Sad I know.....but I fear my char going to the great server in the sky

3140 over the last 21 months for me so far. Yes, I might be a bit sad when the servers eventually go off. Then again that should be a long time for now and I may have already burnt out before it ends. I can only liken it to finishing school: you miss the good times and are a bit sad for a while but eventually find something else to fill the void. Before GW ends my kids will both be fully talking and even more demanding and they get higher priority anyhow so my playing time is going downhill by the day.

Qft. I think it has nothing to do with age. This is my second MMO, the first being City of Heroes, and I'm beginning to sense Arenanet's development direction and priorities are diverging from my interests and aesthetic values, just as Cryptic's did over two years ago. If I decide to leave Guild Wars, I'll take bunch of screenshots, and embark "ranger" style into the metagame of finding a new computer recreation for that aspect of my life. Like others on this thread I'll work actively to take my guild mates along. I wish you well and good hunting should you decide to depart.

There are a couple of things Arenanet may want to consider that I think may not be unique to me. First, I seriously engage imaginatively and intellectually with one MMO at a time. After I left COH, all the emails and special offers were wasted effort: I was in the Guild Wars world. Others apparently felt the same considering COH/COV's revenue numbers and what others have told me about the empty areas, in spite of some interesting innovations. A player community is a precious and delicate resource.

I'm sad every time I finish reading all of Shakespeare's English history plays, even though I know I"ll go back. MMOs are different. Once I've finished I've finished. Ironically, the grief one feels for the end of the experience is very much like real life. And that probably is not such a bad thing.

Diablo 1 was released in late 1996 and still has servers up.............Diablo 2 even more so..............Warcraft 3 does also..........etc....


As long as Guildwars remains free-to-play it will be around for a long long time.


Do you seriously still want to be playing the same game 10 years from now?


All good things come to an end, but as one door closes another door opens to new experiences. Take your friends with you.


If you really want a character that will stay with you till the day you die, then work on the real life character known as "yourself".

You have a storage = your bank account
You can farm = get paid at your job
You kill bosses = not suggested unless you what to become a prison biatch
You can level your character to 100 = whens your next birthday?
You can get new armor = go shopping in the mall
You can learn new skills = community college?
You can improve your Guild = Your wife and kids are the best Guild you will ever have.

The list goes on and on.

I still have diablo 1 installed.

Its awesome stress relief when you take one of your old characters and chain lighting towards diablo :-).

I would welcome being able to pop gw one rainy afternoon after couple of years just to finish odd quests or do odd mission... or maybe check out and go hold halls with heroes/henches as i would skip directly there thanks to noone playing anymore ;p.

This is kindergarten. In twenty years (probably way less), with the exponential increase of technology (think headsets, and possibly neural implants -- not joking), you won't be able to tell real life and virtual reality apart. That's when the real fun --and the nightmare, begins.

I disagree. there have been several reports & theories by psychologist that believe there is in fact a condition being created here. This "second life" that people may, in fact, live in can be the catalyst for psychological conditions.

why are you all mourning now??

Keep your tears for later, when the time will come. I'm only 16, so maybe I dont share the same mentality as you older folks, but honestly, what good does it do thinking and looking at the ticking time bomb... why don't you enjoy it now and remember it later.

I don't take myself as a hardcore GW player, I only have 350 hours in the past 9 months, but I've got alot other things to occupy. I can't play GW more then 2 hours cause I get a massive headache. Some say I read guildWiki more then I play Guild Wars.

I, for one, think that Guild Wars is one of the best MMOs out there, maybe THE best, and I encourage everyone to play it. But please stop flooding the forums with these threads... its all rumours, don't get carried away. Mourn later, enjoy it while it last.

It can eventually end up on one forgotten server in closed somewhere giving last 100 diehard fans their daily fix of gw.[/QUOTE]

That is very true. In the far future, the one lonely GW server will still operate, giving the pleasure to the hard core players...

22 months 4.500 hours, good quota, I am still on 4 months 2.220 hours

What I think this might be for a lot of players is not the "missing/death of a character" but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the time spent that is now null and void. There's no record of it, no more accomplishment, nothing tangible to show for it.

