reasoning, let me illustrate: All my friends except John and Marry like apples. Conclusion: 0,00000000000000000000000000001% of world's population doesn't like apples.

Agreed. I dislike a lot about Factions, and no longer start characters there, but I got my money's worth from it. There is plenty of content, it's just that it's tedious.

Funnily enough, I overheard a lot of Factions-related discussion this afternoon (in Tyria). A few players, in different locations, were asking if they should buy it. Response from everyone that has Factions: No. Wait for Nightfall.

I think Nightfall is key, both in terms of whether it'll redeem the PvE portion of GW, and also to see if some of the problems we've been worried about, like population thinning, will be addressed by things like better henchie AI.

Dreamhunk, you need to stop posting. Please just stop. At least work on some reading comprehension.

Your post did not address or add anything to the OP, you just went off into your own little world again.

The OP is concerned about the rate of expansion with skills and professions in the game and concerning PvP. He is concerned about how to keep up with so many characters and skills when the game starts reaching more and more expansions.

I completely agree.

With the upcoming looming expansion packs, the game is gonna get bigger and bigger and the skill pool is going to be HUGE.

New players will have difficulty competing vs established players who have already unlocked 3-4 chapters worth of skills and professions. This is one reason i am in favor of UAX for older chapters.

Existing players will have the difficulty of choosing from such a large skill pool.

The game is going to get really complicated, really fast.

Izzy addressed this issue partially on the WOC interview. Anet is aware of this issue.

Uh...the only problem with your concern, is the belief that every expansion is going to give us two new professions. They've already told us there will be expansions that do not include new professions but are just focused on giving us more content, a new land to explore, more skills, items, etc.

I think the new Flames of Balthazar, will be great help in unlocking faster through PvP and even PvE. Just PvPing will get you medallions, turn in those medallions and you're adding on to the faction you're already receiving. For all we know, Flames are already supposed to be a way for people who are just joining to catch up faster. If someone happens to get lucky and get rich, they could go out and buy a lot of medallions, and use all of them to unlock a lot of skills.

If anything, I bet by the time more chapters are released, we'll have more ways to get Balthazar faction, that don't actually require you to PvP 24/7.

My thought on this: Yes, good point, but it presupposes that a vast number of people are going to want to unlock every skill of every class just to get their fun out of Guild Wars. I'm not sure this is true. I'm not a huge PvP player but it seems to me that plenty of people are doing okay with niche specializations. Only the truly obsessive or the hypercompetitive are going to want or need to run every class all the way up.

People like me? Well, I dig elementalists. I dig ritualists. I just started playing around with mesmers. I tried the new classes this weekend and neither made me say "Ooh, I gotta!" So if I buy Nightfall, it'll probably be for new setting content, and I can have lots of fun with freaking out about class overload.


And another thing that just occurred to me: a lot of this speculation is based on the assumption that ANet's business plan is to keep adding new chapters to Guild Wars for years and years to come. That's not how a lot of other games work. We've already seen Everquest II, Lineage II, etc.

What if the grand master plan for dealing with the Guild Wars Explosion is just to pump out chapters through, say, the end of 2007, stop at five or so, and then reset the clock with a bigger, totally revamped Guild Wars II (or some other concept entirely)?

Guild Wars would still be playable, just as Everquest 1 is still playable, but expansions would stop and they'd refocus all their energy into moving people over to the new game. With the "CORPG" concept having been proven, they may try a different solution to the profession explosion. (Like, say, doing away with professions and going fully customizable.) Or even if they don't, hitting the reset button buys them a few more years before it becomes a problem again.

Just to point out they have stated that not all chapters will get a new class releases also.

Also the game has to remain blanced, which means that among the core skills / mono-exansion skills is enough variety and useful skills to compete effectively in PvP whilst only owning one expan....stand alone product

rest assured, Anet has already taken into consideration the "future of guildwars".