Hello
I post here only appr. 1/2-3 months, but now I feel compelled to give my two pennies to the thread and not only a simple thank you (but of course I thank you too for your efforts).
As I see there is an overwhelming amount of crying and flaming and very "clever" commenting from a lot of people on various forum, how bad work has been done, how buggy the whole gw, mostly 12-15 years old people (sorry for the exceptions) are continuously explaining how things should be done etc. Fed up with them. I would like to give a bit of insight to people to understand what exactly they have here to appreciate.
I have been working for a famous software company (sry, no name
for several years now, in a position something like technical leader who must ensure some project or part of the project gets completed, responsible for quality and for work done by others. Anyway, it is not the most important here what I do, more important I have some idea how sw development, customer relations (few years in ticket handling, etc) are going.
I have to say that what Anet is doing here is an extraordinary effort. Let's see the facts.
1. Anet has issued an excellent game, created a franchise and they giving it to people very cheap (compared to other MMORPGs). I assume they started with the approach to attract lot of people with quality work, and they succeeded (so far).
2. Anet is a software company, which has several employees. They must be paid. They need profit.
3. NCSoft is the company, if I understand well finance the development of this game. In exchange they expect also profit. Since they gave the money, they dictate all the rules (ok, I know nothing about the business model what Anet and NCSoft follows, neither anything about their agreement, but lets assume NCSoft dictates everything.
So Anet is in the very incomfortable middle position: have to satisfy customers, otherwise they will turn away from the game (=dont buy expansions). But at the same time profit has to be generated for NCSoft, or they will stop giving their money to Anet. I do not know how many work hour has been posted by Anet employees last year, but I bet it was not 8 hour/day average.
It was told earlier that expansions will follow on half year basis. It is visibly 1st priority for Anet which is not a surprise cause their living is at the stakes. It seems to be also straightforward that someone (=NCSoft) is not satisfied with the money aspect: at least there are couple of - earlier not-planned or at least not-mentioned - new revenue generators: character slots, unlocks, PVP editions. These are clearly showing that Anet needs to find additional ways to maximize profits besides expansions. I do not know about their operating margin, but they obviously looking for more revenue.
Let's see more closely for a moment what is here. 6 month for an expansion. 24 weeks. 120 working days. It is very clear that development is going on for a longer time than this 6 months, although I know very little about game sw industry. Anyway, someone did the work also earlier -> consumed resource from other projects (e.g. Factions, probably Nightfall was well ongoing at that time at least in some early-mid phase).
Now everyone who has the manuscript of game, open it at the end. You will see how many people has been working on it. around 200-250 maybe? Plentty, but see to how many phase has been existing in this project: planning, artistry, programmers, level planning, level building, technical writing, quality insurance (a compulsory requirement at all bigger company), engine testing, level testing. Additionally obviously Anet (Ok, this might be NCSoft) needs support for customer requests. Marketing. Sales. Community (remember Gaile?
. Human Relationship department for all these people. Server leasing, maintanence costs (probably subcontractos, partners costs also lot of money).
It might not be clear to where I wish to get. I just want to get to the Testing part. Considering above scale, what do you think how many people could test the game? 20-30? Now think about the size of the game. 1.4 Million players. Now let's consider the number of testers, and let's consider also the fact, that Anet must work with a highly decreased development cycle due to market pressure (=must make profit), competition (=how many of your friends went to WoW? I have couple) -> in a nutshell: They need to do quality in an increadible short timeframe.
Did they fully succeed? Hardly. Nightfall is indeed full of bugs. My guess that Anet simply had to give up extensive project testing. Preview events for Anet now serves as pre-release test. First weeks of nightfall serves as heavy bugfixing period. Also sticky forum in nightfall subsection shows that Anet is highly relying on the 1.4 Million tester they have. After all the cant hire 100.000 people to test everything. How many update has come since release, what do you think how much nowaday coders are sleeping? Dont complain if you find a bug. Report it to help them. Do you find an exploit? Be clever, use it, but after you got rich
report it to help developers. Every software has bug, and this has many because it must have been done quickly. This doesn't mean this is a bad job. It is a good job. It is a super job and worths every cent. Stop flaming on them.
Guild Wars Nightfall is a tremendous effort from the developers who deserve the credits (and the money
for this!
Just need some way so I didn't have to work!
) and I think the voice acting IS WAY WAY better. 