Of course, I say this from personal experience. When a beloved MMOG suddenly loses your interest, closes, etc. there's a sense of "what did I do with that time". Hundreds and thousands of hours. Days, months, years dedicated to a game that you can now look back on and realize that there is nothing to show for that effort. No one will care in 3 months what you did, what false sense of accomplishment you attained, the community that you once shared and once developed relationships in is now completely gone. This might be the root of it for a lot of players.

NCSoft's forthcoming cross game communication ftw. If some of your guild move on to GW2 they will be able to voice chat with you about how l33t it is until you finally break down and get it.

I believe the devs have also stated that should they ever choose to shut the game down, they would release the server code so players could still run the game. Though I'm not sure how likely that is, considering how many fingers there are in the pie. NCSoft might have something to say about it.

Regardless, if GW2 does well, then the lights are bound to stay on for a while. However, I would suggest that you gather your red iris flowers while you may and ask not for whom the ping tolls.

wow so many comments on GW:2 crap. Please stop, it is JUST A RUMOR! The auther of the article said he got the info for it from Anet - but they claimed they never spoke to him about it.

I for one will not believe anything until it is OFFICIALLY confirmed. Until that point I will say that there is not going to be a GW:2.

Tan, speculation is allowed on a Guild Wars fansite. Whether it be for a want such as a concept class, a desired fix for a mission, new ideas for lore, speculation on upcoming skill balances or chapters, discussion on where the game is going, or a rumor such as GW2.

I would be very disappointed if at any point my characters were gone, So i know how you feel.

But I think that anet realizes how much people care about there characters, And i really don't think they will shut them down any time soon.

No worries!

I played Dungeon Siege before I played GW. It has free online servers as well. I had lots of hours and lead a huge clan/guild. DS released a DS2. It played too much like Diablo 2 for my taste, but a few from my clan did expand into it. Characters from DS could not be used in DS2, different game engine was used. Instead of up to 8 in a hosted game, your connection speed dicatated party size. Being on dialup, I could only be in a party of 2.

I stayed with DS until the GW bug bit me. I did name my first GW character after my DS character. The clan/guild did start out together in GW, but most have drifted into other guilds now.

I still once in a great while visit DS. Where once you could find several hundred games to join, there are maybe 10 to 15.

If and when this game fades into the sunset, and if I am still gaming, have been since "PONG" was the rage, I will move to the next game.

I think its important to remember that its the meaning that you gives things that matter in the end. While it may feel like you wasted time after GW is shut down, the memories you have and the accomplishments you made still exist with you. I feel that it matters more that you enjoyed yourself while you were able to then if you can still show of you FOW armor. If you can look back and say that you had a good time and that you are proud of what you accomplished, I don't think you should have any regrets.

Qft. Spoken like a true Red Socks fan, among which I am proud to include myself.

They're not going to cut it off. Hell, look at Lineage and Lineage2. L2 has been out for a few years now, but the original Lineage is still running strong in a lot of places. They even still update it too.

I think the worst that might happen is they won't introduce any new expansions. They might do mini-updates and the likes but I don't see them completely just shutting it down if the player base is still there.

Ew, doomsday thread. When the server gets shut down (a while in the future) do you think you will still be playing? You'll burn out before then bro, trust me. You'll be on to the next game not even remembering guild wars. You'll meet new friends and think "damn its going to suck when I have to leave these guys" when you've forgotten about all the others. If you ARE still playing (which..i'm estimating 5 or 6 years? Thats a long time for one game...get some help) then it might hurt a little but you'll see a gaming magazine somewhere, see the latest MMO that came out, buy it, and enjoy the experience all over again.

Dont be afraid of the future, embrace it, for better things are to come.

Enjoy it while it lasts bro.
Have fun.

I think it would suck if anet shut down the server, but at the end of the day it's only a game, and surely ppl can just get on with their lives?

Interestingly, at least to me, the OP touches upon the death of a world, abeit a virtual one.

Dereth of Asheron's Call 2 was such a world.

An article in Wired gives a good feel for how it was to live in the last days of that community. A player documented in journalistic fashion the final moments leading up to the End of Times.

I played AC2 sporadically over a 2 year period. It has many parallels with Guild Wars, at least to me. In AC2 I faced a dearth of players to actually play with, that is much the case in GW, though for different reasons.

My point is not that Guild Wars is dying, it's far too successful for us to have that conversation, but the dissolution of worlds is an interesting discussion in and of itself.

Asheron's Call 2 - Wikipedia