Conspiration Theory: ANet is losing control over GW

That's the first thing that came to my mind after I read the initial musing on GW2. I mean, the whole thing sounds like the bastard child of Lineage II and City of Heroes, spiced with a few novel ideas from WoW.

In other words, sounds like something NCSoft, not ArenaNet, would come up with. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But in the off chance that I'm right, I just wonder what ANet is doing these days then...

Conspiracy theory: There is no Anet. There is no Guild Wars. This is all an elaborate illusion to keep you distracted as aliens suck your brains.

I mean honestly what I see when i read postings about GW2 is Anet listens to their customers. If you hang out in Sardelac, these ideas have been floating around for a long time and a LOT of players want it.

How Anet will implement these ideas and still maintain the feel and core of Guild Wars is what remains to be seen.

Shhhhh. Elvis and Bigfoot are scared of aliens.

After Factions was release, I DID think that ANet wasn't bothering to listen to their player base, because there were a lot of great ideas I saw suggested before its release, and basically none were implemented. I don't know if it was some kind of community backlash they received or if a light bulb suddenly came on, but they seemed to have listened a bit with Nightfall. They implemented a lot of the "little" things that went a long way.

Also, I doubt ANet is losing control of GW2 to NCSoft. ANet's reasoning that the game was going to become too bloated was pretty logical; I mean, if it kept going, and you got to 6 or 7 chapters, what new player would play if it meant you had to buy all of them and pay $40-50 per chapter just to be competitive in PvP?(Yes. I know the earlier chapters would have gone down a bit, but I don't feel like estimating inflation too :P I think they may have also gotten tired of designing similar campaigns with the same 6 classes and two new ones, and having to design extra skills for all the old classes and entire new skillsets for the new ones. Guess they figured it would be easier just to start from the ground up again rather than try and do it that way.

Conspiration: Is that like anti-inspiration?

Seriously, Guild Wars (and Anet) is one of NCSofts biggest flagships.

Why would they mess with a good thing?

In Anet I trust.

Very bogus, 1/10.

Conspiration??

I can't post anymore then what Lyra had already mentioned, Sardelac is basically not even considered serious to any degree as to what players somewhat want.

Yes its all a conspiracy... in fact i bet that GW stands for George W and was in fact a game developed by the amercian government to brain wash the world's youth into joining the military...

Seriously gw2 is two years away... at least wait for the beta and actually play the game before making stuff up.

I think its important to remember that we are A YEAR away from even the BETAS of this game...Yes the magazine makes the game sound like GWoW (Guild Wars of Warcraft), but that doesn't mean anything is final and we know nothing about the details of gameplay.

Like 100 threads popped up trying to make thoeries on GW2 based off of currect GW when we don't even know that the game will even play the same or use the same system for skills and such (the attribute system).

Anything the magazine says can only be taken as early ideas since the game is one year away from betas..and we know how much a game can change just from betas to release..much less before they even beta test it...

Have you bought PC Gamer and actually read it? I'm so tired of this speculative BS.

If you would like to see some sales figures...

http://news.mmosite.com/content/2007...11500823.shtml

You go right on ahead thinking that NCSoft has taken over the developement of GW from A-Net.

The ones who are REALLY behind all of the reworking of GW into GW2 will be glad to know that you're not onto us... uuhhh - them. I mean THEM!

Geezus. This is ridiculous. Don't like some features of the upcoming game and suddenly everything is a conspiracy. I dont like everything but I don't make threads and act out as though I'm 12 years old. Get a freaking grip people.

Geez. You people have no sense of humor. If I was really serious about this, I wouldn't write "conspiracy theory" in the post title.

I just wanted to note how ArenaNet seems to be (positively) using ideas from other NC games, and other successful games on the market, and do that while riding in the crazy speculation wave.

It's far easier to believe that Anet is simply listening to the parts of the player base I vehemently disagree with, which may even be the majority (I don't really know). It's sad that GW2 seems to be going in such a substantially different direction, it's sad that some of the things I like most about GW are being limited or eliminated in the new game, and it's sad as a result that, barring a major change of design, my GW gaming will end with Eye of the North.

1. You fail at humour.

2. You're still speculating.

/seconded

Oh and just read the article... best article I've read so far in 2007

whats a constipation theory?

Seriously though... there ARE no truly new ideas in games. Anet is using its own engine and format (no monthly fees) and responding to players. It's not a conspiracy. GW2 is going to require some major work. While I love the instance based game that is GW1, and the pvp, and hell the pve... a crossover which somehow avoids the pitfalls of shall we say other MMO's in the persistent side would really make my day.

edit: on second thought it would make my year...

conspiration is the funniest thing i've seen all day

We can speculate all day, but at the end of the day, that's all they are, speculations. No one, other than employees of ANet/NCSoft, really knows. Personally, I don't think this kind of discussion is very constructive and creates the perception of a problem that may not even exist.

Thank god thats a theory.

No point on discussing how angles make love here.

My thoughts are that:

- they've taken Guild Wars as far as they can take it (the pvp balance wouldn't be able to survive another year of expansion packs), the PvE is about the same and stagnating

- competition in the mmo marketplace is getting stiffer (Huxley, Fury, Mythos, Hellgate London, and WoW [of course]) and Guild Wars can't compete for the presses attention if it keeps the same engine

Oddly enough, the title may hit the nail on the head closer than was intended (obviously intended to be funny - but given the level of paranoia and speculation on these boards, it's understandable if you thought it was serious).

The PC Gamer article hints about how the game design was becoming somewhat cumbersome, and starting GW2 gives the designers to correct a lot of mistakes that were made, but can't really be fixed without starting over.

I guess in a way you could say that the ANet game designers "lost control of GW", but not in any sinister way. It's more like admitting that there's just a lot of cool things they'd like to try but currently can't due to current technology and gameplay limitations.

I can relate to that. When I first started playing this game I thought "wow, this game has opened so many doors" and as I continued to play the game, that Idea became more and more clear as Anet developed many oppourtunities to improve upon the game, but those Ideas could be so drastic, it could possibly have changed the entire way that people would percieve the game. In my personal opinion, I believe GW2 is going to be very very different in what we are experiencing at this time (very different). I just hope that this time, GW2 wont have so many doors left open for improvement - but to give a better perspective, any doors that GW2 'may' open, should be able to be walked through without causing too much of a change in the game.

I could even go far as to say that the way in which HoH was changed over the past months could reflect the decision to say "I think we struck a forbidden chord, let's make a new game and see where it takes us."

Speculations aren't so far out as some people may think. The best thing to understand is that speculations cannot be actioned unless the party under speculation comes to concern that something may be actioned, and often under the wrong pre-tenses - that there is a full loop of speculation between both sides :P.

I reckon it serves as a preparation of what actually comes. If the information that was speculated proved to be true, then when the time comes where it actually needs to be discussed, then it's already been done, and people can move on, otherwise, the speculation is dropped like a heavy stone in water - quickly to be forgotten.

I had to laugh at that one.

Anet seems intact. They've made it clear to NCsoft from the beginning that they would be in charge of the games they make.

You're wrong.

Guild Wars 2 is ArenaNet's vision. NCsoft is fully on board, but this project truly springs from the Guild Wars Team, from ArenaNet.

I hope you guys can get your mitts on a PC Gamer -- the plans and the whole concept is so much clearer when you read the preview. Guild Wars 2 grew out of looking at Guild Wars and, while planning a new campaign, realizing that there were so many things that the team wants to do, so many ideas to implement, and so many requests to fulfill that it takes a major step to make all that possible. Therefore, GW2.

You rock.

Woot!

thanks gaile can't wait to get the mag in my hands,man i bet pcgamer sells alot of copies this month!

But you didn't. You wrote Conspiration. On another note, humor is generally lost on the internets.

Can't wait for GW2 beta Gaile

Making crap threads in Riverside is not a good idea.